Category: Truth

The Space Between The Words

“Well, I don’t care if it was some dork in a costume. For one brief moment, I felt the heartbeat of creation, and it was one with my own.” – Futurama

I love my step ladder, but it’ll never be my real ladder.

It was March of 2005.  I remember it fairly well.  It was when we were living in Alaska.  The move had been a big risk for The Mrs. and I – moving north across the better part of a continent for work.  I was fortunate to have a good boss and good co-workers.

It was there that I had what I would normally call an epiphany, but epiphany seems too strong.  A realization?  Maybe.  Regardless, to me, it seemed profound.

The Space Between The Words . . . it was a throwaway line by a guest on a radio show that The Mrs. and I were listening to on KFBX, the local AM station.  But sometimes a phrase sticks with you, and this one stuck with me like the phrase “floozy crotch snout” sticks to Kamala Harris.

Or am I the only one who calls her that?

Yup, real quote.  Her real words are better than almost any meme.

Regardless . . . The Space Between The Words.  It seemed as insignificant as Hunter Biden’s willpower until in that hypnogogic state between wakefulness and sleep I thought about it . . . The Space Between The Words.

What exists there, in The Space Between The Words?

My realization was that The Space Between The Words isn’t made of silence.  It is far from that dead and sterile nothingness that silence implies.

My HVAC guy sure has his ducts in a row.

For me, that space is infinity.  It is the engine of creation itself.

I wrote “The Space Between The Words” down on a piece of Post-It® note and taped it to my computer monitor.  I still have that piece of now-faded pale yellow paper stuck in a book I carry with me every day.  To me, it is a touchstone and a personal reminder.

Why does it matter to me?

When I am talking, (or doing public speaking, which I do 10,000% more often than I want to do and potentially 20,000% more than the audience wants me to do) if I ever get flustered, I can just stop.  I can pause.  I realize that I can tap into The Space Between The Words, that creative power that allows me to choose whichever of the thousands of words I know as the very next one.  I get to choose that next phrase.  I get to choose the way the conversation can go.  I get to create the possibilities with only the choice of my words.

The Space Between The Words is crucial.

If I choose well, I can turn a simple conversation into something meaningful.  One of the powers of words is that, when applied correctly, is that they can become something transformative.  A simple conversation can change a person’s life forever.  Especially if it’s on tape – just ask Richard Nixon.

My buddy and I got a huge contract to make toy vampires.  There’s only two of us – I have to make every second Count.

The choice of words is, as I mentioned before, the power of creation.  I don’t claim to own that power.  Again, the word I would use isn’t that I came up with the idea or invented the concept I’m describing now.  I just discovered something that I’m sure many others before me knew was there, just like I discovered that someone was keeping a list of all of my jokes in a dad-o-base.

I won’t claim to be a great or charismatic public speaker.  I’ve had my moments.  But I do know that I’ve changed at least one or two lives through things that I have said, and I do know that I’ve said more of what I mean with greater clarity when I allowed The Space Between The Words to guide me.

I bet no one expected that meme.

Likewise, when I write, I don’t claim to be a great writer.  I do, however (when it’s not 3am!) try to carefully edit what I write so that it has the meaning I want to share.  Sometimes I don’t get there.  Sometimes, when writing one of these posts, the content takes a sharp turn, and I let it run.  I know that the full idea I was trying to get out will get born, eventually.

Or it won’t.

That’s the beauty of The Space Between The Words.  Even when writing, it is there.

And, to a certain extent, it has changed me.  I’m no longer afraid to stop, to pause, and to collect.  In one sense, that vast galaxy of creation that I feel I’ve tapped into is something much greater than I will ever be, especially if I keep losing weight.

I wonder what other planet worms exist on . . . otherwise why do we call them Earth worms?

In a religious sense, it feels like I’ve come into a brief (and unworthy!) contact with Logos – a deep universal well that I can only see dimly.  Not Legos®, but Logos.  Legos™ just hurt your foot when you walk down the hall in the dark.

In my experience, The Space Between The Words contains wisdom.  The Space Between the Words contains creation.  The Space Between The Words contains . . . redemption.

Listen for it – I assure you there is no silence there between the words.  There is no self-doubt.  It is calm.  It is patient.  It is Good.  And, for me, it has certainly been worth keeping that Post-It® note around.

Warning:  next week we’ll take a darker turn, probably all week, if not longer.  I’ll still try to be the “Mary Poppins of Doom” and interject humor and a smile where I can, but realize – there are many twists and turns ahead, and probabilities leading to a dark future are rapidly coalescing.

41 Things I Think I Know (2022 Revision)

“That’s a short list. That can’t be everyone you want to kill. Are you sure you’re not forgetting someone? – Game of Thrones

The Mrs. asked me to put ketchup on the shopping list. Now I can’t read it.

This is a revamp of an older post from way back in 2017. Are these fundamental rules? No. But between when I first wrote them and today I didn’t see much I’d change, except item 22.

  1. Tell the truth. This will have the beneficial added benefit of changing your behavior so you’re not ashamed of what you do. The whole truth. Even about that. And that. People might not like you, but they’ll respect you. Except for the thing about the cat. Keep that to yourself – no one will understand.
  2. Showing up on time is important. It shows respect. It is also is easy to track, if you’re a boss wanting to get rid of people. Even if you do a great job, you’ll be the first to go if you show up late. I guess that’s changed since the invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions – everyone has stopped Russian.
  3. Don’t give up. Sometimes break-out success means ten years of study and effort and of not giving up. Even Johnny Depp succeeded, which proves that anyone can.
  4. There are no friends like those formed in youth. When you’re ten, there are no pretenses. The cruel calculus of testosterone and estrogen has yet to set in. Greed is not an issue.
  5. Be nice. Life is already really hard enough for many people. Don’t be their villain, unless it pays really well, and even then, the karma is . . . tough.

One time I asked for a lobster tail at dinner. The waitress started, “Well one day this brave lobster . . . .”

  1. When you speak, or write, or think, you own the space between the words. You have the ability to turn your words into something amazing, since infinite possibility lies between one word and the next. This is the one most people will ignore, but one of my most powerful things that I found out for myself.
  2. Don’t continually do things you hate, or things that make you feel like a failure. Putting yourself in situations like that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It also destroys your ability to naturally smell like musk and sandalwood.
  3. Apologize. But only when you are wrong, which, if you regularly read this blog, is hardly ever. If you were not wrong, don’t apologize.
  4. Be of value. If you don’t contribute, you’re part of the problem. Which problem? All of them.
  5. Don’t make yourself into a victim. Almost everybody is where they are because of their choices. Own your choices, and own your outcomes. No one likes victims.

Jussie was just sent to prison. I hope he doesn’t beat himself up over that.

