Significance – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Life Is Hard For A Reason. A Good Reason. Plus Hot Chicks.

“Life’s short and hard like a bodybuilding elf.” – Bloodhound Gang

Regardless, the people at his funeral will be called Paul-bearers.

I bought the book Dune by Frank Herbert when I was a kid. I still recall buying it as it was on one of the monthly trips we took to the book store when we ventured off of Mount Wilder. Ma Wilder was horribly indulgent when it came to books or other healthy creative outlets, like model kits. Books had an unlimited budget around the house, and she never particularly cared which books, as long as I was reading them. As such, at two or three novels a week from age 10 to 16, I read a lot.

I still do.

Dune was one of those. I read it before I started driving. I remember reading it in the time after finishing mowing Grandma Wilder’s lawn and before I was picked on a beautiful summer day decades ago. One thing that struck me is the description in the book of the planet Salusa Secundus. As a kid I mentally pronounced it “Salsa” Secundus, and, well, it is a pretty spicy planet.

I was told to bring an extra jar of liquid cheese, in queso-emergency.

In Herbert’s description, Salusa Secundus was a hell world, horrible weather, murderous beasts, extreme temperatures, awful terrain. It was also the Emperor’s prison where he tossed away the worst criminals of his interstellar empire. “ . . . the mortality rate among new prisoners is higher than sixty percent.”

Yet, here was where the Emperor got his fanatical and tough warriors, the feared Hardeharhar. Oops, different book. I mean the Sardaukar®.

Why there? Well, if you could survive there, you could survive on any planet that a man could live on. And if you could make it though the gauntlet of prisoners trying to kill you, congratulations, you survived the initiation process.

The guards at Big Ben in London look tired! I guess they’re working around the clock.

The idea isn’t a new one. The Spartans had a similar story, as retold by Plutarch, who, despite his name, was not Mickey Mouse’s™ dog:

Another boy . . . when some of his companions had stolen a young fox and delivered it to him . . . hid it under his gown; and though the angry little beast bit through his side to his very guts, he endured it quietly, that he might not be discovered. When the searchers were gone . . . [his friends] chid him roundly, saying, ‘It had been better to produce the fox, than thus to conceal him by losing your own life.’ ‘No, no!’ said he, smiling, ‘it is better to die than to be detected in a base attempt at theft.’

Our teacher told us this story when I was in second grade. Yes. They told it in a somewhat different variation, but they were telling it to seven-year-olds. No trigger warning. No safe space. Just a story about a kid who was so tough that he’d let a fox eat his intestines rather than show weakness.

I think I have an idea where Herbert took his inspiration for the Hardeharhar from.

But at the Best Buy© in Athens you can get advice from the Greek Squad©.

This is a story that resonates, and the deeper it resonates the truer it is. We don’t become strong by being bathed in rose water and sleeping on satin sheets and eating our fill of lemon-cream PEZ© every day, and sailors don’t become captains on calm seas.

We don’t become emotionally strong by never facing hardship.

We don’t become physically strong by sitting on a couch.

We don’t live lives of purpose without getting bruised. Any thing of purpose and worth that one might do will be opposed. Period. Either the odds are against it, the gods are against it, or other people are against it. Sometimes all three.

These are the good fights, if founded in the True, Beautiful and Good. These are the things that are worth the time and effort and pain. These are the things that my scar tissue prepared me for. A life that is based on something that Epictetus said:

Don’t you understand that amounts to saying that I would so prepare myself to endure, and then let anything happen that will happen?

An Epic Cow is really Legend Dairy.

That’s a strong statement. And in a life filled with challenges, it’s hard to understand sometimes why we faced the challenges we did, why we have the scars and bruises that we do. I think it’s because if they didn’t break us and they made us better prepared. Yeah, even Nietzsche was right a time or two, if you include his magnificent mustache.

What then, does this leave us with?

We have today. We have this moment. We have the amazing gift that we can do anything we wish to right now. We can make vows to change the world, we can dedicate (or rededicate) ourselves to fighting for what we know is True, Beautiful, and Good.

And that’s why we’re here. We’re not here for comfort. We’re not here for leisure. We’re not here for quiet. A quiet universe is a dead universe. A universe without conflict is a dead universe. A universe without purpose is a dead universe.

How much mass is in the universe? All of it.

We do not live in a dead universe. We’re breathing, fighting, aberrations, statistical flukes and inconvenient, stubborn fools fighting against entropy and common sense. We see the world and keep going, because, deep down, we have our choices, our reasoned choices that allow us to get up to fight another day.

Or give up.

Me? I choose to keep going, come what may.

Besides, now I’m hungry and am looking for chips and salsa.

Extra spicy. I think I’m ready.

Novelty vs. Routine: The One Line Every Man Must Guard Or Watch His Life Slip Away

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” – Bladerunner

And to everyone who said I couldn’t do standup, well, I see you’re not laughing now.

Routine is where life goes to die.

On reflection the other day I was a bit amused to note how much of my life is on autopilot. I have three pairs of pants that are all the same that I wear for work that are identical in cut, color, and comfort, so I never have to stand in front of the closet wondering what matches what. I have six shirts that rotate on my torso for daily wear, each one as unremarkable as the last. I get up, generally, within one minute of the same time each day, and the Wildermobile™ hits the pavement within the same thirty seconds each workday. I have cigars three times a week, on the same days and at the same approximate time, rain or shine, good mood or bad.

Why three times a week?

Well, because insurance says that means I’m a non-smoker. It’s a loophole I’m happy to exploit, and it keeps the premiums from getting as high as Johnny Depp jumping on Mount Everest.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I set those things up on purpose. I figure I have only so much energy to make decisions each day, so why not save it up and also pre-make decisions for the time I’m stupidest each day? For me, that’s in the morning when I get up. Brush teeth first, pants second, and if I’m lucky they’re on my legs and not as a unique set of chestless arm chaps. No debate, no drama, just forward motion.

It’s like giving my brain a head start on the real work that comes later. This makes sense to me. Efficient. Practical. The kind of system a man builds when he realizes life is long on demands and short on spare mental horsepower.

But.

I get concerned sometimes that I’ve pre-programmed life a bit too much, and created too much of a routine. The reason I’m concerned is that all of those minutes faced with nothing novel or consequential happening slip away like the replicant played by Rutger Hauer says in Blade Runner: “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

And the mostest lostest will be those moments where I was living life on routine, putting one foot in front of the other with hours of my life slipping by on autopilot. The coffee is hot, the drive is the exact same stretch of highway, the cigar smoke curls up exactly as it did last Tuesday. Comfortable, yes.

But is comfort the same as living?

Time is really one of the biggest fascinations of my life. Even as a kid, I was obsessed with the idea that something new is only bright and shiny when it’s brand new, and after a certain amount of damage it simply can’t be made to look new again. It wears. It gets scratched and dinged, and none of that is, short of melting it down and remaking it new again, reversible.

