“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”-Steve Martin Plus? A sniper joke.

“Cash, every movie costs $2,184.” – Bowfinger

wildncrazy

I made this one up for fun when working on this post.  The Mrs. laughed so hard . . . I had to use it.  A link here (LINK) for the age impaired.  Link is probably PG-13.

“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”

That was what Steve Martin said when he was being interviewed by now unpersoned Charlie Rose and Rose asked what advice Martin would give to a young person.

Martin continued, “ . . . it’s not the answer they want to hear.”

It isn’t.

People want easy.  People want lottery money.  People want step-by-step guides, complete with phone numbers and instructions on how to become rich and famous.  And they want Steve Martin to do it for them.  Now please, we’re waiting.

Face it:  people want free stuff, not hard work and risk.

I can’t imagine that Steve Martin wants anything for free – he wasn’t raised that way.  He’s been a comedian, musician, screenwriter, playwright, and actor.  He’s been more successful at each of these than almost any person on the planet.  When you combine these successes, Martin starts to look less like an entertainer and more like a National Treasure©.  Maybe a National Treasure® we should keep in Tupperware® and wrapped in the good paper towels so we don’t scratch him.  We’ll get him out when company comes over.

But Steve’s success wasn’t free.  In his book, Born Standing Up, Martin talks about his road to comedy, “I did standup comedy for eighteen years.  Ten of those years were spent learning, four were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success.”  This is what those of a certain political persuasion call unearned overnight success.  It is obvious that this success was a result of Martin’s comedic privilege, because it takes a village to raise a comedian.

The concept of spending hours and hours, day after day, year after year seems a bit quaint now, when participation trophies assure every wonderful child that they’ll be successful no matter what.  What seemed fresh and new in his comedy routine when his wild success began was in reality the result of work, study, and effort that took fourteen years.  And he didn’t even have to “accidentally” release a sex tape to make it happen.

Did Martin know that his hard work would make him an icon known all the way around the world, worth millions of dollars?  Probably not.  Although it’s also certain that he didn’t wake up one morning and say, “Omigosh, there’s been some sort of error – where did all this money and stuff come from?”  And that line is comedy gold if you read it in Steve Martin’s voice.

Certainly, Steve Martin didn’t and doesn’t appeal to everyone – his persona of an entertainer that’s “just really bad at it” falls flat with certain people.  But Martin’s dedicated work created a skill set that appealed to enough people that Martin has true freedom – to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants.  At one point in Born Standing Up, Martin talks about how stand up became difficult for him when doing huge stadium shows – but he didn’t stop.  There were “too many zeros,” in his paychecks. So, he died an unremembered failure.

No, just kidding.  His next project, a movie called The Jerk, made $180,000,000, despite costing only $2,184 to make.  That was his next step.

I realize that there’s a difference between writing whatever comes to mind and working hard every day, every post, so that today’s writing is better than yesterday’s writing.  And that next week I’ll be better yet.  And that my writing strikes a resonance somewhere, with someone.  It creates value.

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This is true.  I still swoon when I think of it.

And getting good at any craft is not entirely straightforward.  Scott Adams (LINK) uses eighteen elements when writing humor, and edits himself ruthlessly.  Scott wasn’t a humor writing machine when he started, but he built his greatness with time and effort.  And it is effort – I watched a short video of Jerry Seinfeld talking about the effort that goes into making just one joke.  It can take an afternoon or more to get it right – and even then he spends time tweaking it, and this is the level of effort that is required by an experienced comedian.  Imagine how much more difficult it would be to be a rookie.

For me, I’m going to work harder, steal everything I can from Martin, Adams, Seinfeld, and study it.

And learn.

seinfeld

Imagine if I never told Jerry to change his hair?

I do want to say thanks to The Mrs., who has greatly encouraged me to get better.  The nice thing is she’s my harshest critic but also the one I won’t slug.  But I will, passive-aggressively, change all the radio presets in her car to Mexican flamenco music.  She’ll never guess that I changed the autocorrect for “John” on her phone to “His High and Most Worthy Lordship.”

martin

Just kidding, The Mrs. isn’t a trained assassin.  But don’t tell The Boy and Pugsley – The Mrs. just assigned them a mission to stealthily clean their bathroom.

I’m working hard to make myself better, every post.  So I can’t be ignored.

But failing that, couldn’t I just play the lottery?

I’ll just leave this here:

Civil War – The Necessary Conditions

“You mean the war betwixt the Yankees and the Americans?” – The Beverly Hillbillies

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I hear that Robert E. Lee was voted “Most Likely to Secede” in his West Point class.

A civil war is like a fire.  It consumes the energy and emotions of those around it and leaves destruction, desolation and debt in its wake – just like my first marriage.  But I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about civil wars and the necessary conditions for one.  After thinking about it, I’ve decided that a model for a civil war is fire.

firetriangle

For a fire to burn, it needs three things:  fuel, oxygen, and a spark which in turn creates the continuous burning reaction.  If you’re missing any one of those things, you simply do not have a fire.  An example – The Mrs. and I had a clay fireplace we used out on our deck (this was a long time ago – like during Bush II).  One day I was trying to start a fire in the fireplace, and the fire wouldn’t catch – the wood would just smolder – there was smoke, but no flame.  The reason for that was that the wood was a bit wet.  A-ha!  That’s okay.  I must have some charcoal starter liquid.  I looked in the garage.  All out.

But there was gasoline for the mower in the garage.

I poured just a tiny bit down the chimney of the fire place.  A tiny bit.  An itsy bitsy amount right onto the hot coals from the fire I’d been trying to make.  I looked down the chimney as I dropped a match into the pit.  Suddenly, a flame shot out of the chimney and washed over my face.  I had a beard at that time, and as the flame hit the beard it melted and burnt into kind of a single hair shell on my chin.  It smelled as good as burned blonde beard kebab.  Thankfully, no one was at home, so there were no witnesses when I took the scissors and chopped the welded chunks of congealed beard hair off.

It turns out that gasoline boils at a really low temperature, and when I poured the gasoline down the chimney, it landed on the hot wood that I’d been trying to burn and immediately turned from liquid into hot gasoline vapors.  The hot gasoline vapors were the fuel, fully mixed with the oxygen as they rose up the chimney.  All they needed was that spark, and all the energy stored in the hot gasoline vapors ignited at the speed of sound through the chimney in a de-beardifying whoosh.

But this is a model of Civil War not an ad for the use of flame as a shaving aid.  What allows a civil war to start?

  • Fuel – The differences in our opinions are shown pretty well in the most recent survey done by Pew, which is reproduced right below through the power of Internet sorcery. The Right is moving farther right.  The Left is moving farther left.  And in both cases the degree of overlap drops.  This increasingly small overlap between left and right means we’re not even talking the same language.  We look at the same picture, the same news story and react in entirely opposite ways.  The more fuel that builds up (generally) the greater the energy released when the fire starts.  Look to see a lot of hipster beards on fire.

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  • Spark – A spark is an event that’s bold, audacious, emotional, and one that means there’s no going back, things will never be the same again. These are often followed up by escalations, each one following the narrative of the split (the fuel for the fire) of the Godly and good us versus the evil baby-hating them:  shelling Fort Sumter; Caesar crossing the Rubicon at the head of his Legions; the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; and that night that Donald Trump poured sugar into Hillary Clinton’s gas tank.

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  • Oxygen – This is required for the fire to go – it feeds the chemical combustion. In this civil war/fire analogy, oxygen is symbolic of the opposing governmental structure.  In the Revolutionary War it was the Congress of the States that declared the war.  In the Civil War?  The Confederate States organized and met.  Even Caesar had at his disposal the governmental structure of the Legions that he commanded and the means to provide for them.  In all cases, a civil war needs a governmental structure to move from isolated insurrection to true war.

government

In 2018 I think there’s a lot of fuel built up – the division between Left and Right is increasing.  Twitter®, the Fake News (Pulp Fiction, Epsilon Theory, and The News Isn’t The News. Really.) and the concentrated attempts to deplatform entire viewpoints (Civil War, Cool Maps, Censorship, and is Fort Sumter . . . Happening Now?) are examples.  The Left is even rioting against free speech – the very thing the Left rioted to allow in the 1960’s.

I think the fuel is currently pretty wet – it’s inhibited because people just have so much darn stuff.  Who wants to go down to fight Antifa© when you’ve got to get to work the next morning so you can earn money to make payments on your new F-150 and you’ve got beer in the fridge and Netflix® on the television, which is probably more fun than punching smelly hippies?

