Tagged: relationships

I’m Getting Hot This Winter

The power company sent a letter informing me of my newfound power to save money.

Oh joy! Tell me more!

The method?

When I need to see, turn off the lights.

When I need to cook, turn off the stove, turn off the oven.

When I need to do laundry, turn off the washer and dryer.

When I need to shower, turn off the water.

Get it? Isn’t it brilliant? I bet they had their monkeys working ‘round the clock to develop that one.

What next? Restaurants saving me money, putting the power in my hands by charging less between 9:01 and 9:02, both AM and PM? What a deal!

Gas stations down the road from each other now give dramatic discounts immediately after you fill up at the competition, ‘Just bring your receipt!’? Count me in!

Trash companies now let me save by skipping my house for five years straight and then it’s only a fraction of the cost for one big pickup? Let’s go!

I have no idea how much “energy” should cost. Or food. Or fuel. Or trash removal. But I do know that I know best, and with pinpoint accuracy, absolute certainty, and perfect timing, exactly what I need, why I need it, and when I need it—not you.

One Beautiful Truth: Kamikazes Are Dumbfounding

Letting my eyes linger on the cover of latest Alien vs. Captain America (#3), I likewise allowed my thoughts freedom to roam. My conclusion? While the images are too “dark” for my early elementary age kids’ still-clear eyes, and while I am not in love with my kids being aware that their Bible-heavy dad reads dark comics, I am certain that I want my kids to be surrounded with “good guys defeating bad guys”. The other option, ELE or Everybody Love Everybody, is too frightening.

Back in 2021ish, I was going on two years without seeing my, then, pre-teen daughter. A failed divorce was the reason. She and I had barely been chatting over Facetime and we sent a few texts, here and there. When she was about 9 years old, I took her to Metallica, which I mention to establish that music had been an available minor touch point.

So she’s around 12 and I asked her what she listened to.

“Billie Eilish songs like ‘Listen Before I Go’.”

I immediately did what needed to be done to see her again. I wouldn’t say I was worried about her committing suicide, as if she was some super-prone-to-suggestion sheep, but I was shaken, just the same.

5 years later and this Billie Eilish is still making the news.

The reason?

“No one is illegal on stolen land.”

Please recall, communication requires sender, message, receiver. And communication is verbal, tonal, and body language. In other words, please remember that the meaning of what she said is not any ol’ thang that we want it to mean.

So we know what words she sent and how they sounded and looked, but what did she mean?

Well, the word “illegal” in 2026, spoken at the Grammy’s by an award winner means, “those BIPOC people over there who, somehow normie, white surpremists want out of America because they are not white.”

And “stolen land” in 2026, spoken at the Grammy’s by an award winner means, “land that is anywhere but where I live and stand.”

So if we re-word what she said in order to represent her claim fairly, one way it might go is,

“No BIPOC people need to leave America.”

With me?

Another way to say the same thing, Billie Eilish said,

“Those brown people over there, they can stay over there.”

(This is the point where you stop reading if you disagree. This post is not about persuading you. It is about giving like-minded readers winning vocabulary and perspective with which to discuss the issues they find themselves wanting additional and creative approaches.)

To recap: I first learned of Billie Eilish because of my pre-teen daughter who was listening to Eilish’s suicide songs. Years later, Billie Eilish says something stupid and anti-American* and many people are wishing her ill as a result. As beloved Mark Twain said, “But I repeat myself.”

My point: You, faithful reader, must take people at their word. Billie is self-diagnosed as depressed and suicidal. She literally cannot care less. If all the bad things, eviction, unending lawsuits etc. were to befall her, she would not care. If America burns and she loses everything—even her precious ability to create art—she would not care.

This is dumbfounding.

And that acknowledgement is beautiful.

It is beautiful that you and I are dumbfounded by a suicidal person and perspective. If we were not dumbfounded, if we agreed with Billie et al, we would, ourselves, be suicidal and ugly.

Same point put inversely: It is not shocking that kamikazes like Billie Eilish and friends are dumbfounding.

****

*Anti-American because Americans don’t care what ‘color’ someone is.

What Fascism Looks Like When Carried Out By Mankind

Faithful readers and new readers alike: The point of sharing lists of how many deportations past presidents and administrations carried out is not the illustration that both political parties have done what Trump is doing. Neither are the lists particularly indicative of the character of past politicians. In other words, it isn’t news that politicians change their policies or blatantly lie at times.

