Valhalla – Page 10 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Burning Your Way To Happiness

“No! Look, what’s the matter with you all? It’s perfectly simple: We have the fire drill when I ring the fire bell. That wasn’t the fire bell! Right?” – Fawlty Towers

At the pub, the owner told me I was drunk and needed to take the bus home. Turned out those are even harder to drive when you’re drunk.

It was a cold, February campout. It was also rainy, and also weather that most folks would call miserable. In fact, it was also the first campout that I was Scoutmaster.

I think the temperature, at its highest, was probably around 45°F. It froze at night. We put our tents up in the dark, and I snuggled deep into my sleeping bag.

The next morning, we had breakfast. One thing that I had changed since I became Scoutmaster was that the Scouts bought, cooked, and ate their own food. One thing I observed on previous campouts was when the kids and adults ate the same food, the adults wanted good food, and wouldn’t leave the kids alone. Me? I had no desire to eat chicken tartare, so I let the kids fix their own food, and I often cooked for the adult leaders.

I drew a picture of a criminal once. He looked pretty sketchy.

The plan for the day was fairly simple. 80% or more of the Scouts needed to get to First Class (a rank where a boy would know most of the things so they could survive a solo campout for a few days, if need be). We focused on First Class skills. One other thing I instituted is that the older Scouts were to teach the younger Scouts, for reasons that are probably obvious.

My job, mainly, was to drink coffee and take someone to the hospital if the hatchet got the best of them. At this campout, there was one Scout in particular who had very little skill at anything. One of the Scouts of higher rank ran him through building a fire.

Jack London aside, building a fire after a rainy night on a blustery, rainy day isn’t the easiest of things. And, to be fair, this Scout wasn’t the quickest on the uptake. But he worked at starting his fire for a really long time. More than an hour? Certainly. But he had dogged determination, and finally got his fire going.

“Okay,” I said, “You can put that one out now. That qualifies.”

“No, I want to keep it going.”

I hear arsonists do well on Tinder®. They have a lot of matches.

I was fine with that. It was his fire, and if he wanted to keep it going, I was fine with that. There was little chance of him burning down the soggy campground.

He kept the fire going through the night, feeding it, and teasing it along.

He made First Class, but I must point out, by the time he got the rank badge it wasn’t nearly as important to him as building that fire. He had acquired a skill. He could do more than he could before. He did not need outside validation. The achievement was part of him. He was proud of himself.

So often, we get tied up in feeling about things that are beyond our span of control. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.”

I hear that Marcus Aurelius got the first weather report. “Hail, Caesar!”

I know that we are living in a world filled with tough situations. I would say this, if some outside event upsets you, go ahead and be upset. Until midnight.

Then, take control. Realize that what you can be and do is the important thing. As that Scout taught me, being fulfilled isn’t being surrounded by supermodels and driving a Lambo® while they softly nuzzle your neck and . . . where was I? No, that’s not fulfillment. Fulfillment is achievement.

Almost every single person reading this has the power to be better tomorrow at something. A skill. Bench pressing five more pounds. Learning Shakespeare in the original Klingon. Becoming a better carpenter. Finally trimming those nosehairs, or at least weaving them into an attractive scarf.

Me? I write, and try to get better. When I’ve written what I want, I don’t need anyone to tell me – I feel it inside.

And I’m okay.

Except in especially tragic situations, it is in our power to be better. It is in our power to improve. And through doing so, it is in our power to build internal strength. And we don’t need anyone to validate it.

Life is tough, and it’s even tougher when we try to take on every injustice in the world. Sometimes we just need to take a few minutes, and build a fire.

Don’t Fear The Reaper

“No. Not like this. I haven’t faced death. I’ve cheated death. I’ve tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing.” Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Why did New Jersey get all the toxic waste and California get all the lawyers? New Jersey picked first.

When The Soon To Be Mrs. and I were just dating, I was cooking something or other. I think it was eggs. I like eggs sunny side up, and don’t particularly care if they’re cooked all the way.

The Soon To Be Mrs.: “Aren’t you worried about salmonella?”

John Wilder: (Laughs in full Chad manifestation.)

The Soon To Be Mrs.: (Swoons.)

Seriously, she swooned. I’ve never seen it before in my life, but in that moment I think that was what sealed the deal, the moment in time that The Soon To Be Mrs. realized that this one is different. He’s not like the others. Here is a man who has zero fear of The Current Thing, and knows that salmonella won’t be the thing that punches his ticket out of having a functioning circulatory system.

Weird. You can get salmonella from chickens, but not chickenella from salmon.

No. I’m not afraid of salmonella. I would spit in its tiny little eyes or flagellum or tentacles and say, “Not today, my bacterium friend! My Danish-Scots-Germanic blood is far too strong for the likes of you!” And then I would attack Poland. Oh, wait, that’s been done.

I know I’m not going to die like Hemingway, and I’m not going to die like the comedy greats Belushi, Twain, or Nietzsche did. Nope. I think I’m gonna go out like Elvis. On a toilet after having eaten a fried peanut butter, jelly and bacon sandwich covered in cheddar cheese and mayo. Nope, I’m gonna die on a toilet.

I mean, after all, a king should spend his last moments on the throne, right?

A lot of people worry about dying. I suppose I did, in my 20s, when I was worried about carrying out my responsibilities as a dad. Those are serious responsibilities – because those kids are going to be the legacy that I leave on Earth. That and my writing, collection of PEZ® dispensers and velvet Elvis paintings.

I tell you, when the King died, that left me all shook up.

Again, a lot of people worry about dying. I’m not sure why. Of things that are more-or-less predetermined, that’s the big one. We’re all going to die. All of us.

And I’m not sure I care.

Oh, sure, I want to live. I have no particular desire to die. If given the preference, I suppose I’m in favor of my continued heartbeat. But I don’t fear death. I don’t go to sleep at night wondering if this pain or that pain or that thing might be the symptom I look up on WebMD® that seals the deal that Wilder is going up to irritate Jesus in Heaven with bad puns.

I don’t worry about some future point when I’m going to enjoy life. I’ve achieved nearly every goal I’ve ever set for my life. End. Full stop. It’s like when a baseball game goes into extra innings, “Hey, free baseball.” And me? Free life. I’ve done nearly everything I’ve ever wanted to do.

If you don’t like Hillary, you should move to Benghazi. At least you know that there, she’ll leave you alone.

What do you give a man who has everything? I mean, besides another bottle of wine. You give that man: Today.

I’ve got Today. The only moment I live in is right now. And right now isn’t all that bad. I’m sitting in the sitting room (question: is any room I sit in, by definition, a sitting room? Discuss.) with the cool night air blowing in the window, some songs I love playing on the laptop, a cold beer by the keyboard, and the knowledge that at this moment, everything is fine.

