Valhalla – Page 9 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

How An Army Commercial Shows We’re Rapidly Falling Apart

“Chicks dig me, because I rarely wear underwear and when I do it’s usually something unusual. But now I know why I have always lost women to guys like you. I mean, it’s not just the uniform. It’s the stories that you tell.” – Stripes

I didn’t know I was a lycanthrope. I guess that makes me an unawarewolf.

The United States’ Army has a new ad campaign out. The slogan, however, is fairly familiar: “Be All That You Can Be.” This became the slogan of the Army’s recruiting campaign back when they had to convince people to join because driving a fast car like Burt Reynolds while marrying busty blondes was a much more interesting career option.

That slogan lasted from 1980 to 2001, with “Army Of One®” was replaced by Call of Duty™ online mode. The Air Force was encouraged by that slogan, and decided to use “Air Force Of Only One Plane®” since that was all they could afford if they decided to go with the F-35.

But things have not gone well for Big Green recently. I heard in the last year, they actually recruited only one soldier, and he was a decoy. I kid. They had a goal of something like 60,000, but only recruited 45,000. I’m guessing that’s because the other 15,000 decided that working at McDonald’s® was a better option.

Want me to stop telling Rolling Stones jokes? You can’t always get what you want.

And, why not? The videos showing recent Army performance have been, um, less than stellar. From the pullout of Afghanistan, to Biden forcing troops to take the Vaxx or take a hike, it’s been bad. The commercials for recruitment have likewise been horrific. If it’s not good enough for the wise Latina child joining the armed forces and then looking back on her lesbian biracial parents who gave her hormone replacement therapy at age three, well, it’s not good enough for me.

I think the Army missed some real gems in going back to that old slogan. They could have chosen some of these:

Join the Army, where the camouflage makes you invisible to your ex.
Join the Army, and let us take care of your social life . . . because you won’t have one.
The Army: Where you can kill two birds with one grenade.
The Army: If you needed a good excuse to shave your head.
Join the Army: Where you’ll find that “hurry up and wait” isn’t just a saying, it’s a way of life.
The Army: “You’ll learn to stay awake while standing up.”
Join the Army and see the world, through the scope of a rifle.
The Army: “You’ll make lifelong friends. Or enemies. Or both.
The Army, where you can put your Call of Duty™ skills to use, just without the respawn.
Join the Army, and get one free PEZ™ dispenser every year.

Why did the magician sleep at Motel 6®? Because only he could make the stains disappear.

I mean, who traditionally makes up the Army, anyway?

Actually, white dudes. In the terminology of today, people who were born male at birth and score low on the diversity index. Hell, in 2023, I’m wondering when “mail” will show up as a gender – “Oh, baby, put me in the big slot! I’m an oversized package!”

I looked up the makeup of the Army using the most recent statistics I could find. They’re kind of murky, because they don’t break out “Hispanic” by itself. I guess I can understand that. Even though I’ve been described as “so Danish that’s the picture in the dictionary” I can also claim that at least 25% of my ancestors were born in Mexico. Were they Danish?

Yeah. Still don’t understand how they dealt with the sunburn. But Pugsley can check that box on the college application.

2 is a prime number. That’s kind of odd, right?

So, the stats I could find are murky. It looks like the numbers of white people in the Army has gone down 2% in two years from 70% to 68%. And what’s one percent? About 5,000 guys. So, of their missing 15,000, you could make an argument that 10,000 of them might have been white guys that didn’t join up.

I know three kids that were friends of The Boy that were gung ho about joining the military, until November, 2020. Then?

“Nah, I think I’ll work.”

So, to recreate the idea that perhaps the Army wants white guys to join up, the reversion to the “Be All That You Can Be™” slogan was the reaction from the Army. To be clear, they’re still using food made before 1960, ammo made before 1970, so why not a slogan that was made in 1980?

Oh, Francis, where are you now?

Enter the new video. Where in the last few, the only thing not visible was a white guy, this video is chock full of white guys. At one location where the video was stored on YouTube©, the comment section was more disastrous than French naval performance at Trafalgar. I mean hundreds and hundreds of comments that, well, I’ll just post a few of them and let you draw your own conclusions. I did not cherry pick these, and did not see a single, not one, zero positive comments. Feel free to go give a look yourself – the video is here (LINK).

Yup, pretty bad. Both of my sons have received text messages from Army recruiters, heck, as late as 2016, I presented to The Boy the options of West Point and Colorado Springs for colleges. He noped out of both choices. Pugsley is not at all interested.

I am not disappointed – rather, the opposite, and became doubly so after the decision by the Biden Administration to force armed forces members to Vaxx up. Sure, the DOD rescinded the requirement this year on January 10, but that didn’t help the people who already Vaxxed up. Wonder if the VA is going to cover that?

Regardless, I would hazard a guess that confidence in the cohesion of the country is lower than at any time in my life. Perhaps the real slogan should be “Be All That You Can Binge-Watch On Netflix®”?

Bulgarian Mall Lawyers, Proteins, And . . . Life?

“I remember thinking ‘Jesus, what a terrible thing to lay on someone with a head full of acid’.” – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

If you were looking for good jokes, it’s nacho day.

Wednesday is a day that I normally cover economics, but I’m going in a different direction today. As Wilder, Wealthy and Wise has had over 300 Wednesday posts since I cranked it up in this format back in 2017, that’s 300 comments on wealth and related economic topics, something like 1,500 memes, and so tonight, I’ll only briefly talk about economics: we’re screwed. Pic related.

Okay, that looks like a mountain that Yosemite Sam® has to climb to catch a varmint.

Okay, with that over with, let’s shift gears entirely. Why? Because, why not?

Let’s talk about Life.

I’m going to start with a number. 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

I wrote it out with all the zeros because that’s a lot of zeros, and bloggers get paid by the character. I could have written it out as 1×10³⁰⁰, and it would have been the same, but not had the same emotional impact. What, exactly does 1×10³⁰⁰ represent?

Yeah, if I divide most anything by 1×10³⁰⁰ I get zero.

Let’s take a step back. RuBisCO (short for ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase-oxygenase, not Russian Biscuit Company) is probably the most common protein on Earth, making up about 30% of the protein in a plant leaf. When you eat lettuce, you’re chowing down on lots of RuBisCO. It looks like the picture below, sorta, but is much more tasty with some ranch dressing or a nice raspberry vinegarette:

When I was weightlifting I bought expired protein powder. There was no other whey.

By Ericlin1337 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67176768

This pile of spaghetti is a mass of amino acids, but it has a really important task – it rips apart sweet, sweet CO₂ so grass can eat CO₂ and can grow to be eaten by a cow and turned into a ribeye. Or so tobacco can grow and turn into a nice Macanudo™. Or so grain can grow and turn into scotch. A day without RuBisCO is a day without a decent dinner.

