Friday’s Musings, Including LEGO, Seinfeld, And A Ted Talk

“Clarice, doesn’t this random scattering of sites seem desperately random, like the elaboration of a bad liar?” – The Silence of the Lambs

LEGO® just put in a hospital near my house, but they only do plastic surgery.  It’s busy though, people are lining up for blocks.

Fridays are generally the more relaxed post of the week, so this one won’t be an exception.  Here are some random musings:

Joe Biden won’t be the nominee – the cliff of performance we’re seeing from him is too stark.  Kamala Harris has the charisma of chlamydia, so she’s out.  That leaves two players for the Democratic nomination, Mike Michelle Obama and Grabbin Nuisance, governor of California.

My prediction?  Biden will bow out at the Democratic convention.  He’ll very emotionally note that “for the good of the country” he’ll bow out in favor of Obama or Nuisance.  The big networks will already have this in the books, and the new candidate will get hours of free advertising from every network so they won’t be stained with Kamala’s chlamydia.

What does syphilis and chlamydia have in common?  Kamala.

It’s funny to watch the Leftists try to blame cold winters on Global Warming®.  Yup, they did that.  Global Warming© is the best thing that every happened to the Left:  it’s an excuse to solve weather fluctuations with global governmental control and communism.  Everything is about Global Warming™, and finally Leftists have figured out how to blame it getting cold on everything getting “warmer”.

Sigh.

To the Elite, every single event will be used to increase control.  Stayed up too late and tired at work?  Mandatory bedtimes, unless you’re protesting or at a BIPOC LGBT+ riot, in which case you get a guaranteed minimum income.

If Global Warming© doesn’t happen, it will be anti-climatic.

Whenever I feel far from God, it’s not because He moved.  Duh.  Most (90%?) of the problems I have in life are the ones that I created.  Wonder who is going to fix those?

Things happen when they happen, and not when they’d be easiest.  The proper time to install machine gun nests and to mine the southern border with Mexico was 1960.  Life would have been pretty simple if that happened.

But it didn’t.  Life is what it is, and not what we’d like it to be.  The solution to the border problem is obvious to any thinking person.  It will be taken, or the United States will Balkanize into a collection of warring states, or a Caesar will arise.  Regardless, we’ll get snacks.  Or unending low-level conflict.  To-may-to, to-mah-to.

The Swatch© in Switzerland, thank heavens it wasn’t made in Croatia – then people would have been staring at their Crotch™.

Peak racial amity in the United States was in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Barack Obama was (for race issues) the absolute worst president in the history of the nation, erasing decades worth of propaganda poured into virtually everyone from the 1960s on led to my generation being the least racist generation of white kids in the history of the United States.

Race issues will continue to go downhill as all of that is undone by the racial animus currently on display against white folks.  But, hey, we’ll always have Seinfeld.

As found.

I thought I was getting too old to enjoy books, since the recent ones I read sucked.  I then re-read older books that I had, and discovered the truth:  Older books were better.  It’s not because people were better writers back then, but editors and the people who pick the books that are published pick crap.

Yes, I think people are getting stupider on average, but there are a lot more of them, so there still are a bunch of smart writers, even more than before.  But people who can write books that don’t suck aren’t getting them published as much.  Regardless, it’s time to read more than I have in the last few years.  Books are the best way to understand the thoughts of someone from years or decades or centuries ago.

I wonder if my memes will be studied 2,000 years from now?

Speaking of reading, several years ago, I started reading books with a pen in my hand.  If I see something I like, I underline it.  If want to make a note, I make a note.  It makes it easier to summarize books for this blog, but it also will allow a future reader to see what I thought at the time.

The Mrs. noted that, as laudable as this habit may be, it’s still going to cause people to talk if they see me reading Ted Kaczynski’s book with a highlighter.

TED:  Ideas worth spreading.  (As found, and as if I weren’t on enough lists.)

I’m superstitious.  In high school I had a great football game (multiple sacks, multiple tackles, performed CPR on a child that choked on a Hubba Bubba®).  I used a particular roll of athletic tape before the game, so I used it the rest of the season.  There are dozens of things like that.  Humans have a pattern-seeking brain, and I have a good memory.  That’s not necessarily a great combination.

Sure, rationally, I know that these random coincidences are just random coincidences.

But you never know.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

53 thoughts on “Friday’s Musings, Including LEGO, Seinfeld, And A Ted Talk”

  2. I think the 80s were also a good eta for race relations. I grew up in SoCal in a very integrated area. Our Catholic Church had masses in Spanish, Tagalog (Filipino), and Korean. At Christmas time there would be a novena with each mass celebrating a different culture of our parishioners, I recall the Hawaiian was one of my favorites.