Even Antifa™ has to get home early so they can keep working at Starbucks® and Mom still has them on a curfew.  But make no mistake – they have no interest in finding common ground – they want to fight.  And they don’t want to hear what anyone else has to say.  From CNN:

“Antifa members also sometimes launch attacks against people who aren’t physically attacking them. The movement, Crow said, sees alt-right hate speech as violent, and for that, its activists have opted to meet violence with violence.”  So, other people’s speech is violence, and their violence is only speech?

antifa(H/T AR15.COM – warning, naughty words)

But a prolonged economic downturn will dry the fuel out quickly.  Janis Joplin taught us that freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose (and that Bobby McGee could really sing the blues), and we won’t have Civil War 2.0 until people have nothing to lose.  The saving grace for many years has been the all the “stuff” that we have.  Before then we’ve had a fairly homogeneous population with (for the most part) deeply shared values.

We have sparks everywhere – from marches and riots to new laws and elections – things that drive both sides crazy.  These will intensify during an economic downturn, and will be played up in the press.  Conflict sells ads.

We are, however, missing the oxygen – the governmental structure that benefits from the war.  The current governing powers aren’t threatened by Antifa®.  They’re not really even threatened by Trump, since very few of his accomplishments will outlast his time in office – Supreme Court Justice appointments being a notable exception.  The swamp remains intact.  Government certainly isn’t threatened by the very far right, since two out of three Klan members (all, what, 1000 of them?)  are FBI agents or informants anyway.  And individual states have been more-or-less neutered since the Civil War changed the nature of the agreement between federal and state governments.

Civil war?  No.  Not unless the economy worsens, and not unless there’s a structure that benefits “the other side” – and who on Earth would benefit from a civil war in the United States?

aliens

Notes:

I am not the first use the fire triangle analogy when it comes to war – I found a reference to a Major Patrick Pascall who used a similar model in a 2009 paper to describe the insurgency in Iraq (LINK).  As far as I can tell, though, I’m the first to use it in this manner.  Yay, me!

Fire Triangle By Wikimedia User:  Gustavb – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, snarky comments:  me.

The Funniest Post You Will EVER Read About Genetic Engineering, Now Available in Cream or Roll-On

“Right, then!  I do the best I can for you, the bloody best, to set up your sniveling, snotty-nosed kid the way you want, and all I get in return for pouring fifteen years of research into the bloody boring composition of the bloody damn DNA molecule is a pair of pathetic twits, who, when confronted with bloody stats start a pathetic wiffle-waffle.  Right now, Mr. and Mrs. Stolwry, you have a perfect, beautiful specimen of a stocky, blond-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned, quilted, male shrimp-head welder, with pods.  Now, what more do you bloody want?  Frankly, it makes me sick!  Why don’t you go have your child naturally?” – Eric Idle on Saturday Night Live (1976) – I can’t embed the video but it’s here (LINK) and hilarious.

betteronpaper

Now you know why chicken wings are getting bigger.  If only it would make its own sauce.  I bet it does, in the Twilight Zone©!

We are at the beginning of a new age of humanity, and maybe even an entirely new type of humanity.  The first humans have been born where sections of their DNA (the genetic information that defines most everything of what they are) have been replaced with new information.  It’s exactly like someone recutting Toy Story® using dialogue from Fight Club™.  Oh, someone did that?  I do live in the best possible timeline:

It’s only two minutes: give it a watch, please.  My therapist says I need to share things.  But the first rule is that we shouldn’t talk about it.  Thankfully, I’m typing instead of talking.

But in this case, the genetic information that defines a living human being was cut out and replaced with new information.  And the human is an actual living human.

How did they do it?

Tiny scissors.  Really small ones.  And itty-bitty pieces of Scotch® tape.  Okay, they actually used a technique called “CRISPR”, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.  But for all you care it could stand for Clever Reindeer Intentionally Shooting Panda Rifles.  It doesn’t matter.  Let’s pretend it’s really tiny scissors and itty-bitty pieces of Scotch™ tape.

CRISPR allows editing of the DNA strand by using segments of DNA to match up with and replace the parts of the DNA that we don’t like.  And even though DNA is comprised of lots of molecules, in reality DNA is just information like pages in a book, or dialogue in a movie except if you try to replace passages in your book with DNA all you get is a mess and sticky fingers from turning the DNA soaked pages.  But back to the DNA:  some of the information on the DNA appears to be actual junk – it may not mean anything – but the rest of the information defines your height, weight, hair color, maximum intelligence, ability to play guitar, affinity for bacon, and, well, ability to write real good word thoughts (PLOT POINT!).

Editing the DNA with CRISPR allows the editing of new pages into a book, and even the individual letters in the book.  But better not end up leaving out the wrong word:

wickedbible

This Bible was printed in 1631 and is known as the “Wicked Bible.”  If anyone actually followed the instructions, there was probably oodles of amateur DNA transfer.  Hopefully not on the pages.

CRISPR can be used to edit mushroom DNA.  Or cow DNA.  Or . . . human DNA.  And now two human girls have been born and inserted into their DNA is the resistance to AIDS.

The first time I ran into the concept of genetic engineering was when I was a kid, watching Star Trek®.  When I was a kid, it was a law that every other show on television was a repeat of Star Trek™.  The idea of one episode, Space Seed, was that a group of genetically enhanced (mentally and physically) supermen led a war.  When they lost the war, they were shot into space in suspended animation.  Because prison was too complicated, I guess.  The leader?  Khan Noonian Singh, played in scenery-chewing fashion by Ricardo Montalban.

khan

Even Kirk is skittish about genetic engineering.

Any measurable human trait or combination of human traits from DNA can now be changed.  And almost every human trait is genetic in nature.  I know this from experience.  As much as you might think that I was conceived of during an immaculate conception witnessed only by the angels and attended by a gaggle of singing heifers in bloomers, well, that was not exactly the case, no matter what I tell my kids.  It was sweaty teenagers.  But I digress.  I’m adopted, but in the weird way where I’m actually related to the family that adopted me.  I couldn’t even get “unwanted abandoned child” right.  Such a failure.

Anyway, for every moment of my life until I was 35, I had zero contact with my biological father.  Zero.  None.  Nada.  Zilch.  Empty set.  And zero contact with any of his relatives.  Complete isolation from that side of my personal biodiversity.  But I had been told his name.  Then, one night under some assistance from a bit of Coors Light® I did an Internet search and . . . called a number.  He wasn’t there, but a week later we talked.  And it was unusual.

If you’ve read this blog, you know that I have a rather strange set of interests.  One day, jokes about fizzy toots, the next day political analysis, then genetic engineering.  But when I called my biological father it was odd – there was almost no subject that either of us brought up that the other hadn’t researched.  Oh, and he’s a writer (THIS WAS THE PLOT POINT PAYOFF).  Please don’t get me wrong, in no way do I want to imply that I feel anything but the strongest loyalty to the family that raised me, but I could see the similarities so much that I made up a really clever original phrase:  “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”  I’m glad that when they rebuild the last remaining Internet server after the Nacho Cheese War of 2331™, that I’m certain to be credited with my wonderful, original phrase.

But your grandma who didn’t like that little tramp you were dating was right:  genetics matter.

CRISPR puts the tools to optimize human traits in the hands of . . . humans.  Sure, we’ve been doing the amateur kind of genetic engineering for, well, ever.  And it’s resulted in some pretty interesting people, like, say, you.  Our genetic engineers were our mothers and fathers.  Men have broad shoulders because women like broad shoulders.  Women have . . . well, we’ll skip that for now.  Don’t want to say the wrong thing and have everyone think I’m a boob.

3boob

Beware of 12 year olds with the ability to create genetic modifications.

Who gets to play with CRISPR first?  The rich.  Specifically rich Chinese people.  Yes, regulations exist in China, but the regulations exist to protect the State, not the people, silly.  The only reason the Party would restrict rich kids from having SuperBabies 3000® is if the Party feels the technology is too powerful and keeps it for itself.

Make no mistake, this is an incredibly powerful technology, like alcohol on prom night.  I think that the Chinese elite will start snipping and tucking DNA so that their children are smarter.  Taller.  Stronger.  More confident.  Better nose hair, you know, the kind you can braid.  If you’re a billionaire, why not?  The Party will be fine with that, since it gives them the ability to see what the technology does.  I mean, understanding the complicated interactions between DNA molecules is tougher than dancing a polka striptease with a gopher.  And we all know what that’s like.

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Khan we fix your DNA?  Yes we Khan! 

Can you imagine being the master of this technology?  You can eliminate undesirable human traits, such as enjoying Taylor Swift® music entirely from your gene pool.  You can, if you are the Party, create the perfect Chuck Norris-like soldier.  A 9 foot tall (37 meters) basketball player.  The most loyal citizens.