Planet Earth without RuBisCO is probably a barren rock.

If you stretched it out, it’s nothing more than a chain of amino acids that are the building blocks of the RuBisCO protein. RuBisCO doesn’t turn CO₂ into steak without being mashed together, just right. The protein (which is just a bunch of amino acids connected up) has to be folded up. If it doesn’t fold up perfectly, it doesn’t work.

The Japanese gang member responsible for keeping the crime boss’s beer cold is called the Yakoozie.

That’s where all the zeros come in. The proteins that turn into RuBisCO can fold up in to make that spaghetti-looking thing in quite a few ways. 1×10³⁰⁰ of them, approximately. There are more ways that single protein can fold up than there are planets in the entire observable universe. There are only 100,000,000,000 total planets (our best guess) in the Milky Way. Again, our best guess is that the ones that aren’t too hot (Mercury) or too cold (Pluto, still a planet in my book, screw you Neil DeGrasse Tyson) are about 300,000,000.

Now compare with the number of different ways just one protein required for life can fold and be useful. Keep in mind, that when proteins fold wrong, bad things happen, like they don’t work. There are even worse consequences, like having brains rot – mad cow disease is a misfolded protein that replicates in the brain and causes people (and cow) brains to turn into brain sponge. And not the good kind of brain sponge.

Now, as much as I love Bulgarian Mall Lawyers and their ability to be tenacious in personal injury suits and ability to do rudimentary divorce work, if they’re allowed to use shotguns. No, having Bulgarian Mall Lawyers attempt to fix a Bulgarian Mall Lawyer copy machine in their law office that used to be a Spencer’s™ gifts (right between the place that used to sell cheese and sticks of meat and Waldenbooks®) by poking at it with pencils is far more likely than having a protein folded correctly. But let’s see a protein convince my ex-wife to sign the papers.

How do you get two Canadian brothers off a couch in a hurry? Say, “please get off the couch.”

So, we have 1×10³⁰⁰ ways to fold a protein wrong, and 300,000,000 planets. I’ll even spot you that there have been several billion years. And billion years is a long time, almost as long as my first marriage. But 1×10³⁰⁰ is so large that it’s more likely that I put in several pallets of 2x4s, drywall, nails, paint, shingles, carpet, doors, wiring, outlets, and plumbing components into a box and shake the hell out of it and get a house I could live in than have RuBisCO form.

And RuBisCO is important because it is so basic – it’s the building block for extracting energy from sunlight. No RuBisCO? No Nabisco™. To top it off, it forms and folds in milliseconds inside the leaves of every tree on Earth when the temperature and chemistry is right. We have no idea how it does this, and couldn’t computationally predict this.

This is just one protein that needs to be folded up properly for everything to work out so I can have a decent steak, scotch, and cigar. When looking further at things like the storage of information on DNA, it starts to look like the ultimate information storage device ever created – the DNA in one cell of a typical human is over six feet (seventeen milliliters) long. The DNA in all of the cells of your body is twice the diameter of the Solar System, but if you were to stretch all of it out, it’s unlikely you’d be able to go to work on Monday. Each cell contains three billion base pairs of DNA, or almost the number of words in the average Stephen King novel.

RuBisCO is improbable. DNA? Wow. The squish bits that make us up are at the smallest level more complicated than anything man has ever created, with the exception of the way that a VCR needed to be adjusted so it didn’t flash 12:00.

David Bowie’s VCR always flashed 12:00, too. Time may change him, but he can’t change time.

One of the ideas of those who would contemplate that life on Earth in general, and humanity in particular, came from random chance must confront are the mathematical impossibilities of things like RuBisCO appearing at random out of only 300,000,000 planets times 8,000,000,000 years. Further, they have to accept that the number and types of elements available for this are all, randomly, in the proper proportions and properties to support life.

This doesn’t even deal with the observed rates of genetic drift, or the creation of amazingly improbable structures like the human eye or the brain. The brain exhibits non-trivial quantum effects, so from the smallest possible structures of humanity to the largest imaginable structures of the Universe their appears to be an intent. Random chance cannot remotely explain what we are, and how we have been created, or this marvel we call consciousness, or what Bulgarian Mall Lawyers call, “a new client”.

It is readily apparent, based on logic and mathematics alone that there are only a few possibilities:

That the Universe has been created with intent and a pattern (the big G God),
this is all a simulation (the little g god),
that life (and thus humanity) was designed and seeded among the stars (which begs, by who or what?)
that the purpose of the Universe may be solely for the creation of the Ultimate PEZ® dispenser which may take the form of Yosemite Sam®, or
that there are forces that exist in realms in which we cannot yet discern through any physical means.

Random choice is out, mathematically. Every single time I see it resorted to, it’s a kludge and requires more faith than that which would be required for God.

How else would you explain Yosemite Sam™ or Bulgarian Mall Lawyers?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: National Divorce? Getting Closer.

“Dolores, I am making a citizen’s divorce.” – The Man with Two Brains

Big Alarm Clock is a conspiracy! Wake up people! (all non-regular memes are as-found)

Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Open War.

I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom the same. Again. This is moving sideways, but things can unravel quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – The National Divorce – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Silly Season – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join over 740 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

The National Divorce

I remember reading about research a while back that (my fuzzy memory says) indicated that when a married couple didn’t want to have a divorce, one of the easiest things they could do was not talk about a divorce. I guess that would mean that the first rule of staying married club is don’t talk about divorce club.

Marjorie Taylor Greene brought up the issue in a big way:

It’s a stark question: do we want to stay married, or not. Folks on the Internet followed suit, with this poll:

The Internet is what it is, and a poll like that isn’t at all scientific. But 19,000 people (75% of respondents) were done. They were ready to get lawyers, and decide how we get to split up California and Virginia and who got alternating weekends with Michigan.

A much more scientific poll was done by Rasmussen® (more on them later in this Issue) and it emerged that a majority of Republicans wanted out. 47%, plus an 11% who might be in favor, but they wanted to know if they could still get Netflix™ off of Uncle Tim’s account it he were stuck in a Blue State before they made up their mind.

Leftists are never in favor of making anything smaller, since it lowers their power. Remember, it is Leftists who are on the side of international and world governments. I’m pretty sure they’d love to include Mars, too, since it’s Red. This is shown in the poll below:

Fully a third of all people (based on Rasmussen’s™ report) are ready to check out. That’s a lot. Although Gallup® wasn’t around to do a poll, most literature I can find seems to indicate that only 1/3 of the folks living in the Colonies wanted the Revolution, so 1/3 is a big, big number.

I’ll add in this other (entirely unscientific) poll:

Again, unscientific, but it shows that there are a sizeable number of folks out there who believe that soldiers would, if ordered, shoot on American civilians. That’s another scary thought, and perhaps feeds back into the idea that people would much rather have a peaceful exit rather than a violent one.

