Fries WILL be Great Again

RFK Jr. is about to become the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, a department which sounds leftist when you say its name. What conservative would use the phrase “human services”? It’s idiotic. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s too broad. I’m a human. When I hire someone to look at my AC system, it must be a human service. But HHS doesn’t send out air conditioner repairmen.

We had better department names when we had fewer departments. The Department of Defense was the Department of War. No apologies. Truthful. Trumpish.

Let’s Google.

HHS, which is called “HHS,” even though the DOJ is called “the DOJ,” was put together in 1939. Already, it makes sense to me. A socialist put it together.

It was originally called the Federal Security Agency, which is a pretty good piece of leftist PR for its day. “We just want you to be secure and know there are no monsters under your bed.” It was supposed to be in charge of Social Security, health, and education. They must have rejected “the Department of Intrusiveness.”

The guy who ran the department was a man named McNutt. That’s too easy. Before leading the Department of Buttinskyism, he was the governor of Indiana and burdened the citizens with the state’s first income tax.

Perfect.

Eventually, the government felt that the jobs of using Social Security and centrally-planned education were so important, they should be given to separate organizations with independent armies of stooges, so we ended up with the Social Security Administation and the Department of Indoctrination. I mean Education.

HHS includes the CDC, NIH, and FDA.

That’s all I need to know. Let’s disband it.

Okay, okay. We do need someone to keep really awful drugs off the market. I mean, if we didn’t have a government agency doing that, some company might put out untested vaccines that cause blood clots and myocarditis, leading to an epidemic of excess deaths among young people, which the government’s unofficial department, the MSM, would have to tell us did not exist.

All right. All right. We do need the FDA. I think. Even though it keeps Americans from receiving excellent medications used everywhere else in the world. Look up Rowachol. I got covid recently, and the pharmacist in Rome gave me two well-regarded drugs, neither of which had I ever heard of. Thanks to the FDA.

Anyway, the FDA is out of control. It lets lobbyists tell us what to eat. It gave us the Food Pyramid, which was originally known as the Iowa/Nebraska Joint Pro-Diabetes Pyramid. The Pyramid told us to stuff ourselves with all sorts of carbohydrates which rotted our teeth, strangled our pancreases, filled our arteries with placques, gave us high blood pressure, and made us one of the fattest nations outside of Polynesia.

Carbohydrates are the single biggest killer in the US. Think about that.

Here is the Pyramid.

It says to eat 6-11 servings of carbohydrates per day. I overeat, I love food, and I can’t manage that. I can’t even picture the people who do. They must make Jabba the Hutt look like Olive Oyl. All by itself, their gas must have raised sea levels an inch.

Rice and pasta, it says. Bread. Know what you’re eating when you eat those things? Glucose. A sugar so bad for you it’s used as the standard for the glycemic index, a metric which tells you how much damage your food is doing to your body. You chew your bread, mixing it with an enzyme in spit that converts starch into glucose, and before long, excess glucose is pouring into your veins, threatening your eyesight, your circulatory system, your brain, your nerves, and your chances of marrying anyone remotely attractive.

The weird thing about this is that you don’t need carbohydrates at all. We all love them, but you can go your entire life and be extremely healthy without carbs in your diet. Can’t do that with fat and protein.

The Pyramid discourages consumption of meat. I guess the pork and beef lobbyists had a lower budget for hookers and trips.

Meat is harmless. It’s great for you. Plant-based foods cause diabetes, tooth decay, obesity, and high blood pressure. It’s pretty much impossible to have those things without eating plants, and the fewer carbs you eat, the less likely you are to have these issues. Meat simply can’t cause them.

The FDA used to tell us to get 25 grams of fiber every day. Have you ever tried to do that? That’s 6 bowls of raisin bran. You would literally wear out your toilet seat. You would go through life clearing elevators and subway cars.

The government has no business managing our diets. The government is corrupt and stupid. It tells us what lobbyists and leftist freaks tell us to. And nutrition is not properly part of the government’s business. What’s next? Compulsory calisthenics?

Guard the borders. Fight our enemies. Protect business. Run the courts and prisons. The government should do these things. Where does it get off telling us what to put on our dinner tables?

All this being said, RFK is kind of a nut. He seems like he would be a great guy to hang around with, but come on. He eats roadkill. He thinks vaccines cause autism, a theory which is right up there with Pizzagate.

Not taking vaccines causes things like polio, diphtheria, smallpox, and rubella. This is proven.

I don’t know whether he’ll be good or bad for us, but it would be nice to hear less propaganda from HHS, and it would be good if Americans could buy the same drugs that save lives in Europe.

He hates seed oils. I don’t know whether he’s right or not. He loves animal fat, and there, I am with him.

He said something wonderful. He reminded America that McDonald’s used to fry potatoes in beef tallow. They quit in the Nineties. Bad research and the FDA convinced American women animal fat and eggs were bad, which they are not, and women have strong voices when it comes to food purchasing. All sorts of companies started cutting out animal fat. Oreos abandoned delicious lard. We even have skinny pigs now. You can’t make much gravy from a country ham these days.

Women are much more gluttonous than men, and they drive the chip and ice cream industries, but they do more than anyone to deprive the rest of us.

Beef-fat fries are magnificent. I’ve made them. They smell like prime rib. A beef-fat fry is Jane Russell. A canola fry is Elizabeth Warren.

I wonder if he’ll be able to bring beef-fat fries back in some major restaurants. Maybe he can make them trendy. That would be a dream come true.

Potatoes are practically poisonous, but there is no denying their impact on cuisine. They taste wonderful. Fried. Mashed. Baked. Boiled. You name it. Beef fat makes ingesting an inherently unhealthy vegetable worth it.

People say potatoes are actually healthy. They have vitamin C! They’re low in fat! Whatever. Try one without salt and added fat and then return to the discussion. Worthless. Prison food.

I always feel bad after eating potatoes, but they’re too good to give up.

Even if the FDA were right about everything, I would still want it to shut up about our diets. It’s outside the government’s lane.

Getting back to RFK, I don’t think vaccines cause autism. Demons cause autism, and if autism has increased, it’s because America has turned into Sodom. We invite demons to rule us now. They cause disease, mental illness, and other misfortunes. Unfortunately, the FDA will never admit demons exist.

Regardless of what Roadkill Robert says, I plan to take every well-tested vaccine I can get, except for those made with mRNA. That stuff is horrifying. My son is going to be vaccinated, and he will live under the same policy. I don’t want him dying needlessly of some ridiculous 1900’s disease like tetanus or whooping cough.

My son will never be vaccinated for covid.

Covid vaccine : young person :: birth control pills : Caitlyn Jenner.

Trump needs to put a libertarian in charge of the Department of Education. A real Ron Swanson, unlike cookie-cutter kneejerk liberal Nick Offerman, who played him. We need someone who will destroy the department from the inside. The suggestion that states can’t run schools is asinine and insulting. I could run a school. Nearly any educated adult could.

The business of education requires a very low level of competence. You know it’s true. Remember your teachers?

I had one who told us there were 52 states.

I hope RFK succeeds in doing good things and is restrained when he tries to implement ideas he heard from Alex Jones. All in all, I prefer him to anyone Harris would have appointed, sight unseen.

Burning Stuff Shouldn’t be This Hard

I got up today with the intention of getting myself a burn permit. I must have 20 tons of tree parts already in piles.

Figured I was prepared. I had my customer number for the forestry people. I knew I had to call before noon. The weather was okay.

Called with plenty of time left. I thought. They told me I had to call by 10 a.m.

Now what do I do with the day?

It seems like they used to give permits more easily. I used to call in the morning and sail right through. Then they said I had to call by noon. They said I had to take a class and get a special status in order to be able to burn under certain conditions. Now I have to call by 10 a.m.

I miss the days before I knew about permits. I went outside, set the pile on fire, and that was that. I never got caught, even when I accidentally set my pasture on fire.

It’s too bad downed oaks are worthless, because God has blessed me with thousands of oaks. They’re useless for lumber and furniture. They make fine firewood and smoker fuel, but the supply is so great, no one wants them.

The types of oak I have rot pretty fast outdoors, so even though they would make very strong posts and boards, they wouldn’t last. Indoors, furniture made from them wouldn’t look very good, and they’re so hard, they’re tough on tools.

I also have a fair number of sweet gums. It’s a second-tier furniture wood, and Asians like to make chopsticks from it. No one wants it, though. It’s supposed to be terrible for smoking. Some people claim it’s toxic.

My latest chainsaw is on the way. I thought I might get out and cut some more wood this weekend, but the saw won’t be here until Monday, and if I use my old saw now, I won’t get to use the new one for much. Also, the burn piles are immense, so I would like to stop adding to them until at least one is clear.

I guess this will be a good day to remove the remaining bits of trash that could obstruct the mower. Then I can replace the mower’s exhaust pipe. Tomorrow, I could mow. My yard looks like a jungle.

I’m looking forward to having the election over with. Biden is basically a retiree, the country is on autopilot, Harris and Walz keep making fools of themselves, and it’s starting to look like Trump will win. If he does, I expect a lot of violence from leftists, who are much more hateful and immature than conservatives. I would like to see that behind us.

Today I saw Kamala say something truthful. That makes it a special day for me.

Christians showed up at a Harris rally. They were protesting the murder of the unborn. Harris was speaking, and a man shouted, “JESUS IS LORD!”, which is true. And Jesus hates abortion.

Harris was talking about walking Trump’s progress backward and making it easier to turn women’s uteruses into murder scenes. The man shouted during a pause, when the room was quiet. He could be heard clearly.

Harris said, “Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally.” She said she thought they had meant to go to a Trump rally close by, which she described as “smaller.” Of course, Trump was in another state so he could go to the Al Smith dinner, which she skipped, perhaps out of the same cowardice that keeps her from doing interviews.

She grinned. She thought her remark was funny.

She was correct about the protestors, though. A Harris rally is no place for Christians. The Democrats openly opposed God and Israel in a voice vote at their convention years ago, they elected Obama, who was very hard on Israel and promoted perversion, and they treat the unborn like unwanted warts.

No Christian has a good excuse to be a Democrat. They have excuses. Just not good ones.

If you vote for Kamala, you’re voting for perversion, the murder of unborn children, antisemitism, racism, rioting, shoplifting, and the persecution of Christians. Those are major issues. Fake Christians who refuse to vote for Trump complain about his personality and his sexual history. That’s ridiculous. Yeshua himself is not running for president. We don’t have an ideal candidate. We have to avoid the worst choice we have, and that choice is Harris.

It’s not just Harris. It’s the flood of demonized Harris appointees that will follow, including EVERY FEDERAL JUDGE. She will appoint judges that support the castration and skinning of confused minors going through phases. They will support abortion up to and possibly past the point of birth. They will persecute Christians. They will empower Muslim terrorists.

Both parties serve Satan to a large degree, but the problem is much, much worse on the Democrat side.

Even though I hope Trump is reelected, I still believe America is finished. Evangelism is pretty much dead here. The perverts have won; even Fox uses incorrect pronouns. Young people are awful, and they are the ones who will take our places. In the future, unless the rapture comes, the vast majority of Americans will be arrogant, cruel, Yeshua-hating, antisemitic, witchcraft-loving, feminized, dishonest, shallow, useless people.

Privacy is a thing of the past. With the advances in surveillance and artificial intelligence, free will is disappearing. Immigrants from horrible places are piling in and having huge families. Nearly all churches where the Holy Spirit is acknowledged are run by greedy, heartless pimps and whores who enslave people with the prosperity gospel. The other churches promote anal sex but not holiness.

It’s not going to get better.

Christians are going to be marginalized more and more. We will be impoverished and silenced. Attacks on Jews will be tolerated and encouraged.

We chose all this. The people who came before us chose Satan over Yeshua, they raised us in their stupidity and immaturity, we are worse than they were, and the nation has continued to deteriorate.

These days, I spend a lot of time resting in God’s presence. I don’t do it just because I want him to do good things for me. I do it because I want to take breaks from this stinking, corrupted world. It’s like cracking the door to heaven and sticking your nose in. I keep begging God to bring the rapture and tribulation and put an end to this culture.

I hope it happens quickly, because otherwise, my children have no future on their own planet. They’ll live in little Christian bubbles smaller than mine.

America was wonderful. We didn’t understand what we had. The lack of persecution was extraordinary, and it was combined with extreme wealth, power, and safety. Those things are disappearing. Living here will be like living in two-tier England, where Christianity is broadly hated and Christians are seen as troublemakers and parasites.

