Hope You’re Bathing in Love and Joy

This is a very sad day for me. Last night, my little friend Maynard, who called himself “Main Bird,” among other things, passed away at the University of Florida’s small animal hospital.

Sorry I don’t have a newer or better photo on this computer.

Maynard was a citron-crested cockatoo. He hatched on April 2, 1991, and he was with me from June of that year until last night. He was gentle (with me, anyway) and full of love. He lived for his times with me. He used to groom my skin and comb my hair with his feet.

I had no business buying Maynard. People make bad decisions when they’re out of touch with God. I had bought Frank, an African grey parrot, and I thought he needed companionship. Maynard loved Frank and tried to make friends, but Frank hated Maynard from the instant he saw him, so my plan didn’t work out. I had to keep them separate in order to prevent bloodshed. Eventually, they cooperated to make contact through the bars of separate cages, and Maynard bit Frank’s toe so badly he bled to death. After Frank, Maynard lost his friendliness to other birds.

I shouldn’t have bought Maynard for the simple reason that citron-crested cockatoos do not make good pets. Like many other cockatoo species, they have an insatiable desire for interaction and petting. You can never give them enough. Unless you dedicate your life to making your cockatoo happy, he will eventually become sad and dejected. When you take him out of his cage for love, he will brighten up, but the second you put him back in, he’ll feel rejected. You can improve the situation somewhat by providing toys and music and so on, but you can’t make things right.

My other bird, Marvin, is an African grey. He’s very different. He amuses himself all day, and he doesn’t mind if you spend time away from him.

Another problem is that a cockatoo that is cared for well should be good for 50 years, and he might hit 80. Even if you’re the best bird buddy on earth, can you commit to looking after an animal for most of a century?

I bought Maynard, and I found out how hard he was to please. Then I was stuck with him, so I kept him out because it was my duty. I could have sold him, but I knew most cockatoos got worse care than he did. I was afraid I would make things worse for him.

He was never consistently happy, but we had good times. I took him out every day and massaged him for long periods. I am probably immune to all types of bird microbes because I kissed his feathers so much. He used to get so flustered, he would shake with emotion. He would grab me with a foot and refuse to let go.

He never had a health problem until shortly before he died. He started chewing his feathers a few years back, and he also got fat and had to have his diet changed, but he was always strong and full of energy.

When I went to Egypt to meet Rhodah, I put Maynard and Marvin in a boarding facility. When I picked them up, Maynard had lost a lot of weight, and he had diarrhea. I started calling around, trying to find an avian vet. Some said they weren’t accepting new patients. Some offered appointments in the distant future. Maynard’s appetite was good, and his weight bounced back very quickly. He was active, and he looked reasonably happy. I decided to give him a few days.

When I got him to a vet, she took blood and poop samples. This was last Friday. She said he didn’t look too thin, and she was not concerned about his condition. She told me she would get his test results yesterday. Her office called yesterday, and they said his white cell count was high, so he needed an antibiotic.

I thought I would run over to her office and pick up the medicine, but they said they were having it shipped from Arizona. I thought that was ridiculous. He still had diarrhea.

He still seemed strong, though, so I didn’t worry. I decided I would take him to a different vet the next day.

Last night, I picked him up, and I could tell something had left him. He was limp. His beak was open. I offered him cheese–his favorite food–and he barely nibbled at it.

I put him in the car and drove him to the University of Florida, about an hour away. The whole time, I was praying for him and commanding him to be healed.

I had his test results with me, so I thought I would hand him over to the vets, they would give me antibiotics, and we would leave him alone while they worked. Instead, they insisted on examining him. That’s what killed him. He couldn’t take the stress of being handled by strangers while I was separated from him.

While I was sitting in the waiting room, I got a phone call. They didn’t even come out to face me. He had only been in the exam room a few minutes. They told me they had bad news.

I was surprised by the way the conversation went after they said he had died. They offered to do a necropsy, and they said it would cost $800. I like to think they weren’t squeezing a grieving pet owner for money, but it sure looked that way. Why would anyone want a pet necropsy, and why would it cost so much? I declined. They said they could cremate him for $60 and keep the ashes, or they could put them in a box for me and charge $140. I chose the first option. I did not want to see his ashes. I did not want to take his body or his ashes home in a box. I didn’t want to bury him on my land. I didn’t want to think of him every time I passed his grave.

I left his travel cage with them. I didn’t need it.

I drove home alone, and I saw a very strange moon down by the horizon. It was a three-quarter moon, and it was orange. The color was similar to that of a lunar eclipse. Horizontal bands of dirty-looking clouds lay across its face.

The moon looked like the devil himself was inside it, sending the world evil in the form of ugly clouds. It made me think about the tribulation.

If the rapture is near, then Satan’s time is just about over. The word says he will be imprisoned for a millennium, and then he will be released briefly to tempt the earth. We may be in his last months or years. He must be furious and ready to pull out all the stops. The word says he will be angry because his time is short. If the tribulation is near, Maynard won’t have to go through it.

Back at the house, I took Maynard’s toys out of his cage, along with a couple of perches, and I put them in a trash bag, along with the plastic bag that had been lining his poop tray. I pushed his cage into my foyer so I would be ready to roll it into my truck. I want to throw it out. I could give it away, but people here are very slow to answer ads, and I don’t want to walk past the cage every day for a month.

I was in a lot of pain, but I thanked God. Honestly, I think he rejected my prayers because Maynard didn’t have a very good life. The Bible shows that there are animals in heaven. Maybe Maynard is there now. Maybe he’s with my parents. In any case, he’s not stuck here, living an unsatisfying life and feeling rejected.

As much as I loved Maynard, I have to say that his passing will be helpful in some ways. He was a burden. Because I could not let my birds get near each other, I had to repeat things every day. I had to clean two cages. I had to take each bird out for a long time. I had to concern myself with two different diets. I had to buy multiple toys. Now I just have one bird to think about, so I’ll be able to do better by him.

Marvin senses emotions. He has been very gentle and solicitous today. I hope he won’t miss Maynard. I don’t think he will. They were jealous of each other, and they didn’t interact much.

I don’t want another parrot, so I hope Marv doesn’t need a companion.

On the drive home, I thought about my life. I realized I was very tired of death. My parents are dead. Three of my five aunts are dead. Three of my five uncles are dead. My grandparents are dead. Last year, I lost my young friend Travis to a gunshot wound. It was only a year after my father, whom I was caring for, died. Now Maynard is gone.

It’s discouraging.

Many years ago, I spent 4 months on a kibbutz, where volunteers came and went. I planned to spend a year, but I changed my mind. I was tired of seeing my friends leave. I made friends quickly, we spent a lot of time together, we made great memories, and then they vanished. When your life is like that, you may make an adaptation. You may stop making friends. The knowledge that anyone you befriend will be gone soon will discourage you.

Until last night, I never thought about this principle applying to life as a whole.

My remaining relatives are as distant as strangers. I have no wife. I have no children. I have friends, but most live far away. Right now, my fiancee is the only person I have to live for. If it weren’t for her, I would be glad to go. Someone would snap Marvin up. I don’t have to worry about him. My friends would mourn, but not very intensely.

I enjoy life, but how long does a rational person want to stay on this cursed planet, especially when the spirit of Antichrist has rendered so many people insane?

I wish Rhodah had been with me yesterday. Times like these are what husbands and wives are made for.

While I drove, I also thought about the need to streamline my life. I have all sorts of hobby junk. I have a huge tool collection, lots of guns, and many musical instruments I no longer use. The more excited I get about marriage, the less interested I am in maintaining my old pursuits. I feel like my possessions weigh me down. I’m even wondering if I should leave this house and get a property that needs less maintenance.

My next-door neighbors moved away over a year ago. They sold their big house and bought an RV. They planned to drive around ministering to people. I would never live in a vehicle, but I understand their motivation. How much can you do for God when you’re glued to tractors, guns, tools, and so on?

My yard is a real mess. I don’t feel motivated to improve it. It’s very hard to battle weeds and pests here, and growing good things is nearly impossible, even if you replace the sand with real soil. It would be nice to have a place covered in woods, with maybe 5 acres of easier-to-maintain grass.

Maybe I invested in hobbies and activities because I had no wife and no kids.

Do I feel like I want to get rid of things because, in my heart, I’m getting ready for death? I just got back from Egypt, where people prepared for death by stuffing tombs with things to take with them. I think they took the wrong approach.

The most painful thoughts I had involved my failings. In some ways, I am a contemptible person. Friends will deny it, but I know what I know. My character deficits have hurt people and animals unnecessarily, and I couldn’t do much to stop it. I can’t undo any of it. All I can do is thank God for redemption.

I feel bad today. I recognize that. I know most of what I feel now will dissipate. I know better than to make decisions based on the way I feel one day after the death of a pet I loved for 30 years. But some changes may be coming. Things may be sold.

I let Maynard down. I mismanaged his medical care when he needed me, and it killed him. That will be hard to get over. I also let him down while he was healthy. I trapped him in a situation that could never work out well. For years, I’ve been praying for God to help me do better by him, and I thought maybe it would happen once I had a wife here to help me. I can forget that now. At least I can refrain from making the same mistake a fourth time. No more pets. I’ve never bought a pet out of anything but selfishness.

I’m grateful for all the times I did things right. I’m glad I let him walk around on me and try to help me with his painful grooming routine. I’m glad I kissed him so much. I’m grateful for all the times I held him and loved him until he shook with gratitude. I’m grateful for every dollar I spent on him to make things better for him.

That’s it. His earthly problems are over. If pets have an afterlife, maybe there will be some redemption, in a place where time means nothing and creatures are good to each other for so long, they can’t remember anything else.

Home Improvement Follows Spiritual Improvement

I am back to blog. Not because I have something to say, but because I am tired and want to relax.

I got lot more done today.

My house had dubious landscaping when I arrived, and part of the problem was aging hedges around the house itself. Apparently, hedges don’t last forever. Mine were about 20 years old, and some of them were not looking good. Also, I suspect there were problems with bugs. I kind of think you have to poison everything in order to keep plants alive here, and I didn’t do that. I came here from Miami, and whatever that area’s faults are, you don’t have to bomb your plants with poison down there in order to get them through a season. This is also true farther north. It seems like I’m in a strange belt of territory which is abnormally hostile to landscaping.

I had some kind of crummy, spindly, partly rotten hedge on the south side of the house, and a few months back, I got tired of it and hit it with 2,4-D, which is a weed killer. I figured dead plants would be easier to remove than half-dead plants. Today I went in with my Root Slayer shovel, and in about half an hour, I had ripped out 18 feet of dead and dying hedge.

That was nice.

I drove to a nursery and told them I needed 18 feet of shrubs, and the lady who worked there gave me a tour and provided suggestions. I sprung for some Indian Hawthorne. I don’t know much about it, but she said it would probably not die immediately, so it sounded good to me.

I also had some annoying plants in the flower box by the pool For some inexplicable reason, the patio has a concrete flowerbed built into it, right beside the pool. So leaves, insects, and dirt, beside a temperamental tub of water that doesn’t deal with contaminants well. The previous inhabitants put at least two different kinds of trees–not shrubs or flowers–in the flowerbed, along with ferns and some kind of ornamental thing. The trees got way too big. I murdered one a few months back and hauled most of it off. I also killed what I think was a banana tree and dumped it in the woods. Today I cut most of the remaining tree–a big fishtail palm–out, and I carted off the debris and hosed the raw stumps with 2,4-D and glyphosate. I’ll leave them there in hopes they suck up the chemicals and die fast. Then I’ll go after the roots.

I’m going to make the pool area my own. I’ll go ask the nursery lady what to put in the flowerbed. I’ll obliterate every trace of living plant matter, and then I’ll plant one kind of ornamental, and I’ll make sure I pick something that doesn’t grow over 18 inches tall.

My well has a big pressure tank over it, and someone made a terrible effort to hide it with a cluster of unkempt flowering shrubs. I was thinking about it the other day, and I realized there was no reason to hide it. A clean, orderly well looks better than a bunch of annoying weeds. Maybe I could paint Trump’s face on it.

This afternoon, I took the plant-massacre solution and doused all the plants around the well. When they die, I’ll rip them out and dump them. Then I’ll think about ground cover. Maybe grass will grow there. The weeds were an aggravating obstacle when I mowed. If I put grass where they used to be, I’ll have a straight shot all the way to the workshop.

I think I should plant another peach tree. They do well here. I poisoned my tree today to keep webworms off of it, and it needs a friend. I still have to do something about squirrels. They hammered the tree last year.

Squirrel season doesn’t start for 18 days, but I emailed the wildlife nanny agency, and they said I was free to kill them out of season when they caused problems. I haven’t taken advantage of this loophole for a long time. I’ve been planning to wait for the season this year, simply because I am not totally certain I trust the wildlife nannies to keep their word if I get caught. Once I get started, I plan to kill every squirrel I see. I may give up on rifles, which are the most enjoyable squirrel-control weapons, and use the Sweet Sixteen. I can’t shoot squirrels out of trees with a rifle without risking sending bullets onto my neighbors’ land, so I have to wait for squirrels to show up on the ground. A shotgun is less challenging and therefore boring, but it gets the job done more efficiently, and the pellets don’t fly all that far. If pellets make it off my land, they’re so small, they won’t be able to hurt anyone or damage anything.