I read that this year’s CPAC (Republican fanboy convention) was poorly attended, and lacking in energy. And why not? The most fervent people in the Republican party are done, and don’t trust the vote, and don’t think that their votes may ever matter again.

Spiderman®, though, seems to have an opinion:

Violence and Censorship Update

Cancelling really isn’t government censorship, but it’s censorship nevertheless. Scott Adams, noted cartoonist and author, really rustled the collective jimmies of the Left. Rasmussen™ had a poll about whether it was “okay to be white” and 47% of black people indicated that it was either not okay, or they weren’t sure.

Scott has a YouTube® channel (still!) where he talks about whatever he wants to talk about. In this, he opined that if that was the way that black people felt, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be around them. The following cartoon describes it in such a way that Scott retweeted it:

The outrage was both predictable, even though Scott noted that many black people he knew called him up and said that his stance was completely reasonable. Mr. Adams’ publisher dropped him. Mr. Adams’ cartoon syndicator dropped him. Mr. Adams’ agent . . . dropped him. His new book, due out in the fall? Cancelled.

I don’t feel bad for Scott, he knew what he was doing, and he has tens of millions of dollars. But what is it about that simple narrative that makes the Left explode? I’ll cover that in a future post.

The Silence of the Adams

It’s not violence now, but Illinois has now decided that most crimes short of murdering someone and taking selfies with the victim are now non-detainable. Burn someone’s house? Out without bail. Kill someone while high? Out without bail.

Florida. Sigh. Why? They want to make bloggers who write about elected officials register if they make money for their efforts. Is this the single stupidest thing to come out of Florida since they elected ¡Jeb!?

The publisher of Roald Dahl is going through his books an removing whatever they don’t like based on political correctness. No more “ugly” or “fat” or . . . black. Paging Scott Adams . . . These “corrections” are showing up in people’s previously purchased e-books, too. This is why physical media is good. And why I have lots of books.

It’s not censorship, exactly, when programmers prevent A.I. from coming to conclusions based on fact, but it’s close. There are certain facts that are inconvenient, like boys have xy chromosomes and girls have xx chromosomes, so programmers prevent A.I. from talking about that. Elon Musk says he’s going to do his own, non-woke A.I.

When the trains carrying ethyl-methyl-death crashed in East Palestine, it was a story that was minimized until it couldn’t be. I follow stories like this that are under the news, and was aware of it within a few hours of it happening. But the news? No reporting on it, since it didn’t impact Baltimore and had the potential to make the Biden administration look even worse than it normally looks.

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again, and, like Kamala’s womb, this graph doesn’t eggs. Here’s a recap:

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time. They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings. As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence is still minimal right now. I’m betting it stays down until June at the earliest.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it was down a bit more. I think this is a conscious attempt to keep things together, Biden just came out in favor of “law and order”, because I think he saw it the show on cable.

Economic:

Economic numbers took a big dive this month, which surprised me. The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which still isn’t good.

Illegal Aliens:

The number took a big drop! Yay! Oh, it’s still higher than ever for that month. I’d say border is wide open, but we have no border.

So, when can we ask the Mexicans to leave?

The Silly Season

One way to deflect a story is to not tell it. The other way to deflect a story is to flood the media with, well, nonsense. My favorite this month? The Chinese Spy Balloon™. During World War II, the Japanese decided they would make Americans afraid. They launched 9,000 balloons filled with explosives at the United States. As near as I could find with an in-depth three-minute look, one exploded. Out of 9,000.

Ohhh, I’m so afraid.

I’m not sure what we’ve found out about the Chinese Spy Balloon©. I think that we’ll find out they were trying to check up on why Americans weren’t buying more extended warrantees based on those cell-phone calls. Since we haven’t heard anything, I’m think that it may actually have been a weather balloon. Regardless, they can solve their problem with just a little bit of camouflage that the United States would never shoot down:

Was this the story that they were attempting to distract us from?

It’s a scary one. Why do we need so may people? Why aren’t all the traditional people who would go into the military signing up? Oh, yeah. They’ve been told they’re racist. They’ve been told they have unearned privilege? They’ve seen the military force people to take the vaxx. And now they want them to sign up to fight?

What could be next?

LINKS

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky. Thanks so much, Ricky!!

Bad Guys

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11761485/NYPD-release-images-four-brazen-thieves-staged-50-000-raid-Manhattan-Givenchy.html

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1628194739987046400

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626367620151738375

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626397252334809090

https://twitter.com/nofones2/status/1626369625314279426

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626447147225718786

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1621965430930669569

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1628225095893131264

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1627464538609139714

https://twitter.com/762sfuxk/status/1626379421065134080

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11735803/Armed-intruder-left-critical-condition-shot-neck-homeowner.html

One Guy

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11632047/Vigilante-killed-robber-Houston-restaurant-breaks-silence.html

Body Count

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11732497/More-48-000-Americans-committed-suicide-year-report-finds.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11711353/Seven-states-eye-legalizing-assisted-suicide-America.html

https://goodsciencing.com/covid/athletes-suffer-cardiac-arrest-die-after-covid-shot/

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/new-paper-an-estimated-13-million

https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/is-coincidence-now-the-leading-cause

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11738179/Still-think-secure-Joe-Moment-500-Venezuelan-migrants-walk-southern-border.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11730363/Biden-preparing-mass-deportations-non-Mexican-migrants-Mexico.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11733577/Map-shows-14-million-Americans-live-5-miles-cancer-gas-emitting-plants.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11776999/The-blanketed-fentanyl-NINEFOLD-rise-deadly-opioid-use-western-US.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11701187/Zombie-Nation-Shocking-images-lay-bare-Americas-drug-crisis.html

Vote Count

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11761979/Kari-Lake-vows-Arizona-gubernatorial-defeat-state-supreme-court.html

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/02/08/maricopa-heat-maps-the-story-keeps-getting-worse/

https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/15/everything-you-need-to-know-about-democrat-gov-tony-evers-bid-to-overhaul-wisconsin-elections/

https://alaskapublic.org/2023/02/17/launch-of-campaign-to-repeal-ranked-choice-voting-draws-a-crowd-in-anchorage/

https://raheemkassam.substack.com/p/fox-vs-dominion-discovery-docs-show

Civil War
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/keith-olbermann-calls-economic-civil-war-institute-gun-control

https://www.foxnews.com/media/olbermann-urges-blue-states-wage-economic-civil-war-red-states-starve-red-states-submission

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/internal-atf-docs-show-zero-tolerance-guidelines-shutting-down-gun-stores

https://www.carolinacoastonline.com/tideland_news/opinions/article_bec42134-ad30-11ed-979b-4365a8a67e62.html

https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/17/idaho-house-approves-talks-to-annex-oregon-counties/