Literally, in my life, Every Single Thing Is Fine. I could go into details, but you already know how awesome I am. So, I live for today?

Hell no.

That’s YOLO. The idea that “You Only Live Once” is a free pass to act in any fashion has corroded society. It’s really at the root of many of the problems we have today. It is, in many ways, the absolute inverse of the philosophy I’m trying to describe. YOLO seeks to elevate hedonism and the passions of the moment as the highest good. YOLO is Tinder® times Planned Parenthood© times SnapFaceGramInstaChat® times Rwanda®.

I wonder if Hindus consider YOLO offensive? (not my meme, as found)

It’s the inversion of beauty: it consists of being positive about, well, any old thing that feels good. I could list these “pleasures”, but you know the list as well as I do. We see it every day, with vice being paraded as virtue, and the continual demand going out for people to celebrate it, because, “Can’t you see? This horrid abomination that no healthy society or people in the entire history of the world has tolerated, iS BeAuTIfUL!” No, I think living a life built on YOLO is one doomed to fail – inevitably it will fail based on two reasons: it is materialism or a faith based on the nihilism of the material world writ large, and it is based on needs, like youth, wealth, sensation, or, yes, even life.

So, not YOLO.

One thing I’ve tried to preach is outcome independence. Indeed, since the final outcome of life on Earth is fixed, all the intermediate steps lead there. Instead, I try to focus on virtue and faith. I write not because of YOLO, and not because it’s easy. Some nights it’s hard as hell to get the post to “close” and feel right. There are dozens of posts where, even after 1600 words, I still didn’t say exactly what I meant to say. That’s okay, it’s on me. I’m learning, and if I were perfect at this, I wouldn’t have more work to do.

For me, it’s the work. It’s getting better. It’s finding ways to add value to those people around me. There are those who pull their weight in the world, and those that don’t. I want to be one that pulls his weight, who has contributed as much as I can to helping my family and the wider world.

Why was Karl Marx buried at Highgate Cemetery? He was dead.

I don’t always do it. And I’m not always right, either. I’ve produced some stuff in my life that was really, really good, but not perfect. Thankfully, that’s not my mark, either, since just like immortality here on Earth, searching for perfection is a lonely and silly pastime. I want to make the world a better place with my family (first) and my work (now second) guided by God. And I want people to laugh hard while learning and thinking about the things I write.

The beauty of this is to win, all I have to do is the best that I can do every day. To win? All I have to do is be the best person I can be every day. See? Each night, I go to bed and sleep soundly if I know, in that day, that I gave it my all. Do I take time for me? Sure. But that’s not the goal – I serve a higher purpose.

So, what do I fear? Not death. It’s coming whether I like it or not, and, honestly, I’d rather not return my body in factory-fresh condition – I’d like all the parts to fail at once. On the toilet. I think Elvis would have wanted it that way.

Oh, wait . . . .

I wonder if Elvis ate eggs sunny-side-up? Hang on, I’m sure he did. Elvis ate everything.

The Economic End Of Europe

“I don’t get history. If I wanted to know what happened in Europe a long time ago, I’d watch Game of Thrones.” – Community

Why do communist governments always fail? They cease the means of production.

(Memes today are mostly as-found.)

The handling of the war in Ukraine will go down as a historic blunder, rivaled by only a few events in history:

Archduke Franz Ferdinand deciding to go cruising down the road in his ragtop,
Socrates, who in his last words said, “I drank what??” (thanks, Real Genius), and
The forming of the band U2®.

The Western World had already been rocked by the response to COVID-19. The economic shenanigans required to keep the economy on life support had been bad enough. The entire debt-based currency system had been lurching back and forth more than Hillary Clinton after quality time with a bottle of gin and her “Madame President” scrapbook.

And bad things are going around in Switzerland, as we’ll see below. And big trouble may lie ahead for Great Britain:

In truth, the recovery from the Great Recession hadn’t created any real structural changes. The primary mechanism for preventing utter economic collapse was printing bucketloads of cash and shoving it into the faces of the banks so that they didn’t fail in a catastrophic and sequential fashion. It isn’t the only time that irresponsible decision-making was rewarded with buckets of greenbacks, but let’s not dwell on Hunter Biden.

Where are we now?

Europe is facing an energy drought – one that (unless Russian gas shipments are resumed fairly quickly) will result in lowered economic output. How bad? Some have said, “Great Depression bad.” The precursors of this can be seen in the cracks we see developing economically:

If the Pope commanded the cash be transferred electronically, would that have been a PayPal® order?

Now, one thing I do know: religions are really, really good about keeping their eye on their cash. I wonder if there was some reason that the Pope was wanting this financial move? Was it because he like making Papal airplanes? Or, was it because someone had tipped him off?

Why can’t the Pope be cremated? He’s still alive.

People are betting that Credit Suisse® to fail. They’re also betting that Deutsche Bank™ will fail. Why? When banks lend money to people that can’t pay it back, well, unless the Federal Reserve© comes around to stuff the banks full of cash, they fail.

So, COVID-19 hits, governments around the world print cash, but nothing is physically broken. We can (sort of) pretend that the world is fine, and whistle through the graveyard and hope that we can squeak out another year of wild naked greased PEZ® parties, elephant rides, and pantyhose for everyone.

Then, Ukraine. As I’ve said before, with a sane president capable of making good decisions, this would have been solved with a few phone calls, some Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and maybe a few coupons for 50%-off shrimp at Red Lobster™. Nope. Biden escalated all of it.

And, again, maybe (probably not, but maybe) in a world with an economy that had underlying actual strength, Biden could have pushed it just like he did and not cratered the entire economy of the West.

But he did. And now the consequences cannot be avoided. Interest rates are shooting up.

How high?

Oh, surely we aren’t in a real estate bubble.

Oops. But at least the international community isn’t panicking.

Oh, they are? Well, at least Biden hasn’t sold off our energy reserves in a naked bid to influence the 2022 election.

Oh, he did? Well, at least Biden has a good understanding of how energy markets work, and how supply and demand sets prices.

Oh. Well, I guess that’s really scary. Thankfully, no one is messing around with the fundamentals of reality.

Huh. I guess my dog just quit.

Well, at least The Mrs. and I had a serious talk about the bedroom.

All foolishness aside, if Europe has an energy drought that lasts three years or more (one of the latest estimates I’ve seen) the results will be as devastating as a war. Economies need jobs to produce wealth so people can have wild naked greased PEZ® parties, elephant rides, and pantyhose for everyone.

And, despite the magical thinking of some people on the Left, free anything (not just healthcare) isn’t free. Someone, somewhere, has to work for it to pay for it, otherwise it’s slavery. Which, I think, is fine for Leftists, because they never imagine themselves the slaves.

But I have faith, faith that the Swiss will save us.