Squirrels must die. Coons must die. Coyotes must die. Nothing else here gives me problems.

I showed mercy to a coon the other day because it had a youngun with it. That was a good deed which is certain not to go unpunished. I didn’t like the idea of shooting a coon’s mother in front of it. They’re horrible pests, though, so I can’t give it a lifetime pass. They’re so bad, there is no coon season in Florida. You can kill them every day and even at night.

I talked to the nursery lady about squirrels, and she suggested putting a plastic snake in the peach tree. I mentioned my preferred method of dealing with them. Hope she wasn’t triggered. I am not against buying a plastic snake, but I will definitely shoot squirrels anyway. I have grave doubts about the snake theory.

I would have had a couple of dozen peaches this year had it not been for squirrels. I got three.

I need to fix the island in my driveway. When I moved here, it had ferns, some scrubby ornamental plants, a bizarre doughnut of aging hedge, a huge rotting oak, a spindly magnolia, and some other kind of tree which promptly died. I got rid of the oak and the dead tree. I think I should scorch the earth and start over with bare ground. Maybe I can find some ideas on the web. I could stick an ornamental tree in there maybe. Perhaps I could make a raised bed rimmed with pavers. That would give me a well-defined perimeter for weed-eating and mowing. As it is now, I’m never sure whether I’m mowing grass or ornamental plants. They blend into each other.

The irrigation system is screwed up. They set it up so it only irrigates places that don’t need water. It wets the ground up against the house, in the driveway island, by the gate, and in the patio flowerbed. I haven’t turned it on in maybe a year, and it hasn’t mattered. Maybe I could find a place that actually needs water and put irrigation only in that area.

I have a big green electrical transformer box in my side yard. It has a rickety rail fence on three sides of it, and the fence used to have a horrible Florida fire vine on it. I killed the vine, mulched the whole area, and put in blackberry briars and grapevines. The blackberries are not doing great, and the grapes grow very slowly. One vine died mysteriously, on a property where grapevines grow so fast they cover the floor of the woods. It has occurred to me that I could tear out the fence, take up most of the mulch, poison the ground by the vines and briars to give them a boost, and let grass move in.

My guess is that the lady who lived here thought the transformer box was an eyesore. I am a man, so I think it looks swell. It would be better to put a little solid wooden fence around it than a rail fence that looks like it was moved here from Haiti.

I’m planning to take the rails out this week with the tractor. Then I can haul the mulch off.

I don’t know if my house will look better after I get done with it, but it will certainly look like someone tried, and that’s worth something.

Guess I’ve relaxed enough. Time to hang out with the birds.

Learn from my Bad Example

God changes lives with supernatural revelation, and he has been very generous with me lately. He gave me a compound revelation this month involving my attitude.

He showed me that I need to be much more reluctant to complain. I’ve had a lot of bad experiences in cultures where people were pressured to bury their heads in the sand, and I have come to love exposing the truth, but I haven’t done a good job of separating exposure from pointless bellyaching or from reviling or ridiculing. Revealing the truth is very important, and it’s very important to do it in situations where it will destroy your popularity, but you can’t let yourself obsess on what is wrong or let it become an excuse for giving up too early.

It’s good to say, “I hear a noise coming from my front end, so I need to have my bearings checked.” It’s bad to say, “I hate this car. It’s always letting me down. Why can’t I ever have a car that works right? Other people have good cars. I can’t believe this is happening again. I’m so sick of this thing.”

You have to appreciate what you have and what happens to you.

Here is what God has shown me: you have to have what I call an immigrant/orphan/warrior attitude.

Consider immigrants who move the USA. I know many of them are curses to us. Many come filled with hostility toward us. Some perform acts of terrorism. Some expect us to mold ourselves to their toxic, backward cultures, which they themselves fled, instead of adapting themselves to our superior culture. Many come here out of pure selfishness. All those things are true, but I’m not suggesting we be like them in those ways. I’m suggesting we be like them in our appreciation of what we have.

I read an anecdote about a visitor from Russia. This person kept telling her hosts how wonderful the USSR was and how inferior America was. She could not shut up. Then there was a trip to an American supermarket in the winter. The critic looked around at the packed shelves and the fresh fruit and vegetables and started to cry.

That individual appreciated a blessing I have enjoyed every single day I’ve spent in America. I, on the other hand, feel deprived when my local store doesn’t have the exact cut of choice beef I want to buy or the right brand and variety of tomatoes for pizza.

Consider orphans. Many are hard to place, so they get stuck in orphanages for years, or they go from one foster family to another. They dream of having their own homes, with siblings and parents. The rest of us don’t feel much gratitude for situations older orphans pray for every night.

My family did me a lot of harm, but at least I had a family. My bills were paid, and we never had to live in a shelter or even an apartment. My mother was wonderful. I knew my grandparents. I knew my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Both of my parents left me inheritances. My family damaged me more than most white American families, but it also did me a great deal of good.

Think about warriors. When a warrior in a superior force goes into battle, and enemy soldiers start shooting at his position, he doesn’t say, “I am cursed. These people should have given up as soon as they saw us, but they’re trying to kill us anyway, and now I have to go through a miserable battle.” A warrior expects conflict. It’s what he trains for. He sees it as a normal obstacle he has to pass in order to get to victory.

The other day I bought a new stove. My old primitive stove was very hard to clean, and it only had 4 burners. I was reluctant to cook because it was so difficult to get the stove back in order afterward. I found a great induction cooktop at Home Depot for something like 45% off. I measured the existing stove, and while I couldn’t get at the cutout in the stone counter to measure it, I made a reasonable assumption: because appliances are standardized, a 36″ induction cooktop would fit in a cutout made for a 36″ conventional cooktop.

I got the old cooktop out, and I found that the cutout was 3/8″ too short. I had expected the switch to take about 30 minutes. Now I was looking at hiring someone or buying unfamiliar tools, making the new cuts myself, and enduring a long, messy job. I also learned that the manufacturer had not included some brackets for supporting the new stove in a stone counter. I’m talking about two small pieces of steel plus a tube of glue. Should cost about 10 bucks. In fact, these things should be included in the package with a stove that retails for $1800. I looked online, and the price for the “kit” was about $135.

I felt defeated, and that’s ridiculous. I knew it was ridiculous. I apologized to God even while I was feeling defeated. I rejected the feeling.

I said I knew the stove was going to fit. Victory was already mine. No doubt about it. I wasn’t experiencing defeat. I was just having a setback. I was blessed with an $1800 stove for which I paid about $1000, I didn’t have to use cash to get it, I got free delivery, I didn’t need help removing the old stove, I was sufficiently handy to know I was going to be able to get the cutout enlarged, I was putting it in a beautiful kitchen in a magnificent house in an extremely pleasant county in the United States of America…what possible excuse was there for feeling cursed and defeated?

I didn’t have a warrior attitude. I had a snowflake attitude. An Antifa/BLM attitude. I knew it. I hated it. I refused to continue in it. I asked God to help me.

I knew that on the other side of the work and the mess, a fantastic new stove was waiting. The new stove has a top which is a continuous sheet of glass. Cleaning it after a messy cooking session takes less than 5 minutes. It has 5 burners, one of which is gigantic, which is a nice feature. It’s much, much faster than gas, conventional, or radiant cooking. It won’t work with certain cookware, but I can get new things, and I have additional portable burners anyway. When I’m not cooking, the surface functions as temporary counter space.

God was blessing me like crazy. Feeling defeated and wronged was not just incorrect; it was offensive.

I made a terrible mess when I installed the cooktop, but a tradesman would have made the exact same mess. Instead of getting a new stove for $1800 plus maybe $500 in installation costs, I got it for $1000, no cash left my bank account, and I learned a lot.

Along the way, I found out I didn’t need the expensive tube of glue and sheet metal brackets.

The Bible promises us victory over and over. It doesn’t say we’ll never have to fight or that things will go exactly the way we want. Victory is not the same thing as lack of conflict. When we win wars decisively, we still have to fight, and we still lose people. No one with any common sense says that makes us losers.

Sometimes God has shown me what it’s like to deal with me and my bad attitude. I have been in situations where I’ve been in charge of people who were doing various things. If you have employees, or if you have hired people temporarily, you’ve been there. I have dealt with people who whined and complained. I have dealt with people who stood around conversing instead of working, while I, the one who was paying them, worked. I’ve dealt with people who were so slow and lazy, they were literally much slower than I would have been had I done things alone. I’ve experienced resentment from people I was paying. I felt I was being punished for giving them money.

When I was slaving away as an armorbearer at Miami’s Trinity Church, I worked a couple of Richie Wilkerson’s Rendezvous meetings at the Fillmore Theater on Miami Beach. People volunteered to help the armorbearers. We were there mostly to manage crowds. I had a lot of experience, and I was in a position of authority. A young black man was part of my team.

I set things up the way they were supposed to be, in cooperation with the other armorbearers. Then this young man decided he was in charge. He started moving cordons and changing the way traffic flowed. He started telling me how things were going to be set up, as though I had volunteered to work for him!

His ideas were inept and would have caused problems. I immediately moved things back, and I told him I was running the team. I said if he wanted to help us, he had to follow orders.

He got so mad, he walked off and quit. He could not understand that he we were not equals on the team. It was impossible to explain this concept, which 98% of human beings chosen at random would have understood without being told. No one on the team could figure him out.

I never interacted with him after that. I forgot his face. I don’t know what happened to him. Another young man from the same area had also volunteered, and he could not have been more helpful. He kept making sure he was doing what the team wanted him to do. He never complained. After the conference was over, we would always wave at each other in church and converse a little.

I’ve dealt with a lot of people who could not submit, honor, or appreciate. I have often shown similar attitudes toward God.

If someone is willing to pay you and advise you when he has other options, and you make him miserable, he’s going to limit what he does for you. It’s just not worth it when you have to be treated like you’re imposing. On the other hand, when people have a good attitude, it makes you grateful. It makes you want to do more for them and to be more closely involved with them.

Surely we punish God when we aren’t grateful and respectful, and surely he responds by holding back our blessings. Surely he must increase our blessings when we have better attitudes. I believe there are things I wanted which God kept from me, and now I believe he will provide those things because I will reward him instead of making him wish he had a better son to work with.

Here is something Jesus said:

A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.

Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?

And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it:

And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.

When you’re push-starting a car, you don’t push forever. If it doesn’t start to run eventually, you quit pushing.

Every day, I need to see my blessings as though they were new. When I get in my car, I should feel as though I were driving a new car off a dealer’s lot. When I sit in my air-conditioned house, I should feel as though I had been living in a tent in insufferable heat all my life. When I eat and drink, I should feel as though I had just been rescued from a month in a lifeboat. I live in a world where billions of people don’t have the good things I have. I could easily be replaced with someone more grateful.

That’s what happened to the Jews. I’m not talking about replacement theology. They are still God’s chosen. But if you read the Bible, you will see that they got in trouble over and over for taking God’s blessings for granted, and in the end, most didn’t appreciate the greatest blessing of all: their messiah. So most of what he offered went to Gentiles. Now, of course, most Christians take God and his blessings for granted, so we’re in the same boat.

I believe this revelation is extremely powerful and that it will bring me things I couldn’t get before. I pray, and I have faith, but faith isn’t everything. How effective can faith for a result be if God knows you’re going to make him wish he had never granted your request?

I’m astounded when I look back and think of all the blessings I’ve spat on and ruined. My education is an example. I barely did anything in high school, but one of the world’s best universities sent me a letter, asking me to apply. When I was accepted and my parents paid my tuition and expenses without hesitation, I didn’t appreciate it at all. I behaved like a character from the movie Animal House. I thought the administration was my enemy. I thought drunkenness was cool. I made trouble.

I wish I could go through high school again. I went to the best school in Florida. I could have focused on math and science. I could have gone to MIT or Caltech. Even Columbia, the school that accepted me, was a top-notch STEM school.

I know I couldn’t have done much better as things were. I didn’t know God, and I truly was cursed. My family was a constant source of discouragement and pain. Things didn’t go well even when I did things right. But if I had known God and had a better attitude, I would have excelled.

I know people who were thrilled to be able to go to community college. I know people who were thrilled to go to state universities. I know people who have student loans. I had a full ride at one of the best Ivy League schools, and I resented it!

I can’t complain about mowing the yard. Most people don’t have a yard. I can’t complain about doing bookkeeping and taxes. Most people have no money to manage. It’s amazing to me that I ever complained about cleaning up after my pets. Who chose to buy them? How many people are there who would love to have two beautiful exotic birds who love them?

I have to remember that regardless of what happens while I’m here on Earth, I have victory. Under the worst circumstances imaginable, which are nothing like my actual circumstances, I would still be saved when I died. The rejection and problems I face here are like the heckling and reviling Cubans used to experience when they chose to move to America. People would spit on them and call them worms. The speed bumps I deal with are temporary and unimportant, and they precede blessings that will make me forget them.

I think my new outlook will improve my life tremendously, so I want to tell other people who make the same mistakes I did. I hope someone else can make the change earlier and have a better life than the one I’ve had.