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/lost-cause-2-0-desantis-and-republicans-inspired-by-racist-confederate-history-re-writes/

https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/newswire/gops-civil-war-republicans-confront-bitter-divide-no-clear-path-forward/

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/06/megadonor-gop-richard-elizabeth-uihlein-00081267

https://www.reformer.com/opinion/columnists/nicholas-boke-what-would-a-civil-war-look-like-anyway/article_c6beefac-aca1-11ed-9fa4-d74d7a722a44.html

https://sundayguardianlive.com/world/will-2022-witness-american-civil-war-2-0-will-happen-2024

https://news.uchicago.edu/us-headed-toward-another-civil-war-william-howell

https://www.businessinsider.com/mtg-defends-call-split-up-us-says-civil-war-looming-2023-2

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/marjorie-taylor-greenes-national-divorce-was-the-civil-war.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/marjorie-taylor-greene-secession-civil-war/673142/

https://www.theringer.com/2023/2/24/23613267/emasculation-proclamation-civil-war-ii

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/project-veritas-has-forced-out-james-okeefe.html

https://hard-drive.net/hd/technology/ken-burns-releases-4000-part-tiktok-series-on-the-civil-war/

No Way To Go, But Forward

“It’s a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.” – The Blues Brothers

I’ve seen this meme a dozen times, but this is the first time I noticed that Keanu was talking to Sponge Bob and Patrick Starfish. Now I can’t unsee it. (All memes today are as-found.)

Today was . . . busy. On the average day, I manage to manage stuff so that I get my normal life done and then have time to post or do other creative shenanigans. Not today. I could give a much longer explanation, such as: “I ran out of gas. I . . . I had a flat tire. I didn’t have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts! It wasn’t my fault, I swear to God!”

But I won’t. I half expected this, but there was still the outside chance I’d come back in time.

I wasn’t out doing this, but it looks like fun.

So, a very short post on a Friday, and I’ll leave just one thought – there’s no use looking into the rearview mirror of your life. You can’t go back there. The only path that you and I have (provided you don’t have a time machine) is forward.

Me? I look around, and take stock. The mistakes I’ve made? I don’t dwell on them, because I can’t change them. I can only look at what I have, the talents I have, the support of the people who love or believe in me, and go forward.

There is no way out, but through. Unless you live in Canada, where the “easy way out” is now a prescribed medical treatment.

I always thought we’d see another Pol Pot, just didn’t think he would be as much of a pansy as Trudeau.

So, remember, there is one direction, forward. There is one attitude, determination. And there is one moment: now.

What you do with all of that, is up to you.

As for me? I’m going to go hit the hay. I’ll comment on comments from the previous post tomorrow.

I’m sleepy.

Your move, Mr. Bond. Do you really think those Space Marines® can hold out?

Never Lose The Battle For Your Mind

Bah! Your planet doesn’t deserve freedom until it learns what it is not to have freedom. It’s a lesson, I say!” – Futurama

What did they call George Washington’s teeth? Presidentures.

“So, John, after I explained it, do you agree with me?” asked Captain Assholay.

“No, no I don’t,” I responded.

He looked frustrated.

The other details of the conversation were and are relatively unimportant, but the boil down to those two sentences. The fact that the person asking the question was my boss is pertinent, since, well, Captain Assholay was (years and years ago) my boss.

As bosses go, I’d rank the Captain near the bottom of the ones that I’ve had. I think he was borderline retarded, and I can say that word because it’s my blog, and I’m bringing it back.

One of my previous bosses was a man that reportedly lost the family fortune by punching a punter for the Green Bay Packers® who sued him and won because he couldn’t play anymore. I guess punters are fragile. On another occasion (while drinking) he mentioned that he threatened a witness in a felony trial so he’d leave the state and not be able to testify.

Captain Assholay? Worse than that guy.

Alternate caption: “Well, Forrest, there’s cheddar cheese, fried cheese, cheese sticks, cheese curds, cheese slices, cheese doodles, melted cheese, cheese dip (continues for three days) . . . that’s all the cheeses I know.”

But these two sentences encapsulated the relationship I had with Captain Assholay – his question was whether or not I would change my opinion. I would not.

Neither would I lie about it.

I’ve followed a fairly simple pattern in my life: when I’m working for someone, if they ask me to do something that is within my capabilities, and it’s not illegal, immoral, unethical, and doesn’t conflict with my values, I do it. Even if I don’t like it. Even if it sucks. That’s why it’s called work, and not a hobby.

This, though, was different. In this case, I was asked to conform my thoughts and agree with my boss. If he told me to do something (again, nothing illegal, immoral, unethical, and not conflicting with my values) I would do it. But the space he doesn’t own is in my head.

To me, agreeing with the Captain merely because he was my boss is something I couldn’t and wouldn’t do. I’ll hold my tongue. I’ll support silly things. But my mind?

I own it.

My other friend makes wigs. It doesn’t pay much, just enough toupee the bills.

I’m not sure Captain Assholay understood that. Heck, I’m not sure he had the capacity to understand it. But it’s not my job to raise him. One (much better) boss of mine had a saying, “Right or wrong, the boss is the boss.” That is true, and soon enough, we ceased working together.

I don’t send him Christmas cards. Okay, I don’t send anyone Christmas cards, but if I did, I would not send him two cards. My joy in thinking about him is that I do know that karma is real, and that the German word for empathy is schadenfreude.

Even though I’ll enjoy (at some point) hearing about his sudden but inevitable downfall, that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is about the latter part: there are things other people can buy from me. My time.

But they can never, ever, buy my soul. They can never buy my integrity. They can never buy my values.

He also joined a poetry club. So far he’s made some ashtrays and a nice vase.

Life is about a series of compromises. Anyone in a long-term relationship realizes that. In fact, I’m pleased that The Mrs. has learned that if I promise to fix something around the house, I will, and she doesn’t need to nag me every six months until I actually get it done.

I couldn’t lie to the Captain. Why?

I’ve given that some thought. One idea might have been pride, but that’s not it. I’m not much about things like that – the last time I washed one of my cars was sometime when Clinton was president. So, that’s not it.

It was deeper. And I look to my growing up, and the stories. Would the heroes I read about have yielded? Would Alexander? Would Patton? Would Richard Dawson?

No.

While I will render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, there are things that are simply not for sale, and never will be. I will face the world that is being born knowing that.

“All I want for Christmas is Gaul.”

I don’t recall exactly where I read it, but the difference between the Mafia and Leftists is that the Mafia doesn’t care if you agree with them, as long as you pay. Leftists? You must pay, and you must agree, and you must humiliate yourself if you ever disagreed. They will settle for nothing less.

The only answer is to never give in.

Ever. Understand where the line is, and never, ever let it be crossed. Even if you aren’t religious, understand that the battle is for your soul.