  1. If you really are a victim? Act like you’re not. Because even if victimhood status is legit, see item 10. No one likes people who act like victims, even when they really are.
  2. Opportunity is found where responsibility is neglected.
  3. Solve someone else’s biggest problem: that’s the virtuous road to wealth. It’s also harder.
  4. Remember, giving a gift creates a debt in the mind of the recipient. The larger the gift, the bigger the debt. And nobody likes someone they owe a lot of money to – giving large gifts can make people not like you.
  5. If you don’t want to go to bed because you don’t want to get up tomorrow? Fix your life.
  6. If you don’t want to get out of bed because you don’t want to live the day? Fix your life.
  7. Have children and have them early. But only if you have a spouse. And can keep your spouse.
  8. Cooking your own food is cheaper. And it gives time for conversation. Some of the best conversations occur around the barbeque grill and the deck late into the night.

I grilled for the board of directors once. It pleased the steakholders.

  1. Be tough when you have to be. To be kind when toughness is required results in tragedy.
  2. A pleasure repeated too often becomes a punishment.
  3. Beware of ignoring public opinion. Public opinion resulted in witch burning, the guillotine and Hula Hoops ®. You can be on the other side, but understand there may be consequences.
  4. Don’t see conspiracy when simple laziness, plain stupidity, or normal greed would explain the situation just as well. Removed after living through 2019, 2020, 2021 and the first quarter of 2022.
  5. Schools used to be run by school boards. Now they’re run by unions and lawsuits. None of these groups have the students in mind.
  6. You don’t win ‘em all. Deal with it.
  7. You are the sum of your experience, your intellect, your body, your surroundings, and the people you interact with. You also control your own change. So, get up. The you of today isn’t ready for tomorrow unless the you of today is changing to meet those challenges.
  8. Betrayal of trust is an indication of character. Never trust someone who betrays you. Forgive? Perhaps. Trust again? Never.
  9. Real personal changes don’t happen unless an emotional experience occurs. The bigger the change, the more significant the experience needed.

What’s worse than biting into an apple and finding a worm? Getting shot.

  1. You have your shot. Would have and could have don’t exist. (Unless the Many Worlds Theory of quantum mechanics is correct, in which case all things happen, so have another beer.)
  2. The best (and maybe only) way to win at gambling is to own the casino.
  3. No matter how awesome your idea, it has no value unless you make it real. This takes risk, execution, and work. Which is a lot more difficult than talking about your wonderful idea.
  4. Unless your boss is a good boss, being younger and smarter than him won’t impress him, it will make him jealous or fearful. Neither of those things are good.
  5. Having a boss that makes less money than you is also not good. Envy is a powerful emotion.
  6. Know the strengths and weaknesses of your (biological) parents. You’re not too much different than them. At best, you can avoid their weaknesses. At worst, you’ll follow every one of their downsides.
  7. Tip well, if you can afford it. Waiting on tables is tough work. And if you do tip well? They’ll remember you and take care of you. It’s nice to show up and find the right bottle of wine waiting for you.
  8. You’re not going to win the lottery. Unless it’s the one that Shirley Jackson wrote about. (LINK)
  9. If you’re traveling in winter, travel on the top half of your gas tank. It doesn’t cost any more.
  10. Keep your napkin in your lap while at the dinner table.
  11. Always use deodorant. And if in doubt? Have a breath mint, too.
  12. Keep in touch with people who have helped you, so you can help them. And because you’re a person.
  13. If you have too much stuff, your stuff will own you. Except books. You can have as many of those as you want. And ammo.
  14. The only way that you can know another person across centuries is to read what they’ve written. Have you written anything worthy of reading by your great-great grandchildren? No? Get to work.

What’s the name of the Grim Reaper’s dog? Snuffles.

  1. You’re going to die, and we all die alone. Understand that the only person with you throughout your life is . . . you. Be prepared to keep yourself and those you love alive in any emergency you can imagine. Our time will come when it comes, but there’s no reason not to push it back as far as you can.

The Modern World Part IV: What To Do?

“Would you say I have a plethora of piñatas?” – Three Amigos

He was also the first person to use CTRL-C.

So, I promised three blogs on the Modern World.  They are here – The Modern World Part I: Health And Strippers, The Modern World Part II: Wages, Subscriptions, and Dating, and The Modern World Part III: You Exist To Be Farmed.  As I sat preparing to do the blog tonight, I realized there was one more post to provide the capstone to the series, which I present in this post.

How do we deal with modernity outside of moving to a cabin in Montana?

Listen, despite the name, Ted made more than one bomb.

First, if you’re not healthy, get healthy.  That’s actually horribly simple to do for most people.

  • Limit the amount of food that you eat – we’re provided with a plethora of food choices daily. Most of it I don’t need.  As I’ve railed for years, most (not all!) people in the United States could go without food for two weeks with no ill effects, and many would find the experience a positive, not a negative.  Here is some sound advice I’ve incorporated into my life:  you can’t outrun your teeth.  But I can outrun most Leftists – you can tell they like carbs.
  • Sure donuts (in metric, doughnuts) are good. Avoid them.    Will one a week kill you?  No.  Will one a day?  Maybe.  Same with chips.  I had a “snack size” bag of chips two weeks ago.  Since I’ve been eating well, they made me feel queasy.  Same with donuts.  When your diet is good meat and real vegetables, donuts and that gooey cheese they serve with movie-theater nachos taste like . . . a chemical product.  Which they are.  Corollary:  don’t let your teeth dig your grave.  I wouldn’t want to ruin the gravedigger’s hole career.
  • Pick foods that are as close as possible to actual food. If you’re gonna have a chicken sandwich at McDonalds®, pick the one that’s made out of actual chicken rather than some sort of processed chicken stuff.  A baked potato or French fries?  Baked, thank you.  Seriously, once I stopped eating crap, crap tasted like crap.  If it has vegetable oil or a list of ingredients longer than, say, seven, once a week.  At most.  Heck, I even had a kid’s meal at McDonalds today.  It sure made his parents mad.
  • The food pyramid is even poor geometry – heck, I read Pharaoh used slaves to build his. Bricks might have been easier?  Regardless, real fats and meat (butter, a well-marbled ribeye) are good for you and make you feel full.  Flour spikes your insulin and all the breads (except the ones I make from grinding the bones of door-to-door salesmen) are made from flour.  Insulin tells your body to store fat.  Do the math.
  • Get exercise.   It’s good for you.  If nothing else, walk.  If you can’t walk, undulate like a snake on a baby oil-covered shower curtain.  One thing I’ve seen in life – when a man stops walking, death isn’t far away.  Keep moving.  Even if your legs are weak, you can still do diddly-squats.
  • Avoid it, except, say, once a week.  Maybe.  I’ll have an entire post on that at some point.

The other day I said, “Alexa, turn on CNN®.  I want to hear the news.”  Alexa responded, “I’m sorry Lord John, you’ll have to pick one or the other.”

Second, feed your mind.