Satan Can’t Take Away as Much as God can Give

If things went according to plan, my friend Travis Quinn was buried yesterday. I am told the funeral was set for two p.m. I was not there. Instead, I spent the weekend here at the house, hosting a family that knew Travis.

I don’t know if they want their names on the Internet. I will call them Abe and Sarah. I met Abe when I was an armorbearer at Trinity Church in Miami. He was also on the team. We used to have breakfast meetings at the Denny’s on Hallandale Boulevard. Sometimes I said a few things about the importance of prayer in tongues and the need to be freed from iniquities. Abe was very quiet. I didn’t think he was paying attention. Later, I found out he was absorbing everything. We became very close.

Abe and I got tired of the way Trinity Church used people and taught lies in order to get money. Things came to a head when his son was burned in the church nursery. He had a large blister on his face, covering a substantial area. We thought he might be scarred for life.

When Abe and Sarah asked for answers, no one in the church would talk. The head pastor, Rich Wilkerson, ran away, which was S.O.P. for him. My impression was that a lawyer told him to keep quiet. When Abe and Sarah took their son to the E.R., they became the focus of attention. They were asked a lot of questions. The obvious reason: the doctors and nurses wanted to get them charged with child abuse. Had someone at the church called and admitted fault, everything would have been cleared up. That didn’t happen.

When someone associated with Trinity has a problem, Trinity discards that person, like a tire which has had a blowout. They put on a new tire and keep moving. They know new tires will keep coming in the door. They adhere to the teachings of P.T. Barnum.

Abe and Sarah left Trinity before I did, and we ended up at the same new church, where the head pastor showed an inordinate interest in their young daughter and was later imprisoned for having a sexual relationship with a little girl.

We have been through a lot together. I watched them move from home to home, generally upgrading. They moved to Orlando while I was still stuck in Miami. Now they’re in Sanford. They don’t go to a prosperity church. Things keep getting better for them.

Abe once noted that his financial situation seemed to improve during times when he didn’t give Trinity his tithes.

Abe’s dad was not around when he was a kid, and he was raised by his grandmother. Somehow, he came out of that with an extraordinary determination to be a perfect father. He watches over his family like a sheepdog watching a flock. No one makes a move he doesn’t notice. Sarah is right there with him, presenting a unified front so the kids will have stability.

Abe was like a patient older brother to Travis. Sometimes he needled him a little. He didn’t let Travis pull anything over on him. He caught things I let Travis get away with. I held Travis accountable on many occasions, but Abe had a lot of experience in the area of correcting young people early, so Travis never got away with anything around him.

There are 5 kids in the family. The youngest, Gabby, is my goddaughter. She turned out to be a real firecracker. Always saying or doing something unexpected. She used to run up to people with no warning and wrap her arms around them as tightly as possible. At one point, she became obsessed with a line from the movie The Incredibles. She would put her hands on her hips and announce, “NO CAPES!” for no apparent reason.

Abe and I have often discussed the many sorry individuals Travis associated with, as well as his sorry hometown. Travis was from Miami Gardens, and Abe was from Liberty City. Both are ghetto areas. Abe got his family out of South Florida early, and, like me, he hated the area so much he was highly disturbed when he had to make occasional visits. He wanted South Florida behind him and his family, period. No looking back. Travis wanted out, but he felt trapped by his father’s problems, and he hated to leave people behind. He had many, many music students, and he wanted them to escape Miami’s ghettos. Travis didn’t move quickly enough. Abe and I both believe this is why he died.

Travis spent his last month alone in a hospital room, with few visits and no communication with friends. I asked to be put on the contact list, but it didn’t happen. I was part of a small group of people who tried to look after his interests. We felt helpless because we were shut out. We still can’t understand why it was so hard to get things done. There are things people automatically do for you when you go to intensive care, unless you’re a serial killer or a pedophile. Those things didn’t seem to happen for Travis, and there is no excuse for anyone who should have been involved.

Abe called me a few days before the viewing. He had been planning to go, even though he hates Miami. Sarah had advised him against it. I could tell his heart was no longer in the trip. We discussed the ways in which we felt Travis had been let down, and Abe said he had decided not to go.

People say you go to wakes and funerals for the dead, not the people they leave behind. That’s not necessarily true. The dead have no idea who goes to their funerals, and they have other things on their minds. They don’t make lists and tape them to their refrigerators so they can think about the people who really loved them. We go to wakes and funerals for ourselves and for others. We need to see the bodies so we can feel the reality of what has happened. We need to grieve with people we care about. We want to support other people who need help.

In Travis’s case, there wasn’t much point in attending. We knew he was really dead. We wouldn’t have been surrounded by people who shared our feelings or who would have looked to us for comfort. We wouldn’t have been able to help anyone.

The viewing was set up so only 10 people could go in at a time, with masks. The funeral was closed to everyone except his family. It wouldn’t have been anything like a typical set of death rituals. When my grandfather died, people came from all over three counties and brought food to my grandmother’s house. Guests were everywhere. Many people attended the funeral. There was a big lunch right afterward, at the church. We were inundated with food. My dad had a fifth of Gentleman Jack in the car trunk, and we socialized over that. Afterward, the same night, the socializing continued. People told funny stories. Old relationships were rekindled, if briefly.

The events following my grandfather’s death were curative and uplifting. If we had gone to Miami for Travis, it would have been different. We would have been reminded why we left. We would have experienced much of the rejection all over again.

It would have been like a date with an ex-girlfriend. All the reasons for the breakup would have flooded back to the forefront.

Travis should have had a cortege. He should have had a band made up of his students and people he knew from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. There should have been a meal afterward. There should have been conversation. Abe and I knew those things were not going to happen. Part of it was due to the epidemic, and part was due to other people’s choices.

With Travis gone, neither of us has any social connection to Miami.

We didn’t want to have to sit and listen to hypocrites who talked about how they loved Travis even though they were never around when he needed help.

I know who Travis went to when he needed a hand moving. I know who he went to when he needed a place to live. I know who didn’t show up when it was time to carry furniture. No one can lie to me.

Not long before he died, Travis did an interview in which he talked about the importance of giving people flowers while they’re alive instead of waiting for their funerals. That says it all. The people who were good to him while he was alive didn’t have anything to prove after he died.

Abe and his family rolled in yesterday afternoon. I cleaned up the house and gave them the second floor. I went grocery shopping, and they arrived while I was gone. I forgot to leave a key. When I got back home, 4 kids were playing in the pool. The fifth starts a new job tomorrow, and she couldn’t make it.

We fired up the grill and made a tremendous amount of food. Burgers. Hot dogs. Smoked sausages. Grilled chicken. Before we ate, we prayed and thanked God for Travis and for the people who fill the hole he left behind. Abe’s kids made water balloons and took him on in a balloon war. Sarah and I sat in the shade and talked.

A lot of my conversation with Abe and Sarah was about coronavirus. I told them how I had noticed that the epidemic was completely different in godly and ungodly areas. I said I had lacked for nothing. I said that apart from what had happened to Travis, it had been a peaceful and plesant time. I said my biggest problem had been weight gain.

Abe and Sarah corroborated what I saw. There is very little disease where they live. They were able to continue working through the entire lockdown. They paid off their vehicles. They gained weight. They were approved for a home loan. They surprised me by telling me they were moving to Leesburg, much closer to me. It’s a definite step up. They’ll be farther from dangerous Orlando when persecution gets worse.

I always pray for God to move my friends away from the Beast’s hordes. I ask him to put them in houses in Christian areas. I even ask him to make other people pay for the houses.

While we were here having fun, my young friend Tina texted me. She said she had had a dream. She wasn’t sure what it meant. Either it was a vision of heaven or an indication that God was going to give her a big house. She said there was a house in the dream, and she could see hills from it. I told her it sounded like my actual life. I haven’t heard the details yet, but I will get them.

I learned some amazing things while my friends were here. They said Gabby had been very excited about visiting. She said she kept saying, “I’m going to see my god-daddy!” That was wonderful to hear. I don’t get to see the family often, so I always wonder if the kids really know who I am. I guess they do.

After swimming, Gabby and Zoey came out in matching outfits. I’ll have to post a photo. I don’t know where kids come up with these things. They wore multi-colored swim coverups and big clear glasses rimmed with rhinestones. So funny. Gabby is the one on the right.

The kids wanted to see the pasture, so they got in my utility cart, and I took them. The last time they were here, I didn’t have cattle. I told them to expect a lot of manure. They couldn’t stop talking. While I was driving, I kept hearing their comments. “Poop!” “Poop!” “Poop!” “Poop!”

The cattle are curious, so they started moving toward the cart. All the girls started yelling. The cattle scared them. They shouted for me to get away from the cattle. After we opened some distance, Gabby said, “Cows are my worst enemy!” Where do kids come up with this stuff? She also said, “Cows are disgusting.”

I kept reminding them they were full of cows at that very moment.

City kids.

The original plan was to leave them in the pasture and go get their parents. Sarah was excited about the pistol targets I had built, and she wanted to see them. Junior was the only kid willing to stay. The others thought the cattle would eat them. I dropped them all by the house and took Abe and Sarah for a tour.

In the meantime, homemade brownies were cooling in the kitchen.

Back at the house, I made whipped cream, and we had warm brownies with Haagen-Dazs vanilla, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce. Gabby insisted on having real maple syrup instead.

Abe and Sarah and I talked more about the polarization of America and the way God’s people are being sifted out.

The kids did something amazing. They cleaned up the house. They asked for brooms. They did the dishes. Before too long, I saw them mopping. Gabby, Zoey, and Cheyenne handled the kitchen. Junior took care of the trash. It was wonderful. They didn’t have to be asked. I couldn’t stop them.

They even swept up around the bird cages. They did a pretty good job of making friends with Marvin and Maynard.

By the time everyone was ready to go to bed, there was not much for me to do.

This morning, I made biscuits, gravy, and fried eggs. The cleaning continued. Gabby came over to me and hugged me and said she wanted to stay and keep cleaning.

They didn’t complain. They kept thanking me. I kept thanking them back. Abe and Sarah said they raised them to be functional kids, and they were going to be functional adults.

Sometimes having guests is hard. Having this crew is actually helpful. I will think about it the next time I’m a guest.

I took a photo of the ladies working in my somewhat cluttery kitchen. You can see Cheyenne in there to the right of her mom.

I’ve been told I have to have Thanksgiving dinner in their new home, and that I’m not allowed to do anything. I can’t imagine what that would be like.

I could have been in Miami, in a very different environment. I would have seen some people I like. On the other hand, I would have seen some people who don’t like me at all. I would also have been around racists. Some of Travis’s friends don’t like white people. Some have criticized me on the Internet in comments tinged with racism. Apparently, I can’t understand Travis because I’m white. These people weren’t around when Travis was being helped by whites and Hispanics. I guess they were busy being oppressed.

Travis passed on Mother’s Day. I suppose that will color that day in the future for some he knew. The day of his funeral, which should have been a down day for me, was a day of love and celebration. It was a day of very good news for me and others. From now on, when I think of the day of his funeral, I will think of redemption and comfort.

I thought about Job yesterday. He had 10 children, and they all died in one day. Then when his tribulation was over, God gave him 10 more. It didn’t erase what had happened to his first 10, but after the new children arrived, how much room could there have been for grief? The human consciousness is limited. You can’t entertain unlimited grief and unlimited joy simultaneously. Surely sufficient joy will displace grief.

I lost Travis for the time being, but yesterday I had 6 people here doing what he used to do, and I had Tina’s text. I also heard from another young lady I met at Trinity. She’s planning to visit along with her sister and my other godchild.

Part of me wants to say, “This is all wonderful, but I still don’t have Travis back.” It’s a very small part of me. It’s hard to hear it over the rest of me.

I hope Abe and Sarah move soon. Their visits give me life, and my floors will always need mopping.

Miami Umbilical Cord Finally Snapping?

I made what I hope will be my last trip (in this lifetime) to Miami over the weekend. It has been a tough month so far. I visited twice, and I had to put an enormous amount of junk out for the garbage people, in addition to making trips to the dump. It’s surprising how a house that seems empty can yield tons (literally) of junk. On the up side, I have moved my machine tools north, so now I can feel technologically complete again.

I threw out hundreds of dollars’ worth of things. I could not sell them, and I had a hard time giving them away. I put my mother’s patio furniture, which was expensive and in very good shape, in the trash pile. I had advertised it, and people responded, but they didn’t have the gumption to come get it. At least one lady asked my house sitter to deliver it. Thank God, a couple of Cuban trash-pickers came by in a pickup and grabbed it.

It may surprise people to see that I’m not writing about the Trump impeachment vote. I’m not that interested. I will say that, fundamentally, it’s not politically motivated. It’s motivated by spirits that hate God and every friend of God. The Democratic Party could almost be called “the body of Satan” these days. Don’t be surprised that what they do doesn’t make sense. When things don’t make sense, a supernatural force is usually at the root. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath–which would have been a felony, had the Paula Jones case not been dismissed–on camera. He was also forced to give up his law license, after being turned in to the Arkansas Bar by a federal judge. That’s the kind of thing that grounds a real impeachment. Trump’s enemies had to make up a new charge (“abuse of power”) because there was no good evidence that Trump broke any existing law. What we are seeing is a continued effort to make conservatives afraid to run for office, and it goes back to Newt Gingrich, who was shown to be innocent. If you want to read more about it, Alan Dershowitz is probably a good source.