When America is gone, there will be no big, rich, Christian country to run to. Every single large nation will belong to Satan.

The world has two big continents: the Americas and Africa/Europe/Asia. Then there is Australia, which is lost. There is no fourth land mass we can run to in order to establish a Christian society.

The filth of the coming world is disturbing to think about. The whole world will be like the most degenerate cultures we now have.

Consider “Palestine.” They hack suspected Israel-sympathizers to death and leave their body parts on display in the marketplaces. They have children’s shows where they tell kids to murder Jews. The filthiest kinds of terrorists have called their parents during massacres to show off the blood on their hands, and the parents have been transported with joy and pride.

Think of Afghanistan, where the rape of boys is considered normal. It’s a country so savage, it’s not worth trying to save. They murder the people who try to help them, just like the Somalis.

Consider Nigeria, where Muslims are so dangerous, you need multiple armed escorts in order to get around. Think of North Korea, where intelligent, hard-working people drop dead on the streets and rot, starved and full of worms.

Then there’s Central America, where drug dealers skin people alive, and the people support them.

Left to themselves, human beings are almost as bad as demons, and the majority of us have decided to be left to ourselves. There is no limit to the depravity we can embrace.

The other day, I read about government employees in Maryland, removing a young man from his parents home, permanently, because they refused to support his “trans” delusion. The parents are Christians. I was so discouraged, I prayed for God to kill the government employees.

Thousands of times, I have prayed for God to reach vile, cruel people and correct them. When I read about this kid, and I thought about him being castrated and pumped full of drugs by people full of demons, I couldn’t find the patience to ask God to turn them around. Just kill them. They can’t be reached with persuasion. They will do too much harm if they are allowed to live, and what they are doing is an atrocity.

What will I do when the demonized run Florida, my son goes through a feminine phase, and clown-haired stooges with unlimited authority drag him off to have his penis sliced down the middle, hollowed out, and turned into a fake clitoris in a stinking, never-healing hole that grows fungus and bacteria? Shooting them won’t help. I’ll go to prison, and they’ll send more stooges. Suing won’t help. The judges will be on their side. If it happens, I’ll just sit and pray and wish God would take both of us.

I understand why Yeshua, the God who is love itself, is going to return and massacre people. The Bible says his robe will be wet with their blood. I get it. Enough is enough. It’s better than letting this mess deteriorate to the point where life is utterly pointless. Saving new souls is important, but the reality is that human beings have limited value. A person is worth more than many sparrows, but it’s better that people die and go to hell than to have them remain alive and torment the people God loves without significant resistance.

God has killed millions of people, so no Christian should be upset when someone says he will do it again. He told us he’s going to do it.

He created hell and the lake of fire. Satan didn’t do these things. He couldn’t, and besides, the lake of fire is his future home for eternity.

One of the main purposes of these places is to keep the irredeemable away from the rest of us. Heaven can’t be heaven if they aren’t confined and forgotten, and the Messianic Age can’t take place unless fallen angels and demons are removed.

Regarding the apocalypse, I don’t want to see people suffer. I just want evil people to be defeated and kept away from God’s children. I have very little energy left to deal with them. Unfortunately, death and hell are the only permanent solutions. We can’t get permanent relief unless a lot of people die and go to hell. They will not change.

There is a blessing in knowing and being close to a totally worthless, hateful, destructive person who brings misery to everyone around her and makes it impossible for them to relax and thrive. It teaches you that God was right to create hell and the lake of fire. It makes you realize people eventually have to have relief, regardless of what the worthless have to suffer.

Most Christians never learn this lesson. They learn that Yeshua wants us to pray for our enemies, but they don’t pay much attention to the scriptures about turning people over to Satan or refusing to eat with them.

Yeshua never chased anyone. Have you noticed that? He showed up and invited people. He showed them God’s goodness and power by supernatural means. That’s it. When they turned him down, he left without hesitation.

He left most of the Jewish people behind at about 33, knowing hell would swallow them by the millions. He knew Jerusalem would be sacked, the temple would be destroyed, and the people would be dispersed for 2,000 years.

He could have stayed until he was as old as Methuselah, begging and cajoling. The priests had no power to arrest him. He turned himself over to them and chose to be crucified.

Would he have let a worthless son live in his house for 50 years and abuse him? Would he have enabled a junkie or a gambler? Would he have sold his house to pay the son’s creditors or bookies? Of course not. God can’t be manipulated. This is the real meaning of, “Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test.”

I curse the Harris campaign, literally, as often as I remember to do it, but a Trump victory would be like giving a terminal cancer patient Tylenol. Better than nothing, but no solution.

Incidentally, I learned something interesting about the diaspora. Solomon caused it.

Solomon was a failure and a disgrace. He was also a hypocrite. People talk about him as though he were nearly a god, and he wrote part of the Bible, but he was a curse to Israel.

God told Solomon that if he or his people turned away, the people would be driven out of the promised land. A lot of people think the Jews were driven out because the people turned on God, but according to scripture, Solomon’s rebellion, by itself, was sufficient to invoke the curse.

Look at this scripture from 1 Kings 9:

But if ye shall at all turn from following me, ye or your children, and will not keep my commandments and my statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods, and worship them:

Then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my sight; and Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all people:

And at this house, which is high, every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss; and they shall say, Why hath the Lord done thus unto this land, and to this house?

And they shall answer, Because they forsook the Lord their God, who brought forth their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have taken hold upon other gods, and have worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath the Lord brought upon them all this evil.

That’s really interesting. I wonder why no one teaches it.

Solomon praised God before the people, but all the while, he was sacrificing to fallen angels who literally stink. It looks like he, singlehandedly, assured that the Jews would lose Israel.

Look at the people we elect. And somehow many of us think we will never lose America.

Is There Anything it Can’t do?

The last couple of days have been pretty good.

Milton came through, we spent a day without power, it came back on, and since then I’ve been cleaning up the yard.

My tractor has been out of commission for a long time due to a problem that prevented it from starting. I researched it for months. I asked for advice from all sorts of people who know tractors. I got conflicting information. Nothing worked.

I was going to send the tractor to the dealership, but then we had the Europe trip, and we had three storms go by. And we both got covid.

A day or two back, I found I could get the tractor to start with some effort. It’s a pain, but it will run. Since then I’ve been moving trees and limbs.

Last year, I finally learned how to make chainsaws run reliably. I may be the only person on Earth who knows how. I spent years listening to bad advice from people who were supposed to know the truth, and it did not help much.

I have a bunch of gas saws, and I have run three in the last couple of days. All started and ran, on treated no-ethanol gas 5 months old. I have this thing licked.

My lead saw was an Echo CS-590, which is a homeowner-grade saw you can get at Home Depot. I paid $400, which is maybe half what a pro saw would have cost. I kept screwing it up because I got so much bad information. Last year, I invested in a Husqvarna 562XP, which is a real pro saw. It has electronics in it that supposedly reduce or eliminate carb adjustments.

I got good information on maintaining saws at about the same time I got the Husqvarna. I modified the Echo to make it run like a pro saw. It’s a monster now. But I’m glad I got the Husqvarna, because anyone who has a farm needs two big saws. One could need repairs. Also, the Husqvarna has a 25″ bar, which is 5″ longer than the Echo’s bar. On this property, you need a 25″ bar, but there are times when 20″ is more convenient, so now I’m all set.

I wonder how many other people in this entire county know how to maintain and use saws correctly. I would guess nearly all are arborists. I took the Echo to an authorized repair guy who didn’t know.

Milton dropped a large oak across my driveway. I would say this tree was around 20″ thick at chest height, and it may have been 80 feet tall. As noted in an earlier post, my neighbor showed up after the storm, cut the tree in two places, and moved it out of the driveway with a forestry grapple. That still left me with two big collections of debris to disentangle, cut to sizes a tractor could carry, and move. A tree service would probably have charged over $1500.

I took a little homeowner-grade Jonsered/Husqvarna with a 16″ bar and did a lot of cutting. I moved a lot of distracting junk to my pasture. Today I used the Husqvarna to cut the tree’s trunk in sections. I also cut up a 16″-thick oak Hurricane Helene left caught in some other trees.

When I went back in the house, bleeding and covered with grease and sawdust, I told my wife it was a good thing she hadn’t married a Democrat. She said, “Don’t even say that.”

I didn’t mean a Teamster or an ironworker. I meant the kind of Democrat whose pores weep estrogen. Like the pansy in the old pajamas-and-cocoa Obamacare ad. Like the skinny-jeans-wearing waifs who get pummeled when disrupting other people’s rallies.

Compared to men from the World War Two generation, I’m practically a girl, but I can fabricate, machine, shoot, run a tractor, buck trees, make ammunition, shoot sub-MOA, smoke ribs, make beer, and do lots of car, mower, and tractor repairs.

I’m very good at interior painting. I don’t mind killing annoying animals. I have stomped on mice instead of taking them to therapy and trying to rehome them. I’ve shot a bunch of squirrels from inside my home. I know how to fish for everything from snapper to marlin. I can run a yacht or open fisherman 200 miles to Eleuthera with no help, and I’ve done both. I can keep a marine diesel running. I have a basic knowledge of electronics, and I have built a bunch of electronic devices.

I can also practice law.

If my wife had married a boy-band-looking liberal, they would be equally helpless. She would be able to do all the woman stuff, but he wouldn’t be able to do man stuff or woman stuff. Hot yoga and sitting in a cubicle. That would be all he could do.

I had to make a 50-amp San Francisco adaptor for my generator on Thursday. A San Francisco adaptor is male-to-male. I went to Lowe’s and asked for 6/3 cord. The Lowe’s guy and I started having a conversation. Maybe they didn’t have 6/3. Would 8/3 be okay? Well, I wasn’t sure my generator could break 30 amps, so 8/3 was fine. I didn’t have to ask him what kind of cord a generator uses. I didn’t have to ask what 8/3 was.

He didn’t explain anything to me. He seemed to know there was no reason to. Men in this area can do things, except for some of the snowbirds.

Came home, took apart two cords I had made for 220-volt tools, put the plugs on the 8/3 cord, and we were in business.

Two new plugs are on the way from Amazon.

I am sure leftists will eventually start swarming homes all over America, killing and looting. They’ve done that in every revolution. But should we all be scared of them?

In percentage terms, there aren’t many tough leftists. There are a lot of leftists who can throw bottles of pee at the police, and many of them can rob and kill unarmed people with stolen plastic 9mm pistols, but how many can deal with a conservative who can shoot and has multiple weapons, modified to suit his needs, for various uses?

Even gang members don’t train, and they are generally stupid.

Kyle Rittenhouse was a chubby, out-of-shape high school kid with a cheap AR-15, and he obliterated three leftists as they and a big crowd tried to lynch him. He killed a child molester (raped 5 boys) who had been in prison and gotten a reputation for fighting. He blew the bicep off a criminal who charged him, committing assault, with an illegal pistol in hand. He killed some idiot criminal who tried to bash his skull in with a skateboard. He scared the rest of the lynch mob off. Rittenhouse was extremely effective, and his two armed assailants, as well as the unidentified person who shot at him early in the incident, were incompetent and useless.

I just don’t think you can sit around smoking dope all day and apologizing for your maleness and expect to be a real factor in physical confrontations with armed people.

If my wife had married a vegan yoga boy, they would have to live in an apartment or on a very small lot. They would have to live somewhere where there was little for men to do.

Man stuff is fun. Burning things and blowing things up are fun. Steel-toed boots are fun. Shooting is fun. Catching fish and cutting them up is fun. Welding, machining, running heavy equipment, and bucking trees are fun. How could anyone prefer wearing a man bun, carrying a murse, and spending his time going from one moronic activist meeting to another?

Good knives are fun. Concealed carry is fun.

God is masculine, and he was right to make men masculine. The sex roles he created work. People who accept them enthusiastically are fulfilled.

I feel like buying another rifle.

Tomorrow I have to finish moving trees and limbs. Then I have to replace my diesel yard tractor’s exhaust pipe, cut off the muffler I made for the old one, and weld it onto the new one.

I’m glad God didn’t let me become a sissy.

You Will Eat the Entire Thing

People are asking for my white bread recipe. It’s not health food. It has no fiber. It has no quinoa, steel-cut oats, or kale in it. It’s a decadent white bread for people who do not fear death.