  • Feed your mind like you feed your body. Go to the source, and check everyone (even me!) and determine what isn’t Truth.  Journalists are now being taught in journalism school (it’s like real school, but they use pictures and coloring books) that being an advocate for the globalist, Leftist viewpoint is the point of news reporting.  Understand that virtually every news story you are reading today in mainstream media is written by a rich kid who wasn’t smart enough to go to law school and believes that lying to you is ethical, as long as it advances The Agenda and The Narrative.  And sometimes they change The Agenda and The Narrative in less than a week.  Don’t believe me?  Ask Psaki about COVID.
  • The media lies. But I repeat myself.  “Truth is the first casualty of war,” quoted Ethel Annakin-Skywalker in 1915 according to something I read on the Internet.  Remember that “nurse” who told Congress of Iraqi soldiers tossing infants out when they took incubators from hospitals when Iraq invaded Kuwait?  She was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States.  Look it up.  Before you believe a single thing coming from Ukraine, look it up, and understand this:  your emotion is the aim.  Heck, I hear manipulating your emotions is all the rage.
  • Propaganda: even when you’re aware of propaganda, it’s effective.
  • Look for things that make you happy. When I go on the Internet, sometimes (when I’m in a growly mood) I look for things that will make me mad.  There’s plenty.  Twitter® is a sea of it.  Most social media is a sea of it.  That’s why (except for when writing for research purposes) I avoid it like the plague – remember, all work and no plague makes for an entirely different 13th
  • For 95% of people, there is no reason you can’t be happy in this moment, right now.   There are people in this world who have serious problems, but for the most part you’re really not one of them.  Even if you are, why would you let those problems rob you from a moment of being happy?  There is a time to grieve, a time to be sad.  When you let it rule your life, you’re a victim.  Stop it.  Don’t make me come over there and make you.

I brought a grenade to a water balloon fight once.  It did level the playing field.

Then, there’s marriage.  These rules aren’t for 1970, (though they would have worked) but more for today – the world has moved on.  It is far harder today to find a good match than it was even when I met The Mrs. two decades ago.  If you’re happily married, ignore and skip to the next section.

  • If you’re not married, take care in picking your partner. A lot of care.  A bad match will last just as long as a good one (if you have kids) and be amazingly costly.  And never pick woman obsessed with Star Wars® – divorce is strong with this one.
  • Avoid dating apps. They’re really just casual sex apps.  And never go casual.  Get competitive.
  • If you’re a young dude (below 35), try to get a wife who is no older than 20-24 years old and marry for values and character. Why?  Nothing good happens with a single woman in their mid to late 20s now.
  • If you’re a young woman, find a quality guy who has values and character, and stay a virgin until marriage.
  • If you’re a young person, especially a man, avoid marrying a spouse whose parents divorced when they were young (0-16). Understand their family and their values.  Understand that the values on display with the parents are another clue to how your future spouse will be.
  • If you’re a man, don’t let your wife’s work interfere with raising the kids and keeping the house. Raising kids with decent values are more important than most luxuries.
  • And while we’re there about kids, understand this – the move to turn government schools into an indoctrination center has never been higher. Which values do you want your children to have?  Yours?  The governments?

But I hear it’s at a pretty low interest rate.  Heck, I think we could refinance New Zealand to make the balloon payment.

What about economics?

  • Avoid debt to the extent possible. Never borrow to buy a car, unless it’s the only choice.  Never buy a new car unless your net worth is over $1 million or a company you own is paying for it.  Heck, I hear the best way to get back on your feet is to miss two car payments . . . .
  • I have one.  I could pay it off in cash.  Why could I pay it off?  Because I never borrow to buy cars (since 1997).  I hear Spongebob® isn’t paying his mortgage – his house is underwater.
  • Understand that luxury has multiple costs: first, there’s the cash that has to be paid every month.  Second, there’s a moral cost.  Just like a donut, occasional luxury won’t dull the character.  But every month, and forever?  It robs bank accounts and robs the most precious thing that any person controls – their time.
  • Video games are a luxury. If a person spends 20 hours a week playing video games, what else could have been done with their time?  Imagine if Hemingway spent his spare time playing Grand Theft Auto instead of sitting under the Catalan Sun drinking wine from a bota and watching bullfights?    GTA is a life stealer.  And for Ernest, so was a shotgun.
  • Why live in a big city? The high housing cost?  The crush of incessant humanity surrounding you?  Oh, yeah, you can get Thai food at 3am.
  • Realize the dollar is going to die. The United States prints them, and then other people take them.  When Jen P-saki said that this was “Putin’s Inflation” I asked the question:  “When did Putin take control of our money supply and then started printing trillions of dollars?”  If you salted away a bit of gold and silver (and lead, too) the best case is that you could give it to your kids when you pass on.  The worst case?  Well, between you and me, silver and gold might be the biggest bargains of the century in 2022 (I am NOT an investment advisor).
  • Realize that in the future, there is a high degree of probability that having “divergent” opinions to The Narrative will result in cutting people off from their money – it has already happened in Canada. You may not believe it, but it’s Tru-deau.  How will you prepare for that?
  • You have a year’s worth of food, right? You buy a little extra each month and salt it away?  It’s a lot easier to do when the shelves are full, and when shortages hit you’re not part of the problem – you’re part of the solution because you won’t be adding to the panic.  It’s not hoarding if you bought it before the panic hits.

I heard he was sad later in life.  He had a Kipling depression.

The Modern World thinks that this is a new scenario.  It isn’t.  Kipling wrote about this many, many years ago in The Gods of The Copybook Headings:

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

 We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

 We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

 With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

 When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.” 

 On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.” 

 In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”  

 Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

 As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

 And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Hedonism Leads To Nihilism

“Shut up and pay attention to me, Bender.  Look, I love life and its pleasures as much as anyone here, except perhaps you, Hedonism Bot.  But we need to be shut off.  Especially you, Hedonism Bot.” – Futurama

One thing I learned in high school – always date homeless girls.  It doesn’t matter where you drop them off.

I know that lots of people had it rough in high school, that they felt that they didn’t fit in.  They felt as awkward at Whoopi Goldberg at a bris.

Not me.

I’m not bragging, really, it was just how it worked out for me.  I had a great time in class, a great time in athletics, had great friends from nearly every walk of life.  Heck, I even had hair back then.

I was also really lucky with the ladies.  Thankfully there were no small number of girls with daddy issues in town, a drive-in movie theater, and a pizza place.  Of course the pizza was not entirely necessary for a seduction, but a guy gets hungry.  Seducing girls burns up calories.

Let’s add in the last element of hedonism:  beer.

There was a bar where if you had the $5 cover charge, you were of drinking age as long as you weren’t stupid enough to wear your letter jacket.  I should know, because I got in when I was 16.  I went in with my friend’s (who was of drinking age) license.  He was four inches taller than me and was probably sixty pounds less than me.  I wasn’t fat, he was just skinny enough to fit down the barrel of a 12 gauge and not touch the sides.

I dived off the stage at an Oktoberfest party.  I went krautsurfing.

Yes.  At 16 I thought it was a good idea to sneak into a bar holding the license of someone who resembled me only in the fact that they were another human male who had blonde hair and blue eyes and in only those ways.  And that same person who barely resembled me was also walking in with me.

I had no idea what sort of ludicrous story I would tell them if they asked.  “Oh, sorry, I thought I was another person?”  No.  “Oh, when I was at his place I accidentally put his license in my wallet and hid my own license?”  Hmm.  “I was fighting with my multiple personality disorder and physically split into two people?”

