The Wise Wolf Just Got Really Good at Making Lego Iran Videos

I Made Another Iran Lego Video, And This Is Why I Will Be Eating Rice And Beans Until June

Click the play button. Seriously. Why do I get so many people asking me how to play the video? It’s the same symbol that was on your VCR in 1985. Click it. That’s it. Simple.

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A friend turned me onto a new AI video generation tool yesterday. It is the same one Iran has apparently been using to make their political videos, which is a sentence I never expected to write, and which, when I read it back to myself, made me consider going outside for the first time in a week.

The tool is not what one might call intuitive. It is also not what one might call cheap. I spent the better part of ten hours figuring out which buttons to press, in which order, while watching the dollar counter on my account tick down at a pace that suggested either I was being scammed or video generation actually costs what they say it costs. By the time I produced one usable video, half the length of the one I am about to show you, I had burned through almost two hundred dollars. Which is, give or take, my entire UberEats budget for the next two weeks.

Which means I will spend the foreseeable future riding my e-bike to the grocery store, purchasing one large bag of rice and one large bag of beans, and then continuing on to Walmart to acquire a crockpot, because crockpots are what my Grama once told me to use when you are too broke to buy anything but rice and beans.

I should pause to mention, here, that I had high hopes for April. I thought the Wise Wolf was finally taking off. I thought I might be able to hire Lily full-time and stop paying her in praise and the occasional Wendy’s gift card. April had different plans.

April was a financial bloodbath dressed up in spring weather. We lost money. Not “made less than we hoped.” Lost. The kind of loss where you stare at the spreadsheet and wonder if the spreadsheet is broken, and then you check the spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet is fine, and what is broken is the economic model on which your entire life is built.

The reason I am still here, with teeth in my head, is a Wise Wolf reader named Mike, who reached out and helped me cover the oral surgery I needed when my mouth started doing things mouths are not supposed to do. I do not have dental insurance. Almost no one in independent media has dental insurance. Dental insurance is for people with HR departments, and I have, instead, Lily, who has opinions but no benefits portal.

Mike, wherever you are tonight, may your fridge always be full and your teeth always be where you left them. I owe you a casserole.

This morning I made a second Iran Lego video. The good news is that I have, in the past twenty-four hours, become roughly two-and-a-half times more efficient at this. The second video took four hours instead of ten, and cost sixty dollars instead of two hundred. By Christmas I may be able to produce one in the time it takes to microwave a Hot Pocket, assuming I can still afford a Hot Pocket, which is not guaranteed. If this video goes viral, expect more of them. If it does not, expect me to be very philosophical about it in next week’s article while quietly crying into my beans.

A word, before I show you the video, about who this video is for.

It is for you. It is also, more importantly, for your kids and your grandkids. I am increasingly convinced that the generation under twenty-five is being handed a binary choice they have not been told is a binary choice. The choice is between Christ and the alternatives, and the alternatives have been rebranded as “spirituality,” “self-actualization,” “wellness,” and the most popular alternative of all, which is calling yourself an atheist and then quietly worshipping whatever cultural deity Netflix tells you to worship that quarter.

The video is short. The video has Legos in it. The video makes the argument in a way a sixteen-year-old will actually watch all the way through. If you have a kid or a grandkid who is wobbling on the question of why a person should choose God and Christ over the smorgasbord of dressed-up demons currently on offer, show them the video. You might end up saving a soul. You will definitely end up looking like the cool one in the family. Both are wins.

If you have not subscribed to the Wise Wolf YouTube channel yet, here is the part of the article where I politely ask you to do that thing. It is free. It takes about three seconds. It helps me earn the kind of side income that keeps my e-bike battery charged and my crockpot operational.

Click to Sub to our Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thewisewolfclub?sub_confirmation=1

We are also trying to save up for a used van in the next few months, because I am too old to be doing what I used to call “hobo journalism,” which is what I called “showing up to investigative scenes alone, with no backup, like an idiot.”

A few years ago, in New Mexico, this nearly cost me my life. I was stabbed. I do not recommend it. Paid subscriptions help us afford to hire someone to drive me around so that the next time some interested party decides to discourage my work with a sharp object, there is, at minimum, a second witness with a phone.

So that is the pitch. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Become a paid subscriber if you can. Watch the video. Show your grandkids. Pray for me, because I will be eating beans until further notice.

Help keep the Wise Wolf howling.