Here is the recipe.

I recommend using a big food processor with a standard chopping blade to mix the dry ingredients. If you use a short dough blade, it won’t stir them well. Once the dry ingredients are mixed, you move to the short blade. A standard blade may be too hard for the processor to turn.

You can also do all this by hand, or you can use a mixer.

This is for a big nonstick bread pan.

INGREDIENTS
520 g bread flour
1.5 tsp. salt
1 tsp. instant yeast
2.5 tbsp. sugar
4 tbsp. butter
300 g warm water

You can use half as much yeast and let the dough rise longer. Ordinarily, bread tastes better when it takes a long time to rise.

Blend the dry things first in the food processor. Then blend in the water until the dough is well mixed. Maybe 20 seconds. Wait 5 minutes. Blend in butter (softening it first will speed this up). Butter a bread pan, and be sure to add extra salt to the butter.

Form a loaf and put it in the pan. Butter it with more salted butter. Let it rise in a humid place. Score it a few times with a razor to let it expand in the oven. Bake about 35 minutes at 375°. You want the bread to sound hollow when tapped. You can shoot for 195° if you have a probe thermometer.

The top will burn if you’re not careful. I bake for 20 minutes at 375° and then drop a sheet of foil over the bread.

Smaller loaf for 1.5-pound pan:

350 g bread flour
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. yeast
4 teaspoons sugar
2.5 tbsp. butter
210 g water

The smaller the loaf is, the higher the crust-to-innards ratio. A small loaf gives you more of the hot crunchy stuff. You can also roll this dough into balls, put them in a round cake pan, and make rolls.

I recommend letting the bread cool before storing it. Otherwise, steam comes out and makes the crust soggy.

This stuff is best right out of the oven, and the heels are worth fighting for.

18 Hours of Electricity

This must be what the rapture feels like.

What is the rapture? A sudden translation to a place where your problems are instantly ended.

Last night I slept on clean sheets in an air-conditioned room, after a long, hot shower, and today I got up and ate eggs fried in butter, two big slices of toast made from homemade bread, and three slabs of Tennessee Pride sausage. And not I’m sitting in a leather recliner, thinking about how great I feel.

This is much better than yesterday. I almost had to bathe in the freezing 70-degree pool. I had to work on our generator with no running water to wash my hands. We had no air conditioning. Most restaurants were closed. There was no gas.

What a difference.

When I was young, I took things like electricity and cars for granted. I am not like that any more. Sometimes when I’m driving down the road, I tell God how amazed I am. I’m doing 70 miles per hour. It’s 95 degrees outside, and the inside of the car is at 69 degrees. I’m in the shade. I’m sitting on leather upholstery. If I want, I can have the great musical artists of the last hundred years sing and play for me.

That’s pretty wild if you think about it. Three generations back, the only way to travel faster than 7 miles per hour was to board a train. Nobody had air conditioning. There were almost no recordings.

I thank God constantly for dishwashers, clothes washers, and dryers. You shove your stuff in and walk away, and your electric slave does the work for you, better than you could.

My grandmother was an educated woman with a wealthy husband, and she had to wash 6 people’s dishes and dirty underwear. When I was little, she had a washing machine with a wringer on it. Imagine standing on your porch running your family’s used underwear through one of those with your bare hands.

I’ll be honest. She had a lady who came in and helped, but I doubt that took care of all the laundry. Granny did make my mom and her sisters do chores, though.

Anyway, somebody was washing other people’s dirty underwear.

My grandmother had washboards. She had one in her house when she died in 2003.

In Zambia, my wife used to bathe in a bucket a lot of the time. The Zambian power grid is not great.

I always ask God not to take wonderful things away from us.

I eat homemade bread because my wife hates American bread. I can’t say I blame her. The white stuff has no taste, and the brown stuff is like eating a welcome mat. I showed my wife how to make my white bread recipe, and now she’s happy.

Bread probably costs us $1.50 a loaf, and I have never had anything that compares with it, anywhere. It’s so good, I have considered making it worse so I don’t eat so much of it.

I was only without power for a day, but today I feel like royalty. Appreciate what you have while you have it.

The comedian W.C. Fields was on his own when he was a kid. He left home at 11. He found himself a hole in the ground and put a cover on it. For a while, that was where he slept. When he was old, he still got excited about beds and clean sheets. He described the feeling of settling down in a clean bed. He said, “God____, that’s a sensation!”
And he was rich.

I think about that every time I go to bed.

When I was a kid, and I didn’t have something someone similarly situated had, I thought God was unjust. I don’t feel that way now. I feel pampered, because I am. I don’t care if the guy across the street has a hundred times what I do. My life is great.

The natural thing is to become spoiled when God gives you things. That’s a choice you make. You can choose to become more grateful. The Bible shows that God punishes the spoiled.

If you have good health, a clean, safe, quiet, pleasant home, good food, good clothing, people who love you, and God, you are rich. It’s true. It’s not just something to put on a greeting card.

This is all true and wonderful, but now I have to fix the tractor and move the downed trees and branches from my yard.

Well. A lot of people don’t have a tractor or a yard.

November Can’t Come Soon Enough

Here we are at about Milton minus 13 hours.

Before I write about how good things look, of course, I have to mention the fact that many other people are not so fortunately situated.

Anyway, here is the news, as I understand it.

This morning, I found a Jacksonville station with a meteorologist who, I sense, may be fed up with the hysteria. He provided what seemed to be a calm, factual forecast. That’s a rarity. I assume he’ll be disciplined. He is an insult to the Anderson Cooper stand-in-a-flooded-ditch school of hurricane coverage.

He said the hurricane part of the hurricane was only 30 miles wide. People don’t understand how big Florida is. The driving distance from Key West to Pensacola is about 830 miles. This means hurricane-force winds will only hit something like 4% of the state’s coast.

California is shorter than Florida.

They expect the storm’s center to hit Sarasota. That’s 140 miles from here. That means the hurricane-force field will end something like 125 miles from me, and at the edge, it will be Category 1, not Category 4. A hurricane’s strongest area is the eye wall, pretty close to the center of rotation. The winds drop quickly as you get away from it.

They think the maximum sustained winds will be about 125 mph, so that’s the eye wall. At the edge of the storm’s windy part, how strong will the winds be? Simple. About 74 mph. That’s the figure used to define hurricane-force winds. If the hurricane-force area has an outer edge, the winds there must be doing about 74, and they will be lower just past it.

So 125 miles from me, sustained winds will be at about 74 mph, and they will drop off over the 125-mile distance between the edge and me. Also, the winds will have to cross about 70 miles of wooded land with hills to get to me.

The threat of tropical storm winds is iffy here as of the moment. That means we may not get sustained winds of 39 mph. They are predicting 28. That’s at tree-top level. On the ground, it will be lower.

I don’t care too much about gusts. A good gust can do damage, but it can’t compare to a nasty sustained wind that slowly pulls roofs off.

Hysterical forecasters love conflating sustained winds with gusts. They’re saying we may get winds of 60 mph. Well, sure. We get those during thunderstorms sometimes. For a few seconds. No one cares about those. Sustained winds define a storm.

They keep saying we’ll get TROPICAL-STORM-FORCE WINDS because we are sure to get brief gusts. That appears to be a lie; a deliberate prevarication intended to get people excited. You can’t have a tropical-storm-force gust. It would be like having a year-long decade. If the wind isn’t sustained for at least 60 seconds, it’s not a tropical-storm-force wind, no matter how strong it is. It’s a gust.

Meteorologists, even the ones hired for their looks, know the difference between a gust and a tropical storm. They shouldn’t lie.

I’ve never seen anyone but me call them on this huge and obvious lie.

Based on what I see now, we are headed for something like Helene, which means I could lose a few trees. The ground is wetter this time, so more trees could fall. Nothing bad is likely to happen near the buildings. I might lose power, but the odds are with me. The power company has been really aggressive about trimming trees since Irma, and a guy who works for them lives on my street, so we get priority.

I have several trees that have to go, so if Milton pushes them over, I’ll be thrilled. It will save me the work of felling them. Bucking trees is easier and safer than felling them. It takes no skill.

The pool got a bit gross due to our recent trip, but I have been fixing it up in case we have to bathe in it or use the water to flush toilets. Other than that, a power outage shouldn’t be too bad. I guess I should run to Walmart and get some ice for the cooler.

I haven’t bothered with the generator. I guess I should have. It could keep a ceiling fan, the refrigerators, and a water heater going. But I would have to get up every 6 hours to feed it. It may be ready to run, because I cleaned it up after the last time I used it, but I know better than to assume a small engine will work just because I take care of it. Gas is just too screwed up these days.

I learned that the only way to keep small engines going in a situation where there are long layoffs is to put oil in the gas tanks and run it through the carbs. I haven’t done that with the generator.

This is not a typical storm. Yesterday, the sun was bright and there was almost no rain. It was like a normal day. Ordinarily, the two days before a hurricane are gloomy, with an ominous feel. Today is more typical. It’s overcast and drizzly, and there is a light breeze.

They think we will get the worst of it after midnight. The nice thing there is that if the power goes out while we sleep, we may sleep the whole night. If the power went off earlier, the house would heat up and make sleep difficult. Heat makes it hard to fall asleep, but it’s not likely to wake a person up.

I just looked at the 11 a.m. cone, and while the overall wind field seems to be spreading, the hurricane area looks smaller, and the winds are dropping, as expected. The landfall area seems to have shifted south a little, which is good for me if true.

The storm is speeding up, which is great. It’s moving at 17 mph. The faster it moves, the less damage it will do, and the sooner life will resume.

It will be a bad couple of weeks for the people south of Tampa. I keep praying God will push the storm farther south to areas where there aren’t many people.

If you want to see some really stupid, uninformed, dangerous reporting, go look at the site of the British “newspaper,” The Guardian. It’s a left-wing rag, so no surprise. They say Milton has been called “the storm of the century.” Yes, by The Guardian.

They say there will be “up to” 15-foot storm surge in Tampa. No, there won’t. Where did they hear that? Tampa is outside the maximum surge area.

They’re making it sound like Milton is still a 160-mph storm. Off by 15, Fleet Street.

Publix and Winn-Dixie are closed today. The Postal Service is still delivering. Walmart is open. It will be open tomorrow, too, along with everything else. It’s not the end of the world.

This morning I learned that DeSantis was within a couple of miles of me yesterday.

North of me, about 5 minutes away, there is a facility called the Florida Horse Park. I don’t know much about it. It probably covers a hundred acres. For weeks, it has been covered with things like generators and powered lifts. It looks like there are hundreds of them. I thought somebody had rented the park, and they were selling these things.

Turns out it’s a staging area for hurricane relief. The tools at the park will be dispatched to help people. It’s amazing.

It’s very nice to be so close to it. They can have machinery here in less time than it takes to make toast over a can of Sterno.

DeSantis made a speech there yesterday. I wish I had known. We would have been there. We drove right by it. It’s a few hundred yards from the dump.

Speaking of dumps, DeSantis ordered them to stay open around the clock, and some local goofballs tried to close one. This was in Pinellas County, which, for practical purposes, is greater Tampa. It’s full of stuff that needs to be disposed of, partly to prevent it from going airborne tomorrow. They locked the gate used by public vehicles to dump storm debris. In response, a state trooper used a truck to destroy the gate, with the governor’s approval. Man, I love this guy.

Pinellas officials are lying, saying the facility was open, but news outlets clearly say the dump was not accepting storm debris, in an area recently pounded by two storms. Yesterday, even after the gates were opened, the line to dump debris was three hours long.

Our local dump isn’t supposed to be open on Tuesday, but Big Ron made it happen, so we dropped some trash.

In an amusing side note, Biden says DeSantis has been great with hurricane efforts, thus preemptively kneecapping any efforts Kamala Harris and Tim Walz hoped to make, to libel DeSantis and Republicans in general. There is speculation Biden is trying to kill the Harris campaign.

He doesn’t like Harris–who does?–and he deeply resents being kicked off the ticket. I don’t think he cares about our country. I believe he’s completely self-centered, so even if he really thinks leftism is best for America, he might be willing to torpedo the Democrat who replaced him and put Donald Trump in office.

Stories imply Harris has been trying to work with DeSantis as though she were president, and some say DeSantis has not been receptive. That’s understandable. He wants her to lose, and Joe Biden is the president. Biden may be senile, but he is still managing relief and preparation efforts, so why give Harris a chance to grandstand and virtue-signal?