Thankfully, the place was nearly empty and the bouncer never asked me for an ID, just took my $5 and stamped my hand.

I saw a drunk caveman walk home once.  It was a meanderthal.

Apparently, I made enough of an impression that night that they never once carded me, ever.  After one night, I was a regular and knew most of the people that worked there by name.  Not so amazingly, about half the people from my social circle made the same discovery, and on a random Friday night, it wasn’t unusual to see a dozen juniors and seniors in the place.  Of course in 2022, the Safety Police would probably summarily execute the owner and the staff, but this was a kinder, gentler, drunker time.

It was life on easy mode.  Plentiful girls with dubious morals.  Cheap beer.  Great success in nearly everything I tried.  I’m not saying I peaked in high school, no.  Heck, I’m not even sure that I’ve peaked yet.  But it was easy.

One thing I did was try to connect emotionally with those frolicsome fräuleins of my hometown.  That seemed (in many cases) like a lost cause.  One night while sitting under the moonlight in the Wonderful Wildermobile, between hickie sessions, I looked up at the Moon and said to my girlfriend at the time, “It’s amazing to look up at that, and think how much smaller it is than the Sun.  How much smaller the Earth is than the Sun.  It’s a fantastic Universe we live in.”

Her response?  “The Sun is larger than the Earth?  No way!!!!”

Okay, our relationship was over pretty shortly after that comment.  And that also changed me.

I bet my old girlfriend thinks Starbucks® is a currency that aliens use.

I had an epiphany.  I was living a life of hedonism.  And although I had a life of pleasure, there seemed to be a lack of meaning.  I had everything that every guy on the football team could desire.

But I felt empty.  Not dead inside, but empty.  I felt that the things I was doing were, while extremely physically pleasing, were devoid of meaning.  It was like being Hunter Biden without being a Biden, smoking crack (or meth), and getting money from anonymous donors for my retarded attempts at painting to try to influence my dad.

I’m betting that this is the first time Scotty and scotch were used to explain nihilism.

The feeling of empty was a tough one.  It helped me see how someone can go from that feeling of empty in the face of pleasure to a feeling of nihilism.  I looked up the definition of nihilism, and came up with more definitions than I had girlfriends in high school.

I’ll give this one, which I found after looking at a dozen (many contradictory) definitions on the Internet:  “as the view that nothing we do, nothing we create, nothing we love, has any meaning or value whatsoever.”  That is the one that mirrors the emptiness that I felt.

It is the inherent danger of a life that borders on the libertine.  What matters if life is so easy?

Thankfully, I’m glad I caught that as early as I did.  I can see easily of how falling down the rabbit hole of hedonism could lead to nihilism.  As I got older, I realized that, whatever definition used, nihilism is the worst of philosophies, and the worst of the human condition.

Even though the Universe is large, and there have been countless years since the start, and, perhaps, countless years until the heat death of the Universe, we matter.

What happens in this world does matter.  We have meaning.  And fighting the good fight for Good over Evil does matter.  Life and meaning are built not in the pleasure, but in the struggle to be better, to do more, to be more, and to add value because we were here.  Those are the stories worth telling – they are the ones that will be sung around campfires in 100 years.

I hope Aaron Burr didn’t name his son Tim.  It would have been awkward to look for him if he ever got lost in a forest.

Never give up, because what we do here matters.  What you do here has value.  Even as we stare at the vastness of a Universe that no one can comprehend, it matters that we are here.  And it matters what we create.

And our love?  It perhaps has the greatest value of all, though it is rarely found in the bottom of a glass of beer, unless there’s a live band.

Did I mention they had live bands at the bar?

BLM Has Killed More Blacks Than Lynching Has

“It doesn’t matter who we are, what matters is our plan.” – The Dark Knight Rises

What’s the difference between protestors in Hong Kong and Minneapolis?  In Hong Kong they protested against censorship.

I have written before about the Marxist origin of Black Lives Matter®.  That doesn’t appear to bother the news media, Leftists, or the corporations that shovel money into it like they’re feeding a machine.  Yes, Black Lives Matter™ is a machine, but it’s not quite the machine that the liberal wine-aunts that listen to NPR© think it is.

But challenge Black Lives Matter© while working for a major corporation, even in good faith?  That’s going to shorten your career.

Zac Kriegman worked for Thompson/Reuters®.  “Worked for” is the proper tense.  Kriegman had a bachelor’s in economics topped with a law degree from Harvard® and was working for Thompson/Reuters© leading their efforts in artificial intelligence.  His pronoun is:  “Was.”

A friend go fired from a keyboard factory for not putting in enough shifts.

Then he posted an essay on the internal servers.  You can read it here (LINK).  What was the sin he got fired for?  Objecting to the bias he saw at Thompson/Reuters™ and then, worst of all, proving via statistics that Black Lives Matter© and the Thompson/Reuters© narrative was . . . a lie.  A longer version of Kriegman’s story can be found here (LINK).  Thanks to Ricky for both of those links.

The results are clear.  According to the Tuskegee Institute (who apparently are the official counters of such things) a total of 3, 446 black people were lynched between 1882 and 1968.  Based on Kriegman’s data, it’s entirely likely that Black Lives Matter’s™ focus on “defunding the police” along with the Ferguson and Minneapolis Effects, that Black Lives Matter© killed more blacks in three years than lynching ever did in 86 years.

It is clear that facts like these have to be suppressed.  That’s why Zac Kriegman was fired.  At Thompson/Reuters™, the Truth doesn’t matter – just adherence to the Narrative.

But . . . why?

The answer is that the real goal (regardless of the stated goal) of Black Lives Matter© has nothing to with making the lives of black people better.  This is obvious from one initiative alone:  defunding the police.

No, no I really don’t.

I am skeptical of all police.  I tend to think that many police officers will do as they’re told, no matter who tells them, and no matter what they tell them.  History has proven that most cops will go collect guns from lawful owners or round up people for the “vaxx” camps if they’re told to.  Don’t believe me?  Check out Australia.

But if I were a cop in the liberal utopias where Leftists have put a target on my back, I’d do the bare minimum, while looking for a job anywhere outside places where arrests are irrelevant because the Soros-funded DA has installed a revolving door on the jail.  Oddly, this is exactly the desired result.  Soros wants chaos on the streets, and has found that cops won’t arrest people that won’t go to prison.  Those people are then left on the street, where they keep committing crimes until they get bored enough to kill someone.

Combine the following ingredients:

  • inflamed rhetoric noting that no problem in the black community is the responsibility of blacks,
  • occasional “martyr” victims that are selected not because of their innocence, but because the story (Ferguson) or video (Minneapolis) of the incident makes people really mad,
  • aggressive ignoring of the reality documented in FBI statistics that black neighborhoods are amazingly violent places – 58% of all people murdered in 2020 in the U.S. were black, and 54% of people arrested for murder in 2020 in the U.S. . . . were black, and
  • a news media, Thompson/Reutersâ„¢ included, that is all-in on the propaganda and what do you get?

More death.