And you will be tested.

And you are not alone.

I saw my ex-wife get hit by a bus, and thought, “Man, that could have been me,” but then I remembered I don’t know how to drive a bus.

And that is the first step and the final step of winning. If you don’t compromise, there will never be a one-way trip on a train. Be free: never give the space in your head, never give up your values or virtue.

Especially not to Captain Assholay.

Biden And The Coming Revolution?

“No, I quite approve of terror, arson, murder, any tool that serves the revolution.” –Nicholas and Alexandra

I wonder if this came as a peasant surprise to the nobility?

The worm has turned on Biden. Pardon me if I say that this is right on schedule. Trump document frenzy made the Left drool like Amy Schumer when she’s near a cake or AOC when she’s near a new coloring book. To get Trump, the Left would do anything. Anything.

In a very real sense, just as the Left views abortion as a sacrament, the destruction of Trump is a religious goal, as he is the manifestation of their supreme Evil being.

This is nothing new. Remember when George W. Bush was president? His politics were, essentially, as controversial as lukewarm dishwater. But the hate flew strong. Until he started showing up in group hot tub photos with Bill and Hillary and Barack and Mooshell. Then he was no longer the Prince of Darkness, instead just a fuddy-duddy old man who chose wrong.

I’m really glad I couldn’t find the hot tub photos.

Biden, though, is in as bad a shape politically as he is mentally. Joe was (s)elected for the job because he has never really stood for anything in particular, so he’ll stand for anything at all. Even his “memories” are false half the time, talking about things that never happened so that he looks the best to whoever he’s talking to at the moment.

The perfect candidate.

Who is in control then? One would first point to the Chief of Staff, but that person just quit. It’s clear that half of his appointees have little to no competence at anything – I’m fairly certain that only one or two of them could pass the probation period making pizzas at Chuck E. Cheese™.

Kamala says her body is a temple. Everyone is allowed in.

So, I’m not at all sure who is running the show, but we all know it’s not Joe. And whoever is running the show is done with him. Will they force him to step down? Maybe. It would be chaotic, and risky. Replacing kneepads as Veep would require a majority vote – of both the House and the Senate. Since the Republicans hold the House, this would not necessarily be an easy choice.

Even if Joe survives (politically) to 2024, the only reason to have him run again would be for the amusement factor. It’s also clear that the person who will eventually replace Joe is not Kamala. Oh, sure, she might do that until the next election if Joe’s forced to resign, but “they” will make sure that she’s not allowed to do anything of particular importance. Maybe she could do coloring books with AOC.

Someone asked her why the chicken crossed the road. She said, “It’s because of corporate greed! Chickens should not be forced to lay eggs – the eggs should lay themselves!”

The danger is the weak leadership combined with the political polarization and the hidden nature of those who are actually running the government. This seems to me to be very similar to the period before the French Revolution.

A weak leader,
Massive governmental debt leading to economic crisis,
A significant rural/city divide,
A significant atheist/religious divide,
Political polarization fueled by agitators, and
Silly clothing styles.

One of the interesting things to me are those agitators. They were clearly in place at the time of the French Revolution since the Leftist (the French Revolution is where the name “Leftist” came from) pamphlets that appeared “spontaneously” and the large number of inflammatory newspapers that were designed to fuel the Revolution, primarily in Paris.

I tried to tell a guillotine joke, but I always mess up the execution.

The effort was too large and too well coordinated to be an accident. Was Marat, the lizard-skinned angry little toad of a man the leader? Was Robespierre?

In the end, it didn’t matter.

The Revolution gave way to the Terror, where (thankfully) Robespierre and Marat were finally executed. They had to be executed, since, once any Leftist revolution starts, it keeps moving Left in great gouts of blood until someone has the gumption to kill everyone that’s to the extreme Left. Stalin learned that lesson, and purged Trotsky along with millions of others.

The end result has almost always been the same as what happened in France. Tired of the nonsense coming from the anarchy they accepted a new Emperor, this time one named Bonaparte rather than Bourbon.

What position would Quasimoto play at Notre Dame? Probably halfback.

The playbook is the same, and it seems to follow the same parameters over time. Understand that as the statues were pulled down from Notre Dame, and as it was transformed from a church into the “Temple of Reason” that we’re seeing the same things today. The Left removes the past, because nothing can come before – they see this as a cleansing, the ability to return to “Year Zero”.

The future does not repeat, exactly. The Russian Revolution wasn’t the same as the French, but they certainly rhymed. As I look to weak leadership, polarization, economic difficulty, and Amy Schumer, I see the same conditions that existed back in 1789.

I’m still interested in who is going to benefit . . . if there’s less Amy Schumer, then everyone.

What We Can Learn From The French Revolution: The Vendée

“There was nothing spooky about the French Revolution. People lopped off with the heads of thousands of aristocrats and carted them away in straw baskets, then turned the blades on themselves and killed thousands more. Just another segment of Western History.” – Kolchak, The Night Stalker

The French Revolution was a pain in the neck.

The French Revolution was the first major Leftist revolution in the world. The ideology of the Revolution was stunning in its scope. Not only was every single structure of the country to be changed, but even its history. Nothing was sacred – especially the churches and clergy. Notre Dame was renamed the Temple of Reason, though recently it was a really hot tourist attraction.

Additionally, something as simple as the calendar wasn’t exempt. 1792 was proclaimed as year one. Each day was 10 hours long. Each hour was 100 minutes long. And each minute was 100 seconds long. Of course, the week wasn’t spared – each month consisted of three 10 day weeks. Yeah, they renamed the days of the week, too, and managed to eliminate both Friday and Saturday. Bogus.

The names of the months were changed, too. There were still 12, since the French could not figure out how to change the amount of time it took for the world to revolve around the Sun. My favorite French month? Ventôse, or the “month of wind” which lasted between February 19 to March 20. The Ventôse Decrees (I assume issued during this “month”) legalized confiscation of everything counterrevolutionaries owned and redistribution to “needy” people. One would assume that the leadership was just as “needy” as the Biden family.

What’s the best way to kill lots of communists? Communism.

This was also the time when the Republic decided that the old way of measuring things needed to be chucked, too. So out went feet and gallons and pounds and in came meters and liters and kilograms. So, if you ever hear me talk about communist units, well, here’s the reason. The metric system was just another part of the Leftists attempting to subvert all of history.

Oh, and they pulled down statues, too.

It’s as if there’s something familiar with what I’m seeing with the woke crowd in the United States. Hmm. Whatever could it be?

Regardless, there are some other events that happened during the French Revolution that are less known. The item that’s the subject of today’s post?

The Vendée.

The Vendée is an area of France. The French have lots of names for these areas, many of which sound like Joe Biden clearing his throat before a speech. Let’s just stick with area or region, that’s close enough.