Time does that to everything, including us. I can go back to the home I left this morning, but I can’t go back to this morning. It’s a lost country, a place where I can only go in my memory. Gone.

Irretrievable.

And what if every morning is the same for a thousand days? Haven’t I just compressed all of my life into one single Groundhog Day, with the only exception that I’m getting older, less shiny and new? Less naïve? Less innocent?

The calendar pages flip, but the days bleed together into one long, grey blur.

I wake up, I do the things, I go to bed, and suddenly a decade has vanished while I was busy being responsible.

The flip side of routine is novelty.

I remember the first night I met The Mrs., the way the room felt electric and the conversation refused to end. I remember my first car. I remember my first touchdown. I remember my last day of college.

I remember building the first Pinewood Derby® car with The Boy and the last one with Pugsley. Those moments and milestones that make up the peaks and valleys of life. Those, certainly, have made my life longer. Not in years, but in the way that life stretches when something real happens. I remember those moments intensely.

There’s a fine line, though.

If my life is nothing but novelty, then what chance do I have of creating something useful, of establishing meaning with my life?

There is none.

Chaos is where life goes to lose meaning. One wild distraction after another, no anchor, no progress, just a pinball existence bouncing from shiny object to shiny object until nothing sticks and nothing matters.

If my life is always routine, I’m pushing every bit of meaning away, becoming a grey man in a gray room on a grey house on a gray hill. Everything blends. Nothing stands out. The days stack up like identical bricks in a wall you can’t see over, and one day I realize the wall is my life and I built it yourself.

I have this thought, mainly because Pugsley is mostly on his own now. I figure the time when I’ve spent half of the hours I’ll ever spend with him was sometime in 2015 or 2016. He’s now out in the world.

That realization sneaks up on a father like a quiet thief. No warning bell when the halfway mark passes. I just look up one day and notice the house is quieter, the schedule has gaps, and the kid you taught to ride a bike is suddenly navigating highways I’ll never drive.

It forces the question: so what now?

Again, routine is where life goes to die, and chaos is where life goes to lose its meaning.

Routine is Scylla; Chaos, Charybdis. I love it when I work a semicolon into a sentence!

We paddle between the two monsters, trying not to get devoured by either. Too much of one and we drown in sameness. Too much of the other and we drown in noise.

I think we as a culture are caught between these two monsters right now. We have chaos in the never-ending rise of technological advancement, which at the same time turns faces toward the black mirrors in their hands, where they take the cold comfort of doomscrolling their life away in an endless sea of other people’s outrage and other people’s highlights. Every notification promises novelty with a new opinion that will surely change everything.

But it doesn’t.

It just scrolls.

The phone lights up, the brain lights up, and another slice of irreplaceable time disappears into the glow. We’ve engineered a world that offers infinite novelty at the cost of any real depth, and we wonder why so many feel hollow.

Reality, I think, is part of the antidote. Writing is, for me. Sure, I do it on a routine: same time, same chair, same keyboard, but each post is something different. Each one starts from a fresh thought, a fresh observation, a fresh wrestle with whatever corner of life is nagging at me that week.

It’s routine that (mostly) invites novelty instead of smothering it.

And getting out and accomplishing something in the physical world is also important, too. Building something with my hands. Moving my body until it complains and then keeps going anyway. These things don’t just fill time; they mark it.

They leave evidence that I was here, that I did something that outlasts the doomscroll.

The balance isn’t perfect and it never will be. Some days the routine wins because the world demands it. Other days novelty crashes in whether I wanted it or not.

The trick, I’m learning, is to guard the line between them like it’s the most important border in your life. Protect enough routine to keep the engine running and enough novelty to keep the engine pointed somewhere worth going.

Because time doesn’t wait for us to figure it out. It keeps moving, wearing us down, turning shiny new mornings into well-worn afternoons.

And if I’m going to lose moments like tears in rain, I’d rather a few of them be the kind worth remembering: sharp, vivid, and undeniably mine, than a thousand identical ones that blur together into nothing at all.

Why Henry VIII Would’ve Killed for Your Tuesday

“Dying in our sleep is a luxury that our kind is rarely afforded. My gift to you.” – Kill Bill: Volume 1

I guess he had a bad heir day.

Henry VIII could have anyone killed in England killed, whenever.

That’s a historical level of flex, right?

“Off with his/her/their/xir head!” and boom, problem solved. The only way he could have had a more complete solution is if he had ye olde Hellfyre Missyll that he could have obliterated the parts with. Hank had more wives than most guys have pairs of underwear, threw parties that made Vegas look like a church potluck, and ate so much roasted swan he probably needed a crane to get out of bed.

Yet the poor bastard was miserable. Hank’s leg was a festering horror show of oozing sores that never healed. Doctors, if you could call them that, mashed it with hot pokers and prayed to Saints who were clearly not looking out for Henry.

Summers? Hank oozed sweat in every royal crevice like a Somalian in a daycare because air conditioning hadn’t been invented yet. Winters? Drafty castles that made your average Motel 6® feel like the Ritz™.

Fresh vegetables in January? Forget it, unless you counted the mold on last year’s turnips. Antibiotics? Nope. He died at 55 looking like a bloated, angry grape because a simple infection laughed at him.

Bill Gates claimed that it was hard to give away $100 billion. Then he discovered divorce.

Meanwhile, the poorest person reading this right now has:

Climate-controlled comfort (except when the power goes out and we all act like it’s the apocalypse)
Aspirin that kills headaches faster than Henry could yell “treason”
Strawberries in February flown in from well, wherever, for $2.99 a pint
A phone in their pocket with more computing power than NASA used to put men on the Moon, back when they still did that sort of thing

And we complain the Wi-Fi is slow.

As a society, we’ve lost the plot. We chase the next luxury like it’s the last helicopter out of Saigon, never noticing we’re already living better than every king who ever lived.

Marie Antoinnette didn’t like the chopper that took her out of France.

That’s where fasting, prayer, and meditation come in.

They don’t add luxury. And they’re not anti-luxury, either. Instead, they intensify life real life by pulling away things that dull it. They rip the blindfold off so you can finally see the ridiculous abundance that’s been hiding in plain sight.

Take camping, which is another life-intensifier. Or better yet, backpacking, because backpacking is camping for people who like suffering without a car nearby. You hike ten miles with everything you own on your back. Hot shower? Nah. Cold beer? Dream on, pal.

Clean socks after three days? Suddenly they feel like silk sheets at the Four Seasons®. That lukewarm instant coffee at sunrise after a 14,000-foot summit? Nectar of the gods. And that single cigar you packed for the top?

It tastes better than the $80 Cuban some hedge-fund guy is smoking in his climate-controlled man cave. The Luxury Meter resets. Hard. The stuff I took for granted becomes decadent again.