Arguing that having fewer cops in the areas where most of the murders are taking place will make things better isn’t magical thinking – it’s intentional murder.  Regardless of the reasons that black people are killing themselves – having fewer cops around won’t help the situation.

According to BLM™, that’s okay.  The goal of Black Lives Matter© obviously has nothing to do with helping actual black people.  What is it, then, that they’re up to?

The real goal of Black Lives Matter® is to create enough discontent and pain in the black community so that they’ll accept any solution.  Of course, the solution that the Left proposes is based on increased discipline, improving morality, focusing on keeping families intact, creating a culture of personal responsibility, and rigorous academic performance.

Ha!  Just kidding!  It’s literally the opposite of all of those things.  The current Leftist solution is like trying to help Charlie Sheen via giving him more porn stars and cocaine.

Charlie’s tested positive for everything except the ‘rona . . . .

And companies that support BLM© are complicit.  In the case of Thompson/Reuters© they reported uncritically on false claim that BLM™ made.  This, of course, provided oxygen for the fire.  Large companies then threw on bushels of cash, which provided more fuel.  The result?

Thousands of people, most of them black, who would now be alive except for Black Lives Matter™ are now dead.   These people had been utterly abandoned by their local politicians, media, and the large companies that earn Social Justice® points by pandering to those same NPR© liberal wine aunts.

The goal is simple:   to create an army of discontent people to increase violence and chaos.  It’s always easier to destroy than to build – and this idea is to destroy everything, leaving an America that’s hollowed out – a place with no center.  That’s what Leftists are good at.

Building and creating?  Not so much.

But at least black people don’t have to worry about lynching now.  They can just worry about how Black Lives Matter™ is going to “help” them next instead.

Currently Reading:  The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

How I’m Doing My Resolutions, Complete With Rocky II

“Well, you should have had him!  Now don’t let up on this man.  This man is dangerous!” – Rocky II

After he got the “Eye of the Tiger” he got a lifetime ban from the zoo.

It’s the new year, so, I have to buy a new calendar.  Objective achieved!

When I was a young kid, say eight or nine, there were several things that I never quite understood.  The first was the impact of foreign debt flow on monetary policy.  The second was why people got so excited about changing from one year to another.

At best, New Year’s Eve seemed a useless waste of an evening.  My parents would occasionally go to see friends, occasionally they’d host the party at our house.  They’d talk, and drink, and generally have a good time.  My interest in hanging out with them approached zero.  Oh, sure, they were all nice, but the “got your nose” game loses its luster past the age of, oh, one.

What’s the sentence for shoplifting a calendar?  12 months.

Honestly, I really thought the concept was overblown until 2020 – I couldn’t wait to see that year in the rearview mirror.  2021?  Potentially worse than 2020, and I’m glad it’s gone, too.  I’m (honestly) not very optimistic about 2022.

But one thing I have learned is that I can use the concept of a new year, as stupid as it is, for me.

The nice thing about most Christmas/New Year holidays is that I have time off – time to think, time to get back with the family, and time to reassess:

who I am,

Am I following the virtues that I value?  Am I being honest and truthful?  Am I doing the things that provide the most value?  Is my driver’s license data correct, I mean, with the exception of the weight because everybody lies about that?

what I am, and

Am I doing the things out in the world that add the most value?  Am I changing the world for the better?  What are the things I need to stop doing?  What am I intentionally avoiding?  Did I leave the waffle iron on?

where I’m going.

Am I on a path, or am I just wandering?  What is keeping me off the path?  Do I really have to wear clothes outside like the court order says?

Drinking alcohol doesn’t solve my problems.  On the other hand, neither does drinking milk . . . .

I do this annually now.  I find that one of the best places to think about these things is in the hypnagogic state where I’m not awake or asleep.  I’ve had some very good insights during those moments.  It’s (for me) a great place to find uncomfortable truth – things I really already knew, but that I was hiding from myself.  Those insights can be utterly lost in the clutter of everyday life and the constant actions and demands.

Some of the past successes from these New Year reviews have been amazing for me, lost weight, and bad habits quit among them.  I’ve used those times to understand me better.

I used to be a taxi driver, but the riders were boring.  About all they said was, “Hey, I don’t live in the woods . . .”

I’d give you a list of what I’m doing/changing/quitting this year, but I’m not sure it’s at all interesting.  My life is mainly a fairly boring one and except for the “acquire a chimpanzee named Bear and ride around the United States having wacky adventures” most of the items on the list are probably all items on millions of lists belonging to other people.

What happens next, though, is action.  Thinking is one part, but once the decisions have been made, life comes down to taking action and making sure that I have sufficient discipline to do what I’m looking to do.

With small goals, discipline is easy.  It’s not changing habits and patterns that I have built into my life over the course of decades.  Changing habits that have been around since I was 18?  Those are far harder.  For those levels of issues, the only real solution is fanatical discipline, repeated and sustained.  Muscle isn’t built on one good day at the gym.  Muscle is built on hours of effort and pain.

And if the unvaxxed are a danger to the vaxxed, aren’t I putting myself in danger from the unvaxxed if I get the vaxx?

For me, the best goals are based on real, hard data.  When lifting weights, the iron never lies.  Choosing those things that I can describe with absolutes is crucial.  “I will not ever . . .” is much better than “I’ll try not to . . .”  When I combine “I will not ever” with a value?  I have a goal that is stark and sleek, and one I can’t fudge.

I want this to be about the change I want versus me.  I want it to be measured, clearly, in absolutes.  I want the absolutes to be in my control.  If I say, “I will never kill a zebra with a Ronco® Pocket Fisherman™, that’s something that’s absolute, even if that stupid zebra had it coming.

One example of a hard goal is dealing with The Mrs.  When we met and dating got serious, I told her simply, “I will never lie to you.”  I haven’t.  It’s simple.

It’s absolute.

I also don’t have to revisit that every year.  Since we’ve been married, that’s been a promise I’ve kept.

I think these absolutes scare the Left.  They like to deal in degrees and shades of grey.  A fudge here.  A cheat there.  A value subverted, and then (in many cases) a value inverted.

The last part is about failure.

Just because I start a change, doesn’t mean I have to follow through.  I’m allowed to change my goal, especially as my knowledge changes.  Heck, I could even be getting the opposite effects from a change that I anticipated.  Time to reassess.

The last part is failure.  Just because I decided to do something and failed doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try again.  It doesn’t mean that I should be afraid of trying again.  In many cases, (like Rocky II, for instance) the difference between failure and victory is just getting up one more time.

Also, with the Biden administration, failure is not an option.  It comes with the basic package.

Finally, I’ve learned to not fear success.  What happens if I succeed with all of my goals?  That has happened, and more than once.

Add more goals.  I’m breathing.  I’m not done.  And I’m not perfect.  More discipline, and getting up one more time?  That’s the key.

I still think celebrating a new year is silly, but I’m going to use it this time.  With enough discipline, 2022?  That could be, for me, the best year ever.  Heck, might as well put the new calendar to good use . . . .