To get back to what I really want to write about, I’m dying to machine something. I don’t even care what it is. Even I just put a steel rod in the lathe and turn the radius down a quarter of a inch, I’ll be happy.

I watch tool videos all the time. For over two years, I’ve been watching people put metal in their machine tools and do things to it, and I couldn’t do it, myself. I’ve had a lot of jobs I could not do or which I had to do with inferior tools. Life without machine tools is primitive and restrictive. I’m glad it’s over.

It’s very disturbing, watching a forklift raise a 2-ton lathe so high the underside is 6 feet off the ground. My baby was sitting on two steel forks; nothing more. She wasn’t even very close to the forklift. She was way out at the bouncy ends. Every time she swayed back and forth, I braced for the devastating sight of $16,000 worth of very heavy machinery plummeting face-first onto the asphalt.

Machine-moving accidents are pretty nasty. There is a guy in Kentucky you has a huge machine shop, and he posted a video of an accident he had. He has a huge bridge crane in his shop. This is an overhead transverse beam mounted on two beams running the length of the building. The transverse beam has a trolley with a winch on it. He bought a drill press which must weigh at least three tons, and he tried to use the crane to lower it onto a freshly created concrete slab he had poured.

He backed a semi holding the drill press into his shop, and then he used the crane to lift the drill press a few inches off the trailer. He moved the drill press so it was suspended over the pad, which was about 3 feet beneath it. He was standing on the trailer next to the drill press when the cable holding it up snapped.

The drill press dropped instantly, breaking his new slab as well as part of the main casting of the drill press. If he had been under any part of the drill press, he might have been squashed like a grape. And he was alone! What was left of him could have been pinned to the ground or the truck, or parts of him could have been pinned to both, and nobody would have found him until suppertime.

He must have spent a lot of money on the crane, because he decided not to buy new cable before he used it. That’s why the drill press fell.

I’ll post the video here. If you’re in a hurry, skip to about 6:05. Expect profanity.

I read a story on a forum about a man who sold machine tools He had a lathe on a truck, and it rolled off onto his son-in-law. That was the end of him. Terrible story. Probably not a clean death. Imagine what it did to the family.

The riggers did an excellent job with my machines, and the experience taught me a great lesson: I need a trailer. Moving machinery with a semi is insanely expensive. One of the rigger told me to look into air-bagged trailers. These have platforms held up by air bags, as you might guess. Let the air out, and the platform drops to the ground. They lie flat, like sheets of plywood. There are no ramps. To put a lathe on one of these things, you just put it on skates (not difficult) and roll it onto the one-inch high platform. Then you pump up the air bags, and you’re ready to go.

The giant bonus is that you don’t need a forklift or a forklift operator. Simply putting three machines on a trailer costs about $1800, as does taking them down, if you use riggers. Even if you risk death by renting forklifts and doing the job yourself, you will spend $1000 or so for the two days you will need them.

If I get an air-bagged trailer, I’ll be able to move my tractors, my golf cart, and all of my machinery. The next time I move, I may have to make a few trips, but it will definitely be better than paying whatever it costs to move all my stuff across several states.

I haven’t machined anything since arriving home because I haven’t had time. I had to work on unloading my own truck today; it was (still is) full of Miami junk. I also had to bring my birds home from the boarding place, where they are a huge hit. Marv now has a girlfriend named Jessie. She’s a big silvery Congo African grey who occupied a neighboring cage. Sadly, they will not be seeing each other again any time soon. I don’t think Marv cares. He seems immune to negative emotions.

I couldn’t use my tools last night because they were wet. The weather was dry for most of their journey, and then there was a blinding rain near the end of the trip. I had to wipe the machines down, blot up water, and blast them with a solution of lanolin and mineral spirits. I took a big can of WD-40 and poured it onto my mill table. I soaked a rag with Mobil Vactra 2 way oil and oiled things heavily. I was determined not to let the machines rust.

Rust is a big problem north of Miami. It’s surprising, but machines don’t rust at all in humid Miami if they’re indoors. Humidity doesn’t rust machines. Condensation does. When a machine is in an area where the air cools and warms up a lot–meaning all of North America north of South Florida and maybe parts of Texas–it ends up being cooler than the surrounding air many times a month. In humid areas, this causes water to condense on it. Then you get rust. In Miami, machines don’t get very cold very often, so condensation is not a big problem.

My table saw rusted over during my first Ocala winter, and that taught me I had to look out for condensation. Fortunately, a little rust doesn’t really harm a table saw. Even light rust will ruin a lathe, and it’s not great for mills, either.

If you watch machining videos, you will see a lot of people proudly “restoring” rusty lathes. They’ll pay good money for metal lathes that have been sitting outside in the rain, and they’ll scrape the rust off the bed ways, use Evaporust on the moving parts, paint everything, and claim they’re done. They have no idea what they’re doing. Once you have thick rust on a lathe’s ways, the precision is gone, permanently. If you want to bring it back, you have to pay someone to put it on a giant grinder, or you have to be a genius who can use scraping tools to restore flat, true, parallel surfaces. Basically, it means you’re done, unless you just happen to know someone who is willing to load your junkyard beauty on a grinding machine for nothing. The cost of grinding a lathe bed pretty much destroys the purpose of buying a cheap, rusted lathe.

Wood tools can be restored. Take off the rust, paint everything, make sure the motor turns, and you’re off. That’s because wood tools are not precise. If your table saw has a dip 10 thousandths deep in the middle of the top, no one cares. If rust takes 10 thousandths off your lathe’s ways in random places, it’s time to forget about metal and start turning wooden table legs with it.

The funny thing is that most machining hobbyists would probably disagree with me. They’re wrong, though. They’re just caught up in a bit of stubborn mythology born of the natural reluctance to accept bad news.

Another problem with “restored” lathes is that rust and grinding can remove the hardened part of the ways. Many lathes made during the last hundred years have flame-hardened ways, which means they were exposed to high heat after they were made. The hardening doesn’t go all that deep, so even if you scrape or grind your old lathe, you may end up with soft ways which will wear out and lose precision again quickly.

Bottom line: a rusty machine tool is generally going to perform badly, even if you try to restore it. It will be okay for certain purposes after you sand the formerly precision surfaces, but it will not perform like a machine that hasn’t rusted. Preventing rust is important, and rusty machines are not bargains. They are scrap.

Our government puts nice machines out in the rain all the time. It’s horrifying. If you go to government websites that list used machines for sale, you’ll see machines that are largely red. You may see a photo of a machine that cost $40,000 new, stored outdoors without a $5 tarp or even a layer of oil. I don’t know who buys these things. I wouldn’t go near one even if it were free.

Before the machine is put outdoors, it’s worth $8000. A month later, it’s worth the scrap price.

It shows how much government employees care about spending our money wisely. Shocking.

I’ll post a photo of a lathe our government is trying to sell. The bidding is up to $1550.00. I think I can tell you who is bidding on it. Retirees who want a new hobby and don’t know anything about lathes. Either that or people who know it’s ruined and don’t care about precision.

I’ve spent a lot of time on machining forums. Many of the people who participate are middle-aged guys who want a new hobby, and they get very bad advice from everyone else. People encourage them to buy old machines that are in very bad condition, and they make them think “a little rust” is no big deal. I guess a terrible lathe is better than no lathe, but I can’t imagine using a machine that has been stored in the rain. I don’t know what it would be useful for, apart from woodworking.

To get back to my story, my machines are as dry and greasy as I could get them. Maybe tomorrow I can connect the power and start doing something. I have to put my vise back on the mill and tram it, and I may actually level the lathe. A lathe that isn’t “leveled” (actually straightened) may produce tapered parts instead of straight ones. It doesn’t matter all that much if you’re making short parts, which I usually am, but longer parts will be affected more.

I don’t want to spend the whole evening blogging, so I won’t go into the way God has changed my life during my two trips to Miami. He made big changes in my heart. The changes are so great–dare I say it–the unpleasantness of visiting Miami seems well worth the pain. I’ll try to write about them tomorrow.

I’ll say this. I believe the difficulty I’ve had in separating myself from Miami, and in separating myself from financial interests in Kentucky, is related to things inside me that needed to be changed. Our problems here on earth tend to be reflections of the problems God has with us.

Pray the house closing goes well and that I don’t have to look for a new buyer. I am ready to cut that place loose.

Plus Hot Metal

Yesterday was eventful and profitable.

I have moved my tractors out of the workshop. I put tarps on them to protect such parts as would react badly to rain. Now I have more room for important things, like plasma-cutting and watching Youtube.

Speaking of Youtube, I tried to come up with a plan to hardwire the shop for the Internet. I don’t want to dig up the yard. I was thinking about it when I remembered that there was a jack on the wall out there. Phone? Ethernet? I had always assumed it was a phone jack, but I had never checked.

I went out and looked. It was a phone jack. That didn’t stop me. I wanted to find out what kind of wire was behind it. I had a couple of things in mind. If it was skinny phone wire, it could act as a fish line to pull Cat 6 wire through for the Internet. If it was something better, maybe I could connect it directly.

It turned out to be Cat 5, which, while inferior to Cat 6 (or Cat 11), is far better than I need. Pretty exciting. I came up with a plan. I would put a Cat 5 port in the garage, and I would find the phone port nearest to the router and turn it into a Cat 5 port. I would disconnect the land line stuff, which is obsolete, and I would have the Internet, wired, in every room where I had a phone jack.

I got myself some tools and went to work. I changed two phone jacks. I went to the computer. I turned it on. No service.

I traced all the wires, and I learned a couple of things. I found out where all the wiring in my house is. I learned that all the Cat 5 wiring was only partially wired up. Cat 5 has 8 wires, and the phone jacks use 4. Even if the wires from the garage had gone straight to the phone box by the garage, only 4 wires would have connected that box to the jacks in the house.

While I was working on all this, I decided to trace the Cat 5 workshop wires as far as I could. I opened a little box outside the workshop. Guess what I found? Cut wires. The jack in the garage was connected to approximately 5 feet of wire which dead-ended right outside.

Now I have two ethernet jacks that go nowhere.

I’m not sure what to do, but it can be dealt with. I just have to decide whether I care enough to do it. It will mean working in the attic, where the fiberglass insulation and wiring are, and I don’t really want to do that until the temperature drops into the low sixties.

I can use the Internet out there already, by using my phone as a mobile hotspot. It’s just annoying.

I also did some welding. I cut some flat steel bar into short pieces and made T-welds (fillets) with TIG and stick.

My TIG welding still needs a lot of work. After I welded, I went inside and watched some videos, and I took note of some fundamentals I had forgotten. I am hoping to do better today.

Welding is not like other tool-related pursuits. You have to keep practicing. People who have welded for 30 years practice. You don’t have to do this with other tools. No one practices using a wrench.

Because the weather is so much better now, welding isn’t a chore. I don’t sit and drip sweat into my helmet now. That means I can practice as long as I want, provided I observe the duty cycles of the machines and I don’t overheat the TIG torch.

Welding is easier with the cat gone. Before he left, I christened him “Heisenberg.” He now resides with my friend Amanda. I think it was a big mistake for her to take him, but apart from the obvious problems of taking in an unneeded pet in a crowded household, he will do an exceptional job of whatever it is that cats do. I’m just glad I can back out of the driveway at full speed again. And when I want to weld, I don’t have to put any animals in cages.

She took him to the vet to see if he had an ID chip, and of course, he did not. I predicted it, because I knew it was very unlikely that anyone around here would buy a cat chip and then throw away the cat and not look for it.

People treat cats as though they’re disposable. No sane person has ever paid for a cat. They’re always free, so a lot of people feel that that makes it okay to dump them beside the road. That is surely what happened to Heisenberg. He has a wonderful personality, but he’s a cat, so he’s an at-will family member who can be discarded at any moment for any reason.

Whoever abandoned him should have either given him away or had him put down, but it was easier to have no spine and toss him out of a car.

If you want to irritate a cat person, say this: “Dogs cost money, but cats are free.” By and large, it’s true.

His picture is on the Internet on sites where people look for lost pets, but no one will ever claim him. If anyone cared about him, I would have received a response by now.

I wonder if his neediness, which I saw as a plus, is what got him fired. It’s unusual for a cat to be bursting with affection. Maybe someone didn’t want to be pestered. Before he left, he was doing things like jumping on me and wrapping all 4 legs around me. That could get old. In fact, it did. He interrupted me repeatedly while I was trying to work.

I talked to my friend Mike about it. He understands completely. He has two cats, and he keeps hoping they’ll die. He feels obligated to take care of them because no one will take them and he’s not willing to take them to a shelter, but they’re not real pets, like dogs. They don’t care about him. I would have taken them to the pound a long time ago. People are more important than animals. You shouldn’t disrupt your life so an unwanted cat can have food and shelter until it croaks. You have more value than that.

God showed me something interesting and very important. There is a correct order of authority in people’s lives, and if you’re not in God’s will, that order will be inverted. When an animal’s desires come before your needs, you have an inversion of authority. We’re supposed to be above animals. They live for us, not the other way around.