“This was a middle-class hurricane, and LGBTQQIP2SAA BIPOC’s were disproportionately affected…”

Biden just told the world he and Kamala have worked together on all of his decisions as president, so now she can’t distance herself from his stench. That had to be a deliberate jab. Biden knew she was conning the world, pretending she would have done a better job.

I don’t know what to do today and tomorrow, apart from intercession for the people on the west coast. Guess I’ll be eating the inevitable Pop Tarts and hoping the air conditioning keeps working.

What is Left to Accomplish?

Based on weather forecasts, I made plans to do nothing today, and I am sticking to my plans. But I think I made a mistake.

Hurricane Helene’s weak outer winds were supposed to produce sustained speeds of about 40 mph here. Far as I know, it never happened. I would say the situation this county ended up with is 10% worse than the aftermath of Debby, which left a few downed trees here and there. We got nearly no rain during the Helene crisis, so that’s a plus.

I have some cleaning up to do. Yesterday I checked the forecast to see when it would dry up, because nothing is worse than doing heavy yard work on a 90-degree day when the air is full of steam. The forecast pretty much said it was going to rain until next Friday. The probability figure for today is 88%.

Of course, it’s dry and breezy without much sun. The temperature is about 82 degrees, or 8 degrees lower than recent days. This would have been a good day to clean up.

I don’t understand precipitation probability, and it turns out neither do meteorologists.

At some point in the distant past, I looked it up, and I read that a certain chance of rain meant that there was that much likelihood rain would fall somewhere in the area the chance applied to. So if you were in an area with a 25% chance of rain, the chance that it would rain somewhere in that area was 25%. How much rain? Whatever I read didn’t say. I assumed it had to be a significant amount, because if not, the figure was useless.

I just checked again. A British site says a figure of x percent means x percent of sources have concluded it will rain in the area. How much? Doesn’t say. An American site says it means x percent of the area will get measurable rain.

Either meteorologists have no idea what their own metric means, or they are letting uninformed people try to explain it to us.

Experience has taught me this: if a forecast says the chance of rain will be 60% or more, expect a nasty, rainy day, nearly every time. That’s more useful than the weird things I’m seeing on the web. Anything over 20% is reason to avoid outdoor activities as far as I’m concerned.

I am sitting here doing nothing. I still feel some covid fatigue, and I’m not sure I can start the tractor, so I am in no rush.

I’m not sure what to do with my life these days. We are done traveling. I doubt we’ll go anywhere until far into next year, and we will not be able to go any place exciting because of the baby. We still need to fix the house up a little, but that’s about it. What should we be doing with ourselves?

The world has turned into an immense toilet. Americans have proven they really are stupid enough to put Kamala Harris in the Oval Office. Wokeness is getting worse, not better. We are giving birth to generations of soft, useless, cruel, incompetent, spoiled, godless perverts who will make the last decade look like the Messianic Age.

I don’t know what we’re supposed to do here. I am spending more and more time in prayer. We think about things like good food, medical appointments, and managing our practical affairs. That’s about it.

Lately I have noticed I am sometimes bored. That’s a problem I thought I had left behind decades ago. It’s strange to see it creeping up on me again. I find myself thinking, “I remember this!”

I think I had started believing I was immune to it. I took not being bored for granted for maybe 35 years.

I have zero enthusiasm about America’s future. I don’t want to live here. I don’t know how I’ll defend myself when my son asks me why we put him here, to face seventy-plus years of hiding out in a world gone insane. I can tell him God wants people to have children. Best I can do.

While we are here, we will have to devote a lot of energy to sheltering him from godless friends, Satanic entertainment, exposure to perverts, and so on. We will really have to have God’s help, because we can’t generate our own safe Christian bubble.

I don’t have any projects in mind. There is nothing I want to do here. I don’t want to start big things in a world which has no future.

I try not to imagine a future under Kamala Harris. Obama was an arrogant homosexual atheist who was hard on the church, the unborn, and Israel. Biden was dumb and without conscience, and he appointed godless nutcases to rule over us. Harris would make us miss Biden. She is a complete zero as a human being.

She’s a wonderful exhibit to use in order to prove democracy doesn’t work. When Biden gave her affirmative action and made her his running mate, she was extremely unpopular even among Democrats. That didn’t change during her time in office. Now she may get a legitimate majority in a presidential election. The people didn’t get to vote for alternatives. She was simply installed, and Democrats could either vote for her or let Trump win.

Imagine the kind of pigs she will appoint to abuse and control us if she wins. The worst choices imaginable. Disgusting, vile, incompetent, corrupt, and stupid.

It seems like there should be something to do other than praying and waiting for Yeshua, but if there is, I can’t see it.

Maybe I should prepare a rapture-ready will. Will it matter? Will the wills of raptured people be triggered when they leave? Will they be respected? Will whatever I could leave people be helpful to them in a world where demons and fallen angels are running amok?

I assume people will run around killing each other, squatting in each other’s houses, and stealing each other’s money, so I don’t think a will would be helpful.

There must be something useful for us to do right now. I just need to be told what it is.

What if the rapture doesn’t come, and I have to age and die in Satan’s America? Terrible thought. But I know from experience that if I pray in the Spirit enough, things will work out for me. I can’t do all that much for others, so it’s a limited blessing.

I can’t wait for this place to be wiped clean and remodeled. I don’t know what it is to live in a world that works. I’ve seen better times than the present, but I have always been surrounded by death, disease, injury, deformity, murder, accidents, poverty, and every type of emotional pain. I have always lived in a world ruled by Satan’s children.

My patience with suffering is gone. A couple of years ago, it didn’t discourage me as much. Now, every time I see someone with a terrible physical problem, or I hear about a terrorist attack or a natural disaster or some other cause of suffering, I think, “I have HAD it with this. Please get us OUT.” Enough. I have seen enough.

A few people can be helped, but almost everyone will continue to suffer and fail. Most of the people we try to help will turn our help into curses. They won’t turn to God. Not really. They won’t pray in tongues. They won’t repent. They won’t be accountable. Things won’t get any better for them.

The blessed will stay blessed, and the people who hold onto them like Titanic survivors holding onto floating planks will continue to hold on. Nearly everyone who leads a cursed life will continue to be cursed.

People who lead cursed lives generally don’t want to know God. They want money. They think money will fix everything and they won’t have to repent. It’s frustrating, because continued abundance comes from a relationship with God. You tell them how to fix their lives, they pretend to agree, and they don’t change.

When someone listens, it’s like you’ve found a big gold nugget in a manure pile the size of an apartment building.

We don’t have enough money or time to buy better lives for the people who won’t repent. We have to watch nearly everyone sink. Elon Musk couldn’t fix them. Look at his son, the pervert.

I like to prophesy, but I keep hearing about how God is going to destroy people who are against his children. That means the vast majority of human beings. I would love to hear about revival and miracles.

The human race is just too crooked to help. We have always been that way. God is always ready to bless, but almost no one is interested.

Guess I’ll go pray and then think about dinner.

Trading Alligators for Bears

My wife and I did something extraordinary last week. We went on a trip inside the United States.

We went to a bunch of weird countries while we were separated by the State Department, which was busy letting illegals into the US and watching daytime TV because employees were at home waiting for covid to go away. Until this month, however, we never visited another state.

We went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. A place I loved as a child.

For those who don’t know, Gatlinburg is in the Smokies. The physical location is beautiful. It’s in a valley surrounded by mountains. To get to Gatlinburg, you have to travel scenic two-lane roads. The area is very nice. Appalachia isn’t as staggeringly beautiful as places like Switzerland and Utah, but it certainly beats the rest of the Eastern United States.

I don’t know when Gatlinburg became a tourist town. It happened before I was born. By the time my family started traveling between Florida and Kentucky to see relatives, everything was already established.

When I was a kid, it was considerably less tacky. It had a bunch of fun souvenir shops, including one called the Rebel Corner, which was decorated with huge Confederate flags. There was a place that made and sold candy. There were some okay restaurants. There were hotels built over the Little Pigeon River, which is really just a rocky creek. You could sit on your balcony or by your open window and listen to the soothing sound of the water.

There were trails and sights. I remember walking up Clingman’s Dome, a mountain nearly 7,000 feet high. My grandfather, the guy who taught me tact, was with us on the paved tourist path. He saw a man who looked like he checked in at about 350 shambling up the path with his own family, and he said, “It’s a good thing you’re not big and fat!”

Sometimes we saw bears. Back then, tourists did brilliant things like feeding them by hand through open car windows.

In those days, I enjoyed Gatlinburg and the nearby town of Cherokee, North Carolina, because to me, they were part of the experience of visiting Kentucky, which I wrongly thought was heaven on Earth.

Gatlinburg has gotten seedier with time. It’s a little trashy now. They used to have a tiny Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum, and now there is an array of Ripley’s attractions. They have a big saltwater aquarium where you can see sharks and sawfish. They’ve built a big concrete parking garage.

Watch the video below to see what Gatlinburg has turned into.

There are weird little attractions that don’t seem to make sense. One features a robotic horse in a dress, sitting out front to attract customers. We didn’t see the appeal.

Even though Gatlinburg is a somewhat downscale tourist town, we enjoyed ourselves. We walked in the woods. We had big breakfasts.

We didn’t go to Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s creepy amusement park. It’s in nearby Pigeon Forge.

I don’t like Dolly Parton. I thought she was perfectly okay when I was a kid, but over the years she and her park have worked hard to promote abomination, and all the time, she has pretended to be a Christian. She’s a complete hypocrite, but lots of stubborn, rebellious Southern women, and I don’t just mean lesbians, think she’s almost a co-savior, like the false Catholic version of Mary. Like a white Oprah.

I don’t know if her attitude has something to do with her unmarried brother who died young from an undisclosed disease or what, but I don’t want any part of her act. I never liked her music, either. She is no Patsy Cline.

The main reason we stayed in a tourist spot was to have a base from which we could look at the area. We have both had thoughts of moving to Eastern Tennessee, and if you stay in Gatlinburg, you can have good food and a nice hotel while you look around. Appalachia is not known for quality food and lodging, so to me, finding these things was a blessing.

We looked around Sevier and Blount counties. The geography and the trees and plants made a big impression, as did the sub-95 temperatures.

When you live in Northern Florida, you get used to living on sand that won’t support anything you really want to grow. You can’t grow apples, real peaches, blackberries, cherries, tomatoes, corn, or anything else without a lot of struggle. The grass is something called bahia. It’s thin, and when you walk across it a few times, you leave obvious damage. It’s full of stinging bugs, and nettles are a problem. Lying down in your own yard is not possible.

Once you get far enough north, you get into real soil. You can have apple trees and grow tomatoes. You can have a lawn.

I have been concerned that if we moved, the people might be backward on racial issues. I’m from Eastern Kentucky, and I’ve also spent a lot of time in Western North Carolina, and I know there are parts of Appalachia where you can have problems if you’re in an interracial marriage or even if you’re just black.

My grandfather was a circuit judge over Breathitt County, Kentucky, and during his time, a black woman moved there and tried to practice law. I never thought of him as an enlightened person with regard to race, but he supported her. The people of Jackson, Kentucky eventually burned her house down. And it wasn’t that long ago. He died in the mid-90’s.

On this visit, I was shocked. In Gatlinburg, we saw one interracial family after another. What a relief. And they were definitely Southerners. I also saw many clones of myself. Men in cargo or work shorts, T-shirts, and baseball caps. It was like they were pumping us out of a factory.

We saw two black families in rented Rzrs. A Rzr is a factory dune buggy made by Polaris. It has no windows. Apparently renting them is popular in Gatlinburg.

Maybe things have improved.

Southerners are very, very big on powersports and unnecessary vehicles. If you’re a Southerner, and you don’t have a golf cart, an ATV, a dune buggy, a dirt bike, or a Jeep, there must be something wrong with you. I use a gas-powered EZGO to get my mail.

The people were very nice. I was concerned that if we left our area, the people would not be as pleasant. There are a lot of childish, rude, stingy people in Eastern Kentucky. In Tennessee, just about everyone was great. And there were signs of Christianity everywhere. There were signs advertising help for women who were considering abortions. There were signs telling people Jesus was coming back. I loved it.

I have had the feeling God wanted me to move to Tennessee, as have many other Christians. I don’t know if we’ll do it, but now I am less concerned about the possibility of making a bad decision.