If you are willing to sacrifice and experiment to quickly understand what the interactions are between multiple genetic changes and patient enough to await the results, you’ll quickly lead the world in a technology whose limits we can barely perceive.  And in a state controlled by a central Party, well, soon enough we could see a split so wide in human ability that humanity might look more like a colony of insects with different classes of humans genetically modified to follow their role as drone, soldier, queen, scientist, and blogger than the normal wild and feral band of humans we’re used to.  They’d be farther apart than Morlock© and Eloi™.

timemachine

H.G. Wells couldn’t have imagined that 800,000 years of human evolution could be done in an afternoon in an uncomfortably warm doctor’s office. But he also couldn’t imagine that Leonardo DiCaprio would ever win an Oscar®.

In China in a few years embryonic DNA modifications might become as common as vaccination in the United States.  Once the DNA gets into the gene pool of the country, it will stay there.  Perhaps in two or three generations China will have citizens that are entirely immune to some sort of biological agent that just, whoops, “accidentally” gets released to depopulate the planet and leave it free for China.

Shhh, but I think the Chinese have already measured Africa to see if all of their stuff would fit.

But in a twist resulting from an interaction between a snip that removed unsightly ear hair and a tuck that allowed all men to grow mustaches as full and perfect as the one Burt Reynolds had in Sharky’s Machine©, the remaining citizens develop an insatiable desire for eating humans.  What an ending!  Then Rod Serling can come out, smoking, with a good moral to the story.  Yay!

plagues

Okay – I love comments, and would love to have more, so don’t make me change your DNA so you’re chattier.  And don’t forget – you can just subscribe to this in the box above, and I’ll show up at least three times a week in your inbox.  Which won’t break it, unless you have a weak, girlie-man inbox.  And I won’t send or sell your address, ever.

The Funniest and Most Meaningful Black Friday Post . . . Ever.  Now 50% off, Today Only.

“It’s Black Friday, the day when ordinary house moms turn into vicious bargain hunting animals, blinded by low prices, and eager to get the Christmas shopping done early.  If this was a zoo I’d say run for you lives, but this is Buy More!” – Chuck

fiztoot

Mabel’s family was upset with her on the drive home.  They used Apple® products and didn’t have Windows™.  (I’m sorry for that joke, but by way of explanation I’m a father.)

Like many people, I try to avoid the stores on Black Friday.  If I were a mullet wearing geezer with my toga full of elf chum (please don’t ask me to draw a picture of that, I’m not even sure what elf chum is, and now that I’ve written it I feel vaguely dirty), I’d say Black Friday is maybe the one real American holiday that most people agree on.  Christmas is great, but when was the last time a group of people attempted to choke each other to death to get a gift-wrapped package of underwear on Christmas?  Never.  But put a 50%-off tag on socks with a pattern of Iron Man® smoking a bong with Donald Duck™ on them?  Heck, I’d drop kick a calico kitten through a box fan for a bargain like that!  Sure, we have great holidays like Fourth of July, but nobody ever died in a riot for 2 for 1 fireworks.

Bargains!  Free stuff!  Perhaps that’s the new slogan of the United States – Free Stuff!  And don’t forget that buying stuff is easier than actual salvation or real effort to be a better person.  And even if you don’t like toast – that toaster is only $5.  You can learn to love toast.

Perhaps Black Friday not only our true holiday, it is perhaps our true religious holiday.

zombie

You can tell that these zombies aren’t leftists – they don’t appear to be lecturing anyone.

I’m not going to make fun of people who are short of cash and frugal and truly need the items that they buy, but that only accounts for a small percentage of purchasers on Black Friday.  As Americans, we have been conditioned to shop.  Until we drop.  And don’t let Debt stand in your way.  And I use the word “we” for a reason – I’ve done it, too.  No, I would sooner investigate my hotel room with a black light and then still stay there than go in a store the day after Thanksgiving.  But I do have the Internet.  And I’ve bought stupid stuff:

  • Dog Waxer – rechargeable! Never let your unwaxed dog embarrass you again.
  • Solar Powered Night Light – Works best on a sunny day.
  • Internet-Connected Underwear – With your app, you can check the temperature and humidity.
  • Night Vision Scope for Caulk Gun – Now you can apply your caulk, even in the dark.
  • Crossword Puzzle Book for Dogs – Just as it says.

So, yes, I’ve bought my share of stupid crap, which made me ask the question:  why do we buy useless crap at all?

  • Impulse: I see shiny things.  I must have them.  The depths of the brain, that part that grunts instead of talking and that never uses underarm deodorant that drives this fascination.  Just give it meat, scotch, and women and the impulses will go away.
  • Herd Mentality: I will fight you to the death for the toaster that puts the fuzzy face of Bob Ross on toast!  They actually make a toaster that does this and I am hoping that the Discovery Channel® has a series coming where people fight to the death for consumer items.  Makes me feel so, well, Roman.  Humans want to have the things that other humans have, which is why so many ex-wives exist.  I’ll just stop right there.

bob ross

What a happy little toaster!

  • Makes You Feel Better: Shopping really works to make you feel better – it gives you a sense of accomplishment.  No matter how hard your day was, and what tasks you face, there is a 100% chance that you can buy something and it will make you feel a little bit better.  It gives you that sense of control, no matter how poor your decisions were today, you can find a breakfast cereal or, say, 436 pairs of shoes.  You can make a choice and follow through.  People even have a name for this type of shopping – “Retail Therapy.”

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The nice thing about Retail Therapy?  It costs about the same as real therapy, and you can still hate your mother when you’re done shopping for those 436 pairs of shoes.  So you have hatred and shoes left.  I call that a win-win.

Why not shop until you drop?  You can.  If it’s not a problem:

  • Well, if you’re going into debt for power tools just to chase the kids around with (a circular saw works well as long as you have enough extension cord) or sacrificing your ability to retire just so you can have a “Hello Kitty®” ashtray, it’s a problem.
  • If you have boxes of stuff you’ve never opened inside of other boxes of stuff you’ve never opened, it’s either a problem or a movie premise for Leonardo DiCaprio© for a movie called Inshopsion. There is a rule, however, that DVDs starring Burt Reynolds™ do NOT count in this category, so don’t even ask.

If you really need something to complete you, shopping isn’t it.  It’s short term, and only lasts until you’ve bought the next thing.  And the more crap you buy, the more confusion you bring into your life – sooner or later you have to spend more time managing the crap than it is worth.  Again, I know this from experience – my own.  And I still can’t find that spare kidney I bought on Kidney-Bay® on Black Friday back in 2012.  Maybe it moved back to the original owner.

How do you cut back?  Thankfully, the solutions are simple:

  • Replace shopping with something that’s a real achievement. Blogging for thousands of wonderful readers who have wonderful hygiene, immaculate mullets, and stunning good looks counts.  You know, as an example.
  • Look for real competition in the world. I mean, soccer was invented by European beatnik nudist jugglers to provide something to do while their berets dried and they drank cappuccino.  But, yes, even soccer will do.  Find something.
  • Bored? Learn to not be bored.  Take up chainsaw juggling.  European beatniks do it all the time between cigarettes and poetry readings.
  • One of the things we don’t thing about too much when we think about shopping is time. And time, my friends, is all we have, each day that ticks away is lost forever.  Plan your time to be and do something real.

We have to shop.  We have to buy things.  But as the Roman philosopher Seneca said, any over used virtue becomes a vice.  Or was that Captain Kirk?  I’ll go check my 12 disc collection of Star Trek:  The Original Series Commemorative 32nd Anniversary Edition Complete with Pink Tribble Box Set.  I got it on Black Friday in 2009 on sale for $24.99.  It might be here over behind the Original Smokey and the Bandit 2 jacket.  Who knew that Burt Reynolds was exactly my height, but only weighed 155 pounds?  Thing doesn’t even fit around the shoulders.

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Eastbound and Down.

Bonus:  Deliverance interview between Burt and Johnny.

Okay – I love comments, and would love to have more, so don’t be shy.  Or I will dropkick another kitten through a box fan.  And don’t forget – you can just subscribe to this in the box above, and I’ll show up at least three times a week in your inbox.  Which won’t break it.  And I won’t send or sell your address, ever.

Trump: The Last President?

“President Camacho: ‘Number one:  We’ve got this guy Not Sure. Number two: He’s got a higher IQ than any man alive, and Number three: He’s going to fix everything.’” – Idiocracy

lastpresidentbook

You never want to make the call too early.  By the way, in this book, there is a minor character (cabinet secretary) by the name of the name of the Last President was Pence.  Oooh, goosebumps.

Donald Trump may be the last President of the United States.

There will certainly be people that will follow him that will use the title, but their allegiance won’t be to the electorate as a whole – their allegiance will be only to the Left.  As we see in California now, the entire mechanism of state government has switched to a uniform Leftist government – the California Republican Party is as potent a political force as a group of twelve year old My Little Pony® fans at an MMA© event.