    Covid lockdown bs had my reading back in the upswing. Rereading 1984 and atlas shrugged was depressing, but then I read all the John Macdonald Travis McGee stories in order, then some of the others. The girl, the gold watch , and everything is a fave. Just started the longmire books and I think they are pretty good, just finished #3. The Bosch series was a good read too. Even finished the potter series and I have much respect for JK.

    1. Need escapist fiction? Try the Chase Gordon series (Douglas Pratt), Jesse McDermott series (Wayne Stinnett) or the Bluewater Killer series (CLR Dougherty) – especially if you are snowed in somewhere 🙂

    2. The 1980s were, as well. I read The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Everything back in 5th grade. What a great yarn! Related: Ballroom of the Skies.

      1. I recommend the collected works of Dick Francis. Which I own.

        (And if you know me well enough to show up on my doorstep, the guest room is floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.)

    3. The 80s, post Mr. Reagan, was the era where everyone, left and right, could have declared victory and left well enough alone.

      But we did not.

  3. Not only is racial animus on the upswing but it coincides with the culmination of the demographic shift that is making Americans a minority in their own country. One of the things I keep saying: once these non-White racial groups stop seeing Whites as their primary threat, they are going to remember how much they hate each other.

    2. The hate has been there for a long time. When I was a rookie Deputy Sheriff in SoCal, we had to separate the Negro inmates from the Mexican inmates. The Mexicans wanted nothing to do with them. In the late 80’s-early 90’s, a mob of Mexicans ran a Negro family out of their neighborhood in Compton, which had been a Negro enclave for years. This whole “White Racism” thing has been manufactured on college campuses and in the MSM. The white leftists behind this self-hating genocide will rue the day when they are slaughtered in their Blue Hives. This is one of the reasons so many politically conservative whites have moved to their own enclaves in other states. Bleib ubrig. – DTW.

  4. It’s pretty evident that the general intellect of America is declining. I’d say 50%+ of the populace thinks the Houthis are really The Hooties, Darius Rucker’s new band.

  5. Popular wisdom was that Mike did not have the work-ethic to run for POTUS but then FJB set a new, lower bar. So…maybe.

    Greasy-hair Nuke-um runs the shittiest state in the union by a wide margin. He can roll that in glitter but he can polish it.

  7. Older books were better. It’s not because people were better writers back then…

    I am appalled by what passes today for ‘literature’, and I am not so sure that writers of today are the equal of writers decades (and more) ago. If anything, it may be that publishers demand that writers dumb down their product to align with their dumbed-down audience. Compare anything that James Patterson and his minions have belched out to the works of Rudyard Kipling, for example. Even the simple, economical prose of Ernest Hemingway stands tall compared to the agenda-driven dreck being published today.

    I want to be challenged by what I read. I don’t want it pre-digested into small, bite-sized bits that tell me exactly what to think. If I want mindless entertainment that requires no reflection or concentration, I’ll watch cartoons. Or CNN.

    1. It’s not your imagination, modern books suck.

      https://wordsrated.com/bestselling-books-have-never-been-shorter/

      https://www.rd.com/article/have-bestsellers-become-dumber/

      I go thru the Huntsville Public library aghast at the changes – stacks of “graphic novels” and manga where the newspapers and magazines used to be, a century’s worth of old magazine back issues pulped, walls of endless DVD videos nobody wants to check out, coffee shops and teen-only videogame hangout areas, and the new arrivals area flush with LGBTQ+ titles beside tomes on why Trump and Fox News will destroy America.

      Lately (instead of doing something constructive, sigh) I’ve been prowling the used paperback stores to get everything Karin Slaughter has ever written, my current guilt pleasure. That woman knows how to write a crime novel.

      https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/karin-slaughter/

        2. You are not wrong. Not ready yet to tell tales out of school, but the drive to kill the old and hide it under a gloss of new is real.

          The ALA has been a clique of book-burning tools for a LOT longer than their new mascot.

          The key moments were when they assented to banning Dr. Seuss and acquiescing in the burning of Roald Dahl’s oeuvre.

      2. And if you wanna know how to “quantify” the writing of a book, autocrit is a good resource. Here’s their analysis of Karin Slaughter’s “The Silent Wife”:

        https://www.autocrit.com/blog/whats-the-score-silent-wife/

        TSW gets an excellent Flesch-Kincaid readability score of 80 while exhibiting the excellent pacing and tight emotional focus typical of her works. There’s a reason she’s considered one of the best mystery authors. She has perfected The Formula.

        And so, in coming years, will AI.

        1. Storm Front by Butcher has an FK of ~ 5th grade. It used to be my go-to book for the teen guy who didn’t read, and needed a soft entry. It is an excellent book.