The Swiss have a long and proud history. This history goes back to at least 1307, or so the legend goes, to William Tell (the guy who shot the apple resting on his kid’s head). In fact, William Tell and his son were in a bowling league, but the records of what team they were on are now lost to us. We will never know for whom the Tells bowled.

Flirtin’ With Disaster, And By Disaster, I Mean Nuclear War

“A four-alarm fire in Downtown Moscow clears way for a glorious new tractor factory, And, on the lighter side of the news, Hundreds of Capitalists are Soon to Perish in Shuttle Disaster.” – Airplane II: The Sequel

Hillary tried to sell her soul to the devil to be elected president, but the devil declined, “Can’t do it, you don’t have any collateral.”

The big story in the news is the hurricane about to hit Florida. If it were about to hit Detroit or Baltimore, it might add a few billion in value to those cities, but alas, it looks like it might create damage beyond anything ever seen by man – it might muss Tom Brady’s hair. It also reminded me that I’m hungry, since I accidentally typed “burricane” twice before I got it right – my mind must be on burritos. Or maybe it’s prophecy – that a hurricane-sized burrito will hit Tampa?

That’s (the hurricane, not the burrito) the story in the news, however, I think the much bigger story is buried. Or it was buried.

Russia makes most of its money by shipping natural gas, oil, fertilizer, and wheat out to the world. It imports tracksuits, cell phones, and gold chains. As I’ve covered before, what Russia imports is silly, but what it exports is crucial. The cheapest way, by far, to export oil is in the hair of a Russian or Italian. But they don’t do so well at moving natural gas, so people build big holes called pipelines.

Really, that’s all a pipeline is. It’s a hole. As tempting as it is, I’m not going to make a Kamala Harris joke. And you can bury it like they do most places, you can put it on stilts like they did in Alaska, or you can even have it under the sea.

I hear that part of the ocean is haunted, so Germany might be getting super-natural gas.

As the Europeans have come under more political pressure to stop adding CO₂ to the atmosphere, they’ve moved away from coal. They’d like to move to entirely renewable energy sources, but last I heard those only exist in sufficient supply to power a technological civilization in the dreams that Greta Thunberg had in the womb as her mother engaged in one too many vodkas while riding rollercoasters on sleeping pills.

No, in 2022 Europe is powered by fossil fuels. Sure, there are some renewables, and the French built a lot of nuclear power plants. But the desire for power has increased exponentially to keep up with civilizational growth. Concentrated energy is also a multiplier, it allows a person or a company or a nation to do far more. With natural gas, a German factory can build all the Volkswagens® and bratwurst and lederhosen that the world needs. Without it? The production is (if they’re lucky) one percent of the powered production.

Time zones are confusing. It’s September 28 in Europe, September 29 in Australia, and 1953 in Moscow.

Russia was the biggest single supplier of natural gas to Europe, providing 45% of the needs. Nord Stream© was one such pipeline, and it took the route of going on the seabed from Russia to Germany. Why? One reason was that it avoided having to pay Poland, Ukraine, and other Eastern European countries that never visit this blog for “transit rights” through those countries. For example, if Russia wanted to send gas through Ukraine (natural gas, not sarin) then Russia would have to pay Ukraine for the right to do so.

They say they saw Bubbles in the water after the explosion . . .

As such, the Poles and the Ukrainians hated Nord Stream®. But, it was successful. And the Germans loved it. Besides Austrians in the 1930s, what can all Germans agree on? That they like the Nord Stream© and Nord Stream II ™ projects. It lowers the price of energy for them, and makes it less likely that they’ll be held hostage by the Poles (hint, the Poles are still a bit miffed at the Germans and the Russians). The Ukrainians hated it most of all, since it looked like those projects alone would end up costing them over $4 billion dollars a year in transit fees, and it also lowers their political power to hold Russia hostage at the expense of European countries.

And some people have paid dearly for that . . . .

That brings us close to today. The United States has always opposed any of the Nord Stream projects. Why? First, if Europe is divided, the United States has one less group to be concerned with on the world stage. Almost as bad as a united Europe is Germany and Russia on good terms. Combine Germany’s economic powerhouse with Russia’s raw materials? That’s a threat that gives the State Department bad dreams.

Wasn’t she in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest?

This probably explains 90% of what went on in Ukraine, and the other 10% involves Hunter. Could Biden have de-escalated the conflict? With one phone call, yes. But it’s going now, and there reaches a point where even I’m concerned – and that’s the crippling (it can be fixed, but how bad is the damage?) of Nord Stream™ I and Nord Stream® II.

My dad can fix it. He’s got the ultimate set of repair tools.

Why would the United States do that? Well, the biggest reason (that I can think of) is that it makes it so that Germany can’t back out of the sanctions when winter gets cold and prices start to be amazingly high and there just happens to be this nice, big straw filled with natural gas that they could suck on all day to be warm.

Note: this is supposed to be a satire account.

How do we know that people knew this was going to happen? Well, there are reports the CIA told Germany an attack was imminent. And there’s this little matter of the British pound collapsing right before the incident. And, there’s the little matter that an explosive was found next to the original Nord Stream© not too long after Russia took Crimea back in 2014. The detonation wire was cut, so whoever was getting ready to blow up the pipe had changed their mind (cough) Obama (cough). The fact that this happened even before we know the results of the Russian referendum?

Do you think the Ukrainians would meet this result with Jeb!ulation?

Do I think that Germans will freeze to death? Probably not many. They may clear-cut forests, they may shut down industry for February and March, and they might make it against the law to heat your house in any way other than having a chubby girl in corduroy pants rub her thighs together as a space heater. On an economic scale, Frequent Commenter Ricky noted, it might devastate Germany’s economy even more than 9/11 did ours.

But now they can’t pick up the phone and call Putin and say, “We miss heat. Er, you. Please turn it back on. Here are rubles.” That option is gone, and that’s why I’m certain that it wasn’t the Russians who did this: why destroy your best bargaining chip? And, no, it’s not shoddy Russian construction – the companies that made the pipe and built the line are the best in the world, not Yuri’s Pipeline By Mail Company.

Even the Polish know the score . . .

And I thought it was Joe Biden, not For Bidden.

So the United States did it. Biden even told us that he was going to do it. I’m not sure he remembers he did it, but he did. It’s even on video, and he looks rather lucid (for Biden) during the speech.

The thing that scares me is this: if I were Russia, I’d take this as a rules expansion pack: undersea pipelines are now fair game. And the ones that feed Europe from Norway are mighty vulnerable. This, more than anything, just ups the level of tension and ensures that what started as a property dispute keeps escalating. And escalating. And escalating.

In Minecraft, of course.

And one thing I learned from Tom Clancy movies?

Hmm. Good advice. I’ll even add this bit:

Frequent Commenter Ricky also noted that I get to be the first person to make fun of the next stage in escalation toward a nuclear war. So, I’ve got that going for me.