The Governor isn’t the Governor of California, especially when he won in a 57% to 43% victory.  The Governor is the Governor of the Left, and will represent the Left, not the electorate in general.  The swing vote, which has moderated elections nationally is absent in California.  The swing vote means that the most uninterested people have the levers of power.  That category of people simply does not exist in California.

Party leader?  Sure.  Governor?  Well, in name only.  In reality, the recently elected Governor is the Democratic Party leader.

Recently, we’ve had contests at the national level for President – the swing voter makes a difference.  Could McCain have won in 2008?  No, not really, mainly because no one liked him.  Could Romney have won in 2012?  Maybe, but it would have been like electing your middle school principal as President.  The fact that Trump did win in 2016 was relatively surprising to me.

Trump’s victory did expose part of the genius of the founding fathers.  Despite the popular vote being in favor of Clinton, Trump concentrated on and won the Electoral College.  The Electoral College isn’t a genius move because Trump won – the Electoral College was a guarantee of the essential promise of the Constitution to the States that the small states wouldn’t get dragged around like a St. Bernard’s chew toy (small states hate slobber), but it also provided a trap against voter fraud and a mechanism for nearly instant legitimacy of the elected President.  In order to cheat on a national election, you’d have to cheat in state after state after state.  Cheating in New York City or even statewide in Texas alone won’t do elect a fraudulent President.  And while it’s uncommon it’s not unheard of: Trump is the fifth President to be elected by winning the Electoral College without winning the popular vote.

But on election night 2018, Bill Kristol tweeted:

‘I’ve always disliked the phrase “demography is destiny,” as it seems to minimize the capacity for deliberation and self-government, for reflection and choice. But looking at tonight’s results in detail, one has to say that today, in America, demography sure seems to be destiny.’

I rarely agree with anything that Kristol has to say, so I think he might have been on Ambien™ when he tweeted that.  But he’s right.  And Bill Kristol being right makes me certain he was on Ambien®.  The Right faces a serious headwind in future elections.  A few data points:

  • Before the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, California was reliability Republican. After that law passed?  California dived quickly into the Leftist camp – the primary driver being the rise of first generation citizens being allowed to vote – a group that strongly skews Leftist, by 3 to 1 or more.  When I was a kid, California was a shining economic model of progress.  Now it’s a poster-child for income inequality and poverty.  So California’s got that going for it.

California

  • Florida has one major group that will impact future elections – newly-minted predominantly (5 to 1 Leftist) ex-felon voters approved by a Florida constitutional amendment just approved this election. 5 million ex-felon voters, which using extremely conservative math nets the Left 400,000 more votes.  Donald Trump won by 110,000 or so votes.  Additionally, we’ve seen that Florida is a mess after a close vote.  With lots of “ballots I just found in the pocket of my other coat,” if you know what I mean.  Wink, wink.

florida vote

  • Texas is moving Left.   Yes, Cruz beat Beto, but those demographics that Kristol talked about appear here strongly, and I wrote about it before (The Fall of Texas and the Coming One Party State).  Texas doesn’t turn Left in 2020 unless the economy really, really tanks.  Probably 2024.  Certainly 2028.  2032?  Expect posters to Stalin©.

texas

  • The economy. It ran on 0% interest rates for years.  Now that the Fed is attempting to raise rates?  At some point the party is over and the economy will hit a recession – probably before 2020.  If Trump is lucky?  A recession in 2019 would be good.  Like right away.  Presidents don’t do well running for re-election in the middle of a recession.  It’s like trying to lick a flagpole at -40°F (-40°C) – it’s embarrassing to be there and requires the fire department to save you.  Ask Jimmy Carter.

collapse

  • The process of drawing legislative voting districts to benefit your party is as old as the Republic. It even has a name, gerrymandering, named after Elbridge Gerry, governor of Massachusetts when they said the strange congressional district he created looked like a salamander.  Gerry+salamander=gerrymander.  Or maybe it was his wife, whose nickname was “Lizard Lips.”    Republicans have 33 governorships, so they’re getting pretty good at drawing districts that would make Gerry proud.  But the Left is using judges to undo the creative districting, which makes it rougher to gain a majority in the House of Representatives.

gerrymeme

Many of these changes are permanent and spread to other states.  Folks leaving California because it’s too much like California move to wonderful places such as where my brother John Wilder lives.  (There’s a longer version of why my brother’s name is John Wilder, but let’s just assume our parents weren’t very imaginative.  We at least have different middle names.)

What happens when they move there?  Well, being normal Californians, the first thing they do is get on the Homeowners’ Association boards, because people from California really like telling other people what to do.  My brother attended a meeting of his board one night.  Sage McUnicorn, who had recently moved from California, motioned that the new trash company collect recyclables every week.

My Brother John:  “Don’t they charge extra for that?”

Sage O’Smurf:  “Namaste, yes, but it is good for the planet.  It will help us protect Mother Earth.  It’s only a few hundred dollars a year.  Don’t we all love the Earth that much?”

My Brother John:  “You’re saying that you want to charge every person in this neighborhood extra money to pick up newspapers and plastics that the trash company just dumps in a landfill?  (That’s what the trash company was doing then. – JW)  How is it responsible to force another person to pay for your views?”

Sage MacRainbow:  “The oracles tell us that is how it is done.  Never pay for your own convictions.  That could get expensive!”

My brother’s argument actually swayed the HOA.  They didn’t end up with a recyclable fee.  But the point remains:  Californians who leave California because it is, well, California, want to move to new places to make them just like California when they get there.  It’s like when zombie bites you, but you get a lecture, too.

sip

I took this picture in California in February of 2016.  I hear now the water is recycled right out of the toilet to the water fountains.  I guess that’s why I only drank wine when I was out there. 

Trump in 2020 has headwinds against him.  In 2024, however, all of the demographic changes have continued another four years.  Texas may be as permanently left as California has become, and Florida may have joined it, if Florida can figure out how a pocket calculator works by then.  Without Florida?  Re-election looks grim even in 2020.

If every future election has a foregone conclusion, that leaves the President as a single party leader of the Left.  And in Washington D.C. the Left has been consistently more disciplined on voting, though they do tend to form circular firing squads on policy.  Given the thin Senate majority now, another decade of demographic change might allow truly uniform and consolidated power as all legislative bodies are captured along with the Presidency.  And at that point the United States is a de facto single party state, with a minority party that is just for show.  A list of single party states that look like this includes such human rights wonders and great vacation spots as Turkey, South Africa, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.  I mean, who wouldn’t love to live in those places?

Frankly, my favorite government is grid lock.  The government is best that can’t figure out what it wants to do because it’s fighting with itself, because it then manages through sheer incompetence to leave you alone.  Maybe that could be my slogan in 2024 – “Wilder, for the ineffective and confused government you deserve!”

Next Monday . . . we’ll look more how this sets up a Civil War.  But smile.  We have Netflix® now, right?

netflix

Smoking, Orphans, and the French

“Yes.  Give him his cigarettes.  It won’t be the nicotine that kills you, Mr. Bond.” – You Only Live Twice

orphanadopted

An early but failed attempt at a cigarette advertisement as they ran out of orphans too quickly.

Heart attacks were unknown before 1900 – probably because 97% of people before 1900 died in surprise buffalo stampedes and dysentery on the Oregon Trail®.

the-oregon-trail

But I recently learned something that fascinated me.  Heart disease has plummeted during the last fifty years.  Here’s the graph.  I found it here (LINK), with a h/t to Mangun (LINK):

heart

So, heart disease is plummeting.  But I thought we were getting fatter?

nchoverweight

Not good.  There’s a lot of Oreos® and regret in that graph . . . .

According to the NIH, we are getting fatter.  But we’ve (more or less) eliminated heart disease as a cause of death.  Huh?  I would have thought that heart disease would have increased during that time period abetted by a high-fructose corn syrup diet, increasingly sedentary lifestyle, Netflix®, the Internet, and reliance on every modern convenience.  Oh, wait, that’s just me.

Not saying being fat is healthy – it’s linked to a large number of issues including very large pants.  But not so much heart disease.  So what changed between 1900 (effectively zero heart disease) and 1965 (when heart disease peaked) and today?

Cigarettes (graph is from the CDC).

cdcsmoking

Sure people smoked before 1900.  Mark Twain smoked the equivalent of the population of Honduras in cigars every day.  And people smoked pipes, often while cultivating manly mustaches that looked like creatures from an H.G. Wells novel.  But cigarettes?  Not so much, as cigarettes were French, and even back in 1900 no one liked the French.  54 cigarettes per year per person were smoked in the United States in 1900.  In 1965, the peak year for heart attacks was also the peak year for cigarette smoking, when Americans smoked 4,259 cigarettes per person, per year.  And they looked so very cool, except for the heart attacks.  And the berets.

ripper

Also, Watson, an amazing fact:  Kermit The Frog has the same middle name as Jack The Ripper.  Not a coincidence I think . . . the game is afoot!  Let’s catch a Muppet® murderer!

