Archive for the ‘Fat’ Category

The Meat of the Matter

Thursday, February 8th, 2024

Seems Like no One Knows the Truth About Anything

I was praying with my wife yesterday morning, and I got off on the topic of the concealment of the truth. When I pray, I don’t just ask for stuff. I make statements. I was asking God to tell us what to do about something, which means I was asking to know the truth, and I started talking about the way the world now swims in lies.

One of the biggest areas of deception and concealment is that of coronavirus. We don’t know much of the truth at all.

1. Do the vaccines work? At first, people like Joe Biden and Rachel Maddow told us they were 100% effective. Then we heard figures like 90%. Then we heard that every person on Earth could expect to get infected, vaccinated or not. When the vaccines started looking bad, they told us that while they might not prevent infection, they would absolutely, definitely prevent every recipient from getting very sick and dying, and then they told us countless vaccinated people had died or at least become terribly ill.

2. Do the masks work? No; not at all. That’s what they said at first. Then they said they worked very well. Now they say this: no; not at all. Nearly.

3. Do vaccines hurt people? No; not at all. Almost never, they said. Then young people started dropping dead in such numbers it significantly affected official excess death figures. They said this had nothing to do with coronavirus vaccines. It had to be related to all those other giant health crises that occurred right after the end of 2019. A lot of journalists and officials still deny that vaccines do harm, but simultaneously, the CDC says this:

[E]vidence from multiple vaccine safety monitoring systems in the United States and around the globe supports a causal association between mRNA COVID-19 vaccines (i.e., Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech) and myocarditis and pericarditis.

Oooooooookay.

The other day, I read that a vaccinated baby’s risk of heart problems from covid vaccination is about 2.2%. The risk of symptomatic coronavirus infection is almost too low to measure. It is essentially zero. But people gave their babies shots anyway.

A rate of 2.2% is not small. It’s astronomical. Imagine this: you see a table covered with hundred-dollar bills on a city street, and a sign over it says, “Over one in fifty people who take a hundred-dollar bill will get myocarditis.” Would you take the money? Would you drive if getting in your car carried a 2.2% chance of myocarditis?

People can be really stupid about probability. We tend to think a low risk is the same thing as complete safety.

How many babies have had mRNA shots? Let’s say it’s a million, which is not unreasonable and could be low. That’s 22,000 babies with heart problems.

How many babies have had serious problems with coronavirus? Virtually none. And doctors knew coronavirus was not a serious threat to babies before they shot a bunch of them full of experimental vaccines which HAVE given many of then heart problems.

Pretending the 22,000 figure is correct, did we kill or seriously harm 22,000 babies in order to save a couple of dozen freak babies who somehow managed to get severe covid?

Right now, leftists are busy trying to put out the sudden-death fire, and maybe they will succeed, because they distort and control information, just like their spiritual siblings in North Korea and China. When stories come out, they say dumb things like, “Anecdotal! Anecdotal!” Our knowledge of the plagues that ravaged Europe is mostly anecdotal. No one took statistics or set diagnostic standards. Was the plague imaginary?

Today, we have excess-death statistics compiled by scientists, and leftists are still saying evidence for vaccine-induced sudden deaths is anecdotal.

How do you make it NOT anecdotal? How do you prove myocarditis and pericarditis are NOT caused by covid? Is that even possible? Does the body of a 14-year-old killed by vaccine myocarditis look different from the body of one whose cardiac arrest was caused by some other problem? Journalists and people in the medical/pharmaceutical/government complex should tell us instead of presenting us with their self-serving conclusions.

What if 10 million people died from heart inflammation next month? Would they keep telling us not to connect the dots?

How do we know the risk to babies is 2.2%? That’s a hell of a question. Aren’t most cases undiagnosed? It’s pretty obvious that vaccine heart damage sometimes has no symptoms until victims drop dead. If it always came with symptoms, the deaths wouldn’t happen on basketball courts. They’d happen in hospitals, where victims would go after feeling ill.

There is no way we’re detecting all of them. What if the rate is 10%, and 2.2% represents the number we have proven to exist? I haven’t seen anyone address this, possibly because journalists are generally too stupid to deal with math and science.

Disease cases are like cockroaches. If you see one, there may be lots of others you can’t see.

When I brought up the concealment of the truth in prayer, I wasn’t thinking mainly about coronavirus. I was thinking about low-carb diets. I was asking God to tell us whether we should try them.