My sister is a sociopath and a sadist, but she loves animals. She used to cry and make loud moaning noises every time she saw a horse through a car window. She has a long history of spoiling aggravating little dogs and using them to control other people. She has never housetrained a dog. She forced her dogs’ company on people who hated them. She will sing songs to a dog after it poops on the floor, so it knows it’s a good idea to keep doing it. She has an inversion of authority.

Satan rules demons. Demons rule her pets. Her pets rule her. Through her, they rule other people. To deal with my sister is to accommodate her awful pets. This is why every other person in the family has killed at least one of her dogs. My dad turned one loose. My mother took two to be gassed. I took one to be gassed. I prayed for God to kill the last one because she claimed it was the reason she wouldn’t go to drug rehab.

I don’t know if she has pets now, or even if she’s alive. I’m glad I no longer have to be around animals that are so spoiled they climb on the furniture for the purpose of urinating on it. I’m glad I no longer have to be around my sister. Her main function in life is to take away the dignity of other human beings and destroy their joy. I keep praying for God to keep her out of my life forever. He told me I should not think about her, so I try not to.

When I was a kid, I had a dog. I saw him climb onto a couch and push my sister off so he could stretch out. He did this to an abusive, extremely aggressive person who pushed other human beings around and made them miserable. He knew her proper place. She was below him in the supernatural hierarchy. I didn’t understand this until long after he was gone.

Satan promotes something I call “the alternative righteousness.” It’s a pretend righteousness that has nothing to do with serving God. Sick devotion to animals is part of it. People who are obsessed with animals are not Spirit-led Christians. If you have pets, you will be exposed to these people when you need help, and you will see certain things often. Liberalism. Vegetarianism. Witchcraft. Feminism. These things are abnormal, but on the surface, they look nice. Leftists claim they love the poor because they give them things and reinforce their pathological flaws. Vegetarians think they’re better than the rest of us because they don’t kill their food, even though Jesus ate meat and created the sacrificial system of Judaism; the Torah HAD to be written on the skins of slaughtered animals. Witches always claim they only do good. Feminists…don’t get me started.

A warped adoration of animals is part of the alternative righteousness. It’s probably why Hitler loved dogs and gave up meat. The Nazis were heavily into vegetarianism, environmentalism, and nature worship. You can look it up.

I love my pets, but I bought them in ignorance, and I would not do it again. I wouldn’t buy another animal or accept one unless I had a good reason, such as that it was corn-fed, cut in thick slices, and on sale. I would let a barn cat live here (and stay here after I moved) in order to keep pests down. I would buy a protection dog if I had to. I’m not going to have any more pure pets if I can help it. I won’t even have fish.

Drudge likes to link to stories about people who are pulled out of trailers full of sick animals and feces. “HOUSE OF FILTH” is one of his favorite headlines. Those people are demonized. Demons run them, and the demons tell them to hoard animals. It doesn’t help the animals, who should be euthanized, and it certainly doesn’t help the hoarders or the people they cause to suffer.

The Bible says one person is worth more than many sparrows. That’s just how it is.

Have you noticed how nutcases are filling our stores, restaurants, and airplanes with “support animal” pets? That’s a sign that demons are increasing their power over us. People who are controlled by animals have a demonic desire to extend that control over others. Satan is a conqueror; he never stops looking for more territory.

It’s not enough to carry a pig in a bag and sing songs to it. You have to make other people sit next to it in restaurants while it breaks wind and eats off a plate you might get next week. Like the increasing power of illegal aliens, it’s a sign that America is losing God’s support.

If you’re not full of the Holy Spirit, you won’t understand these things. It’s all true, though.

It’s a smart system, in the short run. Not only do you get to coerce admiration out of other people through your virtue-signaling; you get to put them down and control them by saying they’re less righteous than you are. Most people are so simple, they will buy it. Satan is an extremely accomplished manipulator. He has done his homework.

The point of the alternative righteousness is to convince you that you can be a good person and have a fine afterlife while continuing to enjoy sin and reject God. It works really well. Many people you know are burning in agony and humiliation right now because they fell for it.

It’s remarkable how Satan can degrade you with animals, once God stops backing you up. There is a lady in Florida who forces other people to share airplanes with a horse. Those people don’t even know they’re supernaturally defeated. It’s not just a horse on a plane. It’s Satan, saying, “This is how low you are now, because you reject God. A horse is more important than you are.”

My sister, who is basically a demon apartment building with feet, was always ahead of the curve. She forced her dog into restaurants years before the other children of darkness got the idea. While she lived in filth in a house with walls that were caked with mold and floors that were varnished with urine and feces, the dog ate rib eye steak from Whole Foods. That’s the gospel truth. I am a witness.

If you have God’s favor, you should live like it. A man should have authority over his wife, his kids, and whatever animals live on their property. The wife should have authority over everyone except him. The kids should have authority over the animals. If an animal is running your life, you have a demon problem, and you’re not living up to the potential God REQUIRES you to fulfill. It’s a sign, and you need to take notice and repent.

Now that I think about it, Jewish legend says God withheld the flood until human beings began marrying animals. That suddenly makes more sense to me. It’s about as severe as an authority inversion can get. When you’re having sex with your dog and calling him your husband, you can’t get much lower. You’re signalling your true value, which is nil. If you declare yourself worthless, God may respect your assessment.

He has prepared a place for the worthless.

Fascinating stuff. It’s remarkable that this wisdom isn’t commonly held. After thousands of years, we should all know these things. One generation should teach the next.

I’m repeating myself, but God told me these things: “All strength comes from inheritance. There is no strength without inheritance. Satan hates inheritance.” We are so bad at giving new generations their inheritance of wisdom, we are re-learning things people knew 5000 years ago. Satan has done a great job of keeping us poor. We did all the work for him. He just lied and made us think it was the right thing to do.

Why fight your enemy when you can make him fight himself while you watch? When you kill an enemy, you gain nothing. When you make an enemy destroy himself, you gain a servant and a soldier.

If animals or worthless people are above you in life, you need to get some authority. Your situation is not normal, and it’s not permanent unless you want it to be.

I wish I had had someone to tell me these things when I was young, but my parents didn’t know anything. Maybe this material will help you, though. I certainly hope so.

Buying Tools is Never Wrong

I know the entire world is wondering what happened when my jackhammer arrived.

My back was bugging me last week, which is one reason I bought the jackhammer. It arrived on Friday, and I felt good enough to break it out and use it. I only had time to run it about 45 minutes, but that was long enough to convince me everyone needs a jackhammer.

I guess it sounds stupid to say a person whose back hurts needs to buy a tool that weighs over 40 pounds and has to be held up while it rams a huge piece of steel into hard objects, but you have to consider the alternatives, including doing nothing.

I was trying to get a giant rock out of my yard. I pulled on it with a strap attached to the tractor, and as far as I can tell, I was able to rock it about a quarter of an inch. I bought rock-splitting wedges, and they worked great, but splitting chunks off an oddly shaped rock requires contorting yourself into odd positions while crouching in a hole in the ground, and you will have to do repeated splits. I used my rotary hammer to break up the rock, and it works well, but it’s much slower than a jackhammer, and because it’s only maybe two feet long, a certain amount of contortion is still needed.

The only other choice I had was to do nothing. I could put the dirt back in around the rock and continue trying to remember to drive the lawnmower around it for the remainder of my stay on this property. I wasn’t having that. That rock needs to go, and besides, I like using tools to make problems go away.

I bought a refurbished hammer from CPO Outlets, which is known for selling refurbs. Sometimes their deals aren’t all that great, but they sold me a thousand-dollar hammer for under $600. That was hard to pass up. I’ve bought other refurbs from them, and I think it’s smart business. A refurb, typically, is a tool someone bought and then returned because he didn’t like it. The manufacturers have to look them over and make sure they’re up to new standards. They are basically new tools, but they can’t be sold as new, so you get a break. You are likely to get a full warranty, so it’s hard to see any reason not to go for it.

I could have gotten a Chinese hammer for a lot less, as I have said, but it would have been Chinese, so it might have crapped out quickly, and I doubt I could have gotten it repaired.

Interesting thing: the manual for the hammer I bought bragged that it wouldn’t need to be serviced until I had 300 hours on it. That surprised me. None of my other tools have manuals saying, “Get ready for this tool to die at 300 hours.” Made me wonder if Chinese was the better solution. I don’t know how much money it costs to get a jackhammer serviced, so right now, I can’t judge. For all I know, it just means I have to take out a couple of screws and replace an O-ring.

CPO Outlets enhanced its profit margin by not including a bit for the hammer, but that’s okay, because I didn’t want the bit it would have come with. They come with pointy bits. I wanted one like a big flat-bladed screwdriver. When I checked them out online, I saw startling prices. Like $40 each. Then I noticed a DeWalt for $15. It was exactly what I wanted, and it was from a real company, so I ordered it. It works fine, and I can’t find anything wrong with it. I feel like I scored.

I took the hammer out to the hole, put the bit against the rock in a place where I thought it needed to be hit, and went to town. Right away, I was surprised to see how pleasant jackhammering was. I was nervous when I started. I thought the bit might jump around and put my feet in danger. I thought I might be jarred a lot. I equipped myself with safety glasses, a respirator, and ear plugs because I was concerned about noise and flying quartz chips. In reality, the bit stayed nearly where I put it, I was not jarred at all, nothing the bit broke off flew anywhere near my face, the machine was quiet, and if there was inhalable dust, there was so little I could not see it.

When I think of jackhammers, I think of fat guys on city streets operating huge air-powered hammers that seem to make them bounce around like toys on top of a washer full of towels during a spin cycle. It was not like that at all for me. It was more like having a pleasant belly massage. I guess the four fat springs on the hammer suck up nearly all of the pain.

Hammering made me wonder if I understood how rocks work. I think of rocks as things that exist in two states: shattered and not. I don’t think of them as things that can weaken gradually, like fatigued metal. When I hammered on my hard quartz rock, I found that sometimes the bit would stay in one place a long time, seeming to do nothing, and then the rock would suddenly give way, as though the prolonged hammering had softened it up. That was strange.

I had some problems with the bit getting stuck. Sometimes it will go straight down, making a tight hole, and then when it gets too deep, I’ll have to pull it back out. The hammering action doesn’t work when you’re lifting the hammer, so the machine doesn’t help at all. Also, you’re not supposed to pry with the bit. The hammer isn’t made for that. Which is a shame, because the bit alone probably weighs 8 pounds and could certainly pry as well as a typical pry bar. The hammer and bit, together, are about four feet long, so I would have a lot of leverage if I could pry with them.

It seems like I need to keep the sledge and rotary hammer nearby, in case the jackhammer gets stuck. I can beat the rock with the sledge or chisel the jackhammer it out with the rotary hammer.

I cracked a lot of big chunks off the rock in the short time I spent using the hammer. I can see that one of two things will happen. I may crack enough junk off the rock to make it small enough to tear out with the tractor, or I will simply remove stuff until the remaining rock is so far below grade I won’t mind burying it and moving on with my life.

Was this a stupid buy? I don’t know. I didn’t need to remove the rock at all. I could have painted it day-glo orange and driven around it. The house is 19 years old, and the previous owner never had to remove the rock. On the other hand, the rocks are annoying, and they really should be removed. It would cost me maybe a grand to get them removed with a bulldozer, and it would tear the yard up even worse than I have. After all that, I would not have a neat jackhammer and splitting wedges, or the ability to use them, in my tool arsenal. I would just have a bill and a messed-up yard.

It’s fun tormenting the rocks, and I have amassed a very big rock collection which I could conceivably use for decoration.

In other news, my friends Freddly and Freddelle visited this weekend, along with Freddly’s children Noah and Grace. Noah is my godson, and he is 4. I think. Grace is 10 months old. Freddly’s husband couldn’t make it.

Freddelle is a law student at FSU. I have known her since she was 17. We met at Trinity Church. She found out I was a lawyer and immediately began grilling me for advice. Over the years, I have been able to be somewhat helpful to her. She calls me a mentor. I would say I’m just a guy who gave her advice a few times. She had doubts about even getting into law school, and here she is, coming up on graduation, with one solid job offer already in the bag.

Freddly was an armorbearer at Trinity. The code name she gave herself was “Oreo,” which I found extremely amusing. I was somewhat instrumental in helping her reattach with God after the Wilkerson family and Trinity disillusioned and discouraged her.

When they started talking about visiting, I wasn’t sure what two Haitian girls who were suburban at best would do here, but things worked out very well. We went to a barbecue place and a great Italian restaurant, and on Sunday, we went on a glass-bottomed boat at Silver Springs. Noah was beside himself. You would think he had never seen a fish before.

Noah likes trucks and tractors, so that’s what he gets for holiday presents, and he was well-prepared for my farm. He has a Tonka John Deere, so we got the real John Deere lawn tractor out, and he helped me drive it around the yard.

Noah loves Marvin and Maynard, and I think they enjoyed his company, too.

The ladies and I talked about various Christian topics. They seem much more well-grounded than I had thought. I told them I was thinking of moving to Tennessee, and I mentioned the strange trend of Christians moving to that state. Freddly told me something crazy. She had had a dream in which she visited Tennessee. This was before she knew about my plans, and she has no Tennessee connections. She said she visited to see if it was okay for black people move there.