During our trip, we applied for a Schengen visa so we could finally visit Europe. The real Europe, not Ireland or Turkey. Incredibly, they granted our request, so now we have to decide whether we should go. My wife is going through some medical treatment right now–nothing bad or permanent–so we’re thinking it over.

We only saw one bear in Tennessee, but it was a whopper. We were walking down the main drag of Gatlinburg, and we saw a bunch of people staring at the area behind a hotel. I looked and saw a black shape not much smaller than a cow. This thing was enormous. It must have been checking out the bear-resistant dumpsters.

When I think of black bears, I think of animals about the size of a hog. Maybe 150-200 pounds. They sometimes hit 600 however, making them as big as medium-sized grizzlies. The record is over 900. I don’t know what this bear weighed, but it looked a lot more like 600 than 200.

It took my wife a while to spot it, which is bizarre. She finally saw it walking up some stairs.

I knew we might see some bears. I expected typical disappointing bears about my own size. Not this time. This baby could have fed a small town for a day. It would make a beautiful rug.

I enjoyed seeing real trees instead of one water oak after another. We saw hickories, walnuts, sycamores, maples, black oaks, chestnut oaks…serious trees that have practical uses other than fueling smokers. They made me think of the times I had spent with my grandparents in the woods. They seemed to know every plant’s name and purpose.

We saw a lot of people who were obese or had leg problems. Diabetes, maybe. We saw people who clearly weren’t on top of the financial ladder. We saw a lot of tattoos and cigarettes.

I thought about Gatlinburg’s status as a second-tier tourist town, and I felt like God showed me some things. We were there as people who did not have to work. We were able to stay at a very nice hotel. We weren’t going into debt to do anything. Both of us knew God very well and never felt that we were alone or that we might have to handle life’s problems on our own. Our health was good. We were surrounded by unhealthy people who were loading themselves with debt.

Many of the others would have to go home shortly and work at jobs they didn’t like, in order to pay for things they had already received. When you borrow, you get your reward up front, and then while you’re working to pay for it later on, you have no reward to look forward to, and you can’t quit.

It reminded me to keep humility, gratitude, and fear of God in mind. We earned very little of what we have. God gave it to us in spite of our evil natures and deeds. Every good thing we have is part of an inheritance from God. We should never feel superior to anyone. What is uglier than an arrogant heir who has no empathy? I have been that person.

We aren’t sure what we’ll do. Sometimes I think we should go to Utah instead of Europe. It’s a lot less complicated, and it’s a shame for Americans not to see their own enormous country.

In any case, my wife is now in the Schengen visa system, so if we decide to travel in the future, it should be easier.

One More Shot at the Lost Continent

Before too long, my wife and I will find out whether Europe’s racist visa policies apply to African green card holders as well as Africans still in Africa.

We have traveled a lot since we found each other. Egypt, Turkey, Singapore, Ireland…destinations that were pleasant enough, yet which were all compromises. We have never been able to get to Europe.

I mean the real Europe, not Ireland. The place with the alps and the great food. Going to Ireland is like going to Boston, only the people are much nicer.

Well, they would have to be, though, wouldn’t they? Okay, they were nicer than most Americans, not just the interesting residents of urban Massachusetts.

Ireland seems like a pleasant place to live. The climate is gentle. It’s green, just like you would expect. The countryside is pretty. It’s fairly prosperous. It could conceivably be possible to hole up in the sticks and hide from the national psychosis of leftism. But the cities are kind of dumpy, the food is worse than it is here, the sweaters are thin and cheap, and when you’re there, you feel like actual Irish people are a tiny minority.

The Irish have abandoned Ireland. Why is that? They’re all here now. Not completely true, really. They’re all over the world, and they didn’t quit leaving after the potatoes came back. Is Ireland really that bad? Seemed fine to me.

I would not go back to Ireland, simply because it’s dull. There is really nothing there except the cliffs of Moher. Other European countries are different. Those alps. The fjords. Renaissance art. Medieval architecture. Magnificent food.

I wouldn’t go to England, either, and I suspect Ireland is just England without the sights.

Most of my ancestors are supposedly from England and Scotland, but I have no interest in seeing those places. I don’t understand people who want to “visit the old country” and who get all weepy about places maybe 3% of their ancestors came from. Let’s face it; if you have a name identified with a European country, and your people have been in the US over a hundred years, your genetic connection to its people is like a gram of coke that has been stepped on 10 times. If genes were paint, the country’s genes were white, and other countries’ genes were black, you would be charcoal gray.

My parents were under the impression we were mostly Scottish. I don’t think this is true, but anyway, they went to Scotland and looked up my dad’s ancestors, who are dead and were not able to receive him. They enjoyed bad food and mediocre scenery. On a rare and prized, not to mention expensive, foreign trip.

Forget that. Give me someone else’s ancestral homeland. Give me Switzerland, Austria, Italy, France, Germany, and possibly the Netherlands. Give me a place with great sights and wonderful food. Give me excellent weather and hotels that aren’t full of mold.

My parents could have had Paris. Back when it was safe, I mean.

England is full of furious Muslims now. That’s not for me. If I want to go to a country full of furious Muslims, I’ll visit Michigan. With a side hajj to Minneapolis.

London has worse crime than New York now, and like New York, it prevents decent people from carrying weapons. Should I take my wife to a place like that? How would I explain that decision to her in a London emergency room?

It’s true that England has great food now. It’s called curry. No one goes there to find the best spotted dick and toad in the hole.

I would have to rank Egypt at the bottom of our destinations. I would never go again unless I had a sudden desire to do another Nile cruise. The people were very nice everywhere, and sometimes the food was good. The cruise was relaxing and interesting. But Cairo is a slum, straight out. A real mess. And Egyptians throw their garbage everywhere.

The best restaurant we visited had dozens of dead flies decorating the windowsills.

Singapore was the real sleeper. I didn’t want to go at all, but now we have gone twice. We have a bizarre sensation of being at home there. Inexplicable.

We enjoyed Turkey, and the people were wonderful. Now Turkey is threatening to annihilate the Jews, so that takes some of the shine off of it. Ireland is antisemitic, but at least they’re not planning genocidal military action.

I don’t know if they can. Do they have an army? A real one, not the kind that blows up department stores?

We are giving Switzerland another shot because its nearest consulate is on the way to Tennessee. Before too terribly long, we intend to visit the Volunteer State to see if we should move there. Switzerland has a consulate in Atlanta. I figure we can get in and out of Atlanta fast enough to avoid being soiled too much.

Other countries would have required us to go to places like DC, New York, and Miami. If you see me in Miami, alert the police, because I have been kidnapped. Miserable, stinking hole. Thank you again, God, for getting me out.

We were going to shoot for a short trip to Switzerland, but given that this may be our last real trip for years, I decided to tack on some time in Italy. Rome, to be exact. I have been to Florence a couple of times, and it’s wonderful, but I think a person who has never been to Italy should probably pick Rome.

We don’t jam lots of destinations into short intervals. We are not the kind of people who would do three days in Florence and 4 days in Rome. If you haven’t been to a place for a reasonably long spell, you haven’t really been there. If you spend a day in Rome and then say you’ve seen it, you might as well say the same thing after walking through the airport between flights.

It has to be Rome or Florence. Not both.

We are planning to cut Switzerland up a little, but I think that’s different, because as beautiful as it is, you can’t stare at the mountains all that long without wanting to do something else. We expect to do a few days in Lucerne and a few in Wengen. Go up some mountains. Eat some plates of potatoes and cheese. Move on.

Will they let us in? No idea. The visa picture is supposed to be better for green card holders than Africans in Africa who are married to Americans, but we have been lied to before. Every time, now that I think of it. We don’t know what’s true and what isn’t.

I’m starting not to care. We liked Hong Kong and Singapore. We got a Taiwan visa quickly and easily. We haven’t seen America together. We don’t actually have to go to continental Europe. There are other places to go.

I want her to see the nice parts of Appalachia and maybe the Rockies. Utah is breathtaking. We can skip the entire Northeast, all major cities, and anything south of Orlando. No wacked-out West Coast destinations. Sliding around on other people’s feces is not for us.

Traveling with one or more kids is a future concern. I don’t know how people do it. I don’t know how they deal with kids on short trips to the grocery store. My wife doesn’t think overseas trips with children can be done. Not well. Maybe she’s right.

So where do you go in Tennessee? Gatlinburg, of course. Good old touristy Gatlinburg. I went there many times as a child. I saw people feed the bears through car windows. We walked up Clingman’s Dome. We went to Cherokee, and my mother took a picture of me with a bunch of guys who claimed to be Indians. Did braves really wear Chuck Taylors?

It’s touristy, but on the other hand, it has the best hotels, there is real food, and it’s a good base for exploration. And we are, in fact, tourists.

I haven’t seen Gatlinburg since the early 2000’s, I think. My family got together. A cabin was rented. Two aunts, my dad, my sister, me, and some cousins. My sister tortured the rest of us with her nasty unhousetrained Maltese and her constant unprovoked attacks on me. I think things will be better this time. In the recipe for an excellent vacation, or any other pleasant or even bearable experience, the secret can’t-miss ingredient is her absence.

Some people have a gift; the gift of making every occasion better by being elsewhere. This explains the rapture, the tribulation, heaven, and hell.

We are gearing up for all this stuff now. We hope to travel during the coming month.

If the Swiss let us down, I guess it will be the Far East and rural America for the foreseeable future. We have to do something for recreation until Yeshua gets us out of this world.

Chicago Still Disappoints

I got suckered in again.

We were at the grocery, and I saw something I had never seen before: frozen Pizzeria Uno Chicago-style cheese pizza. Like a fool who never learns, having tried Lou Malnati’s acceptable frozen pizza and my own unimpressive homemade jobs, I bought one.

It’s not good.

The crust is hard pie crust with a tiny bit of air in it, and it’s not good pie crust. The shortening tastes old. The cheese is on the grainy side. The sauce is okay, but it can’t save everything else.

I just realized what the crust is like. You know those stale flat noodles they serve in bad Chinese restaurants as snacks? Imagine one of those big enough to put a pizza in.

The Malnati’s cheese pie I bought was pretty good. The shortening tasted less old, and the cheese was fine. But a decent Pizza Hut pan pizza is better. The sausage pie I tried was not good at all because the sausage sat under the sauce and got boiled.

As things stand now, I have to stand by my previous conclusion, which is that Chicago-style can be “worth making.” But let’s be honest. You could say that about oatmeal.

A good Sicilian is the best food possible. This is according to my rankings, which are, of course, correct. Top food on Earth: my own Sicilian. Number two: a good thin pizza. The style is not that important. It just has to be good. After that, prime rib. After that, my own cheesecake.

I think Chicago-style should probably be put in a second-rate pizza category along with frozen pizza, although I’m not sure Chicago-style can be as good as the best frozen pies. I do enjoy those Stouffer’s French bread pizzas.

Chicagoans themselves are not big fans of Chicago-style. They prefer the other Chicago-style, which is thin tavern pizza. How good can their deep dish be if the people who can get it whenever they want usually order something else?

My two Chicago-area-raised cousins love Malnati’s, but they seem to be out of sync with other people up there. I should try making Chicago tavern-style.

I threw out one slice of the Uno pie. I ate three because I was hungry. Very sad. Potential wasted for no good reason.

Why do people who cook for a living make bad food? That’s a perplexing question. If the food has to be cheap, or it has to have a 10-year shelf life, or it has some other weird condition to meet, like being vegan, sure, it may be impossible to make it taste good. But most food isn’t like that.

Let’s talk about kung pao chicken and fried pork dumplings. It costs the same amount of money to make bad Chinese food as good Chinese food, so why not do it right? Same amount of work. If you have a Chinese restaurant, and you’re Chinese, you can’t lie and pretend you can’t tell your food is bad. You should fix it. It’s 2024, and excellent recipes and videos are available to anyone. Why make bad food, then?

Still, most Chinese restaurants are very bad. No wonder the children of Chinese restaurateurs become plastic surgeons and cardiologists. They can’t take the shame.

The people who make this Uno mess know it’s no good. They’ve surely tried it. Surely no one would invest in a big business without trying the product.

I suppose that’s wrong. Maybe they haven’t tried it. Maybe some guy who runs a company that makes garbage frozen food for other businesses told them everything would be fine, and they believed it.

The web says Uno went public and was then taken private again, so now it’s owned by people who probably know nothing about pizza. That would explain a lot. I was thinking it might belong to heirs to were too busy doing coke and wrecking speedboats to watch the business.