The difference between cigars (or pipes) and cigarettes is that no sane person inhales pipe or cigar smoke.  Again, not saying that either of those things are particularly healthy, but it appears that pulling the chemicals from combusting tobacco into your lungs is a bad thing.  I mean, not as bad as being an orphan, but bad.

orphans

Also, can an orphan eat legally in a family-style restaurant?

Could it be other things, like statins?  Nope – they were late to the party, and there are significant debates about if they’re good for you at all.  Aspirin may be a factor in the lowered death rates, but it really seems like smoking cigarettes . . . might be bad for you.

As usual, I am compelled by my lawyer to tell you I’m not a doctor, and that pesky court order requires me to tell you that I’m not allowed around pumpkin pie when there’s lighter fluid nearby, but my conclusion is probably pretty innocuous:  don’t smoke cigarettes, unless you want to die early of a sudden heart attack and save more Social Security money for me.

Twitter, The 1%, and Thanksgiving (Not Available in Canada)

“If you could fight any celebrity, who would you fight?”
“I’d fight Gandhi.” – Fight Club

twitterfight

I’m not saying that an evil psychic entity made me send those tweets at 2am.  But I’m sure the wine had nothing to do with it.

Twitter® is living proof that the IQ of any group can be measured by the taking the average group IQ (which should be close to 100, I would hope) and dividing it by the number of participants.  Since there are over 6,000 tweets per second on the system, well, that means the IQ of Twitter® is 0.02, which is slightly above a rock, but still slightly below anyone dating a Kardashian or a common houseplant.  But I repeat myself.  Slap fights between dim kindergartners are often more founded in firm intellectual rigor than a Twitter© argument, and said arguments are generally about as productive as trying to teach a dog to say “milk.”

But I hadn’t figured that out a year ago.  It was back then that I commented on a breathless news story about the evil top 1% in the world.  I pointed out that almost everyone on Twitter® was in the top 1%.

The howls of outrage began.

outrage

I admit the whole Handmaid’s Tale obsession on the left cracks me up, you know, because we’re on a course to live in a theocracy.  But if we have to live in a theocracy, can’t it be a sexy one?  Sexy, sexy theocracy.  Mmmm.

Okay, it was mainly just this one guy – I think he was from Great Britain.  He was incensed that I would make such an outrageous statement.  His idea was that the 1% was evil.  It must be taxed, and taxed ferociously for the betterment of the entire planet.  He was filled with a mixture of outrage and envy.  Outrenvy?  Anyway, I then cited statistics that stated that to be in the top 1% in income in the world you need to make only $32,400 per year, or whatever the equivalent was in the fancy wrapping paper that he used for currency instead of sweet, sweet American dollars.

englandmeme

Ahhh, England, using children to do the jobs Americans won’t.

There was a long pause.  $32,000 per year is only $16 per hour.  $16 per hour seemed like not a lot of money to him.  Certainly he didn’t want to be taxed, he wasn’t an evil rich guy.  Other people are evil rich guys.  So, he switched the argument to wealth.  To be in the top 1% in the world in wealth, yes, the bar is a little higher.  Including all sources of wealth, homes, chickens, cars, that toenail clipping collection, and your mom’s secret spaghetti sauce recipe (tomato paste and a little garlic and oregano), to hit the top 1% requires $770,000.  That’s a taller hill than the $16 per hour, but still one that’s achievable for many Americans in their lifetime.  I don’t know about Great Britain, since my conception of their economy involves lots of singing chimney sweeps with bad teeth and I have no idea what chimney sweeping (singing or not) pays.  But let’s be frank, $770,000 isn’t Bond villain-level money, unless James Bond’s villain is living in a partially paid off house in the suburbs and maybe has a decent 401k balance.

bond villain on a budget

Times are tough, even the Bond Villains are on a budget.  Hope they have enough credit limit left for date night and a space-based orbital laser system.  You know how much date night can cost.

So, in the big scheme of things:

  • You’re doing okay.
  • You’re alive.
  • You’re likely in the top 1% in income . . . in the world.
  • Besides – you’re more than your money, more than your income, more than your net worth. You’re also your Rolex® collection.
  • You’re a handsome devil, and have an intellect way above average.
  • You’ve got a lot to be thankful for.

We’ll get back to the big picture soon enough in future posts, but in the time it took you to read this sentence, you have to admit – you were doing okay.

And me?  I’m thankful that I figured out not to get involved in Twitter© slapfights.

So, Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are.  Except Canada.  You can’t even get that right, Canada.  Thanksgiving in October?  Is that when the Moose and Beaver signed a treaty not to invade Nova Scotia or something???

candian navy

Last TEOTWAWKI – The Battle for Yona, Final Thoughts on EMP, How To Power Your Car With Smoke

“Dear readers, there was no Battle of Mayberry. The only casualties were one scrawny cow, three deer, and a mule who had the misfortune to look like a deer.” – The Andy Griffith Show

little end

Ahhh, the joy of teaching children to read.  And to kill mutants and zombies.

This is part ten of a multipart series.  The rest of them are here:  (Civilization, The Iron Triangle, and You, Civilization After an EMP: TEOTWAWKI (Which is not a Hawaiian word), TEOTWAKI Part III: Get on your bikes and ride!, Internet Cats, TEOTWAWKI Part IV and The Golden Horde, TEOTWAWKI Part V: Camaro and Camo,  TEOTWAWKI Part VI: The Rules Change, The Center Cannot Hold, TEOTWAWKI Part VII: Laws of Survival, Mad Dogs, The Most Interesting Man in the World and TEOTWAWKI Part VIII: Barricades, Tough Decisions, and Tony Montana),  TEOTWAWKI Part IX: Home at Last, and the Battle of the Silo and TEOTWAWKI Part X: Gump, Wheat, and Chill: Now With 100% Less Netflix.

Back to the action:

It’s one thing to be shot, but it’s quite another to be stuck with your face stuck in the soft clay mud of a creek bank while bullets zip over your head.  The nice thing about being shot, well, is that it’s over.  The slow, continuous beat of the rifle fire continued, and, let’s be real, it’s kinda terrifying.

My bet was that they figured out how to count.  And the thing that they were counting was the number of bullets that they had left.  The US military had evolved from the Revolutionary Army which had to conserve ammunition to fight a stronger foe with better logistics to one where upwards of 20,000 rounds of ammunition were fired per enemy casualty during World War II.  Some records indicate 200,000 rounds were spent per casualty in Vietnam.

Not now.  Every round should count.  It was going to be a while before the ammunition factories came back online, if ever.

breakfast

Sure signs of savagery. 

And on the side of the Watch, we were specifically told to hold our fire until we had targets that we could hit.  Since the other side was just shooting, well, I assumed that they were either long on ammunition, or were shooting to keep our heads down so they could advance.

I crawled on my belly up to the edge of the creek bank.  I could see six of the invaders running towards me, zig-zagging.  75 yards out.  I pulled up my 30-.06 and took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.  I sighted and led the first man headed my way.  I squeezed the trigger.  Down.  I worked the bolt of the rifle and selected the nearest runner.  Squeezed.  He went down.  And again.  And again.  When it was just two runners, they turned and ran backwards, towards the big round hay bales in the center of the field.  They dove behind the hay bales before I could get a good shot.  I stayed low, behind the trees that grew near the creek.  Thankfully, the creek bed was steep enough that I could hide there.

Something about being shot at, made it easier to shoot back, but I hoped it never got easy.  I already knew I’d see those faces every night when I closed my eyes to go to sleep.

This was the battle of Yona Creek.

I don’t live in Yona, of course.  I live in Millerville, fifteen miles to the south of Yona.

But after Yona, this same rogue army would be heading toward my home there if we didn’t stop them here.  I know that

It was 45 days after the EMP.  We’d been hit enough times that we were fairly sophisticated.  We had younger men and women that were news runners.  On a bicycle, a fifteen mile ride was pretty easy, generally didn’t take more than an hour.  When you built a network of these news runners up, well, you had nearly real time news from the towns, plus real time traffic information.

Okay, that was a joke.

farside

Thankfully, we had run out of coffee before this happened.

Most of the news was small news, someone cracking up and shooting up his home.  Someone giving up and committing suicide.  New births.  Shortages of medicine.

But what people were really interested in was The Drift.  That’s what we called it – The Drift of people from cities toward us.  Millerville was in the middle of a network of communities – there wasn’t really a way to Millerville without going through the surrounding towns, but Millerville had volunteered it’s sons to protect the border.  Better to fight them in Yona than at home.