Something is going on in the supernatural.

My back is at about 95% now. I don’t know what I did to it, but it was not serious. I almost never have back problems, so a week of limited activity was a strange and unwelcome experience. Today I went out and did a few things. A three-trunked oak fell over for no reason at all, so I had to go out in the woods and cut all three trunks to take pressure off the trees it was leaning on. There was poison ivy everywhere. I had to walk like I was in a minefield. Before I started my saws, I hosed the whole area with glyphosate. I may have to go back in there, and obviously, it’s harder to get a rash from dead vines than big juicy leaves with oil all over them.

I noticed something interesting: when you cut a lot of wood and throw sawdust everywhere, it covers up poison ivy and makes an area less dangerous. I don’t think I’m very sensitive to poison ivy, because I have eaten mangoes with sap on them for decades with no problem, and I worked in the poison ivy before I knew what it was without getting rashes, but I don’t want to be exposed any more than I have to. When I came home, I used a brush and dish detergent to scrub the soles of my boots.

Cutting leaning trees is dangerous and difficult, especially when you can’t stand wherever you want. I relied on bore-cutting, which means cutting the middle out of a tree before you sever the remaining strap or straps on the outside. It prevents the tree from splitting, which can throw a trunk in your face. I was not able to get the tree down completely in the time I had, but I severed it from its roots, ensuring that it will dry up and rot faster, and I cut enough off the trunks to give substantial relief to the trees holding the fallen tree up.

I can get more done once the ivy is dead.

I am no arborist, but from watching Youtubes, I can tell I know a few things a lot of the old pros don’t. Some of them don’t know much about bore-cutting, for example. I’m not afraid to cut a leaning tree which is hung on other trees, because with a bore cut and two or three wedges, I can fix it so the tree can’t split in a dangerous way or pinch my saw. I can also fell a leaning tree that isn’t hung, as long as I’m okay with it falling in the direction of the lean. I don’t know enough to log or take down rotten trees that are still vertical, and cutting free leaning trees so they fall away from the lean is too much for me, but I know enough to do what I need to do on this farm.

Cutting leaning trees that are not hung is very dangerous. If you leave the wood in the center of the trunk, the torque from the lean may make the tree split up the middle, and then you get what’s called a barber chair. It’s a heavy trunk supported on a springy bit that has split away, and the trunk may bounce and swing unpredictably. They kill people all the time.

Here’s a video of a tree barber-chairing.

This shows why you should always wear a hard hat when you cut anything taller than you are. You can cut a tree a foot from the ground, but if it barber chairs, the base of the trunk may rise up over your head and then come down on you.

A barber chair ruins a lot of the wood in a tree.

I’ve noticed that some of the techniques loggers use are designed to spare the wood. For example, they often cut almost flush with the ground. My wood is worthless, so I don’t care about any of that. When I look at videos and read about tree felling, I discard the stuff that doesn’t apply to me and could cause problems.

Cutting a tree flush with the ground is hard on your back, and if something goes wrong, it may be hard to straighten up and run. You also end up with a stump you can’t pull out with a chain or rope. I have had to deal with stumps people cut this way (stupidly), and I wouldn’t dream of cutting them like that. The higher you cut a tree, the more leverage you have when you pull the stump with the tractor. I try to cut low enough to be safe and high enough to leave me with something to pull on.

It’s funny, but the oaks here rot like crazy while they’re alive, but once you cut one, the stump lasts forever. It absolutely will not rot. You really have to think about stump removal when you cut an oak here. You can always have a flush-cut stump ground, but it’s expensive, and then you end up with a permanent mass of wood just under the ground, where you had hoped to plant something.

It’s dumb.

I had a maple struck by lightning, and because it was not a dangerous tree, I ended up cutting it about six feet up. After that, I had no problem pulling it out. Took about three minutes. It was nothing like the flush-cut stumps that required hours of digging and hacking.

I guess the world has read enough about my doings for one day.

I’ll try to post some jackhammer photos eventually.

Now if I can Just Get it to Cast Itself into the Sea

God has given me another productive day. The trick is to pray, curse your problems, and bless your efforts, in the name of Jesus Christ, BEFORE the problems pop up.

I’ve been working on three stubborn stumps in my front yard. I got one out this weekend, and then yesterday, I went after another one, and I got a bonus. I located a huge rock near a stump, and I managed to get it out of the ground and move it out of the area. I also succeeded in removing the second stump.

Today I went after the third stump. I prayed for help. I spoke the Lord’s opposition to the difficulty of removing it, and I spoke his help to me. After maybe 90 minutes’ work with the subsoiler, drill, sawzall, and Root Assassin, the stump surprised me by surrendering suddenly. It popped out of the ground for no obvious reason.

Here it is. I may have it bronzed.

I bent the tabs that connect the subsoiler to my hitch. I don’t know how I did that. My tractor is not big, so you would think it wouldn’t be able to bend what appears to be 7/16″ plate. I don’t care, however, because the subsoiler still works, and even if it didn’t, the amount I paid for it is a lot lower than the cost of having people come in and remove stumps and rocks. I don’t care if I break three of these a year.

Now there are no stumps in the area where I was working, and a big rock which would have caused problems is gone. I have three little blackberry plants ready to go in the ground. I just have to get more soil. When I began this project, I didn’t know I’d have four huge holes to fill.

I’m wondering if I should put clay or some kind of waterproof material in the bottoms of the holes, to retain water. The dirt here drains way too fast.

The Internet, which never lies, says blackberry roots don’t go deeper than 10″. I could put pieces of tarp down about 15″ and then put soil and plants over them. I wonder if anyone has tried this.

I also finished sewing my second knife sheath. I bought a Lionsteel M4 with olive wood handles, and the sheath that came with it wasn’t right for my jeans. This sheath was harder to sew than the first one. I don’t know why. Anyway, here’s a photo.

I still have to finish up the edges. Right now, the sheath is drying. I wet it down and molded it around the knife’s handle so it would hold the knife in place without a strap. I may have to add a strap later, though. That’s okay. The stitching is not great, and I may redo it. If I do that, I’ll have a good opportunity to add a strap with a snap.

I sharpened several knives. I bought a Cold Steel Swift with CTS-XHP steel. Cold Steel doesn’t use CTS-XHP any more because they can’t get a reliable supply, so it’s getting hard to find these knives. I found one on Ebay for something like $20 below the street price, so I had to buy it. Yesterday, I used it to trim a piece of leather, and it went dull right away. I had to do something.

My understanding is that manufacturers supply defective edges on knives. They sharpen them with belts, and they do it too quickly, softening the steel on the edges. This gives you a very sharp knife which gets dull fast. I think this is what happened to the Swift. Cutting the leather shouldn’t have affected it at all.

I got out my diamond hones and a weird ceramic hone, and I touched it up. Did I get rid of the soft steel? I don’t know. I’ll keep using it. If it gets dull fast, I’ll know the answer.

It’s so sharp now, it’s creepy. The fact that it sharpened up so fast may indicate that the edge is still soft.

The Swift is a very, very nice knife, but it’s an assisted-opening design. You open it part of the way with a little button on the blade, and then a spring slams it open the rest of the way. I don’t like that. I can open a knife just fine by flicking my wrist. Using a spring seems dangerous.

The whole point of buying a steel like CTS-XHP is to avoid frequent sharpening, so I hope the knife isn’t a dud. I have a Gerber Gator II with cheap steel, and it’s a great knife, but for the fast dulling. I paid $15 for it. If I’m going to get cheap-steel performance, I might as well pay cheap-steel prices. The Gator II is indestructible, and it has a very comfortable handle.

I also sharpened my Entrek sheath knife. I have seen the way Ray Ennis sharpens these knives when he makes them, and I don’t think it’s their best feature. Apart from the heating issue, the knife, as it came from the factory, didn’t seem to want to bite into things.

I have DMT diamond stones, but I didn’t use them. I like kitchen-style hones. I have them in two diamond grits, plus the ceramic one and two steels. They seem to work just as well as stones, and they’re easier to use. Also, you don’t have to use liquid.

On top of all this, got a lot of business done. Leases for rental properties and so on. And I stocked up on groceries. Breakfast was sub-optimal this morning because I was running low on things. I had three fried eggs with cheddar cheese, plus whole wheat toast. I had been planning to eat fresh vegetables, boiled eggs, pita, and so on.

Tomorrow, the sheath for the Lion Steel knife should be dry, and after a little finishing, I should be able to use it. I want to get used to going out in public with a sheath knife. I feel conspicuous, but open carry is 100% legal, and I prefer sheath knives to folding knives.

Time to shower up and spend time with the birds. Hope your day was as good as mine.

God is Relocating People

A few years back, I had a dream about my dad. At least I thought it was about my dad. Sitting here writing about it, I think it may have been about him AND the church.

I was in his bedroom. In front of me, a devil who resembled a young black man was dancing. He was short and frail. One punch would have rolled him up like a sock and shattered most of the bones in his upper body. Several spirits that looked like owls were dancing around him. They were suspended in the air. They were located precisely so their positions formed the corners of a rectangle around the devil. Each had an assigned place.

I took it to mean that these were the spirits that ruled my dad. I knew owls were symbolic of evil spirits.

I’ve been thinking about it over the last day, and I think the owls represented spirits of false wisdom. Athena was the false goddess of wisdom, and her symbol is an owl. Before he gave himself to Jesus, my dad was extremely conceited about his intellect, and he said he was too sophisticated to be a Christian.

When God cursed the world, he cursed women with difficult childbirth. One big reason childbirth is difficult is that human babies have very large heads. It makes sense, because confidence in our big brains makes it hard for us to enter the kingdom of heaven. God cursed humanity with problems that reflected the curses humanity had laid on him.

Jesus said, “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” The path into this world is tight, and so is the path into the next world.

Yesterday morning, I dreamed I was on a ship. I was looking for my dad. I found his quarters. It was a large apartment. The same devil was there, dancing. Instead of owls, he was surrounded by dancing roaches. I would say they were around eight inches long. They hovered in the air with their wings spread and their abdomens bent forward, in threatening postures. Other types of vermin crawled toward my feet, but they didn’t climb onto me.

I went into my dad’s bedroom. It stank. It was filthy. His sheets were green with fermented sweat, urine, and other things. He wasn’t there. I somehow knew that he liked to lie in the stinking bed and take drugs.

God talks about casting rebellious people into beds of harlotry.

For some reason, I needed clothing, so I went to the closet. I found a pair of pants that were clean, and I put them on. I fell on the bed briefly, but I managed to roll off without coming into contact with the filth.

I believe the ship was the church. In Genesis, God put his people in an ark and lifted it above the waters of the world. I believe the devil was the spirit that runs the church. He’s not Satan; he’s lower in the hierarchy. He’s black because Africa is the source of a great deal of demon worship. The roaches were spirits that turn preachers into spiritual roaches who destroy and spread spiritual disease instead of building people up. Think of Benny Hinn or John Gray.

My dad represented the preachers who let me down. They were like bad fathers. Never around when I needed them, and when they were around, they caused more problems than they solved. I could not respect them or rely on them. They were dangerous to me, like lepers.

I had a relatively brief engagement with churches. I got a little authority, but I was rejected, so I didn’t get covered in the filth that coated the preachers I served and listened to. Pants are clothing, and clothing is authority. Rolling off the bed without getting dirty represents me moving into churches and then being moved out by God before too much harm could be done. The worst thing that could have happened to me would have been to be honored and made comfortable, because I might have stopped seeking and exposing the truth.

I’ve been asking God to tell me and other people the future. The dream seems to have been about the past, but I suppose it also tells me not to expect or desire any kind of promotion from churches during the remainder of my life. That’s good, because I am fed up with churches. The last thing I want is some backward preacher’s bit between my teeth.

In other news, I just saw an interesting Perry Stone video. He uploaded it in August of 2016, and in it, he quoted an alleged prophecy that was given at one of his events in 2015. The title of the video is “What is About to Happen in the United States,” so I had to watch to see if he had been right or wrong.

Perry Stone has many amazing teachings, but he also wanders off into pride from time to time, and he associates with some unsavory people, such as Steve Munsey, so you can’t assume everything he says is right.

Here is what he said in 2015, as related in the 2016 video:

There is coming a sign in this country. There is coming a sign. It’s in the very near future, and the righteous will discern it, but the unrighteous will not. And you will know it when you see it, because it will be something that is so significant that it will grip your attention, because the Lord is going to do his best to wake up America one more time. And he does this because he loves this country.

Listen to me; I’m hearing it. The widow women have given for missions and for the gospel, and the little women have kept the rural churches alive by baking pies and cakes and the such. People with minimum wage incomes have given to help poor people. America is a giving country. If you don’t believe that, let a disaster happen anywhere in the world; who shows up first?

It doesn’t matter what the country is. If it’s a Muslim country, doesn’t matter. Indonesia? Doesn’t matter. Taiwan? Doesn’t matter. Japan? Doesn’t matter. Who shows up?

And I hear the Spirit of God saying this:

“I remember the good that my people have done, and I will give you another chance because of what you planted in the past. It now comes up before me. What you’ve planted in the past, it will come up before God one more time, and you’re going to see pockets.