Myron Mixon is supposed to be the world’s greatest BBQ pitmaster, but when he opened a restaurant in Miami, it served hog slop and closed with 3 Google stars. This, after he talked all sorts of smack about showing everyone what real BBQ was like. Humiliating. He blamed the people who actually owned and ran the restaurant. He claimed they wouldn’t meet standards. A name isn’t enough to make food taste good.

He shouldn’t have talked smack if he wasn’t going to be on the premises to maintain standards. Ridiculous error for a chef. Every cook knows that as soon as the guy who knows what he’s doing leaves the kitchen to use the can, everything goes crazy. A kitchen is lucky if it has one person who can actually make it work. The rest are all hourly NPC’s.

Uno frozen pizza is nasty, so if you try it after reading this, you have only yourself to blame.

Hunker Down with Peyton and Hayden

I got some comments on the post I wrote about getting homeowner’s insurance. I was trying to decide whether I should get insurance with or without wind coverage, which is often extremely expensive. Based on last year’s huge premium, along with the large deductibles and the low likelihood of serious damage, I figured it was best to skip wind coverage.

No one can explain how insurance companies work. Some people defend them, claiming we are not smart enough to understand their math. They think it all makes sense somehow. That isn’t true. If it were true, similar coverage from different companies would cost about the same amount, but it doesn’t.

I had GEICO for my cars. They wanted $5,000. Suddenly. I could not believe it. I called around, and I got just about the same coverage from State Farm for about half as much. It’s still ridiculous, but it’s not $5,000.

When I was looking for medical insurance for this year, my old company wanted the moon and stars. Another outfit gave me the same policy, more or less, for a much lower price. I forget the disparity. Maybe a third less.

The insurance seems to work, although once I ended up screaming at a woman in India.

If insurance companies were rational, they would make similar decisions about covering various areas. Some companies have left Florida, however, while many continue to insure homes here.

Last year, I was told my home insurance, hurricanes included because of my rotten trees, was going from about $3,400 to $6,000, and then they ended up increasing it to $8,000. I called–literally–every company I could find on the web. I couldn’t find a single one that would write a policy at any price. Because of hurricanes? No. Because of cattle. I have cattle on my farm to kill property taxes.

I knew hurricanes were causing disturbances in the insurance force, but the cow thing took me by surprise. I had no idea. The weirdest thing about it is that they didn’t care about horses. Hello? Christopher Reeve? People fall off horses. Horses kick people. What do cattle do? Eat, sleep, and poop.

Have rogue herds been escaping from farms and taking over towns? I have not heard about it.

Please don’t tell me you know a company that would have insured me, because you don’t. You may think you do, but you’re wrong. Don’t tell me Farmers Insurance would have insured me. They refused. Don’t tell me State Farm would have done it. They refused. Having “Farm” and “Farmer” in their names didn’t mean anything.

I went to a cattle forum for advice, I said no one would insure me, and some cranky old guy who worked in insurance told me not to tell me his job. He assured me a certain company would cover me. They wouldn’t. He looked pretty stupid.

So now I can’t get insurance because I have cattle, right? Wrong. This year, they don’t care about cattle. I got several quotes. No problem with the cattle. No explanation.

This time, I ended up getting pretty much the same policy I bought last year, for around $3,000. So it went $3,400, $8,000, $3,000. It’s like they used one of those lottery ping pong ball machines. I got the $3,000 policy from a real company people know about, not the obscure insurer that covered me last time. Ramon’s of Hialeah.

I have no idea what’s going on.

I was truthful with the agent I talked to. He knows about the cattle. He knew a tropical storm was coming. Didn’t care. He offered an insanely low price for insurance without wind coverage, and then he told me I could add wind coverage and pay only $3,000.

I still think wind coverage is stupid for people in my county, but my wife was nervous about it, and the price was right, so I took it.

That’s my insurance story. Try and explain it if you want.

Here is what I would do if I ran an insurance company: I would charge the snot out of people near the coast, and I would give huge breaks to people inland. I would not spread the risk around, alienating a huge number of low-risk people who were unlikely to file claims. I would make those people my target demographic. I would treat the coast like the coast, and I would treat the interior like Missouri.

Insurers make money in Missouri, selling only to people who are safe from hurricanes, charging modest prices. If that is true, they should be able to make money in the interior of Florida. Getting rid of high-risk clients who refuse to pay high prices shouldn’t matter, and getting huge premiums from high-risk clients who are willing to pay should work out just fine.

As far as the storm goes, they have named it Debby, which is odd, because everyone else spells that name “Debbie.” It will not be a problem here. There are reasons.

1. Prayer.

2. It doesn’t have the potential to strengthen much.

3. It’s going to make landfall in the panhandle, far away.

4. The projected track keeps moving farther west, away from me.

5. I spent $7,500 cutting all the trees that threatened my buildings.

The way storm tracking works is interesting.

I always look at the “static cone” pictures from the National Hurricane Center. The pointy part of the cone is the storm’s location. The fat end is where it will probably be hours and days later. The cones are not all that unreliable these days. If they say a storm will land in Miami, it’s not going to land in New Orleans. Storms usually go within maybe a couple of hundred miles of the places cones say they will, as long as we’re talking about cones drawn within a couple of days of landfall.

That brings up the second point.

A cone itself will show whether a storm is drifting in a certain compass direction, but you can also look at a succession of cones. The NHC’s site doesn’t offer the option of looking at cones over several days, but you can always save cone images on your PC and look at them later.

Cones are updated every three hours. If you look at a succession of cones over a couple of days, you will see the cones themselves generally drift. Weather guys may start out saying a certain storm is expected to hit Fort Myers, and then 36 hours later, they may say it’s headed for Destin. Destin may be completely outside of the cone the weather guys were using when they said the storm would hit Fort Myers.

If you watch the way the cones themselves drift, you get a better picture of what’s really going to happen. A cone predicts where a storm will go, based on knowledge obtained over a short period of time. A succession of cones where future cones will go, based on observations over a longer period. I think smart people look at successions of cones.

Weather guys often get overexcited by early cones that seem to indicate landfalls in highly-populated areas. “IT’S BARRELING DOWN ON PALM BEACH!!!” Everybody in Palm Beach tunes in. The weather guys get better ratings, so their employers can charge more for ads in the future. Then the storm goes to Titusville.

They LOVE “barreling down.” They say it constantly. Well, when they’re not saying “hurtling toward.” They say Beryl BARRELED DOWN on Texas.

It’s a weird expression. I have never seen a barrel hit anything.

I sincerely believe the weather guys don’t care. I think they and their bosses are only interested in money. They don’t care if they freak people out for nothing. Or maybe they’re just not smart enough to understand cone drift. A lot of meteorologists are physics majors, though. That’s odd, because I didn’t notice a lot of gays when I was studying physics.

The latest cone is centered around a tiny town called St. Marks, directly south of Tallahassee. But the cones keep drifting westward, so I think Apalachicola is a more likely landfall.

In any case, it looks like it’s going to land where there are almost no people. Sorry, Apalachicolans. You know it’s true. Remember how excited you were when you thought you were going to get your own Arby’s? Sorry that didn’t pan out.

Mmm. Beef ‘N Cheddar. I was telling my wife about them just the other day.

I don’t care if it’s not real meat.

Don’t fret, panhandlers. It looks like you’re getting a Category 1, so as long as you tie your boats up right, it shouldn’t be too bad. Moderate storm surge and some wind.

I hope people up there have cut problem trees.

Whoever gets hit wants to be west of the eye, because on that side, there will be no storm surge. The wind will be blowing the water away from shore. If the eye is to the east of Apalachicola, things should go well.

A lot of the panhandle is nearly-empty swamp. It’s amazing how few people live on a huge stretch of land right on the water. The government owns a ton of it. Maybe they’re doing Area 51 stuff to kidnapped Florida Men. It would explain a lot.

“Okay, Jayden and Brayden. Try not to chew on the straps, and in no time at all, you’ll be back in your bass boat. No, you can’t tell Ashlee and McKayla where you are.”

It’s actually kind of funny that people in Manhattan think Florida Men are the crazy ones. Someone should erect a giant mirror along the Hudson.

Within two days, it would be covered by a gay BLM mural.

Well, that’s it. I got insurance. Spent too much so the wife would be happy. Feel like I wasted a lot of money.

Maybe the Grass Really is Greener

Reader Tiomoid of Angle left a comment referring to a Youtube called Nomad Capitalist. The comment says, “Go Where You’re Treated Best.”

That’s really interesting.

I know nothing about the channel. I sort of skimmed the “Videos” page, and it looks like it’s a guy who tells people about countries where they might be better off than where they are. Maybe it’s aimed at Americans.

I’m writing to relax, so I have no plans to do unpleasant research that resembles work.

What I perceive, perhaps incorrectly, to be the thesis of the channel is interesting. Why stay where you’re not wanted? Why stay and be treated the way a lamprey treats a bass?

Today I had a revelation, which I posted here. The brief, generalized version is this: bad people want to stay close to good people, but good people want to get away from bad people.

To understand why this is true, you only have to refer back to the lamprey/bass simile. A bass would be way better off if every lamprey died right now, but lampreys would shrivel and die without fish to eat alive.

This is the kind of interaction Scott Adams had in mind when he made the remarks that changed his life.

He says he’s not a racist. He says he was being “hyperbolic.” I don’t know what’s true. I do know that people with a ghetto mindset are parasites, and the people who support them are hosts. This is also true of spoiled Antifa kids and most Palestinians.

He said people should stay the hell away from blacks. That’s ridiculous, but if he had said we should stay away from racist blacks who prey on everyone else, he would have been correct, and he should have extended the notion to other parasitic groups. For example, no honest person can say it’s smart to live near gypsies.

America the nation is parasitic now. I mean the government and cultural establishment. As policy, it torments, libels, censors, imprisons, beats, and robs people who are its biggest assets, in order to feed vicious common trash who happen to be of voting age. So why not leave?

Is it really that big a deal to be an American citizen? What do you really get?

1. Stability. Well, that is off the table now that civil war is approaching. And having a continuous line of government doesn’t mean individuals have stability. The USSR was around for a long time, and people there lived in terror and never knew when they might be whisked off to camps or places of execution. And lots of countries are stable.

2. Wealth. That sounds fine, but the fact that your country is wealthy doesn’t mean you are, and the fact that it’s poor doesn’t mean you’re poor. You can be wealthy anywhere, and it’s best to be wealthy in a place where half of the population isn’t trying to take what you have, claiming falsely that you stole it. One in six Swiss citizens are millionaires by American standards. That’s not bad. There are several countries where it is easier to get rich than it is in America. And maybe you’re already rich, so all you need is a country that won’t rob you.

3. Quality of life. This is a slippery quantity, because the people whose efforts to define it are generally not conservative, but still, the US is not at the top of most lists. Here’s an important part of quality of life: not having racist, anti-Christian, antisemitic, murderous terrorism-lovers constantly threatening to take what you have and turn you into a voiceless slave.

The weather in most of America is bad for a big part of the year. The food is not very good except for prime beef. The people in most areas are rude. We have a couple of large demographics, plus some small ones, that run around shooting, robbing, and raping everyone else plus each other. This is not paradise.

What if you travel and a foreign country locks you up or otherwise mistreats you? Uncle Sam will save you! No, he won’t. I mean, he might, but don’t count on it. Foreign prisons are full of American citizens. If you’re a famous lesbian who willfully committed a stupid crime with a severe penalty, you might get help, but in the process, a far better person might be left imprisoned in the foreign country for political reasons. Not that this has happened recently.

Is it heresy to criticize our food? No. Go to Europe or the Far East some day and look at the produce. We breed plants that taste bad but generate higher profits. They breed plants that taste fantastic, and often, they also look better than ours.

The produce in Singapore (where there is virtually no farmland) and Hong Kong (also almost no farmland) is magnificent. Wonder why we can’t do that.

Consider the Red Delicious apple. I loved them when I was a kid. Now they’re disgusting. I can’t understand why stores sell them. They bred the flavor out of them and made the texture sort of like a mixture of sand and wet styrofoam. They apparently ship quite well, however.

Our Granny Smith apples are like sour croquet balls. Can’t remember the last time I saw a ripe one. They’re great for constipation.

We have the Second Amendment! True, but then we need it more than many countries. I don’t think the Czechs and South Koreans worry too much about carjackings and home invasions.