I felt motion sickness on the airplane yesterday. It didn’t help having all of those people screaming for lifejackets and rafts.

That’s exactly what fasting, prayer, and meditation do as I get older, except I don’t have to carry a 40-pound pack or sleep on rocks.

Let’s start with fasting, because I actually do this every week and some of my happiest days are while I’m doing it.

Yes, I’m the weirdo who smiles while hungry. Judge away. After 72 hours without food, that first bite of whatever I eat next hits different. It’s not “dinner.” It’s a religious experience.

Last week I broke a fast with a salad of lettuce, and my own dressing (olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and Frank’s Hot Sauce™.

I swear the lettuce tasted like it was grown by angels on Mount Olympus. I actually said “thank you” out loud to vinegar. The Mrs. asked me, “Are you planning on starting a cult?”

“No, it’s too hard to find enough people who are willing to shave off all the hair on their bodies. Just no commitment nowadays.”

Fasting reminds me that food isn’t a background app: it’s a miracle, a gift. My ancestors fought wolves for scraps, and won. That’s why I’m here.

Right now I’m so hungry I could eat my watch, but that would be time consuming.

Henry VIII had entire forests of deer murdered for his gouty pleasure and still died angry. Me? I can open the fridge and there sits last night’s leftover steak and a bag of midget tomatoes.

Fasting turns the volume down on “I want more” and turns it up on “Holy crap, this is amazing,” when one of those ripe tomatoes explodes flavor in my mouth as I bite into it. Prayer does the same thing, but with gratitude instead of hunger and with fewer seeds.

I’m not talking about the fancy stained-glass, organ-music version. I’m talking about the five-minute reciting the “Lord’s Prayer” or just sitting there praying “thanks” for all the little miracles in my life, like cigars. Thanks for the roof that doesn’t leak. Thanks for the truck that started this morning. Thanks for antibiotics that would’ve saved Henry’s leg and probably at least one of his marriages if the Habsburgs weren’t trying to kill him. Thanks for the fact that I can complain about gas prices while eating pineapple from Costa Rica on a pizza in February.

I think that if I do this regularly my brain chemistry changes. I cease envying the guy with the bigger bank account and start noticing that I’ve never missed a meal, except on purpose.

And then there’s meditation, which I used to think was for hippies in hemp pants smoking hemp and praying to a bong with hi-fi playing sitar music in the background.

Turns out it’s just shutting up for five minutes. Sit. Breathe. Notice the thoughts racing around like caffeinated squirrels.

After a few minutes the squirrels calm down. And suddenly I notice things. The warmth of the coffee mug. The feeling of my head against the back of my chair that just happens to adjust six ways. The ridiculous luxury of quiet.

Only self-aware people will understand this joke. You know who you are.

Henry VIII never had five minutes of peace: someone was always trying to poison him or marry him or overthrow him or he had another wife to kill.

I can have it peace and quiet whenever I want, and it costs exactly nothing.

When I do all three together it’s like a factory reset on my soul. The constant “I need more” noise fades.

I’m not saying sell everything and move to a cave and become a monk. I like my truck, my cigars, and my central heat as much as the next guy. But I’m not going to let “luxury” make me the modern version of Henry VIII: rich in stuff, poor in joy, angry at the world because the sores never heal and the wives won’t die. These things remind me that the real luxury isn’t the next thing, it’s realizing the things I already have would’ve made kings weep with envy.

Though say what you want about Henry, he did have a cure for wives who had headaches.

Happiness, Desire, Whiskey, and Purpose

“Is this making you happy?” – Fight Club

Why are mathematicians always happy? They know that the root of anything negative is imaginary.

“Happiness is all that it wants, and resembling the well-fed, there shouldn’t be any hunger or thirst.” – Epictetus

Think back to the moment that were really content. Happy. Maybe it was after a nice steak. Maybe it was after a draw on a good cigar. Maybe it was in on the bench seat of a 1978 GMC® truck on a warm summer night.

Whenever it was, in moments of true contentment, true happiness, you don’t want or need anything. The moment is complete. It is as it is. I feel that way after I write a post I’m especially happy with. I feel that way most mornings after the first sip of coffee. In those moments, in those times, I simply don’t need anything more.

W.C. Fields: “Always carry a whiskey flask in case of a snake bite. With that in mind, always carry a small snake.”

This is why I say that happiness is the easiest thing for most people, most of the time. It’s simple. Stop wanting what you don’t have.

Done. Easy. Unless it’s air. I need that most of the time and get quite cross and panicky when I don’t have it. And water, yeah, I need that on occasion. Food? Not an issue. Like most people in current-day USA, I could skip a meal or a few dozen meals and still be physically fine.

So, happiness is easy.

My brothers Sin and Cos stayed out in the Sun too long. They’re now tanned gents.

Why then, are most people unhappy?

They want what they don’t have. In some cases, they want what they can never have. Some mid-tier 8 who spends a night banging Brad Pitt now wants a Brad Pitt type guy to love her. That’s simply not going to happen in this universe because Brad Pitt has all the twenty-year-old 10s he wants to have, and one of them might be a keeper.

So, our mid-tier 8 is unhappy. If she didn’t think she deserved Brad Pitt, well, she might have a chance to be happy. But, no, she’s made herself unhappy. And, she’s made herself unhappy in the stupidest way possible: she’s pining for something she will never ever be able to have. In her case, it’s confusing being Mrs. Right Now with being Mrs. Right.

After A.I., how will programmers make money? Selling their laptops.

This unhappiness didn’t come from outside her: she made it up. So, whenever I’m unhappy, it’s typically because of a really simple reason: reality isn’t conforming itself to the way I want it to be. You know, the post didn’t say what I wanted to say in the way I wanted to say it.

The post is outside of me. It’s something I made. I can choose what I can do with it. I can abandon it. I’ve done that about five times, I think. I can decide, “You know what, good enough.” I’ve done that a few times. But most of the time, when I press the button that schedules the post, I’m happy. Very happy. I put in the effort on a cause that was worthy of my time.

If I’m unhappy with a post, it’s because I chose to be unhappy about it. I write because it is something that makes me, on balance, very happy.

If it didn’t, I wouldn’t do it.

The problem, though, is happy people don’t get much done. That’s why weed and vidya games are bad. They give bliss without accomplishment. It’s the easy road to happy.

But that sort of happiness, for me at least, is without meaning because it’s without accomplishment. I’m unhappy all the time, but I’m unhappy about (mostly) things I choose to be unhappy about. I rarely choose to be unhappy about things I can’t control. If I can’t control it, it’s just the way the world is.

When you break up with an A.I., does it experience machine yearning?

But if I’m unhappy, and I think it’s worth the effort, even if it’s big, I’ll choose to be unhappy to try to make it happen.