My wife got here two months ago, and we have been exploring American food opportunities pretty thoroughly. She is concerned about her weight, and I am not all that happy about mine. Somehow, I came across a video of Jordan Peterson telling the world he only ate beef.

I had no idea there was an all-meat diet. It sounds like a leftist caricature of the Atkins diet.

When I was a kid, a bunch of lobbyists created what we called the Food Pyramid. It told us what to eat. We were to eat a lot of the stuff on the bottom level, and progressively less as the levels got smaller.

Nobody told us food industry lobbyists shaped the pyramid, but it’s true. One would think doctors would have had a say, but our government listened to people who grew grain. As a result, with no evidence whatsoever, people in authority started telling us to pump ourselves up with grain, like beef cattle. And doctors went along with it, which is very weird.

They also told us to go easy on meat. I have no idea why, since meat also had lobbyists. I guess the grain lobbyists spent more money.

Doc Atkins popped up and told the world this was all wrong, and he was right. He said we needed to limit carbs and eat all the meat, eggs, and cheese we wanted.

He was called a quack, and the medical establishment reviled him. Darn those lobbyists.

He told us excess carbohydrates made us insulin resistant, so we craved carbs and stored fat. Other doctors hooted like contemptuous baboons.

Now, mainstream doctors tell us about the dangers of insulin resistance. But they still push carb-heavy diets. They love vegetarianism, a bizarre and unnatural practice that didn’t exist until relatively recently in man’s history.

Doctors still tell us fat is bad, even though the science that condemned it has been debunked or at least stripped of most of its luster.

Doctors literally told us how to get fat and die sooner, but they claimed they were really telling us how to get slim and healthy. Now we’re supposed to believe them when they can’t agree on their stories.

Jordan Peterson says he eats only beef. Not “meat.” Beef. That’s how far-out he is. He says he has gone from 212 pounds to 165. He says his eye floaters and gum problems vanished. He says his lifelong depression went away. He builds muscle easily. He says he sleeps better and thinks more clearly now.

Is it true? I think so. He looks like an obsessive runner, even though he isn’t. His skin looks great. His mind is sharp. He has no reason to lie. No one is paying him.

I listened to him, and I looked around the web. I started thinking my wife and I ought to go zero-carb for a few days to detox from all the pizza and cookies and bread we’ve been eating. I don’t think we should go carnivore, because even if it works, I am not willing to make the sacrifice.

When I was in law school, I went a very long time eating almost no carbs. I lost something like 25 pounds, eating as much as I wanted. I was strong. I maxed out most of the machines where I worked out. People said I would have no endurance, but I used to ride an exercise bike for 45 minutes with my heart rate at 168. I know low-carbing works for me, but I’m not going all the way. Sometimes I have to have a pizza.

Today I got up and ate 6 fried eggs with 6 slices of bacon and 3 slices of American cheese. I feel very, very good. I don’t know why, but when I skip carbs, I always feel peaceful.

I think I’ll go two more days, and then we may start eating meat and non-starchy vegetables 6 days per week, with a break on Saturday to keep us from going insane.

The annoying thing is that people are so dishonest and agenda-driven, I can’t get good information about low-carb diets. And oddly, the lines seem to be drawn between leftists, who reject God, and people who accept him. You don’t really see many left-wing low-carbers. In fact, it’s much more common to see leftists who are enraged by low-carbing. That’s bizarre, but it’s true.

There seems to be a connection between hatred of God and love of vegetarianism. Hitler was a vegetarian. A lot of really annoying godless Hollywood performers are vegetarians. PETA nuts hate Christianity, and look at their diets.

Abel pleased God. He raised and slaughtered sheep. He presented God with the blood of innocent creatures whose throats he had cut, and God was happy with him. Cain raised plants, and he had the gall to present God with produce. When God corrected him, instead of taking the hint, he murdered Abel, and he was cursed for it.

God has always been a proponent of killing animals and meat eating. He had Abraham cut animals up for the covenant of the pieces. He let Abraham cook a goat for him, and he ate it. He had Elijah set out a dead steer for him, and he sent fire to devour it. He forced the Jews to eat meat once a year on Passover. Vegetarianism was a sin to the Jews. He established a sacrificial system that essentially turned the temple into a barbecue factory.