One of the videos on Capitalist Nomad’s channel is titled “You Don’t Owe Your Country Anything.” Wow. In America, that’s blasphemy. But is it true? In many cases, yes.

I obey the law. Mostly. I cost the taxpayer virtually nothing. The police don’t come to my house three times a week to make me stop beating the putative mother of some of my illegitimate children. My kids aren’t in “the system” because I abandoned them. I don’t get affirmative action. I paid full tuition when I was in college. I don’t get student loans and then force better people to pay them off. The amount of tax I pay is really extraordinary because of the nature of my business. It’s fair to say I work for the government. When my grandfather died, my country confiscated enough wealth from his heirs, who had done nothing wrong, to make a person rich. When they brought the Selective Service back, I signed up, agreeing to give my life if they ordered me to. I wasn’t called to serve, but I would have. That’s not a small thing to offer.

Help me understand why I would think I owed America anything. I think our military people have done more for me than anyone except my parents and my mother’s parents, but is our military “America”? Most people have never served.

I do a lot for other people through taxes, but people don’t do anything for me unless I pay them. If I pay them, how can anyone say I owe them for what they’ve done for me?

I benefit from the taxes a certain percentage of Americans pay, but they benefit from mine, too. We use the same roads. I would say the rich benefit me more than anyone, because they pay way more than I do. Thank you, billionaires. Someone appreciates you.

Thank you for infrastructure. Thank you for hospitals and universities. Thank you for aircraft carriers. Thank you for all the things disgraceful politicians bought us with your confiscated money. Thank you for all the corporations that provide great stuff. Thank you for taking risks I won’t take and working harder than I want to.

I’m surrounded by people who cheat the rest of us every day as a matter of routine. Welfare scammers run into the tens of millions, at least. I live in a country where people with no conscience use EBT cards to buy liquor and cigarettes while better people buy their own ramen noodles.

There are whole neighborhoods that are nothing but wealth sinks. The government raises their kids. In prisons, it houses a huge fraction of the adult males and quite a lot of the females. It hands out food, medicine, phones, apartments and all sorts of other things. It pays for programs that help almost no one because almost no one wants to be helped.

Some people owe this country. I am not one of them. If I move somewhere else, America will be worse off, I will be better off, and the country I move to will be improved.

I’m assuming I can move to a decent location. That is still possible.

I don’t often hear people saying they don’t owe America anything, but it’s true for many of us.

I can understand immigrants saying it, provided they didn’t come here from places like Luxembourg or Japan.

Funny thing: I don’t even owe God. That sounds bizarre, but it’s true. He paid the debt I owed him. I don’t owe him for anything in the past, but I definitely have a son’s duty to serve him in the future. And I want to serve him. He’s wonderful, and serving him is a joy. Every good thing in my life came from him, and he gave it all in spite of my revolting attitude and slimy deeds.

I don’t claim America owes me, except that it has a duty to do what our stupid, cruel, clumsy government has promised in return for being a good and loyal citizen. I have done a lot for the citizenry, but I was forced to do most of it, and I don’t consider anyone to be indebted to me for it.

Saying I don’t owe America isn’t the same as saying I don’t love America. I do. Or, rather, I love what America was. I love what little vanishing bits of it still are. I can’t love the whole country. No one in his right mind can love Chicago or Newark. It would be like loving kidney stones.

I suppose I’ve written enough. I have unwound. I don’t know whether I have guessed correctly about Capitalist Nomad’s content. Maybe tomorrow I’ll actually watch a video.

We Yearn to Breathe Free

My wife and I had a good day yesterday, not that this is unusual.

We had an anniversary recently, and we had problems finding her a good gift, so I decided we needed to go to the big city. We succeeded in getting the gift, and she also got to eat at the Cheesecake Factory, where she would happily take up residence if they would let her.

We also visited an African grocery run by Nigerians. I thought maybe they would have a lot of interesting food I would want to try, but it was pretty bad. The store did not smell good, it was run-down, and they sold things I didn’t know were edible. Potato leaves, for example.

The web suggests “potato leaves” are really sweet potato leaves. That would make more sense. The potato is a member of the nightshade family, and you’re not supposed to eat nightshade leaves.

I was glad we managed to get her things she liked. I thought about her good fortune. She used to bathe in a bucket, and here she was, buying nice things at upscale malls and living in a big house will all sorts of appliances, not to mention air conditioning and a power grid that almost never fails (sorry, California).

I asked her if she was glad she was in America, and she surprised me by saying she wasn’t. She said she only preferred America to Zambia because I was here.

In Zambia, she lived with two other women in a cheap apartment. She had to wash her clothes by hand. She had no car because an ex-boyfriend had taken hers. The power went on and off constantly. She had to buy used goods from China. But she prefers Zambia to America. Why?

One reason is that she was raised in Zambia. The other reason, however, is that America is insane.

In Zambia, men in dresses aren’t holding antisemitic protests outside Jewish businesses. Perversion flags are rare. Homosexual marriage is not legal. Zambians don’t riot. Wokeism isn’t a threat. Political censorship is not much of a problem. Christianity is in their constitution.

Here, we are preparing for a civil war because leftists have become cruel and oppressive. That’s not happening in Zambia.

Her preference actually makes some sense.

Zambia has other problems. Drunkenness is out of control. Paganism does great harm. Corruption is severe. The economy is always disastrous. According to my wife, Zambians are lazy, so things are not likely to improve. Still, apocalyptic violence will probably be much less severe there than it will be (is) here.

Zambians don’t hate each other the way Americans do.

Am I saying I would consider moving to Zambia? Sure. If things got bad enough here, and Zambia looked better. I want to survive like everyone else. I don’t want to spend my days shooting and burying black-clad trespassers who want to punish my family for the crime of existing.

I really, really don’t want to move to Africa, but what if we have no choice?

To leftists, the existence of everyone else is a capital offense. We have seen them try to cleanse the world with rifles. They did it in places like China and Cambodia, to name two examples. Many here have praised Trump’s failed assassin. They’re always waiting to be released on better people so they can destroy them and take what they have. After they get what they have, they destroy that, too, because leftist traits, not social inequities, are what made poor leftists poor.

Alan Dershowitz just did a podcast in which he expressed dismay over an anti-Jewishness protest.

Dershowitz loves admiration and being associated with celebrities, so he lives in Martha’s Vineyard. As we all know, Martha’s Vineyard is a rich leftist enclave where wealthy socialist hypocrites pat each other on the back all day.

Unbelievably, Martha’s Vineyard has a Chabad branch. Chabad is an ultra-Orthodox Jewish organization. Maybe they’re in the Vineyard so they can milk guilt-ridden Jewish celebrities for cash. I very much doubt a significant percentage of Martha’s Vineyard Jewish residents have any interest in giving up sin and pepperoni pizza.

Chabad is not affiliated with Israel or the IDF.

Chabad held a sort of festival of Jewish culture. Music, food, and so on. Dershowitz says antisemitic Democrats showed up in a mob and protested. As he noted, they were protesting Jewishness itself. The organization and the event had nothing to do with the war in Gaza.

Democrats showed up to accuse Jews of the crime of being Jewish.

If your crime is being Jewish, what is the appropriate punishment? Let me be more obvious: what is the final solution?

What is your defense? There isn’t one. You can become a kapo, though. You can join those who persecute your people and postpone your own destruction. Many Jews are doing this. Many did it under the Greeks and Romans.

You don’t know about the protest because you don’t watch his Youtube channel. It should have been on the national news, but as a Babylon Bee character has said, hating Jews is cool now. That is literally true. Our press is about 90% leftist, and leftists crave admiration. To get excited about the problem of antisemitism is to break with the cool kids. Coverage could also bring disrepute on the Democratic Party, and no one in the press wants that to happen.

The thing that puts a knot in one’s stomach is knowing Dershowitz will complain and admonish and then vote for Kamala Harris anyway. American Jews will continue assisting their persecutors and persecuting their friends.

Americans in general are starting to behave the same way. Notice how we give privilege to hostile military-age immigrants from Muslim countries, China, and Latin American nations that are not friendly.

I keep wondering if I’ve given Dershowitz too much credit. He’s supposed to be brilliant, but I haven’t seen him say anything really clever, and I’ve seen him say things that would appear to indicate that he is not brilliant, even for a lawyer. His analysis of the Baldwin manslaughter case was very poor.

Law is not that hard. Law professors are smarter than most professors, but not a whole lot smarter. They are not in the same lofty stratum as STEM people. You can be a Supreme Court justice and be substantially less bright than a state college professor of electrical engineering.

America is turning into something resembling Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, so I understand why my wife would want to live somewhere else. You wouldn’t think a poverty-stricken African nation would tempt anyone, but these are strange times.

I wonder if Christian countries in Africa would accept Jewish and Christian refugees from America. Maybe they would. They need money and educated people with skills.

I used to think I might be called upon to shelter Jews. I now think that would be impossible, because you can’t hide anything in modern America. I no longer consider it a serious possibility.

Now I think a foreign country may have to shelter me.

Here is a funny fact no one ever talks about: good people want to get away from bad people, but bad people want to be with good people.

When you judge two parties that don’t get along, the one that wants nothing to do with the other is usually right, and the one that wants to force the other to stay close is usually evil.

The other day, I was thinking about my health, and I wondered if something I experienced could be a symptom of cancer. My reflexive response was to think, “Maybe I can get out of this place!”, meaning the world. That was the very first thing I thought of. Remarkable. This is not new. Whenever I read that a person has died, I can’t help thinking, “Good for him!”

Then I thought about my family and regretted it, because I would be abandoning them. I also thought about the suffering cancer patients go through. Then I thought about cancer patients who didn’t suffer all that badly. A year or so on painkillers, a sudden downturn, and then off they go. Worse than growing old and feeble and being tormented by leftists? No. That’s a chilling realization. Millions of people leftists have abused, both dead and living, would have preferred cancer and death.

I actually had these thoughts. As much as I enjoy life, I can’t feel enthusiastic about a future in this sick, twisted country.

Get Ready for Your Last Stand

For some reason, I started reading about stand mixers. While I was doing that, I decided to see which one is currently considered the ultimate. I could be missing out.

When I say “ultimate,” I don’t include commercial mixers. I’m talking about mixers that sell for less than a grand.

What do people always say when you say “mixer”? “KITCHENAID!” Sadly, they have been fooled.

Kitchenaid makes great-looking mixers based on the old Hobart Kitchenaid commercial mixers. Not the real Hobart commercial mixers with bowls big enough to bathe a golden retriever. The little-bitty ones with 5-quart bowls.

Hobart is a commercial appliance maker, and they started the Kitchenaid company in 1919 to make mixers. Hobart doesn’t make Kitchenaids any more. They make real commercial mixers starting at over $4,000.

The old Hobarts looked like modern Kitchenaids, but they were simpler and tougher. They had strong gears that lasted decades. Modern Kitchenaids look like Hobarts on the outside, with added levers and buttons and lots of pretty colors designed to fool women, but they have plastic gears, and they fall apart.

Even Kitchenaid’s “Pro Line” mixers come with a warning. You’re not supposed to knead dough for more than two minutes because your motor might burn up. I guess this protects the plastic gears.

I think this is Kitchenaid’s (Whirlpool’s) way of voiding warranties. They sell you a tool to do a job, knowing it’s not fit for the purpose. You try to use it, and they say you abused it.

You buy, you keep. So sorry. CCP keep you money.

It’s strange that Kitchenaid mixers came from Hobart, and Kitchenaid now pretends it has a “pro” line. Hobart’s Kitchenaid was the real Kitchenaid pro line. CCP-adjacent Kitchenaid doesn’t make commercial-grade products.

When I decided to look at current reviews, I went to America’s Test Kitchen. They have done a fantastic job in the past. Before they fired Christopher Kimball. They do tons of testing. Before they will give you a cookie recipe, they’ll make hundreds of cookies. I thought they would know about mixers.

Guess what they recommended? “KITCHENAID!”

In the review itself, they said the mixers might burn up when kneading past the two-minute mark. So they recommended mixers…you can’t actually use. Many, many doughs go way past the two-minute mark.

Those kids can’t be trusted without daddy in the house. Everything went to pot when Christopher Kimball left.