Yes, Your Leftist Friends Are Mentally Ill. You’re Not. Share This Post With Them To Trigger Them.

“Snap out of it! You’re Krusty the Clown! One of Look Magazine’s Hundred Most Promising Clowns of 1958!” – The Simpsons

I told Pugsley that Aristotle taught us that, “We are what we repeatedly do.” So I told him I was his mother.

A Dutch dude named Erasmus of Rotterdam (who died in 1536) made a famous quote that I’m sure you’re all familiar with, namely, “In regione caecorum rex est luscus.” Presumably, Erasmus said this before he died. I was going to follow this up with a joke about the Dutch, but then I looked at my site statistics, and found that the Netherlands is number 5 on the countries that come to visit here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise.

So, my conclusion is this: people of the Netherlands are amazing people who have impeccable taste in fine writing and I’d be glad to give them all a free bikini wax, but I’m pretty sure that they’re so tall, blonde, disciplined and perfectly proportioned that they’ve trained their bodies to not grow hair where they don’t want it. Go Netherlands!

I’m pretty sure they have flying cars in the Netherlands now.

Anyway, what Erasmus was saying was originally in Latin, but Latin isn’t a dead language – it’s still Roman around. My initial translation was, “Near the gas station in the skanky part of town, never pick up women after 3am.” These are wise words, but what Erasmus really meant was, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

That’s one of those phrases that sounds really cool. In fact, I imagined being able to see in a country full of blind people. I mean, the only actor that would be able to play Batman would be Christian Braille. And, using my crazy superpower of sight, I’d be able to break into their houses at night and steal all of their PEZ®.

But that’s not the way it would work.

I would probably try to explain to them that I could see – a sense that they didn’t have at all. The concept of photons and colors and would sound crazy to them. In fact, they’d probably think I was crazy and come at night while I was sleeping and give me blanket parties or worse until I shut up or left.

In the modern world, it’s similar, but it’s what’s commonly referred to as “Clown World” where everything is inverted. Things that are beautiful are corrupted, and people are expected to applaud the bravery inherent in people reveling in the corruption. I’ll let Stonetoss lead the introduction of the topic at hand.

If you’re not familiar with what Stonetoss is writing about, there is a “teacher” in Canada who decided, apparently, to wear comically large and obscene fake breasts to shop class. How do we know they’re obscene? YouTube® banned them.

But, yet, these Z-cups are allowed because a “teacher” showed up to work wearing them, and the school board is apparently afraid to confront the dude. When a parent tried to bring the subject up, the local school board shut down the meeting rather than confront the amazing amounts of silicone (or foam rubber??) being paraded in their classrooms. In fact, they say it’s illegal to criticize the “teacher”.

In my assessment of the situation, there are two possibilities. The first is that the “teacher” is so mentally insane that allowing him to dress like this is similar to allowing him to claim that he’s made of string cheese and now has a mouse phobia. That’s the first possibility.

The second is that the “teacher” is gaming the system and seeing how far he can push things so he can get mental disability payments and not have to show up to work, or not be graded based on his job performance. I actually consider this more likely, but, hey, it’s 2022 so he just might be bonkers.

This was actually the plot to a South Park® episode where a teacher became more aggressively, explicitly gay in front of his students in an attempt (I recall) to get fired. Instead, the people celebrated his inappropriate behavior because of his bravery. So, yeah. Blame Canada. I’m sure that this is what the Canadian troops were thinking about when they hit the beach at D-Day, the freedom for shop teachers to don Z-cup fake breasts.

Women are, oddly, not at all good with this. Not all women, of course. I use The Mrs. as a sounding board for this sort of insanity, and she (more or less) notes that it’s offensive for (at least some) actual women to see men parading around pretending to be women. But Canada says it’s okay. And companies will ban you for “hate” if you dare to not say that this is completely normal.

In 2022, it’s now accepted that teachers indoctrinated in Leftist institutions should be allowed free access to your children. And there’s nothing bad that can come of that. Because teachers have shown themselves to be so stable.

The problem really does start with Leftism. I know I drone on and on about this, but it’s true. Leftism is a mental illness rooted in victimhood. How can I prove this? THEY TELL US THIS WHENEVER THEY CAN. It’s worse than being stuck in a room filled with vegans who do Crossfit®.

I sometimes think it’s a competition on how many mental illnesses that they can have, like they all want to be the Georgy Zhukov of mental illness and be the (she/they/them/it) with the most medals.

Part of the idea is that Leftists are incapable of harboring thoughts that are counter to their programming. Scott Adams found this out and after this cartoon strip, he was canceled from 77 newspapers.

Here are a few examples of why.

Yup. Martha’s Vineyard. Importing millions of people across the border is amazing, right? Well, no. Not when they show up in near the beach bungalows of the rich and famous. Obama lives on Martha’s Vineyard, and his house alone could have housed every illegal alien that was transported there. But, no.

They booted all the illegals in 44 hours. Who needs a wall when you invade the territories of Leftist lawyers?

But the damage of Leftism is real. It destroys families. And it stops families from even being made.

But it leaves some really important questions to be asked.

And it makes you wonder what Biden is really after, when it turns out that “Right Wing Extremism” is actually less deadly than riding lawnmowers. Really.

Seriously, though, this isn’t the battle the Left should push, because when real Right Wing Extremism hits? Continents burn.

I guess that works for me. I’ll continue to be a Right Wing Extremist.

And if they want Clown World, that’s fine. They can soak in it.

Me? I think this next picture works better than anything they can come up with.

Erasmus would certainly agree with me. And? Go Netherlands! You guys rock!!!! (Yes, I know Ariel is Danish, but you Danes have got to get your pageviews up.)

Three Best Stocks To Own After A Nuclear Attack

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

Biden wanted to emulate North Korea’s experience for COVID – Biden liked the way Kim implemented a lockdown.

I was on hold with Tech Support working on site issues (again) when I came up with the post name. I couldn’t resist, because that’s exactly the sort of headline that I see when I flip through financial pages. Oh, sure, I could have just as easily gone with “How A Zombie Holocaust Can Help Your Portfolio”, but the nuclear attack seems a wee bit more timely.

As I’ve written before, a big part of wealth isn’t just cash. It isn’t money. Queen Elizabeth II may have had a much fancier funeral than I will, but just like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, she’s still very dead even though there are rocks worth hundreds of millions of dollars on top of her coffin. Money could buy her a lot of stuff and allow her to avoid Markle, but it couldn’t buy her one more minute on the planet than she had.

So, wealth means more than just money. And as the world seems to be shifting ever so fast under our feet, what are the true components of wealth?

I did hear about one king that was exactly 12” tall. He was a horrible king, but a good ruler.