But in order to be prepared when the invaders showed up, they had to know that they were coming.  Early on, barricading the roads had worked.  Not so much now after nine weeks.  People had figured out that legs don’t have the same restrictions that wheels do, and when coming to a town, they now took to fields and creek bottoms to avoid the roads.  Now, only the most dangerous people took to roads.  Or the most stupid ones.

How to cover this area and know when people were coming?

Scouts.

The Scouts were young men, 16-24 or so.  Able to camp.  Able to move quickly and report back when contact was made.

And they had.

At night, they could flash lights to the high point where we maintained a lookout.  During the day, they’d make their way back to town as soon as possible or use mirrors to flash to that same lookout.  They’d met up with a force of people, 45 or so, headed our way.  With guns.  Given that the Scout had provided a location and size, we grouped our people together into a blocking force along what we guessed was their line of attack.

And since invaders no longer had the advantages of a modern military – maneuver, munitions, artillery and air support, well, the idea was to dig in behind cover.  The era of fixed defenses and aimed rifle fire being supreme had returned.  Thankfully, Lieutenant Brady was leading the Yona defenders.

—–

Former Corporal Walt Davis, late of 1st Platoon watched the aborted rush toward the creek bed.  He winced as each of his men went down.

That was okay.  The rush had served its purpose.  A group of twenty, fully half of the men he had left, had snuck into position during that rush.  They were ready to work up the creek bed and flank the defenders.

Walt was mad.  This was supposed to be easy.  They had seen the Scout as he fled them on his bike, and Walt knew that not shooting him was the biggest mistake he’d made since the EMP.

He ordered the real attack to begin.

—–

After Davis sent his men forward into the creek, Lieutenant Brady, who had been concealed with fifty men due east of 1st Platoon, in a drainage ditch, signaled his men forward.  I saw them.  Two clicks on my cheap Wal-Mart® kiddie walkie-talkie (it was a pink cat) told Brady that, as expected, the enemy was trying to flank the force in the creek bed.  Thankfully, Brady had selected a good position, well concealed.  100 yards of open country and he could engage with Walt’s flanking team.

hellraiserii

I wonder if the walkie-talkie was Great Value®?

Brady motioned his thirty or so men forward.  Most were wearing hunting camouflage, better suited for turkey hunting than sneaking up on armed soldiers during broad daylight.

They made it 75 yards – tantalizingly close to the creek.

—–

Walt spotted them as they were within 20 yards of the creek.

“Dammit!  Swing the M240 over there!”  He pointed at Brady’s men, still obscured by the trees.  “Fire!  And go get them!”  He motioned his last twenty men forward.  The M240 was the standard light machine gun for the Army, they called it “the pig.”  Belt fed, and it shot 650 rounds a minute – 10 a second.  They were down to a less than 2000 rounds.  Regardless, it was powerful on the battlefield.

—–

I had never heard a machine gun in real life before.  It made constant thudding beat as it opened up on Brady’s men.  It had taken precious time, so most of Brady’s men made it to cover but still, 15 men went down as the weapon washed back and forth. The element of surprise was somewhat muted by sound of the machine gun, but Brady’s men still had the advantage.  His remaining 35 versus Walt’s 20 gave him numbers, and since most of his men had semi-automatic AR-15s, they even had similar weapons.

Or would have, if not for that stupid machine gun.  I could hear it, and I could see roughly where it was shooting from.  I pulled my rifle up.  No shot.

But if I moved out of the tree line, to the left . . . I crouched down and ran.  There.  I could see it.  I dropped to the ground, sighted, and squeezed the trigger.  The gunner went down, the gun went silent.  Another man jumped forward and grabbed it.  I worked the bolt and fired again.  Another man down.  And I then looked and saw 18 men looking my direction, and I’d left cover behind.

I worked the bolt.  Out of ammo – I needed to reload.  The bullets started kicking up dirt as they hit around me.  I tensed and thought about running back to cover – likely a fool’s choice since the moment I got up I’d be fully exposed.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to make that decision.  At that time, Brady charged.  Walt’s men turned and retreated.  They didn’t run away – they took turns covering each other, slowing Brady’s charge.  After a few hundred yards, Brady broke off.  We’d broken their nose.  They wouldn’t be back again.  They’d find someone weaker.

In the fall that followed, we had our first harvest.  It was small.  But we were learning.  A lot of the ancient tractors could be put to work, and repaired.  We even managed to fix up old harvesting equipment and learn how to make replicas in the factory nearby.  Next was fixing the diesel issue.  But we were on it, learning how to make biodiesel and how to make wood-gas powered tractors.

I work at the factory, the “veteran” with one good arm who works on the lathe.  My boys are in the Watch, working for Brady; one of them is a Scout.  And we live for today.

wood

Home heating after the apocalypse.

There’s so much we don’t know.  We hear rumors.  Someone with a functional shortwave set said that they’d heard some broadcasts that said that Mexico had collapsed, and that portions of that nation had just headed north, and was in the process of fighting the Chinese in what used to be California.  The East Coast was nearly depopulated.  Miami had been lost to Cuba.  Nobody knew if any of this was true.  News from a state over was exotic.  News from the coasts was probably more myth than news.

Was something other challenge coming?  I don’t know.  I don’t think anyone does.  We just go day by day, in a world with a much slower pace.  On most days, that’s enough.

Tomorrow will take care of itself.

###

We are so used to information – we can email the International Space Station, we can email researchers at the South Pole.  We are connected, and used to knowing what’s going on everywhere.  However, if you go back 50 or 100 years, there was still national news in the paper, but there was a much richer amount of local news.  I can name the Supreme Court justices, but I can’t name the county commissioner that serves my area.

I do think that in the scenario I’ve set up, information and resource sharing would be fairly high.  Plenty of people around here don’t bother to lock their doors.  And given that we have lots of food, the main thing we’d have to be concerned about is defense, and here in the Midwest, we can’t defend a farm by ourselves.  Idaho’s remote cabin?  Maybe.  Here?  No.  Too accessible.  It’s the wild west, and the Comancheros are everywhere.

But one big question that’s still outstanding is:  is an EMP a real thing?  Last week I was informed by the inimitable Hans Schantz to information that at least one person says, EMPs aren’t a concern – a link to a summary of his ideas is here (LINK), and he has a book out.  That’s worth consideration, especially since so much of the data is flat unavailable and classified.

One thing that does seem to be the case is many more cars MAY work than originally thought.  When I first learned about EMP, the general consensus was that cars built after the advent of the electronic ignition wouldn’t work.  So, early 1980s.  Later tests have shown that most of the cars tested (1990’s to 2003) worked.  And all of them seemed to be “okayish” if they weren’t on during the EMP.

nuka

But who is a paid agent of Nuka?  Hmm?

Here’s a link to some pretty substantial information that was most recently brought up by a link from 173dVietVet last week (LINK).  It’s got a lot of great information.  Also the EMP Commission and their reports can be found here (LINK).  I also found some work done by the Army.  Computers were toast.

FEMA did, however, do research on how to fuel vehicles on partially combusted wood gas – smoke if you will.  The plans are here (LINK).  Half of Europe was running on wood gas when the Allies invaded.  It works.  And if you use cedar?  It smells wonderful.

In one sense, having the cars knocked out by an EMP is a best case for people living in the country.  The chaos in the cities is more-or-less contained in the cities.  Sure, people walk out of Thunderdome, but not as many will make it over fifty miles if the car is toast.  In an EMP-like event where the cars all work?  No place is safe.  And towns won’t have enough time to react to defend themselves.  Not a pleasant thought.

But the East Coast is certainly the worst place to be.  I would expect that not one out of 100 people would survive a winter EMP, cars or not.  Most people in urban environments have great survival instincts, if survival is defined as finding a place that serves sushi at 2AM.  If it involves not dying in the cold, not so much.  I learned that when (a long time ago) I was in a training session with actual adults who didn’t know what a sleeping bag was.  I’m sure these same people think that steak is manufactured in a factory some place and that milk comes from a milk well someplace.

Stupid city people.  We all know that milk is mined, not pumped.

Pulp Fiction, Epsilon Theory, and The News Isn’t The News. Really.

“Zed?  Zed’s dead, Baby.” – Pulp Fiction

dead news

So if the Internet is a motorcycle and Bruce Willis is original thought, at some point . . . we should just go drinking and stop thinking.

How much of your news . . . isn’t news?  Turns out, a lot.