Penultimate Day: The View From 2021

“Well, I simply observed, sir, that I’m felicitous since during the course of the penultimate solar sojourn, I terminated my uninterrupted categorization of the vocabulary of our post-Norman tongue.” – Blackadder The Third

I invented a time machine so I can view the Resurrection on TV – it’s amazing resolution: ADHD.

Penultimate Day.

This is the only unique Wilder Holiday that I know of. New Year’s Eve? That’s for tourists. It happens every year. It’s the last day of the year. But what about the next-to-last day of the year?

That’s Penultimate Day.

Penultimate Day started as a lark, maybe a decade ago.

The Mrs. decided that she didn’t like her Blackberry™ phone, and wanted to shop for a new phone. We did. The deals were all bad, so we didn’t buy a new phone. What then? We’d driven nearly 100 miles (the closest place to Modern Mayberry that sold phones then) and decided to . . . eat Italian food.

Driving 100 miles home, we made jokes about it, and Christened the day, Penultimate Day. The three tenets:

  1. Shop for a new cell phone (at Best Buy® is best),
  2. Don’t buy a new cell phone (you can decide to not purchase a cell phone nearly anywhere),
  3. Eat Italian food, namely at Olive Garden® (it’s close to Best Buy™). Since, when “You’re Here, You’re Family™” is their motto, I still wonder why they look weird at me when I take off my shoes and put on pajamas to eat with my shirt off.

Where did I go after eating all of those breadsticks? The hospitialiano.

Ta-da! You can celebrate, too! Well, at least you can celebrate next year, since my math shows that December 30, 2021, has (thankfully) perished from the annals of history.

Last year was lame. We were in the midst of (yet another) ‘Rona lockdown – 40 weeks to stop the spread, or something, so we stayed home. This year, though, it was time for a full and hearty observance of Penultimate Day. I arrived from home, ready to not purchase a cell phone.

Sadly, only Pugsley was ready to go. The Mrs. and The Boy claimed that they were deep in the clutches of some evil virus. Since Pugsley was patient zero, and I was in the midst of recovery, well, we let the weak decide the day. Here’s our scorecard:

  1. We didn’t shop for a new cell phone.
  2. We didn’t buy a new cell phone. Win!
  3. We ate Italian food. Win!

We ate Italian food because I made (with assistance) chicken Alfredo for dinner. Since everyone else old enough to drink was sick, it was up to me to drink the wine. I threw myself on that grenade for the family.

I had a real problem when I used a collie for gathering my sheep. I had 48, but he always brought back 50. He was bad about rounding up.

I’m a giver that way.

But what happened this year?

  1. Everybody was sick. Last year? Everywhere was closed. As simple as our task was, we failed it twice in a row.
  2. When we sent Pugsley to buy food for dinner, he reported that one supermarket was entirely out of pasta. Pasta is, well, one of the easiest things to make and distribute. Why is a national grocery store chain out of pasta?
  3. They had chicken. I cooked that, and The Mrs. pronounced it “dry.” She wasn’t being mean – she was being honest. Dry chicken isn’t due to a lack of moisture – dry chicken is due to a lack of fat. My bad. More butter next time. I thought that putting a stick under each of my armpits was enough. I’ll add more in 2022, though I’m unsure of which crevices to put it in.
  4. Pugsley said they were out of Alfredo sauce. Since that’s easier to make than adding water to ice, I gave him the ingredients to make it from scratch. Oops! They had Alfredo sauce. Just the wrong aisle.

The most disturbing thing Pugsley said was this: “It’s weird. It was like there was nothing in the store. Most of the shelves were bare.” Since The Mrs. had just complained, “Why do you tell them to buy more things, our pantry is so full we can hardly buy anything at all,” I smiled. When she said, “And you’ve infected them. When I ask them to buy one, of anything, they buy three.”

I smiled so hard my face ached.

Being a skeleton is nice – nothing gets under his skin.

I will probably go to the store in the next few days. That will be the first time in months. Not because of the ‘Rona, mind you, but because I really hate going to the store because there are people there. I’ll give a look to see what is missing, or what has gone up in price.

But it’s been two years since we’ve properly celebrated Penultimate Day. Before The Boy graduates from college, we have only one more. I’m not thinking that he’ll often decide to come home so we can travel and not purchase cell phones and then eat Italian food. So, we have just one more year where it’s the four of us.

The only hobbit I met was a jerk, a real douchebaggins.

This is the last post I’ll make this year, and even in the 10 years that we’ve been celebrating Penultimate Day I’ve seen very big differences to our lives – Penultimate Day used to be a lark, but now it’s a time to look back. In the failure of this Penultimate Day, I’m wondering – what does it mean? How have we as a nation changed in the last decade? Do we even still like Italian food?

  • Our nation has split apart farther than I ever thought it could go. There is rarely anything either side can agree on, except that they find the other side awful poopy heads.
  • The economy is even more poised for collapse. As it is, I think we’re riding a razor’s edge, where on either side is a collapse in prosperity that will last generations.
  • Alec Baldwin has finally made good on his promise to kill again.
  • The punchline to a joke since at least 1988 (really, look it up) inhabits the Oval Office despite a (legitimate) doubt that he was elected legally. The Left responds as they always do – by doubling down and declaring him the “most” legitimate President in our history.
  • We went from energy dependent to energy independent to energy dependent (and in crisis) in four years.
  • As far as I can tell, yes, everyone still likes Italian food.

We face a very unique crisis – one of cohesion, one of leadership, one of economic collapse. All at the same time. What will happen?

When I was a little kid, my dad made pasta when I was scared – to show me there was nothing to be Alfredo.

Who can know. All I know is that the Alfredo was pretty good tonight. And each day that my family spends together is special, and I cherish each one of those days. I have right now, so I will enjoy it.

As Marcus Aurelius said: “The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.”

Today I’ll focus and value those things I can control. And when I look at that? Penultimate Day 2021 wasn’t so bad after all. Happy New Year to all.

Joe Biden’s Early Christmas Gift To The Right

“Well, you know, anything could happen. You could get run over, pickpocketed, . . . fall down a manhole, bump into people, murdered . . . imagine that. Or even just ridiculed.” – Flight of the Conchords

Bruce Lee had a son other than Brandon.  This son was a famous vegetarian:  Brock.

I’m betting that most of you saw the vidya of Alzheimer in Chief Brandon Biden taking a call from a parent about the tracking of Santa by NORAD.  At the end of the call, the parent says “Merry Christmas, and let’s go Brandon.”  You can watch it here (LINK).

Biden responds with an enthusiastic, “Let’s go Brandon!  I agree!”  The look on Jill’s face is priceless, like she had just eaten a tuna fish sandwich that had been fermenting under Joe’s butt for six days.  I know that Jill told the Secret Service to not let Joe sit on them that long, but to quote Joe, “They’re just so creamy and feel so good and cool on my buttocks and make my skin so supple.”

Immediately, the Leftist Twittersphere™ erupted with all of the impotent rage of a six-year-old that’s not allowed to sit at the grownup table during Christmas dinner.  A classic response is from the harpy known as Sarah Reese Jones.  Here is her Tweet™, which I have not seen on her Twitter© feed, and may have been deleted because it was so insipidly stupid.  I’ve seen it elsewhere, but if Sarah asks me to pull it down because it’s fake, I will.  She made plenty of other comments that are still up there that I can pull from.