First on my list would be having a horde of skilled fanatical barbarian soldiers that do my every bidding. That’s pretty cool. Sadly, I can’t find a wizard who’s willing to narrate things like the following every morning when I get out of bed and get ready to go to work:

“Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan John Wilder, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia Modern Mayberry upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!”

That would be nice. I guess second on my list would be a wizard-bard to narrate my life, throwing in things like, “And despite having had one too many glasses of wine the night before, John Wilder bravely got up as his alarm went off, brushed his teeth, stared into his mirror, and began the noble process of finding socks to wear today.”

An illiterate wizard is useless. He can’t spell.

What would be third on my list? I mean, I’ve already got a fanatical army and a wizard-bard. Some people work a whole lifetime and don’t get either of those. At one point, I would have said “Immortal Life” but then I realized that if I lived too long, that would probably void the factory warranty. So, that’s out, unless those random calls I get on my cell phone about getting an extended warranty aren’t a scam.

But I still need to have a number three on my list. I’d say food for my fanatical barbarian army, but I think they’d be fine feeding themselves – that’s the advantage of having a barbarian horde – they make their own sauce. I guess I’ll have to live with surgically altered doubles that look and sound exactly like me. Why? If I have a fanatical barbarian army, why wouldn’t they send James Bond® after me?

I always invite Bond over to my BBQ. He’s got a license to grill.

For my fourth item, I suppose the boring thing would be to look for would be a lair hidden deep underneath a volcano suitable for launching my spaceships. The big problem is demand. First, I think Elon Musk has the market cornered. Second, if James Bond© saw what Great Britain looked like in 2022, he’d probably join up with Blofeld™ because he and Blofeld© probably share more actual British values than Britain does.

I’ll be serious – I wouldn’t turn any of those things down except the doubles. As irritating as I am, I can’t imagine what it would be like to live with multiple iterations of myself. And I can’t even imagine the number of socks that would be in the living room.

But what is real wealth outside of money?

I’m going to start with family. The Mrs., for whatever reason, is on board with my nonsense. And, as I wrote recently, we are building the people that will take us into the future. They are our children. We build them for the future, so that they can build the future. Of wealth, there is absolutely none more precious. Except the fanatical barbarian horde.

Yet, more battles are won by infantry than by adultery.

Second on the list is health. I can only buy this a little. The rest I either have due to genetics (on one side of my family, I have heard that the only thing that can kill us is gravity), or hard work. I need to spend a bit more time on the hard work. And that’s an easy way to invest in myself that has amazing dividends.

Third on the list is skills. Skills are yet another way of investing in myself. What kind of skills? The basic ones are the best – and there is depth required in some of them. If I garden, it’s not just planting a seed and then walking off to come back later and eat. Nope. There are millions of ways to kill a plant, and I know most of them. Many skills come from simply knowing how to not screw it up. So, picking the right ones is one way to get to the future.

I debated putting reputation up higher, bud decided that I’d leave it here. In the world, leadership is a way to multiply yourself. And that leadership is a function of reputation. Known as a liar and a cheat? No man will follow me or trust me. Known to be a man of my word? I can have influence far above my level of skills or health. When General Patton took over the II Corps in North Africa, he had a few weeks to turn them into a fighting force. That he was able to do so was built on skills, sure, but more than that on his reputation for having an amazing force of will.

The last thing on my list for today is a variation on the first real thing. Just as my children take me into the future, the inheritance that I got from Pa and Ma Wilder allows me to know what to send into that future. It is the inheritance of values that I speak of here.

I heard she never carried cash – who wants to carry around pictures of their ex-mother-in-law?

So, on this day, I’m certain of one thing: I’m wealthier than Queen Elizabeth. And in better shape, too. I wouldn’t trade her family for mine. I’m certain I could beat her at Uno®, so I have skills covered. Reputation, though is difficult. I mean she couldn’t hit 100 before she died, though I think she made sure Diana did.

What’s The Meaning Of Life? It’s Right Here.

“Well, that’s the end of the film. Now, here’s the meaning of life.” – The Meaning of Life

The dinosaur with the cleanest teeth is, of course, the flossiraptor.

What are we here for? It’s a big question, and one we have to ask now. Sadly, I think the answer for many people would be, “inexpensive Chinese-made throw pillows, new Marvel® movies, and the next iPhone®.”

For most of my life, it was a clear question that didn’t involve any of those things, except maybe affordable throw pillows, because they wear out so very quickly. At some point though, I figured it out. What was it? The meaning of life, or at least the abridged version. The existence of my generation, of any generation, was for two reasons:

First, to create the next generation. It’s the toughest and most fun work in the world. A family, working together, would do the best job possible at creating the best children possible.

Why do we need those children? Why do they need to be better?

The “why” is the essence of the second reason. There are more challenges, literally an infinite set of challenges, that are before us. There are more horizons for us to conquer – we may have been to the Moon, but we don’t live there. We have sent robots to Mars, but we haven’t visited. Humanity has a job, and it has always been clear to me that our job was not yet done, at least not until we have developed a reliable way to make the PEZ®/Anti-PEZ™ drive (LINK).

I was at a performance of Hamlet when there was an earthquake. It was a Shakesperience!

Both of those answers rely on optimism. I think that optimism is justly earned. Even though humans have created unimaginable horrors, they have created, time and time again, amazing wonders. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet noted:

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!

What I see today, however, isn’t the wonder of man, it’s the crisis we face with apprehension. It consists of multiple fronts.

Energy: Even though we are up against physical limits on the energy systems that we use, the idiocy of the Green Energy™ movement feels more like a mutual suicide pact. The use of energy, primarily since the Industrial Revolution has created the greatest amount of prosperity and well-being the world has ever seen. It is an absolute certainty that if the Leftists have their way, the amount of misery around the world will make World War II seem like a carnival ride. I mean, not a good carnival ride, but at least it would have Patton.

How did Patton celebrate November? He gave tanks.

Family: One of the primary reasons for civilization in the first place is that it creates the basis for making itself better, and that basis is the family. Children are not easy to raise. Any single parent working by themselves would have been my victim. It took both Pa Wilder and Ma Wilder (along with my brother, John Wilder) to make me a better person than Feral John Wilder would have become. Family is important, and you can’t make good and strong children without one.

Morality: Morality is crucial. We have moved away from the moral basics that have created Western Civilization, and inverted them. We used to celebrate the beautiful, and now celebrate the ugly. And Pride Festivals®? Pride was a sin. And it still is. Unless it involves lions.

Who are the enemies?

The Globalist Left: This is a big bunch, but they come in two flavors.

The Globalist Left – The Antifa Gang: These are people, who, generally despise themselves. They revel in ugliness, because they feel that they’re ugly inside. They look at society and hate it. They want to watch it all burn. They hate themselves, and want to make the world outside as horrifying as the world they old inside themselves. This probably describes everyone that works at CNN®.