As men speak of pockets of selective judgment, so, likewise, there are pockets of selective revival; areas where people will pray and pray and worship and pray until the glory is seen. And it will not be the type of meeting which will make attention from coast to coast, but in that region and with those people.

The town will know that there is a visitation from heaven going on here, and it will be known as the rural revival because people will begin to leave the large cities, not in droves or in masses, but they’ll begin to pull away and not know why into the mountain areas and into the smaller cities because of the danger and the fear of mobs and robbing and looting and stealing, and they’ll be drawn to where the good people are, where they hear people love each other and they care for one another.

And some will come, and they will have no background in the word–they’ll have no background in the things of the Spirit–but they’ll be drawn here because of the mercy of God, and he will draw them to places of mercy of the people of the Lord for his people, and the good people who know their Lord and know their God shall teach them the things of God one more time because the Lord says he still has more than a remnant in this nation.”

Of course, I find this interesting, because it describes exactly what happened to me. I was desperate to get away from Miami, but I couldn’t seem to get free. In 2016, I started looking for a new home in earnest, and in July of 2017, my dad bought the rural home in which I now live.

I’ve been writing about the danger of leftist mobs for years. I know Miami and other big cities will eventually be ruled by crowds of trashy, cruel, underdeveloped, grasping people who have decided to be no better than apes. This is where leftism and hatred of God lead. Perry Stone must have been hearing from the Holy Spirit, because he described my flight from Miami as well as my reasons for leaving.

He also says people are going to move to mountain areas, and he talks about Appalachia and specifically mentions West Virginia and Tennessee. Even though I’ve been here less than two years, I feel a tremendous drive to move to Tennessee. I keep talking about how much I miss Appalachia. I have sat and stared, with thirst, at Youtube videos and real estate websites, just to get a look at mountain properties.

When I decided to watch this video, I expected to be disappointed, but it looks like this was a real prophecy. I hope God sees fit to move me to Appalachia.

God has been helping me get on top of my responsibilities. He has used the revived pressure washer to change my life. The house is getting clean outside, to match the inside. Today I used the pressure washer to clean my birds’ cages. Those cages have frustrated me for years. They are impossible to clean well by hand, without extreme effort. Today I blew the crud off of each one in a few minutes. I was amazed. Anyway, this property is being whipped into shape, and I wonder if I’m getting it ready to live in, or to sell.

It appears that my farm has increased in value since I bought it. There is new construction going up in my area, so the appreciation will probably continue. I may be able to sell without losing anything.

Toward the end of the video, Stone started telling the young people around him about the passage in Joel that says young men will have visions and old men will dream dreams. He interpreted it to mean the kids should have the vision to help him build the ministry he had dreamed about. This is where he got off the Holy Spirit bus. God doesn’t want a bunch of young people to devote their lives to promoting Perry Stone. He wants them to be important in their own right. God didn’t put us here to serve Perry Stone. He put us here to serve God himself.

You can see why I’m a little cautious about Stone. He’ll do great for a while and then veer off into the bushes.

When Joel wrote of “visions,” he was talking about visions. A vision is a supernatural experience in which a person sees things that are not present in the natural realm. In 1984, I woke up in the middle of the night, and my bed had turned 90 degrees. An angel was standing at the foot of the bed with her hands up in worship, and she was bathed in a light that came down from heaven. That’s a vision. John saw visions which he recorded in the Revelation. Ezekiel saw visions. The kind of “vision” a preacher has for building something is a completely different thing. It not a vision at all. It’s just an idea.

I am concerned about people I know who are going to be trapped in cities when things get bad. They don’t listen, so they will have unnecessary problems. I wish I could help them.

Jews insist on living in big cities. They will be easy to find and attack.

I hope I get to visit Appalachia again soon. Maybe I’ll be able to find time.

Simple Project Made from Common Household Items

My balancing robot is in Miami, but it’s not in my house. Fedex promised to deliver it on Wednesday. Today is Monday. The robot is relaxing at a Fedex facility instead of riding a non-balancing human-driven truck to my front porch. How crazy is that? I want my robot!

I’m not ready for it, though, and not just because I don’t know how to operate it. I’m not ready for it because I have another electronics thing I should do first: the Arduino-powered bird organ.

I have a cockatoo. His name is Maynard. He craves attention. Since I moved my office, he doesn’t see me as much as he used to, so he gets even by pulling his feathers out. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to give him as much attention as he demands, but I suspect I can improve things by entertaining him.

A long time ago, it occurred to me that a bird as smart as Maynard might enjoy a musical instrument. I ordered a couple of toy organs, and my plan was to rig them up with strings so Maynard and my other bird, Marv, could pull the strings and make noise. The organ order was cancelled for some reason, so I forgot all about it.

There was also another problem with the idea. These days, everything turns itself off. The hippies have rigged life so you can’t turn things on and leave them that way. Little hippie chips inside them turn them off after they decide you’ve left them on long enough. The organs I bought would probably have shut down after ten or twenty minutes, unless the birds played them all day.

I got on the web and looked around for an Arduino organ, and I found out you can make one. I also found out you can make one without an Arduino. In a way this is a bummer, because I want to do Arduino stuff from time to time. On the other hand, a simple organ made from a cheap breadboard would be faster to build, and it would be less potentially aggravating. There would be less that could go wrong with it. And it would stay on forever. I could put a wall wart on it. I only have about 30,000 of those.

People who have built PCB organs have used momentary pushbutton switches. That won’t work for me. A bird can’t push a tiny button on a circuit board. I need levers or strings. I looked around and realized what I needed: microswitches with levers. I could slap them on a board and come up with a way for the birds to move the levers.

I checked Ebay, and I learned that you can get the switches for practically nothing if you order from China, but they’re like $3 each, which is highway robbery, if you order them from the US. I don’t want to wait a month for Chinese switches. What to do? Hmmm.

Of course, I already knew what to do. I already had a bag of microswitches. I bought them for my CNC lathe, and I never used them. I can order Chinese switches to replace them. While I wait for the Chinese ones, I can use the ones I already have.

I have breadboards. I have a billion resistors. I have a little PCB speaker. It’s kind of disturbing. How many normal people have all the parts for a bird organ sitting around waiting to be assembled?

What about the 555 timer I’ll need to make it work? Sorry to report: I have a bag full of those, too.

I don’t think Maynard needs all the notes of the scale. I suspect his music will be too avant-garde to require tonality. I figure I can give him four notes and let him express himself within that narrow regime.

This project should take about an hour and a half, not including building a cabinet (box) for the organ. If I decide to add LED’s that light up, call it four hours to be on the safe side.

If I wanted to go Arduino, I suppose I could build a four-button organ that plays four different MIDI songs. I think Maynard would be happier with the simpler organ, because it would respond to him in real time. Pull, get a sound. Stop pulling, no sound. It would encourage him to keep pulling. I want him to be busy so he forgets about pulling his feathers.

I only have five switches, so five tones would be the limit. Maybe I should go with three. I saw a movie involving a casino yesterday, and I heard the gambling machines playing MIDI tunes. They always use the notes C, E, and G to give a C major feel to their annoying music. It’s supposed to be cheery and uplifting (“Yay! Your IRA is gone!”), and Maynard needs all the cheer he can get. He’s a natural whiner.

I wonder how I’ll get those tones. Trimmer pots to adjust the pitches? I don’t know. But I have a pile of trimmer pots. Naturally. Maybe I should give him one tone with a thing he can pull to make the pitch go up and down.

Anyway, I should quit worrying about the robot.

The More Special You Think You Are, the More Special it Gets

I’m always looking for something to watch while the birds are out of their cages. I found a channel that runs old episodes of Barney Miller in order; that was kind of fun, until I got tired of the Seventies a second time. I watch car shows, restaurant improvement shows…just about anything that isn’t the news and doesn’t feature naked people.

The other day I saw a short documentary about a documentary. A man named Klaus Lanzmann made a 10-hour documentary called Shoah, between about 1974 and 1985, and the newer documentary was about the difficulty of creating the longer one.

I had never seen Shoah, so I looked for a copy to buy. I tried to find a legitimate used copy, so the royalties would be paid, but the one I bought turned out to be Korean, which means its legitimacy is dubious. Oh, well. I did try.

The word “shoah” is Hebrew for “destruction.” Some Jewish people prefer it to “holocaust,” which describes an animal burned as a sacrifice. I suppose the notion of sacrifice seems to suggest that God sanctioned the millions of murders and other crimes.

Personally, I think “Holocaust” is the right word.

Not all sacrifices are holy. Pagans have always sacrificed animals. Satanists are known for it. If what happened to the Jewish people was a sacrifice, it doesn’t mean it was a good thing.

When I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and saw their tabletop model of the killing area at Auschwitz, I was surprised how much it reminded me of the temple in Jerusalem. The people who were gassed were treated a lot like sacrificial animals. They were stripped (Jewish priests had to be covered, so that their private parts were not exposed from below; also, Jewish law requires modesty), and everything useful they had was harvested from them. Then they were killed with the blood remaining in them (Jewish sacrifices have to be bled out), and they were burned (Jews are not permitted to cremate their dead). The whole enterprise was hidden, and the point of it was to remove all evidence that the murders and the Jews themselves had existed. One of the worst curses in Jewish culture is to be forgotten; Jews who hated Jesus have written, “May his name and memory be blotted out.”

Auschwitz was a place of unclean sacrifice. It was a parody of the temple. It was Satan’s deliberate insult to God. “You like sacrifices? Here you go.”

The documentary (Shoah) tells a great deal about the extermination camps, using eyewitness testimony. Lanzmann even tricked Nazis into giving interviews. He and his assistant got a bad beating for doing that.

I will watch the remaining minutes of the documentary today. When it’s over, I will have finished it in three days. It’s hard to stop watching.

All the time that I have been watching it, God has been reinforcing a message he gave me a long time ago. The world belongs to Satan, and God is not as closely involved in it as we think. In fact, the world is a death camp. The majority of human beings who are born live as slaves to Satan, and then they die and go to hell. Not just people who aren’t nice; most people.

The world is a failure. It’s as if someone baked a beautiful cake, and before it could be served, a dog lifted his leg over it. It’s not basically okay with pockets of evil. It’s extremely evil with pockets of good. When God comes here, he doesn’t come as the hands-on supreme being who runs the operation. He comes the same way Red Cross volunteers go to POW camps, or the same way spies go into hostile countries during war. He is an insurgent leader, not a resident monarch.

We can’t get this through our heads. Human beings have the unfortunate ability to get used to anything; we laugh at funerals, and even people doing life in prison have days they enjoy. We are used to this horrible world, which is full of murder and anguish, so we think it’s not a bad place. The Holocaust serves to remind us that we don’t live in heaven’s waiting room; we live on hell’s roof, literally.

The Jews are precious to God, but he stood by while terrible things happened to them, just as he has stood by while terrible things have happened to Christians. He stood by because he had been rejected. He had one plan, and man had another, and when man chose his own plan, God folded his arms and waited. That’s how life works, for all of us.

I am tempted to say God is hard, but that’s not sufficient. God is infinitely hard. Stones are hard, but they can be scratched. God is perfectly just; his justice can’t be altered or defeated in the slightest way. There is no bad deed that will not be noted and dealt with justly. God’s commitment to justice is so strong, he came down and let himself be abused and killed by people who were like filthy apes compared to him. He had to have a release for his anger, so he released it on himself. If he will do that to Jesus, who was the only good person who ever lived, of course he will allow evil to land on the rest of us, who are extremely corrupt.

Americans are among the most spoiled people on earth. We feel entitled. We think everyone is entitled to good health, a wonderful spouse, a strong income, a nice home, and happy children who make us proud. We get extremely resentful when we don’t get these things. We have the audacity to go to God and say, “Why me?” We should be saying, “Why me?”, when things go well. Every one of us deserves to be dead, in a pit in hell, burning and waiting for the final judgment. The suffering of persecuted Jews and Christians should remind us that we are entitled to nothing, and that there is no limit to the anguish God will permit for those who rebel.

We are inundated with mercy and patience, and we think it’s approval. We think it’s a reward, when it’s just God, withholding punishment as long as he can. So we go on dancing on thin ice.

Meanwhile, hell continues filling up, and many of the people filling it are Christians.

If you want to do well in this life, you have to stop defending yourself and claiming you’ve been cheated. You have to stop complaining about your problems, as though they were unfair. All the bad things that happen here are more than fair. If it’s better than hell, it’s more than fair. Imagine how you would feel if you had a rotten, murderous child, and you helped him in ways he didn’t deserve, and all he did was complain and accuse you of unfairness. Would you keep helping him?

The world is Satan’s death camp. Before Satan, there was no death. He practically invented it. The world may be more pleasant than Treblinka and Birkenau, but it’s still a death camp. We should not be surprised if Satan allows things to go well enough to convince us life is good; the guards at Auschwitz told their victims they were going to be showered and given nice jobs. They lied right up to the point where the gas chamber doors were shut.

Between God’s mercy and Satan’s propaganda, it’s no wonder we expect too much from life. It’s no wonder we can’t see doom looking us in the face.

I have found that if I praise and thank God correctly, and if I take blame on myself instead of lying and saying I’m a victim, things go better. Problems I couldn’t beat disappear quickly. God works most strongly where he is welcome, and where he is not slandered. The more you defend yourself, the worse your life is likely to be.