That’s the definition of purpose. It might be small, like mowing the lawn. It might be big, like changing the world. But I get to choose. It should fit my talents. And, as I’ve been prattling on about them, yeah, it should be in service of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

It needs to be worth it, and that defines what worth it is. Well, at least to me. YMMV.

I think so many people are unhappy because they simply don’t have a purpose, they don’t see a way that they can be of substance, be of consequence in a world where 8 to 10(!) billion people exist. It’s overwhelming.

It makes one feel small, sometimes.

But me? I keep pushing. I’ve even distilled my purpose down to a sentence: “To make visible that which would otherwise not have been seen.” So, the writing is kinda core to a purpose like that, unless I want to sit in the backyard yelling at the squirrels on how they’re being inefficient with their nuts.

Do Catholics ever give up cleaning their drier filter for lint?

Purpose, then, is a double-edged sword. It provokes me to action, and leaves me with a fire inside. But this is one that I choose to carry. It’s one that I wish to have.

I control (mostly) my emotions. Being happy means not wanting. Except when I choose what I want. And right now? I want elimination of Evil, a steak and a cigar.

In that order. But I’ll work on getting rid of the Evil while I enjoy my steak and cigar.

The Wilder Guide to Self-Reinvention

“Ultimately, anybody could crash on an island like this, and the idea of being surrounded by strangers and getting to reinvent yourself in some way is sort of readily identifiable.” – Lost

The NFL® has an obscure rule that players cannot own ducks or geese. Those are called “a personal fowl.” (all memes as-found)

Sometimes I’ve felt like I’m stuck in a sequel nobody asked for.

Same plot, same villains, same scriptwriters, same predictable ending where the hero, me, ends up in the same place where the movie started. All of it happened, and all of it changed nothing.

Reinvention sounds like one of those self-help buzzwords peddled by people with suspiciously not-grey hair, perfect teeth, and look like they smell vaguely of Lemon-Scented® Pledge™.

Me? I’ve lost most of my hair, have okay but not perfect teeth, and more often smell of cigar than citrus. I’m not selling you anything. Except songs. And you can listen to all of those for free. But if reinvention is done well, it changes everything, which should be no surprise because it’s in the name.

I’ve reinvented myself a time or two. Switched careers, changed habits, even moved across state lines once. It’s never as glamorous as the brochures promise. I have never yet experienced a slow-mo training montage with Eye of the Tiger blasting in the background. More often it’s like grinding through a B-movie script where the director keeps yelling “Cut!” because I flubbed the line again.

Plot twist: it was really Freddy Kruger™ that killed Martin Luther King, Jr. After all, he had a dream . . .

In the changes I’ve made, however, I have learned more than a few things. First, real reinvention demands a brutal assessment of what’s True, Beautiful, and Good and how that differs from what I see in the mirror. People, me included, want to believe pretty little lies whenever they can. Real assessment is required.

If it isn’t hitting at least three out of three of the True, Beautiful, and Good criteria, why bother? I try to take stock without mercy.

Is it True?

Does it square with reality, or am I kidding myself?

Is it Beautiful?

Does it create something worthwhile, or is it just pumping out more plastic widgets for the landfill?

Is it Good?

Does serve a higher purpose, or is it just vanity?

If the answer’s a resounding “meh,” to any of these three, it’s not worth the effort. If I lie to myself here, the whole reinvention turns into a farce.

Would you like three alternative punchlines?

Hollywood peddles a different script, of course. Change is always Good™, wrapped in a rom-com bow. Picture the uptight stuffed-shirt. Khakis pressed, 401(k) maxed moping through life until a random crazy hot chick crashes in.

She’s got purple hair, a tattoo of a dreamcatcher, and a backpack full of “experiences.” She drags him to a rave in the desert, teaches him to juggle fire and smoke weed, and poof, he’s ditching the corner office for a food truck.

Roll credits, cue the indie soundtrack. This is celebrated as a modern goal.

Reality check: I’ve crossed paths with more than a few random crazy hot chicks.

Positive contributions? Slim to none. All the experiences rhyme, though: a whirlwind of chaos, pain, and stories that start with “So there I was…” and end with lawyers or bail money.

Random crazy hot chicks didn’t reinvent me, they just rearrange the furniture in my life until nothing fits.

Real change doesn’t need a manic (or maniac) minx catalyst.

She keeps sending mixed messages.

It just needed me to stare in the mirror and decide the current plot sucks.

Change itself?

That’s the bonus, the change is immediate.

Change happens now, effects come with time. Flip the switch.

Boom, reinvented. The results take time. The bigger the change, the more patience required for the results.

That’s why urgency is my ally. Time multiplies effort like compound interest, and the old saying goes: When’s the best time to plant a tree? The best time to start is 20 years ago. The next best time is now.

Silly me, I would have thought the next best time would have been 19 years ago, but maybe I missed that day in Arbor Academy.

The message, though, is clear. Act now, act deliberately. Not in a panic but with a purpose. Delay, and I’m just leaving Future Me a bigger debt.

Which brings us back to the noun. The what. I had a boss that would always slow me down with this one simple question: “What do we want the outcome to be? Start with the end in mind.” Again, the criteria for me is simple. Is it True, is it Beautiful, is it Good?

Also, how I frame the change dictates the ending and the success or failure. Any change that constantly demoralizes me is doomed. If I have an end state in mind, and I’m not there, I’m failing. Right?

No. Remember the montage. Starting the montage is the success. You’ve gotta have a montage.

Seriously, though, my mind rebels against endless punishment. Why should I keep showing up if every step feels like defeat? For me, I often measure effort rather than outcomes. Build a habit of study, and not measure myself against the end. Even a little progress (if the change is big enough) is what I’m looking for. Patton put it perfectly: “A good plan executed now is better than a perfect one executed later.”

My dudes, attitude is everything.

There are exceptions: any positive reinvention that energizes me? That’s the winner. It creates a feedback loop: my effort sparks momentum, my momentum delivers wins, my wins fuel more energy. These can even be bits of the montage, if you will.

Quick wins? I grab them whenever I can. I’m wired for routine. Once a habit locks in, it’s tougher for me to break than to keep. Like autopilot, I set the course, and it flies itself. Your mileage may vary, but for me, momentum is king. Get the ball rolling, and inertia works for me, not against.

I’ve learned to not wait for a muse. She’s probably off with that random crazy chick anyway. Just consistent action.

At its core, reinvention isn’t about morphing into someone else. It’s honing the best of who I am, aligned with Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Brutal honesty spots the flaws, urgency launches the fix, energy sustains the burn, and time polishes the gem. When it clicks? It’s worth every sweat drop, every dawn patrol, every skipped shortcut.

Whenever I am at a crossroads I always stare into a bowl of rice, hoping to find a grain of truth.

I’m beginning to think the only bad ending is the one where I don’t change. Oh, and all of the Disney® movies since 2017 or so. They all suck.