If you could go back in time to the temple, the first thing you would notice would be the delicious smell of meat being roasted. It was there all the time, because sacrifices took place every day. A lot of sacrifices. Birds. Goats. Sheep. Cattle. The Bible says God loves the sweet smell of burning meat.

Jesus ate meat. He told his disciples to eat his flesh and drink his blood. He was called the lamb of God.

God told Peter to kill unclean animals and eat.

It’s pretty clear that God has no interest in veganism. God eats meat, and so should we.

I wish we lived in a world where people told the truth, so I could get good dietary advice everyone agrees on, but that is not possible. Human beings are too crooked. You can’t believe anything they say.

I don’t believe the people who say you should never eat plants, and I definitely don’t believe the creepy, self-righteous zealots who get angry at people who eat meat. I will continue eating meat, and I doubt I’ll ever go carnivore.

Ham but no Green Eggs

Sunday, December 24th, 2023

Hope everyone is having a great Christmas Eve.

The wife and I have pretty much given up any pretense of healthy eating until day after tomorrow. Last night, I made her my own dish, champagne chicken, with fettuccine covered with basil cream sauce. I also made a pile of garlic rolls. She loved going to Italian restaurants when we were traveling, and she said this beat them all. She said it was like a 5-star restaurant.

Today I’m fixing a Honey-Faked ham. I like Honey-Baked ham, but I can’t see spending $13 per pound for something I can make for about $2.75, better. I have a recipe I made up, and it works great. Right now I have a Smithfield spiral ham, bought on sale, resting on a broiling pan. They come pretty wet, so I’m letting the liquid drip out of it before applying the crust and using the blowtorch.

We may make cookies. I am also considering making bourbon balls, a Kentucky favorite. They’re just chocolates full of bourbon-flavored goo. They’re generally pretty bad, but I have an idea for fixing them. I plan to make Kentucky cream candy, flavor it with bourbon, and use it for the filling.

It’s hard to describe cream candy, so I won’t try, except to say it’s like soft, butter-flavored chalk made from sugar.

For around 10 days, I’ve had a rib roast sitting in the fridge covered with salt, butter, and garlic. Tomorrow, it comes out. I’ll serve it with potatoes au gratin and Caesar salad, made with real dressing based on a Serious Eats recipe. It turns out Kenji Lopez-Alt isn’t totally useless. I’ll follow up with creme brulee. I came up with a very easy recipe that doesn’t require a water bath. You just bake at 205°.

We plan to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas special today. We have to buy it at Walmart. Apple bought the Peanuts specials three years ago, and they refuse to stream the Christmas show on anything but their ridiculous platform. They keep it off network TV.

I like the show because it’s one of the few Christmas specials that mention Yeshua. It’s not about snowmen animated by witchcraft or deer that pull an imaginary fat guy around on a sleigh. It’s not about feeling good about yourself on your alternative drag Christmas. It’s not about imaginary critters that eat roast beast.

It’s funny how many of the best-known specials were created by Jews. You can’t really expect good things to happen when you turn Yeshua’s birthday over to people who think he was a magician who went to hell and then founded the Nazi Party.

I wouldn’t try to write a Passover or Ramadan special.

Dr. Seuss was Jewish. I love his work, and I enjoyed the Grinch cartoon, but there was no Grinch in the gospels unless Herod and the high priests count.

Things keep getting better here. People told me we were still on our honeymoon because we had spent so little time together. They said we would learn what marriage was really like once my wife got here. In reality, we get along even better now. That’s a relief.

We may be the most boring couple on Earth. We get up, pray, eat cookies for breakfast, goof off, buy groceries, eat again, pray, and sleep. It seems to suit both of us well.

I wondered if a young woman would be bored in the country, far from malls and so on, but she loves it here.

God really looked out for us.

I have to go buy cheese for the potatoes, so I will sign off. I leave you with the ham recipe. There is still time.

INGREDIENTS

1. Honey glue

1/2 cup orange blossom or other light-colored honey
2 tbsp. prepared yellow mustard
1 tbsp. butter

2. Sugary crust

1 cup caramelized sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. cloves
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. allspice

Flop the ham face-down on a plate. Let it sit in the fridge for a while to see how much water comes out. You don’t want it too wet.

Apply the glue and then pack on the crust. Set it with a torch if you want. Refrigerate.