When I think about these powerful lessons, I get very disgusted with the preachers I’ve known. I am exceedingly disgusted with the false “house prophet” at my last church. I am very unhappy to realize they poisoned me when they told me I was doing great, and that good things were right around the corner.

These people held me back! They made my life harder! They made me more of a failure! How can you claim to serve God if you reinforce the chains Satan puts on other people? When Jesus announced his status as Messiah, he said he had come to set the captives free, not to make them more the slaves of hell.

These churches taught people that “blessing” means something like money, power, advancement at work, children, or marriage. Totally wrong! Yesterday God reminded me: we are not rewarded for being good; being good is the reward.

Yes, if you improve, good things will come to you, and life will be better, but the real prize is the inner change wrought by the Holy Spirit. Under the law, men were required to behave well. Under the new covenant, we are expected to change so that bad behavior and evil thoughts don’t appeal to us any more. That’s “setting the captives free”; the evil inside us holds us captive. The disciples thought it meant routing the Roman occupiers. Before the Holy Spirit fell on them and changed them, they had the same materialistic mindset modern prosperity Christians have.

I realize why God has kept telling me to speak up. Many times, he has told me to be more outspoken, when people around me were telling me I was too loud. I could have helped more people if I had been louder. That may be held to my account eventually, as Ezekiel predicted.

God owes you nothing. You cause your own problems. Because you cause your problems, you have the power to fix them. The correct way to fix them is to become Spirit-led, ask God what you’re doing wrong, and ask him for grace to change. That’s how life works. You may be looking at painful lessons which are intended to be beneficial and regarding them as unjust attacks from the devil. If you don’t know help when you see it, you will never benefit from it. Help doesn’t always look like a box of frosted doughnuts. Sometimes it’s a disease or a problem with your marriage. The way you react determines whether it’s a curse or a blessing. The outcome of a thing, not the beginning, determines its nature; the outcome determines whether it goes in the plus column or the minus column.

I’ve complained about things I should have thanked God for. No wonder they didn’t work out well. What else should an ingrate expect?

I am closing comments on this post because I don’t want people to be distracted by misguided remarks from folks I am offending. Sorry about that. I hope you understand. I want people to be helped by what I write, so I don’t want the message to be lost in tangential noise.

Put this stuff to work in your life. Don’t wait till the floor caves in under you.

I Wish I had a Deformed Cat

Yesterday I got curious and looked around the web to see how hard writing is for other people. When I worked for my law school paper, I saw people lock up when they were asked to write a couple of hundred words, and when I was blogging and dealing with bloggers who wanted to write books, I knew people who couldn’t get more than a few pages done. Clearly, my situation is not like that.

On the web I saw people talking about the goal of writing a few hundred or a thousand words per day. It was like they were talking about learning to run ten miles per day; they seemed to consider it difficult enough to make achieving the goal unlikely.

This Saturday, I cranked out something like 3000 words just to relax. If I had to write 4000 per day as a 40-hour job, I would think nothing of it. I once wrote a 48-page legal brief in a day. I believe it was 48. Anyway, it was over 40. It made the judge mad. It was too long.

I wonder what the purpose of this facility is. The fact that you have an ability doesn’t mean you know what to do with it.

Whenever I’m with my dad, and we hear Rush Limbaugh on the radio, my dad says the same thing: he can’t believe a person can talk for three hours a day without running dry. Someone who used to have a radio show once complained to me about this. Apparently, this person dreaded having to come up with material.

It wouldn’t be a problem for me. There is always something to say or write. Life is a constant flow of experiences, insights, and ideas. You can’t say you lack stimulation.

You can’t choose your talents. If I had been given a choice, I would have held onto writing, but I would have traded cooking for something else. I have really enjoyed cooking extraordinary food, but it’s not an important gift. It’s trivial. And you can’t use it all the time. I get up every day and eat the same boring stuff: homemade vegetable soup. I almost never cook anything good for lunch. I grab a protein bar or a sandwich. If I really cooked, I would weigh 400 pounds, and it would slice two hours out of every day.

I am fairly good at a number of things, but the older I get, the more it looks like writing and cooking are the only areas where I really shine. It’s like being good at theoretical physics and tiddly winks. One gift that can have an impact on the world, and another which is more or less a novelty.

I envy people who have gifts that guarantee them a livelihood. Songwriters, in particular. If you write one hit song, you can retire. Even if you go into a coma right after you publish it, the money will continue coming in, and your heirs will also be able to benefit from the copyright.

Doctors are also fortunate. Their incomes may wax and wane, but no one will ever tell a doctor his job has been rendered obsolete. And doctors are welcome everywhere. Back when Haiti was in an uproar over the earthquake, people I knew were going there as volunteers, but I stayed here. I figured the Haitians could do anything I could do, just as well, except for practicing law. What was I supposed to do over there with my legal skills? Sue people? If I had been a doctor, I would have flown over and made myself useful. There would have been a purpose in it.

I can write, but cashing in on it is not that easy. I got some silly books published, but they did not make me rich. I have worked as a copywriter, but that kind of work comes and goes. I used to write for a newspaper magazine, but even if I had done that full-time, I would have pocketed a maximum of $800 a month.

To sell books, you have to write books people want. There has to be a waiting market. That’s not hard if you write novels; people will always want something to kill time on airplanes. But other types of books are harder to sell. And of course, editors are buried in complete garbage. People who absolutely cannot write refuse to stop sending their horrible manuscripts, so it’s hard to rise above the noise.

It’s not easy to cash in on cooking, either. Restaurants are a nightmare to run. There is a ton of regulation. There are piles of paperwork. You have to deal with cooks and waiters, who are right up there with musicians when it comes to honesty and responsibility. You have to deal with things that are totally unrelated to good cooking. Then when you get the business running, you gross $3 million per year and take home $30,000, working 15-hour days, six days a week. And even if your food is great, the public may simply get tired of it.

Lots of people get rich in the restaurant business, but you have to be a fool to risk your capital on it. Even with hard work and talent, it’s a lottery ticket.

I always hope God will arrange it so I will never have to practice law again. The responsibility is just too much, unless you’re the kind of person who doesn’t care. If I represent you one time, I am responsible to you for the rest of my life. And I can be sued for malpractice, at 90, for something I did when I was 40. The statute of limitations is short, but there are ways around it. In continuing legal education, I was taught that you should pay for malpractice insurance for as long as you live! How would you like to do that? You could easily pay out a third of what you earned in your career. Or you can trust your former clients to be nice to you. Yeah. That’s a sure thing.

The other day a friend asked me for legal advice, and I told him what I tell everyone: no way. I don’t care if they get mad. I’m not going to put myself in a position where I have to look over my shoulder for the next thirty years. Friends don’t sue friends, but then friends don’t stay friends, either. Former friends sue lawyers for malpractice every day.

Seriously, I think there is nothing like royalty income. You don’t have to manage property and be abused by tenants. You don’t have to buy and sell securities, risking a beating every time you trade. You don’t have to go to work. You can’t get fired. And copyright royalties are the best, because they never expire. Among copyright royalties, songwriting royalties are probably the best, because you don’t have to perform or promote, once a song gets noticed. You sit back and take money from other people. They do the performing. Their promoters do the promoting. You sit around at home, eating Cheetos.

Oh, well. I can write and I can cook. That’s how it is.

I could go ahead and write a book every three months and see what happens, but there’s a problem. I’m a Christian. You can’t just spew words out for money when God isn’t behind it. You have to wait for him. On top of that, what if I wrote a popular Christian book? Could I take money for that? If God gives you something for nothing, should you charge for it, especially when it’s possible to put it on the Internet and give it to billions of people free of charge?

You can say the laborer is worthy of his hire, but is that really apt, when you have almost no expenses? If you have to give up your job in order to serve God, you should be paid, but what if you don’t?

I think about that when I read Christian books. The writers have a conflict of interest: God versus Mammon.

Some books cost a lot of money to write, but most don’t. If I wrote a Christian book, it would cost me nothing, except for ISP fees. I wouldn’t have to travel or take photographs or pay for a cover design. Even before the Internet age, Paul wrote books, and all he did was dictate while someone scribbled. Worked out pretty well.

I should teach Marv to do something entertaining. Have you seen Grumpy Cat? I saw a news story that says he pulls in $50 million per year for his owners. God help those people if a dog gets him. I would keep him in a safe.

I won’t complain about what God gave me. It’s nice to be able to write, even if I have no idea what the value of it is. The cooking, I’ve pretty much given up on, but I will always want to communicate. And it’s going great guns. Like 50 people read this blog now.

I guess I’ve written enough; I’m procrastinating because I don’t want to study accounting. I better get in on it.

I’ll be back. You can count on that.

Have the Groupies Clean his Perch

What a day. I got my Telecaster working yesterday, and I fired up the Super Champ XD and the Fat Sandwich pedal and started working on “I Know a Little.” It turned out that the Telecaster, with its long scale and super-tall frets, was actually easier to play than my amazing Epiphone Riviera P93. Slides are somewhat unpleasant, because my fingers smash into the frets from the side, but still, it worked great. It felt like it was harder to play, but I was undeniably playing better.

Today I decided to make a recording to see just how bad I sounded. I figured it would be horrible, because the timing on my last recordings was really jerky and awful. Also, recording makes my timing even worse, because it seems like my joints quit working. I worry about what the mike is picking up, and there goes any hope of playing loose.

Incredibly, it sounds like music. WAY better than I hoped. There are three passages which are still technically not under control, but basically, it’s sound. In a week, I should be able to play it for real. I don’t know that I’ll be able to play full speed, though. Today I cranked it up to 78%.

I don’t know that I like it at 100%. You lose many of the guitar subtleties, and there isn’t as much opportunity to play with the vocals.

I recorded this on a Sansa clip, which is a tiny, cheap MP3 player. And Marv was “helping” in the background. I’m posting it anyway. Whatever the problems are, it proves this is going to work!

I Know a Little, With Marv as Background Vocalist

I have a new wonder pick. My teacher recommended a Dunlop jazz pick, which is a very hard, small nylon job. They’re very fast, but they make a somewhat dull sound, and the tiny size is hard on your hands. Last week I took a Dunlop triangle pick, which is huge, and modified it so it would still be easy to hold, but it would not interfere with my movements or rotate out of position. The result is the greatest pick of all time. I can’t put it down. I’m wondering if I should make my own version and sell it.

Anyway, this is fantastic. When I get it cleaned up, I’ll post a better version. Probably without Marv.

If I can do this, it proves I’ll be able to play decent Christian music.

Sparrow, Parrot…Same Basic Idea

Here’s a wild story.

In 2009, Dave Rodenborn’s parrot Splint flew off. Dave let Splint’s feathers get a little bit too long, and Splint shot out the front door and got away. Parrots have no desire to obey, and you can’t rely on them to do the things you’ve trained them to do, so you can’t just call them back. If they feel like coming back, they come back. If not, tough. And once they’re a few dozen yards from your house, they have no idea how to get back. The general rule is that they stay lost, and they die. They don’t know how to cope in the wild, the North American climate can kill them, and hawks love them.

At the time, I was highly distressed. I know how it feels to lose a parrot due to my own mistake. And I thought about Splint, out there in the wilderness, lonely and starving.

I put in some prayer time for Splint, and when I did, I felt a powerful flow of faith, telling me he was coming back.

After months had passed, I figured my faith had been wrong. Non-spiritual teachers are always telling us not to trust what we feel, which is a little bit crazy, considering how obvious the Holy Spirit’s power and presence can be. The fact is, most teachers don’t get good results from prayer, and they assume anyone who claims to have a better experience is a kook or a liar. They don’t want to set people up for disappointment, so they actually tell people NOT to trust God! How crazy is that?

These days, when I pray, I can literally, physically, mentally feel faith pouring through me. I don’t have to feel it in order to believe, but experience has taught me that when I do feel it, it’s real. I believe it comes from praying in tongues. When you pray in tongues, you deposit power in your supernatural bank account, and it’s there when you need to make a withdrawal.

Last night, I got an unexpected response to a Youtube comment in a thread in which Dave was participating. In the thread, Dave said Splint had returned! Someone yanked him out of a tree near Dave’s house, and it took them a year to find Dave! How do you like THAT?

So here is the position I’m in: I had faith, and God rewarded it, even after I decided my faith was wrong. Is that possible? Apparently so. It has happened to me before. I think your best bet is to hold onto what faith tells you, no matter what, but God may come through regardless of your foolishness.

Faith is a crazy thing. Sometimes you will pray for a thing and be sure you’re going to get it, yet you’ll still be amazed when you see it come to pass.

INCOMING!

Marv’s message for today: “Eat your bird. Big fat.”

Why did I buy this thing?

Marv has gotten so good at tactical pooping, I no longer get mad at him about it. Instead, I feel awe and respect.

The other day we were on the couch, and Marv managed a stealth poop in a location where I later put my face. I had to give him his props for that. It transcended ordinary poop. It was an Improvised Poop Device.

Last night he got off a poop that hit my hand and then the floor without me even knowing it. He did it while I was putting him in the cage. By the time I knew I had been shelled, I had tracked all over the house. I had to get out the mop and the Clorox.

I don’t know how he does it. He’s an artist.