No To Resolutions, Yes To Future Me

“You’re right. We could sit around here all day, talking, passing resolutions, making clever speeches. It’s not going to shift one Roman soldier.” – Life of Brian

When I farmed sprouts I was assertive. I was an alfalfa male.

I have mentioned before that the whole New Year holiday has never resonated with me.

New Year’s Eve means amateur drunks on the roads, bad decisions, and an excess of early September births. One of the things that I thought about when I was a kid (not born in September!) was the idea of a resolution. I’ve always thought of a resolution as a promise not outwards, but inwards: a promise from today me to future me.

I tried it a few times when I was young. As I got older, I decided that resolutions didn’t make sense. I have now decided that Future Me is probably in a better place to make decisions than Current Me. I mean, Past Me in 2020 should have bought a lot of gold, as Current Me can now attest. So, promising Future Me something that Future Me might not even want isn’t the best idea.

I mean, twelve-year-old me wanted to join the Columbia® Record Club™. Twelve CDs for one cent! Now I realize that the Columbia™ Record Club© is a circle of hell somewhere between having to listen to Whoopi Goldberg for 20 minutes a day and having to smell Whoopi Goldberg for 20 minutes a day.

I lost my ABBA CD. Where did the disco?

I’ve since thought about changing Current Me into a better Future Me. I decided to do that instead.

So, I wrote down on a piece of paper, “Making 2026 The Best Year Ever”.

Nice header. Could I do it? Jury is still out, and I never judge a story until I see the end. I’m giving it a current “okay”.

I wrote down this stuff the second week in January, so I’m two weeks in. I was rather stunned on how making some small changes could translate into immediate and large results, making a whole year’s goal in a week. Guess I was aiming too low. Lots of times, my guess is that the biggest thing standing between me and a goal is me just doing it.

I’m not going to share entirely the things I’m doing, but one of the actions that I could take was:

Spend an hour a day doing something for Future Me.

This was absurdly successful on day one. It’s the art of anti-procrastination. Find something that would make life easier for Future Me. Spend an hour doing it, every day.

That’s it.

They used to call it Stalin.

I’m actually doing that right now. Normally I write these the night before I post them. Tonight, I’m writing this a day earlier than I normally write a post. Each minute I spend on the post is a minute I won’t have to spend tomorrow. The other bonus is it will give me time to review it and edit it and think about it.

This works well. Absurdly well.

Most of the other things have been based around organization. My den now looks much better, and when I walk into the room, it makes me happy to be there, rather than staring at a pile of papers I know I have to deal with on a messy desk.

Now, that stack is half as high and I know that with four or five more hours, my den will be my favorite place in the house.

Moore’s Law says that transistors double every two years on a chip. They do that by making them smaller, so less is Moore’s.

The part about devoting an hour to it is important. Most of the time my procrastination works on the idea of, “well, it will take me six hours to do that, so I’ll wait until I have six hours.”

That’s not good. It’s a thought that allows me to rationalize putting something off until tomorrow. But if I have to do it because I owe Future Me, it gets easier. I just go, start, and put in an hour, and be free to stop after that hour is done.

Wow. The results have been big. I think one of the big hurdles to overcoming procrastination is just doing the very smallest part of what I’m planning on doing. Tonight, it was: ”Okay, I’ll open Word®.” Opening Word© is easy. One second later, I’m staring at a blank page. I remember a video I wanted to reference for this post, and 30 seconds later that video is up in the adjacent window.

Boom. Ready to go.

Absurdly easy, yet now I’m two thirds of the way through the first draft of the post. That’s work that Future Me doesn’t need to do. It’s done. I’m actually not at all unhappy now, but tomorrow me will be absurdly happy that he was given this little gift of time. (I can verify this)

Is the past tense of William Shakespeare Wouldiwas Shookspeared?

That’s just one example. But to build the Future Me I wanted to build, I decided to see if there was a path. If there was a path, I’d break it down to the smallest possible step. Once I had that step, it actually solves another hurdle: the brain hates failure.

Or, at least mine does.

It would rather have a mediocre non-win than a chance to lose. So, I break the task up into smaller tasks that are impossible to fail at. Open Word®. Who can’t open Word™? This actually short-circuits the willpower part of life. If it’s easy to do, I’ll do it.

An example: if I think of shaving my face (I haven’t done that in years, but hang with me) I can think of it in two ways. First, I can think, “I have to shave my face. Every day. For the rest of my life.”

That’s soul-sucking. Awful. And you know you can never win because the hair keeps growing back. I know people who think like that. Ugh.

Or, I can say, “Shaving, two minutes in the shower, done.”

I try not to make things bigger than they are.

I also need to build out a mechanism to change that doesn’t require willpower, about which I believe Mr. Twain said, “lasts about two weeks, and is soluble in alcohol.”

What can I replace willpower with?

Willpower is easy. I’ve quit tobacco dozens of times.

Aversion. Yeah, it’s a negative emotion. So what? I’m actively avoiding something, and I need to visualize that person I don’t want to be, and then act in the opposite way that produces that person. It’s actually much easier than willpower, and the farther away from that person that I don’t want to be that I drift, the better.

I don’t have huge changes to make (though with a few, I’m expecting huge results) and I plan to revisit this every week, and see what the next steps need to be, or, if Future Me has gotten smarter and decided that there’s an even better way to go.

Okay, I cheated. I decided to make one New Year’s resolution for 2026. I decided to resolve to gain weight and exercise less. Perhaps I’ll fail at that one, too.

The Clock Ticks: Make It Matter

“I’m not dead yet.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I told The Mrs. I wanted to be cremated. She made an appointment for next Tuesday.

Scott Adams shuffled off this mortal coil this week, and that event got me thinking about the big D: death. Adams, the Dilbert author who turned office satire into a cultural touchstone for nerds like me, left me thinking about his legacy. Adams wasn’t just a cartoonist; he was a man who rewired how we see persuasion, hypnosis, and the Clown World® we call reality. His passing was foreshadowed, but when it happens, the inevitability of it doesn’t make it better.

That’s Adams, who has left us, but there’s a contrast in George R.R. Martin, still kicking (for now). Today (my today, not yours) I read an interview where he whined at a fan who had asked if he was going to finish his Song of Fire and Ice series (Game of Thrones to most people) before he died. To his face. Martin griped about this confrontation.

“I’m not dying,” he grumbled, as if that’s the point.

George, buddy, hate to break it to you and subvert your expectations, but you are. So am I. So is everyone reading this post.

We’re all dying, right this second.

Tick-tock, the clock doesn’t care if you’re an author with $120 million in the bank lounging in Santa Fe while some flunkies sand off your bunions with sandpaper made from diamonds or a blogger hammering keys in the Midwest who ran out of beer last weekend. Every breath is one closer to the last.