          We are being distracted by incidentals, Mr. Ricky.

          Any one of the current crop of writers could have vocabulary, grammer, and technique galore; yet he would stand, unlike the writers of the 50s and, maybe into the 80s (civilizationally-speaking) on the shoulders of midgets.

      3. Your library has books?!? I remember fondly as a child going to our local branch of the LA County Library and it was full of books and the shelves were taller than a grownup. Had to climb the shelves to get to some of them.

        Now? Our local library has shelves a dwarf can see over and really spaced apart and it seems to be largely dvds and cds. I rarely check out physical books there, and the digital collection is lacking as well.

      4. I read a lot of sci fi and quickly learned that for books written after about 2010, it was a good idea to check author’s biography section very carefully before purchasing. Woke writers took over much of the genre, so much so that the Hugo and Nebula award winning books became unreadable (literally the only people winning the awards were lesbians, trannies or supposedly disenfranchised POC’s). While I have nothing against these folks, I found that every…..single….one…… of them wants to force their woke ideology on the reader. What they completely forgot is that good sci fi usually requires some actual knowledge of science, and has nothing to do about how oppressed you think you were growing up. The “science” in many of these books was so bad it was embarrassing.. I don’t even bother going into Barnes and Noble anymore as they cater specifically to these woke sci-fi authors.

        Maybe a side note on this, but the same thing applies to technical literature as well except the cutoff happened a few decades earlier (mid 90’s). I used to peruse technical periodicals at work, but began to notice that most of the new articles were poorly written and the experimental work was mostly garbage. I started talking to coworkers and realized they were doing the same filtering and didn’t even realize it. It’s sad because I can literally track the demise of US scientific capability by the precipitous decline in journal quality.

        1. Yes. Barnes and Noble’s SF section is awful.

          And magazines today are written for bright fifth graders.

  8. C.S. Lewis had an essay on why older books are still relevant, as I recall. He had a rule that for every “one” new book he read, he had to read an old one.

    I do not think that new authors are across the board bad – but I have to admit that I approach them much more gingerly than I used to as I do not want to invest time and energy in a book only to find out the author is just a reflection of modern thinking instead of a good storyteller or revisionist historian.

    The Democratic Convention will be interesting to watch. I am still not convinced the current resident will not be the nominee – there are parties that still are able to exercise influence that might lose influence if there was another sitting candidate.

  9. Want good stories? Read the works of the authors posting at “Mad Genius Club”.
    Raconteur Press is going great guns with anthologies.
    Baen Books is still a worthwhile publisher.

    1. Baen may be the last “big” publisher that’s publishing worthwhile SF. Yes, it’s out there. Wish it was in bookstores.

    2. Castalia House is the bee’s knees.

      Alao, “make ours Arkhaven” for my fellow uber-nerds.

      ‘Nuff said.

  10. On your habit if writing notes in the books you read, I’m sure the local library is pleased.

    I do much the same, but with a highlighter and a notebook on the side. I’ve solved several Hardy Boy Mysteries that way LONG BEFORE THE AUTHOR!!!

    1. Really pissed off my fifth grade teacher when I read ahead in a copy of a Nancy Drew mystery. I knew it was the Bidens before anyone else!

  11. Pedo Joe may not be the nominee…but I doubt he’s going to step aside with a speech at the Demonrats convention. He may be demented but his ego is fully intact. And while he is not actually in charge he
    believes he is. So he’s NOT going to step aside voluntarily. The DNC will have to remove him…and that
    may mean he suffers a “tragic accident” or a “deathly illness”.

    2. You’re assuming there will be an election after they declare war on Russia, Belarus, and Iran.

    3. Nah, they’ll just offer Hunter a way out. That’ll be enough. If Jill allows it (seriously on that point).

  12. a)
    “…football game (multiple sacks…”
    Close parentheses?
    .
    b)
    As early as fifteen years ago, I recognized AI-written books and articles.
    Perfectly worded sentences of repetitive lines, lacking thought-provoking innovation.
    .
    Mark Twain is fun.
    AI is dreary.
    “Eat ze bogs, be hoppy.”
    .
    c)
    And ‘yes’, Wilder memes will be required reading for millennia.
    Although dedicated anthropologists and academics may turn them every which way and backward in their quest for understanding TheGreatWisdom® of the mysterious Wilder Wealthy Wise, every single one will be taken seriously.
    Their loss…

    1. a) Fixed, and thank you!!!!
      b) Yup. The Internet is filled with websites no human wrote.
      c) I tried to read a book from about 400 years ago and the discussions on the issues of the day in the book was distracting to the point I had to put it down. Maybe I need to rewrite the “1000 Year Wilder” for people who won’t know who Johnny Depp was?

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