Sarah would make her Tweets® longer, but she ran out of character.

The salt to be mined from Leftist tears could make anyone a millionaire, and it looks like Sarah needs it.  Whereas I have no idea if she’s had “work” done on her face, it looks like it has a higher composite chemical content than the re-entry surfaces on an Elon Musk spacecraft.

Yes, it’s a personal attack.  I sort of feel bad because I think my readership is higher than hers.  I know I look a lot less like Steven Tyler’s illegitimate child.

Why did the Leftists react so strongly to these bad jokes?  I know that my readers react to my bad jokes like Hawaiians:  A low ha.

I know that there are several things that drove instant hate to this exchange:

  1. It exposed the media’s attempt to cover up the way people felt. Let’s remember where “Let’s go Brandon” started – with a television host attempting to cover up a crowd of thousands of people saying “f**k Joe Biden.”  The clumsy cover-up caught fire, precisely because it was one of the most blatant lies of the year, outside of “Biden won the election.”
  2. It exposed that this never happened to Trump. The media routinely had him under a microscope, looking for every single thing that could be used against them.  In one instance, hundreds of stories showed up in the mainstream media that . . . Trump got one more scoop of ice cream than everyone else got.
  3. It exposed that Biden is either so insulated or so mentally lost in the fog of someone who probably could no longer qualify for a driver’s license that he would actually repeat a phrase that meant, “f**k me.” Either of these things is figurative poison for a politician.

NBC© did a pilot for a sitcom about Abe Lincoln, shot before a live audience.

  1. It exposed Biden to yet more mockery. This is right out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.  It’s Item 5:  “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
  2. The Left hates it when their playbook is used against them. They have to defuse it at any cost.  So, they either bury it (this segment is, I hear, already cut out of the transcript and official video) or attack it because it’s (according to them) inappropriate.
  3. The Left doesn’t actually even like Biden. He’s just the only guy that they could keep hidden until the 2020 general election, drawing crowds of dozens to Trump’s crowds of thousands.  He was the gluten-free, peanut-free, bread of the Left.  It may be made from sawdust, but at least it doesn’t offend anyone.

The irony was palpable:  the same people that had made a (not so) huge balloon made of Trump in a diaper were all twisted up about a phrase that no child would understand.  Of course, the tombstone for the Right (in the very unlikely chance we lose) will say “Imagine if it were reversed.”

To make this clear:  we don’t care because they don’t care.  The games that they play are just that, games.  The rules for civility are long gone.

To be fair, the biggest inflection point is either hot pants Clinton’s impeachment for perjury (which you could squarely blame on the GOP©) or George W’s election victory.  Both of those enraged the Left in a way that they’re not over today.   – they felt they had been robbed of their glorious forever lock on the halls of power, despite the fact that W had more in common with the Left than JFK ever did.  Me?  I think Alinsky killed them – and the Left has been playing for keeps.

Looks like someone made a measurement error when ordering the balloon that would “ToTaLLy oWn TrUmPz!”

“Let’s go, Brandon” had probably run its course.  It had gone on for months, and eventually, every joke (like Joe) gets old.  This probably gave it another month or three.  But it doesn’t end here.  There is more to come, and that’s what we must never, ever give up on.  We must mercilessly ridicule the Left at every chance.

Why?

  • First, they hate it, they cannot stand it, it makes them stupid with rage.
  • Second, it’s fun.
  • Third? The Left has to react.  And when they do, regardless of what they’ve taken over in society, the mass of the people will understand the foolishness we face.  They are power.  Speak Truth to them.  Ridicule them.  Have fun with it.

Sometimes, they do all the work for you.

Oh, and one more thing:

Let’s go, Brandon.

Christmas – It’s Not About The Money

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

What do Musk and Edison have in common? They both got rich off of Tesla.

Wednesday is normally a day where we talk about wealth, economics, money, currency, and the state of the economy. But, it’s nearly Christmas, so I thought I’d take this time to give a different take on wealth. And no, it’s not Joe Biden appearing in a Marvel® movie where his superpower is to make vast amounts of wealth disappear, because he can do that on, oh, every Tuesday.

Don’t get me wrong. I love prices. Prices are a great way to allocate things in such a way that the most people win. I have my pile of cash and get to buy (within that limit) the things that make me the most happy. Does everyone want a really cool sports car? No, some people don’t want them at all.

Personally, I’d love to have a cool sports car, but I’d much rather not have a mortgage. So, I make choices. And then cry silently in my pillow at night because I’m dead inside because I decided I didn’t get that Mustang®.

Othello always would visit Sauron through the Moor Door.

Regardless, choices mean that I’m in control. I mean, if I chose to study theology and then move to Colorado after I graduated? My choices mean I could become a high priest. I am free to choose and try to optimize my life based on my resources, talents, and luck.

Combine that with a system of (more or less) private property, and the system allows for the sum of millions of individual actions as people try to maximize their happiness. This provides incentives to work to buy steak. Or starve. But owning property provides incentives to create wealth. So, in striving to get enough money to buy a Lambo® and a vapid trophy wife in a functional economy, a businessman works to create the most joy for his customers.

Boom. People who have never met, and will never meet, work together to create a complex economy. This economy translates information based on prices, and is fueled by incentives, and private property.

And yet . . .

What’s the fastest thing in the universe? Nic Cage accepting a movie role.

As much as I love this system, I have to mention again, this system exists to serve men. It does not exist for men to serve it. There is a richer experience of life than only the pursuit of profit.

Also, this system is one that optimizes without regard to morality or virtue. On more than one occasion I have heard a Wall Street billionaire exclaim, “this isn’t Boy (or Boy-Girl, or Trans, in 2021, I guess) Scouts®.”

That was a direct rejection of morality and virtue.

The result of that type of thinking?

If it’s legal and can pull money out of someone’s pocket, Wall Street will do it. If heroin were legal for sale, Wall Street would be looking to invest in the e-Heroin® mobile App. They’d sell underage . . . well, you get the picture. Heck, Wall Street would sell ghosts as supernatural slaves if they thought it wouldn’t come back to haunt them.

When money is their god, they will do anything to get it. Wall Street will do anything legal. The black market, we know, will do anything illegal, as long as they get paid. Wall Street and the black market have essentially the same morals. And, like Satan, Wall Street just has better lawyers and lobbyists.

If there is a fault in the system, that is it.

I hear Charlie Brown was suspended from school. Some kid was allergic to Peanuts™.

And Christmas is one of the best times to point that out. Christmas is a holiday that has been morphed over time into one that, if we were to go by commercials alone, was based only on the mass consumption of stuff.

I won’t go into the deep history of Christmas. It’s long and more complicated than the math that Nancy Pelosi uses to charge her vodka back to taxpayers. But the short version is that the Winter Solstice was a great place to put a festival if you were going to convince the Germans and the Vikings that this new Christianity thing would work out okay for them. To make it work, Christmas had to be a party.