It starts out, for me, with a video on fiction writing:

The international-selling author Rob Kroese (buy his stuff, it’s awesome LINK) published a link to a YouTube (more about them later) video on Twitter®.  This video is below; it’s exceptional advice for writers of fiction.  In it, Trey and Matt point out that there simply must be causation in a story to make it pay off for the reader.  A story isn’t just a sequence of events that happen and are randomly connected via the conjunction “and” – no.  A story is a sequence where one event leads to the next, and there is causality.  It’s not “and” it’s “because.”  That’s the reason that Pulp Fiction is so awesome.  Tarantino sets up a sequence of well thought-out stories and makes you, the movie goer, unjumble them to discern the real causality that underlies the plot.  The genius is making you find the “because” and “therefore” of the film.  The best part is that it only becomes clear at the end of the film how it all works together.  Sure, it’s a one-trick pony thing to do, but it was masterfully done in Pulp Fiction, enough so Tarantino can still coast off that genius for decades.

Trey and Matt, please go back and watch early episodes of South Park©.  It’s not too late to Make South Park™ Funny Again:  #MSPFA.  Check out the guys from the Venture Brothers® – they manage to do it.  Especially all the Rusty Venture stuff.

Pulp Fiction is a movie where we were looking for causality to bring it all together for us.  However, Rusty Guinn, writer extraordinaire from the excellent site Epsilon Theory (LINK) made an outstanding connection.  He has for some time been talking about Fiat News.  Here it is in his own words (emphasis in the original):

The Washington Post is in the fiat news business. They are trying to influence our political process to their institutional benefit, just like the Wall Street Journal and every other mainstream media institution is in the fiat news business. The Washington Post is never a foe to a status quo American regime, regardless of which party is in the White House, as the regime bestows on them the authority to issue fiat news. Still, if you trust the Washington Post, you are no less a fool.

The fiat news business is booming. As a result, the counterfeit news business is booming, too. And if the history of fiat money and counterfeit money is any guide, we ain’t seen nothing yet. (LINK)

 

So the short version of this is:  a good story is poor news.  What makes Pulp Fiction great, what makes spy stories exciting is that narrative.  I don’t need that narrative with my news.  I don’t want to hear the newscaster come on the radio and say, “It’s 38°F outside (291°C) because global warming is FAKE NEWS.”  I also don’t want the newscaster to say, “It’s a scorching 102°F (-391°C) because TRUMP WANTS YOU TO DIE OF GLOBAL WARMING!”  Yet I hear similar stories about the weather all of the time.  “Hurricanes increasing because of global warming,” when I heard nothing of the sort about hurricanes declining because of not global warming in the relatively hurricane-free recent years.   Even weather events are co-opted for Fiat News.  Every story that can be remotely part of the narrative is brought in.

And before you complain about my temperature conversions, the metric system is for countries that haven’t put people on the Moon.  Nanner-nanner.

uncomfortable news

Oh, that’s where Fiat News comes from.

It’s especially stark where I live.  On my morning drive, I have the option of a radio station playing music from when Nixon was president, a station with programming from the American Family Network™ (Radio Free Jesus), and NPR™ (National Progressive Radio).  I opt for silence most days.  The bias in the reporting is like chewing on aluminum foil covered fingernails that just screeched on a chalkboard.  At least American Family Network© is open and upfront about their bias:  they are right leaning, and hate abortion, communism, Nancy Pelosi and any book written since Eisenhower was president.  There is zero pretense of a bias-free story.

NPR® is worse.  Whereas the American Family Network™ is open and honest about their bias, NPR© pretends that it is actual journalism.  A case in point:  on an NPR© segment during the program All Things (Leftists Agree With) Considered from a while back, there were two stories that ran in sequence.  The first one was a blatant attempt to drum up sympathy for people who had broken the law and were continuing to break the law to be in this country.  The second story was about how horrible a certain group was because there needed to be a law to stop their behavior (it involved guns, I think, and no one was hurt).  NPR™ was consistent in its narrative – an adherence to liberal principles, even in what were framed as news stories.  What was a crime, shouldn’t have been.  What isn’t a crime, should be.  In news segments.  NPR© won’t say it, but they hate Trump, also Trump, Republicans that aren’t the Most Recent Republican To Do Something Trump Didn’t Like, and also Trump.

bonniesnews

Bonnie thinks NPR® is news.  Don’t be like Bonnie.

And NPR© will interview right-wing politicians, and will ask them blazingly tough questions about their policies and positions and any inconsistency is ruthlessly followed up.  As it should be in an honest news organization.  But a left-wing politician?  The questions are all sympathetic, and the occasional vague answer to the equally occasional probing question is accepted without follow up.

NPR:  “But Senator, didn’t your bill allow a million deaths a year due to the unforeseen consequences of unlicensed PEZ® operations?”

Liberal Senator:  “Well, no, people die all the time.  PEZ™ deaths are a thing that happens.  But smokers, oh, my, and look at that shiny object!”

NPR:  “Very shiny, Senator.  Tell us, how is your cat doing?”

And ever notice that anything Trump says is “unfounded” whereas anything that a liberal says is, well, not burdened by an adjective?  It’s like when The Mrs. indicates that I smoked a cigar in the basement.  I reply “That’s an unfounded assertion!” while I make sure my cigar butt is safely thrown away.

unfounded

Yeah.

And I see this in print, too.  Especially now.  The hallmarks of this Fiat News are obvious now that they’re pointed out.  Like the Gimp, you can’t unsee them.

But you can count them.  And Rusty Guinn did.

fiatnews

Rusty (who I believe is no relation to the Venture family) started with a variety of news sites.  As a control, he selected several sites that aren’t news sites to use as a comparison.  Vox.com™, for instance, has a mission to explain the news.  It’s partisan.  And that’s okay.  It’s not a news site.  Neither is the National Review®.  Or the New Yorker©.  The biggest use of the “Fiat News” words (the list of words like but, because, therefore, is at Epsilon) was from Vox.  So Rusty set the Vox as a unit of measure.  One day, I hope, the Wilder will be a unit of measure.  A fundamental intrinsic value of the universe – it’s the measure of smugness that is so great that the ego cannot escape.  What kind of hole would that be called?  Hmmm.  Oh.  Please don’t say that in the comments.

But back to Rusty.  His amazing graph speaks for itself:

Updated-Chart

Why?  (And I can ask that because this isn’t a news site, and never has been, unless you’re as addled as an abacus adding algebra alumna from Alabama.)

Bias sells.  The Washington Post® and New York Times™ are published to serve highly liberal people in highly liberal environments – so liberal that every morning they have a privilege review and spank the person with the most privilege, unless that person likes spanking.  And then they don’t spank them.  The Post® and Times™ are abetted by a journalistic corps that is 95% or more left-wing and comprised of the children of liberals that weren’t smart enough to make it into law school.  The readers and journalists want to hate Trump.  They want to write and read how awful he is doing.  They want to hope that he’ll be impeached and then sent off to that hell that they feel he so richly deserves next week.  This week would be better, but they’d be willing to wait until next week.

royalewithcheesenews

Fox News® and Breitbart™ rely on the same principle, but to a different audience, namely the right-wing.  They want to hope that Hillary will be indicted next week and sent off to that hell that they feel she so richly deserves.  But they have jobs, so they can wait a month or so for the show, as long as it’s on YouTube®.

And all of it pulls in viewers on the Internet and television, and causes newspapers to be purchased.  Eyes and money flow to the business.  In short?

It sells.

It sells because people like to see that others mirror their bias.  They like feeling like part of that group (liberals more than conservatives, but that’s an r/K thing (LINK)).  And the more biased?  The better.  They want that emotion.  They want to feel that they are just, and someone will right the wrongs.  They want . . . to feel hate for the other side.  My journalism teacher from high school would punch me straight in the face if I were to write news stories with such bias.  And she likes me, even though she’s a liberal and knows that I have all of the sympathy of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun all rolled up into one.

I watch YouTube® videos while I work out climbing stairs on an unending staircase that Robert Plant assured me would lead to Heaven.  I’ll watch videos that pertain to my political interests some days when those stupid cats have stopped doing cute things because it’s a holiday.

narrative

But I noticed a trend.  If I was watching a right-wing video, pretty soon I was seeing that the next video up was further right-wing.  Further biased.  If I watched that, the list would pretty soon be in amazingly right-wing territory.  On the other side of the aisle, I imagine that someone who was watching a video on how free health care was good would, after a few iterations, be looking at YouTube© videos that supported Antifa™ as the neatest thing since Venezuelan Stalinism® and looking to create camps to re-educate corn farmers from Iowa into progressive Marxism® and collective farming.

Huh?

Yeah, YouTube® knows that emotions drive viewing.  And emotions are driven by extremes.  So its algorithm, purposefully or not, drives viewers to extreme viewpoints to get more video views.  The Pugh study on political views supports this (LINK).

The media is purposefully encouraging the split in our country.  Mainly for revenue and to sell papers, but also partially because they believe it’s the right thing to do.  Thankfully this always ends well, and as a commenter, GSS, on a previous post has noted, this division isn’t new – it’s occurred many times and may be the norm during the life of our Republic.