Why did the skeleton go to the party alone? He had no body to go with.

We have an end date stamped on us like milk, but the Universe keeps the label hidden. Could be tomorrow in a freak duck attack (hey, it happens), or decades from now after a life of quiet desperation that had no more impact on the world than a potted fern.

The point? We’re terminal from day zero. I think Adams knew this; he talked about it in his books, framing life as a series of systems to hack for maximum output.

Martin? He’s procrastinating his way through what could be his magnum opus, letting plot threads dangle like cat toys. Ignoring the reaper doesn’t make him go away, it just wastes the sand in my hourglass.

In our rush to the grave, have we forgotten the miracles? Yes, miracles. Not the flashy water-to-wine kind. I’m not good at those. But what about the everyday wonders that make existence sparkle? Bite into a ripe strawberry straight from the plant. The explosion of sweet yet tart on my tongue?

Phenomenal.

Or cracking a cold beer after mowing the lawn on a scorching day, sweat dripping, the pilsner hitting like a high-five from my guardian angel. Crisp linens on a freshly made bed, sliding in like you’re royalty in a five-star hotel are another feast for the senses.

These aren’t mundane bits of life: they’re tiny miracles, proof the universe isn’t all entropy, Indians, Somalians, and taxes. We take these amazing things for granted, missing the point. We get one shot on this merry-go round. Enjoy it.

I tried to organize a hide-and-seek tournament, but it was a complete failure. Good players are hard to find.

Even I, the mighty John Wilder sometimes get bogged down in the daily grind. Bills, deadlines, that endless loop of work-eat-write-drink-sleep-shower-rinse-repeat. It’s easy to zombie through days, forgetting the biggest miracle and gift of all: being alive. Heart pumping, lungs filling, neurons firing symphonies in my skull. We’re stardust animated by the Great Cosmic Spark, yet we whine about traffic or the price of eggs.

Adams would call this a bad frame.

Zoom out.

Reframe.

Boom. The mundane becomes amazing magic. Martin’s dragons and ice zombies are cool (I mean the first three seasons with all the hot naked chicks), but they are pale imitations next to the real epic:

Life, unfolding heartbeat by heartbeat.

Here’s the kicker: we have a choice. Every. Single. Day. That next moment? It’s yours. Infinite power in that moment. No matter if you’re chained to a desk, stuck in traffic, or lounging on a yacht (I see you, Elon), that sliver of time belongs to you. You get to choose to squander it on despair, or seize it like a Spartan grabbing a Persian neck at Thermopylae.

Adams seized life. He didn’t just draw funny strips; he changed the United States. He changed the entire national conversation on politics, race, and the matrix of media manipulation. Some X™ dweeb (responding to me) called him a victim of the woke mob after his cancellation.

Victim? Please. Adams knew the game. He poked the bear on purpose, shifting Overton windows at scale.

I asked my dog what’s two minus two. He said nothing.

Martin? He’s the flip side. He hit the jackpot with Thrones, turned his fantasy story into a cultural juggernaut, then found himself unable to stick the landing.

Hell, he hasn’t even landed, and almost certainly never will now. It’s way more than a decade and his books are not only unfinished, they will never be finished by him. His writing chops are leagues above mine (I’ll admit it), but finishing an epic like that?

Nah. He’s got time left, but he’s squandering it on forgettable side quests while the sand runs out on the hourglass? That’s the opposite of Adams’ hustle. One built empires of influence; the other built a throne of delays.

There’s hope, though. If you want to change the Universe, it’s likely that you still can. You think, “I don’t have an audience.” True, but Adams started with zero. Sketched in a cubicle, built it strip by strip. Me? I peck away at the laptop, hoping to nudge minds.

Tomorrow, what can you do? Write that book. Start that business. Mentor a kid. Plant a tree. Convince an Indian to move back to Mumbai.

Make the most of every second.

Death’s coming, but until then? Make it matter.

Why don’t skeletons fight each other? They don’t have the guts.

Adams left a blueprint: hack reality, persuade boldly, point out and mock the absurd. Martin’s a cautionary tale: don’t let potential rot.

Me? I’m typing this, hoping it sparks something in you. The clock ticks for us all. Use it wisely.

You’ve got one life. Make it matter.

Scott Adams, Rest In Peace

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

This post is an update of a post I ran last May when Scott announced he didn’t have long to live.

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.

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 heartbeat and are still in the room, I think Mr. Adams might have appreciated it, if he saw it. It was my most popular post of 2025, so who knows?

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 was the creator of Dilbert™, and was one of the top five cartoonists of all time. His humor was outstanding, and his satire was spot on until the end.

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.

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.

Mr. Adams entertained, he had been a fountain of ideas, and he had helped shape what is perhaps the most crucial social narrative of our time in the most crucial manner.

The world was a much better place with him in it. I will miss him, but I am grateful that he was here.

The rest of it is up to us.

The Bright Side of Cultural Collapse

“A date gives you a corsage, not a multiple fracture.” – Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

At the LEGO® hospital, almost every operation is plastic surgery.

If you’ve ever felt like America’s cultural compass is spinning like a drunk uncle at a Latvian wedding reception, you’re not wrong. I believe most of my readers can remember back to the 1970s and 1980s.At that time, Americans had a (mostly) shared reality, love it or hate it.

That shared reality kept the country rowing in roughly the same direction. Getting out of Vietnam was a political choice, and (we know now) hard-GloboLeftist Walter Cronkite was instrumental in getting us out after hard-GloboLeftist president LBJ got us involved. The media could start and stop wars, at will.

Now?

It’s a fractured funhouse mirror where the Super Bowl® and presidential elections seem to be the last gasps of collective attention, like family reunions where everyone shows up but nobody talks afterwards. The rest of the time, we’re each siloed in our respective algorithm alcoves, each getting a different view of reality, sort of like the way she looked after six beers and the way she looked at 8AM.

I’m always polite to people who wear glasses, after all, they paid money to see me.

How’d we get here?

Blame the usual suspects: tech titans and open-border overlords who can’t get enough of cheap labor and expensive ballots.

Picture this: pre-1930 America, a patchwork quilt of immigrants fresh off the boat around 1900, all crammed into cities like Ellis Island escapees. Cultures clashed harder than a bad blind date. Languages tangled, traditions tussled, and the “melting pot” was more like a slow simmer with occasional boil-overs. How bad was it? Immigration was essentially shut down with the Immigration Act of 1924 which sharply restricted numbers and essentially banned immigration from most non-Western cultures.

At this time, however, technology makes its appearance: enter radio, then television. These were the great homogenizers of America. From FDR’s fireside chats in the ’30s to Reagan’s ranch riffs in the ’80s, these boxes beamed a single narrative into every living room with little competition. Three networks – ABC®, CBS©, NBC™ – dictated the national conversation.