I had dinner with a journalist, but he pulled the labels off his ketchup and mustard. He liked to keep his sauces anonymous.

The Globalist Left – The Elite: They always seem to exist. They were there at the fall of Rome, they were there when the Library of Alexandria was sacked, when Russia became a killing ground, and when China killed uncountable millions. They appear to be the parasites that are jealous of real achievement and seek to game society so that they can come to power. They also appear to gravitate to power for the sake of power, and delight in the destruction of anything as long as it brings them wealth and comfort, even if it kills the host society.

Technology: I could go on all day, but there are two that jump out – they are the two most destabilizing technologies that exist today. Technology is difficult, because now it moves so quickly, but humans don’t adapt to it very quickly at all. I mean, VCRs existed and no one ever figured out how to stop the blinking 12:00.

Technology Itself – The Pill: To a certain extent, one of the big foes of humanity right now is our state of technological advancement itself. Multiple technological advances have created stresses that have never been seen before in human history. The first of these, The Pill, was a disaster. Some of the oldest rules to make society stable were about marriage and reproduction. Why? The stability of the family structure was ripped apart by The Pill, and the divorces started not long afterward.

The most effective method of birth control I ever used was my personality.

Technology Itself – Social Media: When the printing press was originally invented, it opened a world where the knowledge of the entire history of mankind could be shared. When the Internet developed, all of that knowledge could be shared freely. Instead, the Internet has become a dopamine factory that is one of the most insidious narcissism trap in the history of humanity. What could have united us has, instead, created zombies of people who sit in restaurants staring at their phones rather than talking to each other and having authentic conversations. This has created a world with artificial closeness between people who have no connection, and artificial barriers between those who should be close.

Obviously, I could keep going. The enemies of that which is Right, True, and Good are legion. The methods they use are diverse.

I bet he gets tired in prison explaining he made more than one bomb.

If I were writing a screenplay, I’d be wondering how I write myself out of this predicament. Thankfully, the answer is that I don’t have to. Western Civilization has defeated enemies just like these for thousands of years. We have been at the breaking point again and again.

It is true, we won’t be the same after this crisis. There’s no guarantee that the crisis won’t last for decades. And I promise it really will be the most difficult thing that any of us live through. I mean, those of us that make it.

So, what are we here for? We’re here to carry the torch forward. To have wonderful children that exceed us in our capacity, because there are tough horizons, and more work to be done. We are building the people that will take us into the future. They are our children. We build them for the future, so that they can build the future, despite the obstacles and enemies of humanity.

And we’ll win.

We always have.

Energy: We Need Everything. Now.

“No, Jonny. It consumes them. It eats energy: sunlight, electricity, the energy in a living body. Anything it can get.” – Jonny Quest

What do you do with a dead chemist? Barium.

I remember way back in high school gym class when I was a freshman. One day we showed up in the gym and saw a roughly six-foot diameter ball in the middle of the gym floor, as if a majestic bird the size of Alec Baldwin had left an egg for us.

That was new.

Coach said, “Welcome to Push Ball. Wilder and Jones, you two are captains. Pick your teams.” Jones and I were on the football team together, so we divvied up the rest of the boys. I think the girls were doing something like advanced couch-sitting that day.

Coach followed up: “Here are the rules. No rules. If your team pushes the ball into the opposing team’s bleacher, you get a point.” Technically, that was a rule, but I decided not to argue.

Pretty quickly I divined that part of the point of Push Ball was to burn up a lot of energy on a game that was very hard to win. Probably “something, something teamwork blah blah blah”.

But then I looked at the ball. It was filled with air, not Baldwin-DNA-soaked egg yolk, so it wasn’t all that heavy. But it was way too big for any one person to grab.

It wasn’t entirely smooth, though. There were laces.

These laces were like those on a football, except the gap between the laces was big – big enough to slip my fingers through. I developed a plan. I told my guys, “It’s gonna get easy – we’re gonna win. When I say go, get in front of me and block.”

Alternate meme text: “When the weather tells you to dress for the 100’s.”

As we played, I concentrated on rotating the laces towards me. When they were right there about shoulder height, I slipped my fingers in the gaps between the laces, and got a good hold.

“Now!” I yelled.

With the leverage of the handhold, I could easily use the opposing team’s force to pop the ball back towards me, and up. And with the ball gone, my guys got in front and blocked. I ran, holding the absurdly large ball over my head with one hand and slammed it into the retracted bleachers causing the wood to reverberate under the mighty force, scoring the first point.

“THIS. IS. SPARTA!” I yelled. Okay, no I didn’t, it sounds way cooler to pretend that I did. And I sure as hell felt like Thor (not the fake Marvel® one) slamming his hammer and making the lightning crash. Our team really did high five.

Coach blew his whistle.

“Okay, we now have a rule. You can’t do that.”

We had a really good weightlifting facility.

Weirdly, this post is the second one about energy. In one sense, our world is like that game of push ball. We work to innovate and create breakthroughs to better use the energy we have. The number of cars are up in the country, but the miles per gallon are way up, too.

Government would love to take credit for it, but it’s really not the case. Sure the CAFE standards have led to higher mileage, but a lot of that is due to innovation that occurred outside of those standards. When I read that the Trans Am® in Smokey and the Bandit only produced 200 horsepower, I realized that most of the cars I own have more power under the hood, and get better mileage. I always wanted a car with a T-top like the Trans Am™ in high school, so my dates could have had more legroom.

I was considerate that way.

We have become more efficient at using energy, and that’s great. But we find more uses for energy, too. If I lived in the same house today in 1977, right now there would be zero power usage outside of the fridge and the freezer. As it is, I’m watching a silly movie on a huge television while I type on a laptop with alarm clocks that don’t tick from springs winding down. I’m happy for that, because if the alarm clock would go tic-tic-tic all night, it would keep The Mrs. awake and she’d want to toc.

Is my house using a lot of energy? No, but there are a lot more devices in a home today using energy passively, like charging cell phones and security systems and “always on” televisions and computers and garage door openers on low power mode.

I drove up to my garage and saw someone had painted a “3” on it. I thought, “That’s odd.”

Even industry is more efficient, generally, at using energy. Modern manufacturing plants are expert at using what would have been waste heat in all sorts of ways to save energy, which in turn saves money. I mean, don’t be an engineer if you’re not so hot in thermodynamics.

But at the base of all modern industry, energy is crucial. It is the ultimate leverage. One analyst noted that $20 billion in Russian natural gas was used by Germany to create $2 trillion in economic output. That’s stuff made. It’s amazing leverage – $1 in natural gas was the basis for creating $100 worth of added value. Germany would like to start a war, but the rule is that it’s three Reichs, and you’re out.