It’s not like a newspaper could take us to war, is it?

themaine

And if you liked today’s selection here are some more posts along the same theme.

Enjoy, even with dinner!

Ringo

Credit Cards and Kids. They go together like Gasoline and Flame.

“So you listen to me and you listen well.  Are you behind on your credit card bills?  Good, pick up the phone and start dialing!  Is your landlord ready to evict you?  Good!  Pick up the phone and start dialing!” – The Wolf of Wall Street

oprah

So, this is how I viewed the world when I was in college.  Free money!  What could go wrong???

It started as an innocent dinner conversation.  One thing about our dinner conversations – they’re not normal.  We might discuss topics as diverse as financial impacts of currency devaluation on the Roman Empire, or what food makes Pugsley toot the most.  It turns out its pretty much any food, he claims, except for ice cream from Dairy Queen® and Cheetos® and whatever else he’s eating at the time.

But this night The Boy piped up.  “Hey, Dad, I was thinking about getting a credit card.”

Being that he’s 18, he’s and adult and that’s his right.

“What credit card were you thinking of getting?”

“Well, one company sent me an application . . .”

“So, if you were going to buy a car, would you just drive down the street and just buy the first one you saw?”

Long pause.  My dad logic was a laser-guided missile.

“Well,” he replied, “I really don’t know much about credit cards.  Can you help?”

I can.  And I promised I would.

So here it is:

The first thing a young person should know about credit cards is that they are evil.  Not evil in the sense of being a direct minion in the service of Satan® that slowly creates global warming just so it can barbeque endangered species over oil from the tar sands in Canada™.  No, credit cards are worse.  Besides, have you ever eaten slow-cooked panda with bald eagle sauce?  Or fried whale?

This may be the first time this sentence has been written in English:  “You haven’t eaten until you’ve eaten panda.”  Goes great with ketchup.  Tastes like chicken.

Wait, where were we?  Oh yeah, why are credit cards evil?

Mark Twain had the answer:  “Willpower lasts about two weeks, and is soluble in alcohol.”

debtgirl

Yeah, the credit card company was pretty excited when I bought that original picture of Cats Playing Poker.  Who knew there would be no market for that??

Let’s conduct an experiment that shows how 18 year olds feel about money.  Pretend you’re 18.  For the average adult, one fifth of scotch should do to start the simulation.  Now, let’s pretend your net worth is, oh, some paperback books, t-shirts you got in high school for band camp, and empty tubes of acne medication you planned on turning into an attractive art piece.  Now, stare at your phone a lot.

Now, some nice person has offered to allow you an amazing opportunity.  He sounds nice, but he’ll let you to spend money you don’t have.  He’ll even give it to you in advance.  You’re a good guy.  You deserve this, right?

And for every second that you carry that credit card in your wallet, well, your struggle is to not spend money.  You have it, it’s available.  But you’re 18, and at the peak of hormonal activity in your body.

things

So, after you’ve spent a Friday night on a crazed PEZ®, pantyhose and elephant ride binge, well, now you have a bill staring at your face for all of that crazed fun.  But, hey, elephant rides, right?  And the bill is approximately every cent that you would make in the next year of your life, if you didn’t have to spend money on stuff like rent, food, gas, and, well, more elephant rides.

The second thing an 18 year old should know about credit cards is that you can’t really have one:

You’re 18.  With no job.  You’re in luck!

no credit

In 2009, Congress passed a law that says you can’t have a credit card unless you can pay for it.  Yes.  Banks were giving 18 year olds credit lines even though they had no income.

But after 2009?  Congratulations!  You’re a winner!  You can’t have a credit card.

In what could be seen as the barest hint of morality coming out of Washington, this bill passed with the support of both Republican’ts and DemocRATs.  Yay!  But is it just me that worries that the stuff that gets support of both parties is the scariest?

Anyway, The Boy can get a credit card limit that matches his documented income.  Both of which are zero.

Unless . . . I cosign.

What is a cosigner?

Robert Mueller would call a cosigner an unindicted co-conspirator.  You sign your name to the credit card so your kid can buy pantyhose, PEZ® and elephant rides, but you get no pantyhose, PEZ™, or elephant rides.  And if your kid can’t pay for the cool party?  You pay.

Queue a sad trombone playing.

Note that a co-signed credit card does nothing to help your credit rating.  What’s a credit rating?  It’s a mathematical formula that computes the ability of the banks to squeeze you between two blocks of concrete and extract gold.  The bigger the number?  The more gold they can squeeze out of you, if you start talking back to them.

xwife

So, human sacrifice is really in the terms and conditions of every credit card company and on a cosigner they make you live without a kidney or liver.  Just letting you know.

The third thing to know is that you don’t have to worry, the second you turn 21, the banks will be glad to lend you all the money you want that you can’t afford to pay back:

Yes.  When I was in college, there were hot chicks in scanty clothing that attempted to convince you to sign up for a credit card, with the insinuation that, you know, they’d ignore you later after you spent all of your cool credit cash on them.  Party!

frycard

And this will happen to you when you turn 21.

Why?

That temptation that I talked about, that constantly burning credit card in your pocket, whispering in your ear “buy me now”?  It is a tool.  It’s a tool with a purpose.

later

This is why credit cards are awesome . . . for those you have to pay money to.

I was talking with a friend who is a zillionaire.  He had hundreds of apartments in Dallas.  He looked at me and said, “You know, John, it’s like I have an army of slaves working for me every month.  I own the apartments.  They were paid for on the first day they were constructed through me selling government tax credits to third parties.  Then people move in.  And they have to work every day to pay me.”

I was stunned.  Here was a zillionaire, telling me that his tenants were . . . his slaves.  And he is right.  Any time a man is obligated to pay a debt, to work for another is a slave.

The fourth thing you need to know is that debt is enslavement, but enslavement on steroids:

A lease, like a credit card, is a debt.  But a credit card allows you to buy pleasure now for future labor.  But it’s not an even trade.  Every month, the debt gets more added to it.  That debt is interest.  That means that for every elephant ride you charge to your credit card, you have to pay an elephant ride, 25,000 PEZ™, and two pairs of pantyhose.

You have to pay your purchase back, plus more.

When you buy a house, if you can’t afford to pay in cash, you get a loan that’s called a mortgage.  Mortgage is from the Latin root, meaning “Morty” and “Gauge” – so it’s a gauge of how many people named Morty that can live in your house.

sincard

Not to get heavy, but, you know, sometimes it’s worth it?  Oh, not really?

Just kidding.  It the Latin root for “mort” is death.  And “gage” is pledge.  Yeah.  A death pledge.  Happy thought, right?  Back in the day you were pledging your life to pay back the loan.  At least they were honest, then – you would die rather than not pay this money back.  But at least you have a pool, right?

The fifth thing you need to know is that credit cards can be a weapon to fight back:

I have in many years, paid for every single Christmas present with rewards from my Visa© card.  Yay!  Credit cards give cash back bonuses for spending with them.  The idea is that you spend money on the card.  They make money when you spend it via extortion fees from the people who sell you stuff.  Buy PEZ® online?  Get cash back.  Buy 25 Macanudo™ cigars online?  Burn the enemy’s crops.  Heck, Mark Twain used to smoke 300 cigars a month.

But what did that guy ever accomplish?

The sixth thing you need to know is that credit cards only make sense when they make sense:

I was married before I met The Mrs.  It was a mixed marriage.  I was human, she was Klingon®.

klingon

Just sayin’

How much would you pay to be rid of a Klingon™?  Well, as Henny Youngman asked . . . “Why are divorces so expensive?”

His response:  “They’re worth it.”

After my divorce from She Who Will Not Be Named, I was in debt.  My student loans.  My death pledge mortgage.  The debts from the marriage.  I consolidated them into four credit cards.  The total was enough to allow me to have gone to the Super Bowl® on a private jet with 2/5ths of the Spice Girls® as companions.  But all I had was a bill.

spicegirls

Well, maybe I’d pass on all of the Spice Girls®.  (Shudder)

It was paid off three years later.  Thankfully, I didn’t have to wash Spice Girl© off of me.

The seventh and final point is this:

Credit cards are like fire:  helpful when you are in control, but like ice cream and Cheetos®, a fearful master.

goodcredit

And, for extra credit:

I hate to ask this question, but I must:  how much could we achieve as a civilization if we abandoned debt.  Paid it off.  Bought houses with cash.  Paid up front?

What if interest was illegal?

What if no one was a slave to debt?  What if our country paid our bills, in full, every month?

Everyone who reads this blog knows I’m a fan of capitalism.  Of freedom.  Of Western Civilization.  I’m not sure that interest is required for any of these.

Discuss.  A Macanudo® to the best response . . . or some PEZ®.  Your call.