Why is the French flag blue, white, and red? So that they can rip off the sides and surrender.

Not long after the French Revolution, the people running France realized that they were surrounded by hostile countries that were headed by Kings. When King Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793, the people who ran the French Republic were pretty freaked out and worried that they were going to be invaded by groups of Kings that weren’t fond of the whole, “kill your leader because it’s Tuesday” concept.

That’s when they decided to have a general draft to build a French army with 300,000 new additional recruits. Many areas fought back against this draft, since, outside of Paris, the whole, “kill the King, destroy religion, and start a war” policy of the Commies in charge of Paris wasn’t especially popular.

One area, though, was really good at fighting back. The Vendée. It’s on the western shore of France, and is notable for making that invisible rope that French mimes use as the primary regional product. Like I said, they fought back well – they wanted to be left alone and to reopen their churches. The army that was formed, the “Catholic and Royal Army” was initially very successful for several months in spring and summer of 1793.

The Popemobile is cool, but let me see you try to fly in a Papal airplane.

From a military viewpoint, they were very successful, at first. Early in may they captured over 5,000 Republican troops. They asked them to leave and promise not to fight against them anymore.

And then released the Republican troops.

This may have been a mistake.

Again, through May and June they kept winning, capturing lots of Republican cannons, powder and supplies. Until they lost. The Republicans captured quite a few folks from the Vendée Army. And shot them or put them in boats and drowned them.

By October of 1793, the Committee of Public Safety in Paris decided that the solution to the Vendée was complete physical destruction. After the defeat of the Vendée army in December, the revenge started. The Republicans were not shy about what they wanted.

When one commander asked what he should do about women and children, the response was simple, “if it was necessary, to pass them all by the sword”. The women were of particular interest, since they would be carrying anti-revolutionary babies.

Yeah. Dark.

The invention of the shovel was groundbreaking, but it was the broom that really swept the nation.

The Vendée folks paroled their prisoners. The Leftists? Murdered them. For the people in the Vendée, it got worse. Some people from the Vendée got together with the British and the British funded and supplied a really lame invasion of France. It failed. Spectacularly. The French might not like each other, but one thing was for certain – the French, I mean, all the French, hate the British.

This didn’t help the Vendée with the rest of the French. Public relations level? Disaster.

The Vendée had about 800,000 folks living in it prior to the French Revolution. The Leftists killed, for the sake of ideological reasons, between (best sources I can find) 250,000 to 400,000. This is about 1.5% of the population of France at that time. That’s proportionately like losing half the population of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, New Jersey, or Virginia.

This proves, once again, that the only people that the French can beat in a war is the French. It also proves, once again, that when Leftists run a country, the first priority of business is to kill their own people who aren’t on board with the Left.

Regardless, this didn’t stop the people from the Vendée. They kept fighting, and were even a thorn in the side of Napoleon in 1814.

I asked my friend how things were going in Moscow. He said, “I can’t complain.”

The Vendée made me think of the United States today. It is easy to see the parallels – the full attack on every value. The attempt to destroy everything from the past is in full force now. The removal of the statues is part of the playbook. The vilification of the values and heritage people? Also part of the playbook.

Where is the Vendée in the United States? Oklahoma? Ohio? Missouri? It is clear that the values of the Left do not match values of many.

What happens when a line is crossed? When the gun confiscation comes in? If the Vendée acts alone, it fails. If it’s not alone? It wins.

You are not alone. Nor is Oklahoma, or Missouri, or Ohio, or Texas, or Idaho.

This isn’t 1793, and we don’t cotton to the metric system. Me? I’ll never accept the metric system because I don’t want a foreign ruler.

How Scarcity Has Changed Your Life, And Will Change It Again. But With Hot Chick Pictures.

“Dad! Bob broke your beer!” – Strange Brew

Here’s one only 1300’s kids will get: The Black Plague

Part of the history of humanity was scarcity. Scarcity has formed society since, well, forever. What do I mean?

Well, before agriculture, there was a scarcity of beer. My personal theory is that civilization itself is because we wanted beer on a regular basis (Beer, Technology, Beer, Tide® Pods, Beer, Civilizational Stability, and Beer). Click on this one, it’s a fun read and one of my Original Wilder Thoughts.

So, beer was scarce, and we made agriculture and farms so we could get beer.

But what became scarce then? Labor.

Prior to having agriculture, slavery was a net negative. To have a slave, you had to feed him or her, and what were you going to have them do all day, hang out and play Nintendo®? If you sent them out to hunt or gather, they’d never come back. But once you had work to do every day to make sure the farm produced pre-beer?

Slavery made sense because having more slaves resulted in having more beer.

If agriculture was the most disruptive technology in history besides Über®, slavery was an unintended consequence. Labor stayed as a scarce resource for a long time, until the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was amazing precisely because it changed the game on labor.Why did Leia passionately kiss Luke? She was looking for love in Alderaan places.

Sure, labor was needed, but the entire type of labor needed to be changed. It went from artisans and craftsmen making “one of a kind” items to people working in a factory making standardized items that were all the same. Because of the nature of the process, people generally worked on only one part of whatever was being made. The jobs were simplified, so that people could do one, repeatable task again and again.

People became replaceable, just another cog in the machine, but the scarcity of labor that created the need for slavery changed to make slavery uneconomical again. Why have a slave that you have to take care for, when you can have an employee that you can fire when they get old or injured?

Now, the scarcity was energy.An entire industry was built on just getting energy to feed the industrial revolution. Coal was the first, but followed soon enough by oil. The first oil wells were a boon because they produced lamp oil, and the gasoline bits were thrown away (generally dumped on the ground) and the heavy bits (asphalt, etc.) were thrown in pits.

Of course, soon enough, we determined how to use everything that came out of the ground for something, and none of the sweet, sweet oil was wasted.

Have we outstripped our energy resources? Possibly. But that’s another post . . .After I put that fence up, my neighbor was dead against it.

Entertainment had been scarcer than an Amy Schumer comedy special, too. If you wanted to listen to a song, you had to find someone who could play it or sing it. And the best version that you could get was dependent upon the best singer in town, and the best guitar player. After records showed up, now anyone could listen to the best vocalist in the world. Local bands? They weren’t needed so much anymore. Soon enough, the best actors and comedians (Amy Schumer, sit down) in the world were available, too.

You could say that entertainment was just a subset of information. The availability of that had been growing, too. From information carved into stone, set into clay tablets, handwritten on paper or parchment, to a printing press using moveable type, information kept getting cheaper and cheaper.