Commie Cronkite signed off with “And that’s the way it is,” and America, by and large, believed him. Why? Mainly because there were no other options except some fringe samizdat.

Radio had replaced the town square and TV turbocharged it. Now it was I Love Lucy laughs for all, and heavy-handed M*A*S*H moralizing nationwide, with Johnny Carson‘s couch as the national nightcap.

I heard the national origami championship is tonight. It’s on paper view.

This centralized media forced most of the immigrants into and ersatz Americana because there weren’t Slavic-language radio stations in most places. Right or wrong, it forged a (more or less) unified American ethos from 1930 to the mid-1990s.

Sure, it was sanitized suburbia with a side of Cold War conformity and liberal-left inclusion, but it worked: shared heroes (John Wayne, anyone?), shared villains (Commies), shared laughs from non-stereotypical minorities who were, after all, just like us (Cosby before the fall and his final TV show: Women Say The Darndest Things).

We were one nation under three channels, indivisible, with sitcoms and soaps for all.

Then the cracks came.

First, cable TV in the 1980s splintered the spectrum, MTV™ for the kids, CNN® for the news junkies, ESPN© for the jocks. But the real wrecking ball?

Then, the Internet appeared in the mid-1990s, and was supercharged by smartphones in 2007.

Suddenly, infinite choices: blogs, YouTube®, TikTok©, X®. Everyone is a broadcaster, nobody is the boss. Literally no one tells me what to write, I’m free to bring up uncomfortable truths. This resulted in something the GloboLeft hates: attention is atomized. Their rescue, though, is that now Faceborg™ and Google© could manipulate results and (mostly) keep ideas within politically acceptable limits.

Annnnnd she runs an NGO whose mission is to restrict speech.

The Super Bowl® still pulls 100M+ viewers, a rare ritual that the NFL™ is trying to destroy by featuring increasingly divisive halftime shows. Elections? They glue us to screens every four years, like national therapy sessions.

But otherwise?

The GloboLefties lap up MSNBC® memes, righties rally on Rumble™ and there is no overlap. Also, there are no more “water cooler” moments since the odds of anyone watching the same things as you are very low.

Worse, massive immigration since the ’90s poured gasoline on the fire. Post-1965 reforms flipped the script: waves after wave from Latin America, Asia, Africa from clashing cultures. Traditional American values? Now they’re “racist,” “xenophobic,” “bigoted,” “transphobic,” “climate-denying,” “patriarchal” poison.

Family, faith, freedom? Hate crimes.

The people didn’t vote for this mosaic meltdown; The GloboLeftElite engineered it. Cheap labor lured corporations; votes lured Democrats. As Lenin reportedly quipped, “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

Here, the “rope” was imported workers who tilt 80% GloboLeft, hanging the old republic with demographic destiny.

By 2026’s doorstep, consensus is kaput. COVID crackdowns under Biden tried to muzzle dissent: shadowbans, deplatforms, “disinfo” dossiers. But the dam burst.

GloboLeftElite’s iron fist? In the United States in 2025, it appears to be wholly rusted. Political correctness, once their shield, lies in tatters.

Why?

Dissenting elites like Musk and Trump flipped the script. X™ became a free-fire zone.

He has a lot of X employees.

Ideas flowed unfettered, exposing the emperor’s empty ethos. “Woke” went from weapon to punchline; folks stopped fearing the “racist” label like it was yesterday’s news.

So, where does this cultural shatter take us?

Short-term: more balkanization. Red states redline GloboLeft policies, banning DEI diktats, booting illegals, building walls (literal and legal).

Blue bubbles boil over with sanctuary silliness and virtue-vomiting, with California leading the country in giving free money to illegal freeloaders.

No national narrative means that, right now, there are no peaceful national solutions.

America does have quite an advantage, though an armed citizenry and what remains of federalism, where I expect state freedoms will increase as the central government weakens. American was built as a country that could fight back against overlords with the preservation of the 1^st and 2^nd Amendments being so crucial to us not falling into the horrific tyranny we see places like England currently entering.

Ah, a raft filled with Marxmen. (meme as found)

My take, long term? Free ideas forge fresh foundations, with a Tradright renaissance entirely possible: young men gymming, girls gardening, families flourishing in flyover fortresses.

I do see that the GloboLeft’s grip will have to slips as their “diversity” devolves into division because the moslems in Dearborn and Somalisota hate gays and want Sharia. The GloboLeft cannot understand, at all, why their pets hate diversity.

We’re not done. The rope the GloboLeftists sold? We’ll use it to climb.

You Can’t Touch This: The Importance Of The Battle Of Tours

“The one rule we had on Charles in Charge is Charles must always be in charge.” – The Simpsons

Islamic suicide bombers aren’t so bad, but the Buddhist ones? They keep coming back until they get it right.

Europe in the early 700s was a patchwork of squabbling kingdoms still picking up the pieces from Rome’s grand collapse. When the Empire fell and the Legions retired and moved to Florida, Europe was a hammered mess. Barbarians had even turned Rome into a tourist trap for Vandals and Goths where you could get great bargains: half off togas, and all the gold you could eat.

A new wave of chaos crashed in from the south: The Umayyad (U-Mad) Caliphate was fresh off conquering Spain during a short decade of conquest. After that, they began eyeing the rest of the continent like Whoopi Goldberg eyes a dozen chocolate éclairs after a hard day of being wrong.

It occurred to the U-Mads: why stop with Spain when they could go on to France (then Francia for some reason) for cigarettes and baguettes and brunettes and marmosets and intangible assets?

Enter Charles, the Frankish warlord who was the illegitimate son of that hobbit®, Pepin. Being a bastard (like me Charles was born one, and didn’t have to work at it like most people) Charles wasn’t in the line of succession for all that Frankish Hobbit® power. Scared of him, Pepin’s wife had Charles tossed in the clink so Charles wouldn’t become the boss when Pepin died.

“Hand. Hand. River. Dirt. Gollum. Hobbits. Pockets. Pockets. Finger. Envelope. Fire. Hand. Neck. Neck. Finger. Hobbits. Neck. Neck. Neck. Pocket. Finger. Lava! The Lord of the Rings, from the perspective of the Ring.

Well, prisons were made for breaking out of, and Charles did exactly that. A lot of others decided they were king instead when Pepin died, so Charles had to defeat the humorously named Chilperic II, Raganfrid, and Radbod. Okay, Radbod would probably be a good professional wrestling name, so Radbod get a pass but the rest of them are just bad D&D® names from a drunk DM.

The Funny Name Gang fought with Charles at Cologne, and Charles lost.

Charles didn’t give up, and instead regrouped and trained in a movie montage in the hills, and then attacked his silly-named foes at Malmedy, and they scurried like schoolchildren and Charles got all their stuff, plus the reputation of a guy who could win battles against people who were utterly unprepared for it, them being asleep on siesta and all.