The point of the lists is to definitively give absolutely conclusive and damning evidence that Trump and his administration are not behaving like fascists while they enforce the nation’s—every nation’s—established Laws.

For a glimpse of fascism, read this blurb from back in October of 1938. Pay careful attention to the twin facts regarding there being (a) a new agreement and (b) no protection.

To be sure: Trump et al are not enforcing some new law. And there is no law (being enforced or left unenforced) in which protection is withheld or unconsidered.

Current events across the land are not evidence of fascism. Not even close.

Time to Revisit Immigrants and Bananas

The main line is sung in a memorable scene in A River Runs Through It, but it took me decades to actually google it.

With absolutely nothing derogatory towards liars, Somalis, or loose band-aids in mind, and instead offered in the spirit of legal immigration, here ya go. You’re welcome.

Yes! We have no bananas!

There’s a fruit store on our street
It’s run by a Greek
And he keeps good things to eat
But you should hear him speak!
When you ask him anything, he never answers “no”
He just “yes”es you to death, and as he takes your dough
He tells you
“Yes, we have no bananas
We have-a no bananas today
We’ve string beans, and onions
Cabbageses, and scallions
And all sorts of fruit and say
We have an old fashioned to-mah-to
A Long Island po-tah-to
But yes, we have no bananas
We have no bananas today.”

Business got so good for him that he wrote home today
“Send me Pete and Nick and Jim; I need help right away.”
When he got them in the store, there was fun, you bet
Someone asked for “sparrow grass” and then the whole quartet
All answered
“Yes, we have no bananas
We have-a no bananas today
Just try those coconuts
Those walnuts and doughnuts
There ain’t many nuts like they
We’ll sell you two kinds of red herring
Dark brown, and ball-bearing
But yes, we have no bananas
We have no bananas today.”

Yes, we are very sorry to inform you
That we are entirely out of the fruit in question
The afore-mentioned vegetable
Bearing the cognomen “Banana”
We might induce you to accept a substitute less desirable
But that is not the policy at this internationally famous green
Grocery
I should say not. No no no no no no no
But may we suggest that you sample our five o’clock tea
Which we feel certain will tempt your pallet?
However we regret that after a diligent search
Of the premises
By our entire staff
We can positively affirm without fear of contradiction
That our raspberries are delicious; really delicious
Very delicious
But we have no bananas today

They Do Not Conceal Like I Would

It is surprising to me, and seems to surprise most of us, that the bad guys self-identify so strongly.

I am currently reading GW’s biography. There have been parallels to today which are difficult to ignore, even as they aren’t 1:1. For example, I have to admit that had I been British back then, I would probably have been surprised that the colonists were so blatantly identifying as enemies. I would have thought, “Don’t they understand who they are up against? Maintaining neutrality, even as a feint, seems the stronger play.”

But no. When a fight is brewing, the two sides declare themselves.

I think the matter can be put plainly: When you’re on the side of those with the guns, it is surprising that the people without the guns would fight you—but it shouldn’t be.

These contemporary secessionists in Portland, Minnesota, and elsewhere have not yet declared independence. I would say, on most levels, they are miles away from being organized in any sense like those who declared independence back on July 4, 1776. But I will not be teaching my kids that it is surprising that stupid people unabashedly announce the side they’re on.

On the Whole “Effin’ B’” Comment

I would be stunned if my dad has ever uttered that phrase—stunned. Is this because he has never been around “effin b’s”? Or is this because he doesn’t get rattled?

I don’t recall ever saying that phrase, certainly not earnestly. I prefer the “c-word” if I am grump about the fairer sex AKA “ex-wives who steal from me”.

I doubt many of you have ever walked away from a female and audibly declared, “Fuckin’ Bitch.”

But I say that learning that our LEO kills the woman and then utters, “Fuckin’ Bitch” changes the tenor of the scene.

New question: does it change it to “more complete” or “less complete”?

From early high school I grew up in gym locker rooms and loved the honesty I witnessed. For whatever reason, I never quite joined the cursing crowd. And I didn’t really harbor hate towards anyone or any group. But the colorful stories were enchanting.