Energy is that important. And energy usage isn’t a linear progression – it has been exponential. The problem is that energy usage is growing nearly exponentially. If you look at any short-term graphs, it doesn’t quite show it, but here’s one that puts it in perspective. I got it at Our World in Data (LINK) and it’s reused by CC (LINK).

If Ebola grew as fast as the world energy consumption, it would be called Hyperbola.

I think this one graph alone should be tattooed backward on the head of every Leftist who says BuT MUh ALtERnaTivE EneRgy. Eliminate oil, coal, and natural gas, and you have a world that, roughly, has as much energy as 1920.

The world population right now is 7.97 billion people. In 1920, the population was closer to 1.9 billion, which is roughly the number of people on a typical airplane nowadays. In 1920 electricity was only in 35% of homes. In the United States. Most people in the world in 1920 had no electrical power usage at all, heated their homes with firewood or coal, and only saw electrical lights at the picture show. Also, they were, sadly, almost sixty years too early to see Smokey and the Bandit.

Let’s go back to Germany (not the 1920 version) but today. Just $20 billion in natural gas costs $2 trillion in value added. Population is growing exponentially. Energy use is growing exponentially. We’re setting ridiculous ideas that we’ll be all-electric by 2030 by changing rules to limit innovation and declare winners. It’s like Coach not allowing innovation in Push Ball, but this time with real-world consequences.

But those electric cars. They’re powered by . . . what, exactly? Seriously, look at the chart. What? Nuclear we haven’t built? Solar which is so small it can’t be seen? Hydropower which is in decline because it can’t be built? Wind? I can’t see wind outside, and I also can barely see it on the chart.

Looks like the Green Energy Plan is free of charge.

Anyone, and I mean anyone who is not realizing that the Leftist energy pipe dream won’t lead to the greatest suffering that mankind has ever seen, even more than anything Global Warming® could ever cause, even more than both of the World Wars, combined, is deluded.

We need more innovation in energy, and we need it now, because the exponentials in energy use and population require investment to keep ahead of the game. Exponentials are funny that way, you have to be like Alice’s Red Queen and run faster and faster just to stay in place.

The Leftists that want to bring it all down? They deserve to be put into a Push Ball filled with Alec Baldwin’s DNA-soaked yolk.

Student Loans, Death, And Taxes

“I’ve got Doctor Euthanasia’s home number for that eventuality.” – Absolutely Fabulous

They should thank their student loans – I don’t think they could ever repay them.

I had another theme picked for today, but that’s okay – it can wait for a few posts. It’ll keep. But when I heard that Joe Biden was planning on relieving up to $10,000 in student debt for all borrowers that make less than $125,000, I was astonished.

The late genius P.J. O’Rourke described exactly this situation:

“I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle-aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men strictly accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well-being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on virtually everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country club.

“Santa Claus is another matter. He’s cute. He’s nonthreatening. He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without thought of a quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he’s famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.”

First, $10,000 doesn’t sound like all that much, right? Further, that would wipe out entirely all the debt from about a third of the borrowers. So, I pulled out my calculator. A third of 45,000,000 is 15,000,000 people, who presumably vote. Assuming that their average debt . . .

That’s $90 billion. Ugh! Some people work a whole year and don’t make that much money. I checked the numbers again, and was, like, um, that’s right. So what about the other two-thirds?

I assumed that some of them made more than $125,000 a year – Biden’s cut-off for his “gift”. I decided to play it conservatively – assume that only 25,000,000 people would get the full $10,000 airdropped into their lives. That’s another $250 billion.

Altogether, that’s $340 billion. $340,000,000,000.

This is an astonishing sum for someone to just give away as free money. And forget the moral hazard associated with doing this – paying debts is honorable, especially when everyone else is required to. You’re not a loan.

I guess someone didn’t get the Barbie® they were looking for from Santa Biden.

But since (spins wheel) at least Bush II (and you could argue Nixon was on the bandwagon, too), the competition by presidents of either party has been to shovel the most money out the door to people as fast as they could in year two of their presidency to juice the economy so all the cylinders would be pumping when their next election hit. And since they only have two terms, who cares what happens then?

People vote in favor of good economies, so a good economy going into the 2024 election will help get votes.

Originally, that $340,000,000,000 bought a lot of nonfat vanilla lattes on the way to Introduction to Feminist Non-Binary Ancient Indigenous Australian Literature 201 at good old We Have A Climbing Wall University. I’m betting that $340,000,000,000 will buy a lot of votes from the graduate-level baristas that took that class.

What will be the result of all of that extra cash floating around the economy?

It does look like it will be tax free . . . but I’m betting lots of those folks wouldn’t cheat on their taxes, I mean, what kind of example would that be for their 23 dependents?

It’s hard to tell. Normally, I’d say almost certain inflation. I think that even Biden is dimly aware that all of the previous inflation has destroyed the housing market – sales are down over 20% from last year. That destroys a lot of value. And if the market drops?

The bigger question is this: giving a single politician the unilateral authority to make multibillion-dollar decisions on a whim is madness. It turns the executive into a king, handing out largess to whoever he feels like. I mean, if Biden remembers.

But what other powers does a king have?

The power of death. And that’s in play up in Canada.

3.3% of deaths? Those are rookie numbers, Canada!

They are rookie numbers, and Canada is doing its best to pump them up. Remember, coffee is only for closers. And Canada wants to be a closer. Read a headline the other day – a Canadian veteran has PTSD. Doctor’s suggestion?

In Canada, if you’re feeling suicidal, apparently the authorities want you to get help. As in someone to help you kill yourself.

Yup, Canada suggested he run away to go live on a farm where he can run and play, like all those goldfish I had as a kid. Except in this case, if you go to a doctor because you have a cold, they’ll suggest, without you asking, if you want to have a dirt nap instead. Okay, not a cold. But PTSD.

I can’t imagine why they’re suggesting that. Perhaps it’s because it’s cheaper to bury someone than to give them “free” healthcare?

Suicide? That’s the last thing I’d ever do.

Oddly, it turns out that when people have goals, values, and the prospect of a decent life ahead of them, euthanasia is an idea that doesn’t sound so good.

Except to them. And if it’s you dying.

Huh, somehow they no longer sound like Santa. Because? He isn’t real. If you want to know how they really feel, re-read the Tweet® above.

The Best Post You’ll Read Today About Almost Anything

“You don’t know what cold is. I once survived an entire week trapped in a Swiss glacier eating nothing but frozen Neanderthal. To this day, I can’t stand the taste of early hominid.” – Futurama

So, after 232 ties in a row . . . Gung decided that “rock beats skull”.

Usually, I write about money and finance and the shenanigans going on in the world now. I thought I’d deviate from that formula for several reasons. First, I’d like to have some good news about the financial world, and that didn’t happen this week, unless Biden had a brief moment of lucidity and finally figured out that the sanctions are actually hurting us more than Russia. (Checks news.) Nope.