One battle doesn’t win a kingdom, though.

Charles waited a year and trained his army in yet another movie montage for the sequel, Charles II, complete with 1980s theme music, something telling him he was the best or something. Regardless, Charles invaded Chilperic’s place in Northern France, and won.

How do squid go into battle? Well armed.

And he kept winning. Charles essentially spent the next fifteen years fighting battles and winning ever single one of them in his bid to secure power. After that, he selected the title he wanted. It was mayor. So, after all of that, it was time for peace, right?

No. Charles had just beaten the other French. But as I mentioned, he was being invaded from the south.

That brings us to 732 AD and the town of Tours.

Let’s frame it this way: Charles’ victory at the Battle of Tours in 732 AD stands as one of those rare moments where the West dodged a civilization-ending bullet. Think Thermopylae, where a handful of Spartans bought time against Persian hordes; the Battle of Vienna in 1683, halting the Ottoman tide at Europe’s gates; or the sack of Carthage in 146 BC, when Rome finally crushed its African rival and secured Mediterranean dominance, or John Wilder’s Divorce of 1995.

Tours fits right in – a pivotal civilizational clash that crushed a major threat to the struggling West like it was a telemarketer.

Salt makes everything taste better. Sodi-yummmm! (meme as-found)

Let us set the scene properly, because context is king (or mayor as in Charles’ case).

By the 8th century, Islam had exploded out of Arabia, swallowing Persia, North Africa, and Spain in under a century. The U-mads crossed the Pyrenees in 720, gobbling up Septimania (southern France) and launching raids deeper into the Frankish lands.

Their leader, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, governor of Al-Andalus (moslim Spain), was no slouch. He had spent years in active command of an army taking over Spain. His army, perhaps 20,000 to 80,000 strong (historians bicker like barroom philosophers on numbers), consisted mostly of Berber and Arab cavalry, light and fast, perfect for hit-and-run plunder.

They had sacked Bordeaux and were loaded with loot, but this was no mere smash-and-grab; the Arabs smelled yet more conquest, and were testing the waters for a full push into Frankish heartlands. They outnumbered the Frankish armies.

On the other side? Charles, the Mayor of the Palace the real boss of the Franks.

Why Charles? No one else stood ready to protect Europe; the Byzantines were busy fending off Arabs in the east, the Lombards in Italy were too fragmented and hadn’t even invented spaghetti yet, and the Anglo-Saxons across the Channel were still figuring out the magic secret of bathing that disappeared when the Romans left. If Charles failed, the road to Paris, and beyond to the Rhine, lay open.

Stakes? Imagine a Europe where minarets dot the Seine instead of cathedrals.

Oh, wait . . . .

Why are the French depressed? Because the light at the end of the tunnel is England. (meme as-found)

Now, the battle itself:

October 10, 732, near Tours. Charles, with about 15,000 to 30,000 infantry-heavy Franks, chose high ground in a wooded area, forming a tight phalanx of armored foot soldiers, a tactic used successfully by everyone from Sumerians to Greeks to Romans to Vikings.

This was a human wall of axes and swords and shields and pikes, disciplined like Roman legions but with beards that could hide small animals. They set up on top of a lightly-forested hill, and waited. And waited. Abdul Rahman wanted Charles to attack. Charles wanted Abdul to attack.

As the Arabs didn’t have warm clothes suitable for the winter, they finally blinked, and attacked.

Abdul Rahman’s cavalry charged uphill at this mass of men, lumber and steel, repeatedly, expecting to shatter the line like they had against the Visigoths they had defeated in Spain.

But Charles’ men held, their heavy infantry absorbing the impacts like Rockey Balboa in, well, like every Rockey movie. And with good reason: Charles had seen this battle coming and had the largest standing army, well trained and ready to go, fierce and with faith in their nearly undefeated leader.

I think shields are a concept I can really get behind.

As the day wore on, the Muslims tired. Their horses foaming, their riders frustrated. It was now hammer time. Charles’ scouts raided the enemy camp, sparking rumors that Abdul Rahman was dead and the loot vulnerable.

Panic spread among the U-mads.

The governor himself charged into the fray to rally his troops and got cut down, probably by a Frankish axe to the skull, because why not go out dramatically? Night fell, and the invaders melted away, leaving tents, treasure, and thousands of dead.

Casualties? Franks lost maybe a thousand; Muslims, up to 12,000, including their leader.

It was not pretty, with bodies piled like cordwood, blood soaking the fields and Charles standing tall. Charles got his nickname at this point. In old Frankish, it’s “Martel” but it translates to “The Hammer”.

Aftermath hit like a hangover after a wild raid.

The U-mads retreated south of the Pyrenees, their momentum broken. Internal revolts soon toppled their dynasty, replaced by the Abbasids who shifted focus eastward.

In Spain, Christian kingdoms in the north took heart. This sparked the Reconquista, a 700-year grind where indigenous Iberians overthrew their colonial moslim overlords.

My friend has an intricate tattoo and I was surprised when he told me he got it in Iberia. I guess no one expects Spanish ink precision.

No “noble savage” myth here; it was gritty reprisal, castle by castle, until 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella booted the last emir from Granada and started Spain’s golden age. Tours proved resistance worked, and turned the tide from defense to offense.

Yet Charles Martel remains poorly remembered today, a footnote in textbooks while his grandson, Charlemagne, gets the statues.

Why? Charles never crowned himself king, deeming the title too puny for a man who ruled de facto over Franks, Aquitainians, and more. “Mayor of the Palace” suited him. It was understated power, like a mob boss who wears sweats instead of Armani®. Martel laid the foundations for post-Roman Europe: professional armies funded by land grants, essentially the birth of the feudal system. Martel also left a unified Frankish state, and was the salvation of Christianity.

After the victory at Tours, Charles granted large portions of Church land to his followers, on the condition they help him militarily. The Church wasn’t happy, but the Pope later begged Charles’ aid against Lombards, dubbing him a “defender of the faith.”

Irony? Delicious, especially with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Most crucially, Martel set the stage for his grandson, Charlemagne. Martel’s son, Pepin the Short, finally ditched the Merovingians and became king with papal blessing.

Charlemagne then forged the Carolingian Empire, crowning himself Holy Roman Emperor in 800 A.D., defining medieval Europe with laws, learning, and conquests from Saxony to Italy.

Never challenge Death to a pillow fight unless you’re prepared for the Reaper cushions. (meme as-found)

Without the Hammer’s stand at Tours, there is no Charlemagne and perhaps no unified West to change the world.

Martel reminds us that history turns on hammers, not hashtags. He was no saint. He was ruthless, pragmatic, a bit of a land-thief, but he saved the West from a fate it might not have survived. Next time you think that we can’t win, tip your hat to the Hammer, who showed us the way because he was too illegit to quit.