Nowadays, I spend tons of time around beloved “First Responders”. I don’t exactly consider myself one—pilots like me, to me, are a class above. But these people see things. And what they see is far more “locker room” than “civilization”.

And time is of the essence. So inappropriate jokes still bubble up from time to time—though, unfortunately, professionalism rues the day these days.

Back to the killer LEO. He kills a woman and walks away declaring, “Fuckin’ Bitch.”

Out of the two options I have laid out, the phrase seems to change the tenor to “more complete” in the sense of “more accurate” by my thinking.

These women are out there, folks. My suggestion is try not to be one.

“The Law Must Win”

The law must win.

This is timeless wisdom. This is the proper perspective. This shouldn’t be controversial.

If someone you know, or if you, find this controversial, that does not surprise me. It just means that their (or your) position is anarchy.

Those of us who believe the law must win do not owe the anarchist a Covey-esque attempt to understand or empathize, anymore than we owe thieves or murderers the same.

It should not surprise that criminal behavior and criminal minds exist. It should not be surprising that people disagree that the law must win.

There is no world where we all exist to follow the law. That is the point.

So, the law must win.

We, The “Idiot Savants”

One delightful aspect that accompanies the hobby of reading that I did not expect when I began to read could best be called “following my whims”. In my case, I wanted to be a bit methodical, so I began with a couple sets of liberal education type books (AKA classical education), filled with essays by great and influential writers. (Keep in mind, this “began with” is after master’s level coursework, age 35ish). The editors of these sets would have pleasant introductions which included “for more on this topic” recommendations. And ebay supplied the steady-stream of follow-on books at minimal cost.

Math History is my main “whim” of late. This is because I have a belief that “there is no math in the Bible” and want to be able to explain the importance of my claim eloquently.

After you read Math History for long enough, to the point of being half-way through the first of four volumes of The World of Mathematics, you find essays on “Idiot Savants”.

Here I want to say I have provided enough information to not need to explain what “Idiot Savants” are, but to be clear, we are talking about people—a very, very few in number—who can perform, say, 10 digit by 10 digit multiplication problems in their head. The interesting part is that this ability has no apparent correlation to life skills or general wisdom or even other talents, professional or otherwise. IE, most jarring, even these “Idiot Savants” can be not good at math in the complete sense. In a word, to modern man, they are perplexing. Just what exactly is their “skill” or “talent”?

The above picture of the plate is something I took in a downtown toy store, one of the last holdouts of its kind, in my city. There are a couple of problems with it; can you spot them?

  1. If a kid can’t eat, a kid can’t read.
  2. If a kid can’t put food in his mouth, a kid isn’t hungry.
  3. Eating does not require plates.
  4. If a kid can’t distinguish plate from table (as manifested by their inability to keep the food on the plate and off the table), then they certainly aren’t able to distinguish individual sections within one (1) plate.
  5. Some forks, especially kid-sized, have three prongs.
  6. Lastly, and this may be picky, but if you’re going to put dinosaurs on a baby plate, I think the least you could do is label them with their names, followed by phonetic spelling. How else will the child learn?!

Faithful Readers, there is a big world out there. If your world is small, in other words, if you feel like you’re really close to finally being fully tooled and comfortable at, this, our problem-riddled life, then I challenge you to consider if you are, in fact, an idiot.

The Natural Response to Seeing Clearly: Thankfulness

Sight has aways been important in my life. For whatever reason, from the youngest age, whenever I took a vision test and had 20/20, people told me I could be a pilot.

These days, as a pilot who often flys with night vision goggles, I can’t help but wonder how different life would be if the ancients had NVGs available as they searched the sky.

Of course, the fact that they didn’t is because of their own ridiculous beliefs about motion and rest and circles and spheres.

I remember a childhood friend who had recently got a better prescription telling us how different the world looked. She said something like, “It’s like the trees now have individual leaves.”

How did she react? Obviously she was thankful and happy about her new glasses.

Why, then, is this not the case when we use telescopes and microscopes to see more than before?

Why would seeing more somehow make us angry?

Why would seeing more somehow make us give up beliefs, like Christianity? It’s not like Christianity said, “There are three hundred stars, and the smallest unit of material is a grain of sand.”

If we can see more, I think the appropriate response should always be the same—and limited. We should be happy and thankful.

It says more about your heart, or more broadly “you”, than it does about the “data” (what is now seen) when you react otherwise.