What else do they like? Ankarsrum. Named for a town in Sweden, or maybe Norway, like there’s a difference. Ankarsrum mixers are supposed to be lifetime appliances, and they do a great job. For the low price of $750. Caveats: they’re hard to use, so you might ruin things you’re trying to cook. But they’re great. Really.

I don’t see the logic. If there were nothing else available, I would understand. But what if there is something else?

They didn’t test the something else. They didn’t test Bosch or Nutrimill. These companies offer more or less the same thing. Bosch calls it the Universal Plus mixer. The Bosch version has a side thing on it you can use to attach other implements. You can grind meat and shove it into sausage casings with it. You can grate big blocks of cheese.

I’ve had one of these for maybe 15 years. I got it when I was making pizzas for a church run by con artists. They already had a tiny Hobart, and it would make a few portions of dough. The Bosch will make 14 one-pound loaves of bread in one shot. Yes, you read that correctly. It’s crazy. That’s enough dough for 14 16″ pizzas.

The Bosch is light. It’s quiet. It’s easy to clean. It lasts forever. It does a very good or great job with everything. You can get a new Nutramill without the Bosch side tower for $300, so less than half the price of an Ankarsrum.

Years ago, I had a complaint with the Bosch. It has a plastic pillar sticking up in the middle of the bowl, and when I made cheesecake, batter would stick to the pillar. It didn’t get mixed in. Now they have a scrapey thing you attach to the pillar, and it shoves unmixed material back where it will get mixed. Problem solved.

I have no idea why ATK didn’t review the Bosch. They should know about it. It’s famous among home chefs and pizza makers. It’s the number-one mixer for serious pizza at a consumer-mixer price.

The Universal Plus has suction cups on the bottom to keep it from jogging around your counters. ATK says it doesn’t like suction cups, because they don’t stick when flour gets on them. Hmm. How could that be fixed? Let’s start a second Los Alamos project. Maybe you could stop setting the mixer down on counters covered with flour.

Maybe ATK isn’t that great now. They also jacked up their prices. Here’s a tip. If you subscribe, and they send you an email with the new Biden-level price, turn them down. They’ll email you again and give you over 50% off.

I would rather have a 12-pound mixer with suction cups than a heavier mixer that relies on mass I have to lift. Not that the Ankarsrum is all that heavy at 18 pounds.

I also have a 7-quart Cuisinart SM-70 stand mixer. It used to get good reviews, but they seem to have vanished. It’s the same mixer Kenwood makes or made. It has been fantastic for me (used very rarely), but you literally need hearing protection to use it. No exaggeration. Cuisinart makes a different mixer now.

The Cuisinart supposedly has 1000 watts of power, and it has done everything I asked it to. It also has a timer with a digital display. Cuisinart is kind of a hinky company, though, so I now avoid buying their products unless there are no substitutes.

Since I bought the Cuisinart, a lot of people have said some pretty nasty things about the reliability, so maybe it’s not so great. Because I have a hand mixer and the Bosch, the Cuisinart has had a very easy life. It has not been tested. It has coasted along like Hunter Biden.

I went for big mixers because no one wants to spend maybe $400 on a kitchen tool and then have an event where it won’t get the job done.

I believe I got the Cuisinart because I was tired of scraping cheesecake batter off the center pillar of the Bosch bowl. I kept the Bosch because it was so wonderful otherwise, and then Bosch fixed the pillar problem.

If you have a Kitchenaid, you’re probably pretty upset right now. I don’t blame you. I understand why you bought it. They look great. And ATK recommends them highly.

It looks like Ankarsrum mixers are only for people who bake every day. I say go with Bosch or Nutrimill. Nobody likes a learning curve that has to be ascended over and over and provides no real benefit.

I still need a good hand mixer. I bought a little Cuisinart 7-speed, but it was annoying because it always started at top speed. It starts in first gear, but for the first half-second, it goes much faster. Then it slows down. By then, it has thrown your ingredients on the wall. I bought a new Cuisinart 9-speed with slow start, which it does not actually have. It literally does exactly what the cheaper one did. I emailed them, and they told me to return it to Amazon, because they didn’t care. The return date was long past.

When I finally get a decent hand mixer, I’ll be like $150 into it at the start because of the Cuisinarts that went to Goodwill.

That’s it, I guess. Avoid Kitchenaid and Cuisinart. Bosch is good. Ankarsrum is probably good if you like a pointless challenge. ATK is suspect.

Good luck with your pizza and cookies.

Shredded Tweets

I am once again not on Twitter.

I tried Twitter for a few days because I thought Elon Musk might be serious about making it a Youtube alternative, but he is not serious, and Twitter was a bad experience. Video sites have to be set up a certain way, and Musk has not yet chosen to set Twitter up correctly. Also, the content on Twitter was largely infantile, not to mention plagiaristic.

I think God showed me a few things.

If you want to use Twitter, first of all, you should pray first. You probably should not be on Twitter.

Once you’re on Twitter, you have to be proactive, not reactive.

Based on what I saw, Twitter is designed–I mean intentionally–to be irritating. It forced me to pick people and things to show up in my feed, and then, instead, it fed me content which was almost certainly selected to provoke me. Biden’s account. Harris’s. Chris Hayes. Jon Favreau.

I saw nearly nothing of the topics I had selected.

For a while, I thought this was all I would ever get. I muted and muted and muted, and the same garbage kept popping up. Eventually, I found that if I scrolled down about a mile, Twitter ran out of anger clickbait and started showing me better things. It still was not great, though.

If you look at the trash Twitter puts at the top of your feed, after a few minutes, you’re angry. You feel like posting rebuttals to the libels and lies.

I had good intentions when I signed up. I thought I could post helpful things, including revelation. I got absorbed in a reactive mindset, however. I felt myself getting pulled into the undignified squabbling. Fortunately, I didn’t get into any arguments. I was not there long enough, and Twitter didn’t promote my posts.

Yes, Twitter does have censorship. If you pay them, they promote the things you say. How is that censorship? Simple. If you promote one group without promoting others, you’re censoring the people you don’t promote. You’re not silencing them, but you might as well be, because nearly no one will see what they write.

Twitter should not accept money to promote posts, except for obvious ads that don’t advance a point of view. It’s fine to promote a post for a brand of breakfast cereal, but they shouldn’t promote argumentative ads.

Back in the 1950’s, radio hosts were imprisoned for accepting secret bribes to play some records more than others. Elon Musk and his team should think about this when they accept secret bribes to promote Twitter accounts. Bribery is still wrong, especially when it pays for censorship.

If you think you have something to say on Twitter, don’t read other people’s posts much. There is not much of anything worth reading. You really have to search to find anything remotely helpful. Just write whatever you want and let it sink or swim.

It’s best not to argue with stupid and biased people. When you do that, you become like them, as Proverbs warns. You can’t change their minds, but you can damage yourself.

“But it’s wrong to refuse to defend what you say!” No, it’s not. Where is that written? “It’s wrong to refuse to consider other people’s views!” Not always. Twitter is full of patent idiocy, and besides, by the time you’re an adult, you should have a considerable number of unshakeable beliefs. If you stay open-minded about absolutely everything your entire life, it doesn’t make you mature and reasonable. It makes you lost and unreliable. You will never be sure of anything, and no one will be able to trust you.

So if you take the approach I’m outlining, who are you like? Yeshua.

If you read the gospels, you will see that Yeshua did not let other people run conversations. He said whatever he wanted. He did not respond to every question people posed. Often, when they tried to corner him with questions, he said things that were not responsive. He spoke of other things that were more useful.

Boxers call this fighting your own fight. You don’t let your opponent decide what kind of fight you will have. You tailor your actions to your best advantage. You do what you’re good at.

If Yeshua were on Twitter today, leftist trolls would treat him the way they treat everyone else. “SOURCE? SOURCE?” They’d make digressive accusations hoping to change the subjects. They’d deliberately misconstrue what he said in order to make him look bad.

A long time ago, God told me I was not in the least bit responsible for the way other people took things I said. If I offended people with the truth, it was their fault, not mine. If I gave them information that could save them from hell, and I didn’t do it in a soothing, unctuous way, I wasn’t responsible if hell was where they ended up.

I don’t have an obligation to get tied down in arguments with stupid people, letting them lie, accuse, misconstrue, and repeat themselves, responding to every idiotic thing they say. I have an obligation to speak the truth, but after a reasonable effort, I can do whatever I want.

If you are usually reactive and not proactive, what are you? A follower. Yeshua created us to be leaders, like him. It’s funny that a person who subscribes to other people’s Twitter posts is called a follower. It’s Biblically accurate.

If you really hear the Holy Spirit, you will get a lot of revelation, and revelation is true. It’s not something to “toss out there for discussion.” Other people’s opinions aren’t helpful. They are degenerate and harmful. The Talmud is full of opinions, like the opinion that Yeshua is in hell, boiling in excrement and semen. Catholics are of the opinion that it’s good to pray to dead people.

There are no opinions in heaven. There is only the truth. This is one of the most excellent things about heaven. When you get there, there will be no protestors and no lies to debunk.

Yeshua is the Prince of Peace. You can’t have peace without agreement.

If I say the Hulk is better than Superman, that’s an opinion, and it’s no better than your opinion. If God tells Jonah the Ninevites need to repent or be destroyed, it’s not suitable matter for discussion. It’s the truth. No one has the right to argue.

I think New York style pizza is better than Chicago style. Reasonable minds may differ. I can’t say I have authority. If I say you need to pray in tongues every day, I speak by revelation, so your contrary opinion has no value, and I have no obligation to listen to it or publish it in a comment.

If I were to go back to Twitter, I would avoid following people.

Once you get revelation, you will be wary of spending too much time with other Christians, because only a small fraction of them will be able to receive what you tell them. This is why Yeshua died with 11 disciples, after teaching thousands. It’s why he had to get away from the disciples frequently. They were better than most, but they were not on his level. He had to be with the Father in order to be refreshed and empowered.

The Christians I saw on Twitter were generally horrible. A lot of accounts are just click farms, trying to make money. Other people fight and call names. I learned two names: “dispy” and “Calvy.” A dispy believes time is divided into eras, or “dispensations,” in which God deals with the human race differently. They believe in the Messianic Age, for example. A Calvy is a Calvinist. I have some vague ideas about what Calvinists believe, but I don’t care enough to look it up so I can explain it here.

Apparently, Calvies and dispies don’t get along.

I saw people in various factions, fighting about doctrine, ridiculing their opponents. They referred to scholars and preachers to give their opinions authority. It was tiresome.

We are all supposed to hear from the Holy Spirit, not from John MacArthur, the Pope, and Joyce Meyer. If, after a year of salvation, you are still depending on Kenneth Copeland’s books, or Augustine’s, for information about God, you are missing out and filling your mind with damaging lies.

Apparently the Schofield reference Bible is controversial. I barely know what it is. People get really heated up discussing it.

Yeshua was uneducated, and so were the 11 disciples. Somehow, we still give Hellenist scholars like Thomas Aquinas, as well as other arrogant academics who never healed or prophesied, more respect than we give our neighbors who listen to the Holy Spirit.

It seems to me that engaging with Twitter Christians is a big waste of my time. They already know everything, but nearly all of them are wrong.

More and more, as a resident of Earth, I have the feeling that I’m watching people brawl, through bulletproof glass in a nuthouse. I just don’t know what I can do for them.

I can always intercede and give, and I try to put useful things on my blog, but that’s about it.

The Republican convention has not been encouraging. We’ve had a whore, a pagan who prays to unclean spirits and has nominal Christians join her, a socialist union official, and Hulk Hogan, a professional geek who made his money in a televised sideshow.

A geek is a person who does revolting or sensational things on a carnival midway. That’s professional wrestling. Profane, juvenile, lowbrow entertainment that corrupts kids and fuels the steroid industry.

Hogan isn’t even respected by other geeks. He is hated by many of his peers because he ratted them out to Vince McMahon when they tried to organize and negotiate with the WWE. He pretended to be their friend while he was doing this. He has a reputation as a backstabber. He took steroids all of his adult life and lied about it. When he was investigated, he snitched on Vince McMahon.

Part of his fame comes from a nude video in which he had sex with a friend’s wife. His birth name isn’t even Hogan, and he plagiarized “Hulk” from a comic book. His birth name is Terry Bollea. What does he have to do with conservatism? They could have had Curtis Sliwa or Nick Sandmann. Somebody respectable.

I understand that not every speaker will be a war hero or a missionary, but they could do better. I guess this is the Trump family influence.

Anyway, I’m off Twitter.