Second, on Monday I wrote about collective vengeance. It was, in modern Western Civilization, an anachronism that is rapidly returning. The post talked about how I had grown up in shell where collective punishment simply didn’t exist and that it was rapidly returning.

I’ll note that my youthful innocence on collective punishment didn’t extend forever, but the point of the post was that the Left fed on collective punishment – I might write more about that in the future, since (last time I checked) I still seem to have an infinite amount of words combinations left.

I am, however, very aware that collective punishment was at one time the norm. Reading in the Bible, when the wall of Jericho came down, not a single person was supposed to be left alive, so historically in a story we all know, collective punishment was a thing.

Why don’t the Amish complain when people make fun of them on the Internet? Amish: “What’s an Internet?”

I’ve written about things even farther back in history, and (perhaps) why people are the way they are based on tribe sizes in a theory that I think is entirely unique (read this because it’s awesome) until someone shows me that it was already written about the year I was born. I’m still irritated that Newton figured out F=ma when I was only six. Conversely, wouldn’t it be a hoot if an Internet humorist actually figured out why people are nuts?

Third, this post is really related to Monday’s post, and it shows this: collective punishment may be actively written into our DNA, and only during brief moments of history (as brought about by Western Civilization and its particular individualist elements) is it not the norm.

I’ll start this rather unusual post with a concept that many a familiar with: the Uncanny Valley.

The Uncanny Valley is that weird place that we get when something looks human, but isn’t. An example would be CGI that looks like a human, but there’s something in the CGI that makes us step back because we process the simple equation: it looks a lot like a human, but it’s not human.

Well, it’s nice that the spirit of Yoko lives on. Except this one takes out a monarchy that started in 1066.

Zombies are a perfect example. For me, that idea that something that is so close to human is propelled by an intelligence that is certainly not human is one of the scariest ideas.

Why? Why do things that inhabit the Uncanny Valley between human and observably not-human give us the creeps? The Uncanny Valley implies that at some point in human history, there was something that looked like us, and wasn’t us. It must have been a very, very big deal if tens of thousands of years later it still can inhabit our collective memory and produce a (general) revulsion and fear.

What was it that did that?

I’m sure they had a very complicated order at Starbucks®.

I’m thinking that maybe, just maybe, it was the Neanderthals. This was spurred on by the book Them+Us by Danny Vendramini. He’s got a website here (LINK) and the image of the Neanderthal below is from his site, which he allows based on terms that seem to have disappeared, so, I’m thinking Fair Use covers it all.

I like the book. Spoiler, Them is the Neanderthal, and Us is, well, our ancestors.

He starts the book by attempting to reconstruct what a Neanderthal really looked like. For most of my life, what I’ve seen were the pictures of people who, with just a wee bit of barbering, you could toss into a suit and they’d be at home at the floor of the New York Stock Exchange®.

Vendramini thinks not. First, he thought that they might have been covered with hair. What’s his evidence? The first part of his evidence is that there is no evidence that they could make clothing of anything more than the most basic “throw an animal skin over your shoulders” type. So, how do you keep warm?

Hair. Hair is the norm for mammals in the world, except for people (sorry, Italians). So Danny (sorry, Vendramini is too many letters to type again and again) came to the logical conclusion that, like other primates, Neanderthals inhabiting Europe and the Near East would be quite hairy.

Pretty much no one argues that Neanderthal was about six times as strong as modern man, or even of the beta version of homo sapiens that existed at that time, so about a 431 times stronger than a typical soy-latte-based ambisexual® Leftist.

But Neanderthal wasn’t just strong, he was smart. Neanderthals made things, like spears. Like stone blades. Like stone axes. Hmm, I’m seeing a pattern here. I don’t see any mochachinos.

Based on the size of their eyes, Danny thinks they were huge. What needs huge eyes? Things that hunt in low light. So, Vendramini thinks that Neanderthals might have been low-light, nocturnal predators. What else would low-light nocturnal predators have? An amazing sense of smell, so there’s no reason to have a nose like ours – a nose like a pug.

And eyes? The most efficient eyes for low-light hunting are slit-pupil eyes – like a cat. The brow ridge? It shielded the eyes during the day – and the eyes were much higher than a normal human, like where our forehead is. So, huge eyes in the forehead with slit pupils. Not scary, right?

Okay, I’ve finally found something scarier than my ex-wife.

Oh, every bit of evidence says that Neanderthal ate meat, so he was a carnivore. But he also ate . . . Neanderthals. So, he was a cannibal. Eating puny humans? That’s pretty easy if you’ve eaten Neanderthal. Probably more tender, too.

Neanderthal lived in the forest. Oh the forest, my dear, is lovely, dark and deep . . . . One anthropologist described Neanderthal as this: wolves with knives. So imagine that there are wolves in your neighborhood that are at least six times stronger than Arnold Schwarzenegger at his peak. And they are as smart as a human. And they have knives.

Think that might help you sleep at night?

So, our ancestors, say, 50,000 years ago were wonderfully happy, living in a world where they were the king. It was Eden-like. Garden-like. Hmm.

Anyway, one day they wander across a border and find? Neanderthals that want to eat them. Or, make babies with them. Yup, they could make babies with humans, and between 1-3% of your DNA comes from nocturnal, cannibal, predators, unless your DNA is entirely from Africa.

So, when a Neanderthal group of hunters found a human group, it was the equivalent of a college party: sex and food. I’m not sure what order makes it better.

This, of course, baked our noodles. It made it necessary for us to become smarter. Vendramini suggests that this was the stepping out of the Garden which required us to have the knowledge, skills and brainpower to fight the Neanderthal, to beat them, and to become much better.

Does one hate the stone that hones us? I think not. Note: my beard is better, but my abs need work.

It describes the Uncanny Valley in many respects. What are the myths of our monsters? Werewolves and vampires and cannibals and (Biblically) the Men of Renown (look it up). It also explains our instinctive fear of the dark, where the huge, strong, cannibal near-human that can smell you from two counties over might be hiding waiting to get frisky or to turn you into a snack.

But we fought back. The mark of a conquering civilization is the Y-chromosome, because, well, dudes give that part. As I read it, the Y-chromosome in humanity is, human. In the end, we won. But they changed us even as we eliminated them. It’s likely we did our own collective punishment and killed off all human males that looked too much like the enemy – too Neanderthal. So, yeah, collective punishment.

And this also provides an explanation for the Uncanny Valley, and why it is generally the source of the ultimate horror and fear that humanity feels. But we won.

There’s drinking, fighting, and death and drinking and fighting. I think this is an insurance company’s nightmare.

As Western Civilization fades, the barriers to collective punishment fade as well. So, sleep with one eye open, gripping your pillow tight . . .

And we’ll win again.