And faster and faster. The upside? All of Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius and Seneca available in an instant. The downside? Game of Thrones™ and Maisy Williams with her unibrow.Aristotle says we are what we repeatedly do. Therefore? I am your mother. (not my meme)

There are those that hypothesized that the only reason the Mongol Empire stopped before overrunning Europe was the time it took to get communications from the seat of the Mongol Emperors of China to the fringes of Empire. Or it could have been that they didn’t watch their steppe. Communication of information around the world was impossible at 10,000 B.C. (or could take centuries), years during the Roman Empire, months after Britain ruled the waves, days after communication cables were strung ‘round the world by the end of the nineteenth century, and down to hours after radio.

Now? Tribesmen living in the middle of a South American rainforest know the daily price of gold. Information has transcended the bounds of time and space, and the greatest works of literature and film are widely and instantly available. Oh, and Amy Schumer videos.

The ability to make decisions is in the process of being phased out as a scarce item. For decades, computer control systems have replaced operators at industrial facilities, and robots not only make welds, but make the decisions on the quality of the products produced. But these processes are determined and monitored by people.

That’s changing. Difficult things that were kept to humans like diagnosing patients? Human doctors are losing to A.I. One particular system looked at EKGs, and the A.I. could predict people who were going to die, even when doctors looked at the information and couldn’t see anything wrong.What do they call the person who graduated last in his class at medical school? Doctor.

But at least we still have thought and creativity, right?

Well, no. 2022 is the advent of A.I. art. There are multiple engines, online right now that will draw pictures that are almost indistinguishable from photographs. I’ve posted one below. It may look like a hot chick, but I assure you that it is not. Don’t believe me? Look at the hands. Small details, sure. And small details that will eventually be fixed.How long will it be before novels are written by A.I., and entire movies from start to finish are created in A.I. engines? Something tells me, not long. If agriculture was the most disruptive technology in the history of mankind, A.I., even as it exists today, is the second most.

It has long been my assertion, that in any Universe where A.I. is possible, it will be created, and will spread to the stars. But what’s the densest form of information storage currently known, the wellspring of millions of species across the history of Earth?

DNA.

Such a complex structure that incorporates so much information. It’s almost like it was . . . created.

Wouldn’t it be the perfect vehicle for translating information across the vastness of space? Easy enough to encode an entire ecosystem a fraction of an ounce (megaliter). But I digress, that’s probably (likewise) a good starter for a future post.A friend of mine had a job circumcising elephants at the zoo. The pay wasn’t good, but the tips were large.

So what is the scarcity that we are facing now?

One thing I see that we’re facing right now is a scarcity of virtue.

The values that we know produce a stable society are in short supply, and dwindling. The cracks of that are spreading. It can’t, and won’t continue long. We are at the cusp of a singularity of different factors, the scarcity of scarcity, and the scarcity of virtue and self-discipline.

Good times make weak men, who create hard times, who create strong men.

We are on the cusp of the hard times, and the strong men will be back. Our civilization will not be the civilization that came before. We have the elements in place to make a future that our ancestors couldn’t dream of. There is a chance that it will be a golden era of freedom and enhanced creativity.

And to think, it all started with Urg, king of the 78-strong tribe of the Shamalama tribe in ancient Mesopotamia, wanting to have a cold beer.

Cheers!

Thanksgiving Thanks, 2022

“Two men are dead! This is not the time for petty sibling squabbles. That’s what Thanksgiving is for.” – Psych

I knew an Irishman who used to sell lawn chairs. I’ll never forget Paddy O’Furniture.

As this is Thanksgiving week, I thought I would share a few things that I’m thankful for. These are in no particular order.

I’m thankful that almost every single one of my problems is self-inflicted, and has a clear way to solution. I am where I am because of who and what I am, and I can change everything I don’t like, when I want to.
I’m thankful for being with The Mrs., because either of us with other people would be just an unending misery for them. I believe the Geneva Convention specifically lists being married to either The Mrs. or to me as a Crime Against Humanity.
I’m thankful for Elon Musk and the amusement he creates by stirring the pot. Do I think he’s on our side? But I think he irritates enough of the people who hate us to make me laugh, nearly daily.
I’m thankful for friends. I have a Polish friend who is a sound tech. And a Czech one, too. And a Czech one, too.

Or if I opened a trampoline in Prague, would the Czechs keep bouncing?

I’m thankful for standard time. Daylight savings time is the tool of the Devil.
I’m thankful for the “ringer and vibration off” switch on cell phones. And I should use it more. There’s something to be said for uninterrupted focus time. When going out to dinner, we often ditch our cellphones at home. This leads to this crazy thing called “talking to each other.”
I’m thankful that The Boy is home from Midwestia State U (located right next to Wassamatta U) and that he and Pugsley talk for hours when they’re together. A loyal brother can be the closest friend as you move through life.

I recently bought a toilet brush. Long story short: I’m going back to toilet paper.

I’m thankful that I got up late today, and that I’m writing this early.
I’m thankful that, right now in this place and time, my family is safe, and we are together. This is why Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday: there isn’t the stress from presents, merely a time to give thanks and be together.
I’m thankful for decongestants. I’d tell a joke about me having a virus, but I’m worried you might spread it.
I’m thankful that I live in a time that has the greatest access to knowledge of any place and any time in history, allowing me to read the thoughts of the greatest men who ever lived and the ideas that influenced our civilization and showed us what truth is, almost at a whim. Oh, and there’s also CNN®.
I’m thankful for cheese.

A Pomeranian puppy looked Medusa in the eye – he became pomegranite.

I’m thankful for living in a time and place where starvation is unknown, though the Left keeps wanting to put it back into play.
I’m thankful that The Mrs. talked me into buying the chair that I sit in to write these posts. I had to get rid of my old recliner. Me and my old recliner? We went way back.
I’m thankful for hard exercise, where when I’m done, I know I’ve given it my all. I try to use the workout the actors who played the Marvel® superheroes use, but I get Thor just thinking about it.

I accidentally hit my Nokia® with a hammer, and took it to Best Buy™ so the Geek Squad© could fix it. Best Buy® said they don’t work on hammers.

I’m thankful that Pugsley and The Boy are sons I can be proud of, strong and with their own opinions for their own reasons, and with exactly the character that I had hoped for. It wasn’t easy, and no matter what I do, German children will always be kinder.
I’m thankful for Ma and Pa Wilder, who, though gone, helped me become the man I am today. There was a time when I had a difficult relationship with them: when I was born, I didn’t talk to them for two years.
I’m thankful to have lived through some of the most interesting times in human history, and having seen amazing advances in technology. And Chia Pets®.
I’m thankful for the first sip of hot coffee on a cool morning. I’m thankful for the last sip of coffee on a hot day. I guess words cannot espresso how much I like it.

What was the subtitle for War and Peace? Tsar Wars.