And it was. And it is. Over time, though, the party aspect of Christmas changed to a focus on family and generosity, which seems to be well matched to the holiday’s stated purpose. The meaning of Christmas then, is giving, not getting.

Certainly, there’s a certain magic in the eyes of a young child being surprised when the gifts under the tree far exceed anything she could imagine. The delight in a boy’s eyes when he sees the BB gun that will probably shoot his eye out?

Priceless.

I pitched a movie to Alec. He shot it down.

That’s the magic of the giving. The Mrs. and I, however, are old enough that we like the peace and family aspect of Christmas far more than the “stuff” aspect. I’ve given her the same gift for Christmas for the last five years (hint: it’s expensive scotch). She enjoys it. The Mrs. generally gets me something small. I like the keychain fob that she got me a year ago, “Be careful, handsome, I love you” better than something large, or an expensive scotch I won’t drink because it’s too expensive.

This year, The Boy and Pugsley have also (I think!) surpassed the greed aspect of Christmas. It’s not so much about the gifts they get. Heck, it’s not so much about the gifts they give, either. It’s about waking up on Christmas Eve, getting together and sharing the few gifts we have for each other, having a nice dinner, and then . . . relaxing together.

Together. And for me, that’s the biggest gift.

It’s that spirit that makes me look forward to Christmas. We’ve long been a “Christmas Eve” gift giving family, because it defuses the emotions associated with gift giving and leads to a very quiet and family-based Christmas Day. Plus no one wants to get up early if the presents are all already opened.

That’s the opposite, really, of the advertising that pelts us on a regular basis. The ads are all based on more and bigger. Time to give your loved one a $75,473 car with a big red bow, because nothing says love more than massive consumption.

Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. It’s a Christmas Eve movie.

Just like in most of our lives, we have choices. We can live the choice and have the Christmas that the media wants to sell us which is a holiday based almost entirely on creating the most economic activity possible.

Or? We can enjoy our family, and choose to place emphasis on giving, and choose to understand that the Nativity itself was the greatest gift that could be given. Even if you aren’t a Christian, understanding the promise of redemption in that gift of a child to mankind is one of supreme optimism.

That optimism is based firmly not in economics, since it promises exactly zero economic prosperity. No, this gift is not money – it was a gift based on virtue and morality.

I love prices, and incentives, and the creation of wealth. But there are things that are more important than money. You know, things like all the stuff . . . .

Dead Romans Agree: Don’t Let The Small Stuff Bother You

“Happy premise number three:  even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won’t.” – Bowfinger

I hear that Marcus’ wife was a perfect X.

Mike, the proprietor over at Cold Fury (LINK), is going through a very difficult time.  Big Country has set up a gofundme for him here (LINK).  Much more information at the gofundme site.

Now to the post . . .

I woke up this morning just irritated.  No particular reason.  In all fairness, it was entirely an internal feeling, and I imagine most people never noticed.  I was nice and polite to nearly everyone I interacted with.  And why not?  None of them were my ex-wife.

I wasn’t irritated with them, I was just irritated.  There were no issues.  I wasn’t in pain.  No one around me was in particular trouble.  Thankfully I’m not an electrician – people might dislike me not being positive at work.

As I thought about it, what was irritating me?  I couldn’t quite put a finger on it.  There was no rational reason at all.  During a conversation tonight, though, I had a reason to quote Marcus Aurelius:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Not mine, but I couldn’t resist.

Sure, Marcus Aurelius’ kid was an utter tool, but when you become Caesar at 18, well, it might tend to go to your head – think of Commodus as Miley Cyrus, 180 A.D.  Back to Marcus, though.  Marcus genuinely did his best for the Roman Empire.  As near as I can tell, Marcus was a pretty good leader.

And that little quote above wasn’t written for you and me.  It was written for Marcus, by Marcus.  He was reminding himself that the external things in the world had only the power he gave them.  He was giving himself a pep talk.

Marcus Aurelius was right.  In the conversation I was having tonight, the person was very upset (most of you don’t know the person, though specific readers in California and Indiana do – hi guys!).  The reason she was upset?  Nothing rational at all.  So I quoted a dead Roman emperor.

Who says that Stoics aren’t compassionate?

Did it help?  I don’t know.  I’m beginning to see a pattern where crying people don’t stop crying when I quote dead Roman emperors.  I’m beginning to see why the kids call The Mrs. when they want actual human sympathy.

My irritation (I think) came from the same place.  Nowhere.  I felt fine (except for my right knee which is much better now) and the day generally went fairly well.  I realized that the advice I gave was meant just as much for me as for the person I was talking to.  I was just being irritated because I let myself be irritated.

Once I was done and realized I didn’t have to be irritated?

My hands disappeared today, but I can’t really point my finger at what caused it.

My irritation disappeared.  I know that the way I feel is (generally) my choice.  I can choose how I feel:  salty, Wednesday, or even drunk.  The only reason that I’m not happy every morning is if I choose not to be happy on some particular morning.

Are there actual reasons why I might have different feelings?  Sure.  If I had mental problems (other than an unseemly affection for awful jokes and a desire to consciously be able to make my fingernails grow absurdly fast) that might be a reason to have a feeling other than what I choose.

Don’t know.  I do know that there are people with actual mental problems.  There’s proof:  some people actually voted for Biden.  But, going back to Marcus, that’s not external.  Being sick or goofy enough to vote for Biden isn’t external.

Marcus Aurelius might have voted for Biden – Marcus is dead, after all.

Physical pain also is an internal source that can destroy moods.  I once (for a few months) had sciatica.  I was irritable enough every morning to chew nails and spit bullets.  Then I discovered that I could work out for a few hours on an elliptical trainer to make the pain go away.  A week later?

I was fine.  My irritation vanished along with my sciatica, never (hopefully) to return.

That was nearly 15 years ago.  Sure, I’ve felt pain since then, but most of it was the good pain from a hard workout.  Heck, most days the worst thing that happened was the crisp morning breeze running through my back hair.

My mood depends on me.  My attitude depends on me.

Does that mean that I can’t see the actual situation we’re in?  Of course not.  I see a nation tearing itself apart.  It’s worse:  it’s not just a nation, Western Civilization seems to be happily thrashing about as it marches down a path to extinction.

Is that good?

Of course not.

Does it mean that I should walk around every day being sad?

Of course not.  I am doing, I assure you, everything I can think of to stave off that darkness.  I mean, those memes won’t make themselves.

Never buy a sculpture of Bonnie Tyler.  Every now and then it falls apart.

And I am doing it cheerfully.  I laugh every day.  I smile because I know that most of the things that I worry about can have no power over me unless I give them that power.

Make your choices, and understand that while you might wake up irritated – it’s your choice if you wish to stay in that mood for a minute or an hour.

Me?  I like being happy, so I choose that, even in moments where it might not be appropriate.  I might even need to stop high-fiving people at funerals.

So, I got started late typing this after a day I chose to just be irritated.  And, I’m going to choose to end now.

With a smile on my face.  Go and have a great day.  Most of the time, having a great day is just a choice.

Choose wisely.