I’m thankful for the troubles I’ve had in life, because those have made me better. When I was young, Ma Wilder called me a pirate when I was learning the alphabet, since I always got lost at C.
I’m thankful for the talents that I was born with, because those gave me capacity. In fact, I have one talent that I’ll brag about: I can always tell what’s inside a wrapped present. It’s a gift.
I’m thankful for winter. Winter is the time of year when things are quiet, and I can think. Sometimes I work on math, which makes The Mrs. say that I’m cold and calculating.
I’m thankful that I don’t have regrets, and go to sleep soundly. I often sleep without pajamas, which seems to bother them at work.

And I’m thankful to spend time with you folks every week. Happy Thanksgiving!!

Defeat? Never.

“Okay you people – sit tight, hold the fort and keep the home fires burning, and if we’re not back by dawn? Call the president.” – Big Trouble in Little China

I hear that Rob Halford became an eastern monk, which I guess makes him a Buddhist Priest.

Back when I was in high school, I started a quest. It would probably be a trivial quest in today’s world with the Internet, and tens of millions of songs available all from a single search. However, back when I was in high school, the only people using the Internet were computer nerds at colleges or places like Los Alamos sharing nuclear bomb design info and ASCII porn.

Is this how Los Alamos beat the Soviets?

There was exactly one rock and roll radio station that reached the lofty heights of Wilder Mountain, and it was a good three-hour drive from where I lived. Heck, the nearest record store was a 45-minute drive. But I heard a song . . . and loved it.

I had no idea who the artist was. All I knew was that it had guitars that sounded like jet fighters coming in for an attack (metaphorically) and a heavy metal singer with pipes to growl low and also hit the high notes.

This was not helpful. My bumbling attempts to hum the song to the record store clerk probably sounded like a toddler attempting to instruct an Albanian goat herder on how to repair a Junkers Jumo-004 on an ME 262. My incoherent rambling eventually convinced the store owner that I could probably be sold a lot of records on my quest to find the goofy song.

What happens when a plane full of Leftist lands? The Jet turns off but the whining continues.

She was right. On one particular winter day, I bought two cassettes. Memo to the young: a cassette was an attempt to put a part of the Internet on a skinny magnetic tape and take it with you. Sort of like WIFI but with a really, really low transfer rate that cost over $7 for 42 megabytes.

I listened to one of the cassettes on my forty-minute drive to Stately Wilder Manor. I don’t recall what the first cassette was. It was okay. The song I was looking for, however, wasn’t on it.

When I got to Wilder Mountain, I decided to listen to the other cassette. Pa Wilder wasn’t home. It was November, and snow was falling gently across the valley, as I looked toward the volcanic cone that dominated the view above the mountains that surrounded the valley.

I put in the cassette. I hit play.

A single guitar hit an E note that crunched and then was followed by 41 seconds of guitar solo that made my brain implode. The first second was enough, the next 40? Pure passion. My father’s stereo, which before that day was primarily concerned with playing Dean Martin and Johnny Cash, must have been surprised.

I know I was. Then? Another driving song, this time about a sentient A.I. encased in an orbiting surveillance satellite.

The two satellite dishes on my house got married. The ceremony was awful, but the reception was amazing.

What? I was in heaven. The cassette was Judas Priest, the album? Screaming for Vengeance.

The theme of the music was unabashedly masculine. It was fueled by testosterone and optimism and defiance. It was, in short, everything I loved in life.

What was my ethos at that time? Full speed. Every moment in life. When I played football, I played football. Every ounce of my being was focused on the next play. The cleats digging into the turf, the snap as the center delivered the ball to the quarterback, my sudden sprint, and the exquisite feeling of my shoulder pads digging into that quarterback’s belly as I impacted him at full speed. Life was a game to be played at full speed. When a football game was over, win or lose, the idea that I would have left anything of myself or held back an ounce of myself? I never felt that after a single game.

Win or lose. Everything I had.

And that was the ethos. My focus was on doing everything that I could humanly do during the game. If we won? Excellent. If we lost? There was no room for regret since I had done every single thing I could for the team.

Amazingly, here that was, in music.

This music and most of the music I have loved since then was fueled by one concept – it was fueled by the idea that, in this life, there are winners, and there are losers. But there are no victims. I was responsible for my preparation. I was responsible for my effort. I was responsible for me.

If I won? Wonderful. If I lost? Yeah, it stung. But if I gave it my best, and lived up to my own values, I still won.

I took a survey of what soap people used in the shower. 95% of them told me to get out.

Again, winning was and is important. But a loss of a single day was nothing. Winning could and would come. And I would live my life, on my terms.

Have I been cheated? Yes. Have I been wronged? Yes. Did I stand toe to toe with my boss and tell him that I wouldn’t sell my honor and principles to him for any reason?

Yes. And did I pay a price?

Duh.

Do I regret it? Not for a minute. Not for a second.

There are moments in life, where honor and values will be tested.

Heck, that was in this music, too.

In this world we’re living’ in, we have our share of sorrow
Answer now is don’t give in, aim for a new tomorrow

Also in the music? Questions of deep philosophy. The eternal battle between Good and Evil. Oh, yeah, and hot chicks.

Eventually, this changed and fell out of fashion. I think it was Bush. Or maybe raising the drinking age to 21. Or maybe drugging generations with lithium and Adderall®. Or maybe the new “zero tolerance” lifestyle, where fighting for Good and being right still resulted in a suspension.

Or maybe all of that.

Kurt Cobain was depressed at 13. Guess that was his midlife crisis.

Music based on honor and testosterone and optimism eventually fell out of favor. I can even give you the date: September 21, 1991, when Nirvana launched Nevermind.

With the lights out, it’s less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us

That abomination of learned helplessness replaced this from Judas Priest:

Thousand of cars and a million guitars
Screaming with power in the air
We’ve found the place where the decibels race
This army of rock will be there
To ram it down, ram it down
Straight through the heart of this town
Ram it down, ram it down
Razing the place to the ground
Ram it down

One of these makes me feel like slitting my wrists. The other? Fills me with the idea that none of us are alone. We have power. We are . . . going to win, no matter what the damn odds are. Judas Priest is still touring. Kurt Cobain? Not so much. I guess it proves that one person can handle only so much Courtney Love.

Fast and furious, we ride the universe
To carve a road for us, that slices every curve in sight
We accelerate, no time to hesitate
This load will detonate, whoever would contend its right

I refuse to accept defeat. The idea is against every fiber of being in my body. I realize that I will not win every battle. And I am going to listen to music, and I am going to take in media that tells me the truth, but I shall never, ever, despair no matter how dire the situation. My family? They come from heroes. So does yours. Never, ever, give up.

I always took a piece of paper to a wrestling match. That way I could beat The Rock.

I’m not going to stop until I stop breathing. And I won’t relinquish my honor to any man. And I am responsible for every aspect of my life and my situation.

Oh, I did find the song I was looking for, a year later:

The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde, sing and cry
Valhalla, I am coming

But that’s another story, though the song remains the same.