MORE

In case anyone else wants to try Kentucky cream candy, I’ll post a recipe, but I only have my own version, which I made with real maple syrup instead of sugar. I invented this myself, and it is well worth the cost of real syrup. Believe me.

If you want to eat this tomorrow, you need to make it today so it has time to turn into real cream candy.

If you don’t do it carefully, you may end up with hard candy, which is still a win. When cream candy is made correctly, it sort of disappears in your mouth. It’s different.

INGREDIENTS

1-1/2 cups maple syrup (not fake maple)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Dump the syrup and salt in a deep saucepan. It will bubble up, so you don’t want a shallow pan. Heat until it boils gently. Add the cream slowly. You don’t have to stir it.

You can add the vanilla at the start, or if you’re afraid boiling will hurt it, you can drizzle it on the candy right before you pull it. Pulling will work it into the candy.

Boil the mixture until it hits 260°. When you start getting close to the final temperature, get a pan ready to chill the candy. Put several teaspoons in the pan, concave side down. Fill the pan with ice and water, a little deeper than the height of the spoons. Butter a smaller pan.

When the candy is ready, put the small pan in the big pan and pour the candy into it. When the candy is cold enough to remove with your hands, remove it and form it into a long rod. Stretch the rod, fold it, and stretch it again. You want to do this for about 5 minutes. The candy will develop a satiny look.

Stretch the candy until it’s thin enough to make pieces of a convenient size. Cut it into small pieces with shears. Set it aside until it “creams,” meaning until it turns soft and chalky. This may take a whole day.

Don’t try to cut the candy with a knife or cleaver.

You should be able to use any flavoring you like. You could buy menthol crystals and make peppermint candy. You would need to use table sugar instead of syrup. A cup of sugar is about equivalent to 3/4 cup syrup.

No Sauce for the Gander

Wednesday, November 29th, 2023

New Blog Post Category: “Apocalypse”

Here’s a short post to help chronicle modern insanity.

Yesterday, I went to Target. There were big photos of women on the walls and displays. Old, homely, and/or fat women. Some in their underwear. Eww.

Guess what was missing. Photos of old, homely, and/or fat MALE models.

Hmm.

The Enduring Stain of Bourdain

Monday, August 28th, 2023

Deceased Bizarro Food Influencer Strikes Again

In case anyone who reads this blog is wondering where I’ve been, I have two things to say that might be clues. You really have to try Ki’s Roasted Goose in Hong Kong, and you should avoid the chili crab at Keng Eng Kee Seafood in Singapore.

My wife and I keep meeting abroad while we wait for her American visa, and we just spent two weeks in the Far East.

I have never had any interest in seeing Hong Kong (or any Far Eastern destination), but beggars can’t be choosers, and very few countries will let my African wife visit without a fight. China will not accept her, but Hong Kong, which is part of China, lets Zambians in straight off the plane. She wants to see as many countries as she can, and she didn’t want to revisit our prior destinations without including something new, so we threw Hong Kong into the mix.

Before the trip, people gave me a lot of bad information. Somehow, the Internet has made it harder to learn the truth about other countries. It should have made it easier. Because there is so much money to be made from cheap Internet exposure, people who have a lot of eyeballs on them are able to charge a lot for lying about hotels, restaurants, and attractions, and they are making the most of it. Also, forums are full of people who give bad advice for no clear reason.

Regarding Hong Kong, I was told I should get a hepatitis shot or immunoglobulin because something like 6% of the population has the disease. I was told I could get typhoid from eating raw food. People said I should avoid the tap water. I also read that I might be arrested and imprisoned for no reason.

Regarding hepatitis, it’s not easy to get without close contact, so that’s not a real problem. Typhoid affects people who eat dubious things like raw oysters, and I won’t even eat cooked ones. The tap water comes from a completely modern purification system, and it contains chlorine, just like the tap water you probably drink.

I think the people who get arrested are generally Americans with Chinese backgrounds, or Chinese people with American green cards. If you go to Hong Kong to protest the CCP, you may have a problem, but I went to eat restaurant meals and be with my wife.

I was also told people in Hong Kong would be rude, but they seemed fine to me. Of course, I spent most of my childhood in Miami, so I barely notice rudeness that would put most people in therapy.

I guess I can tell you some useful things about Hong Kong.

First, the food is generally very good. It’s not always fantastic, but you will find very little food that is truly disappointing. We went to a number of places, recommended and unrecommended, and the only truly worthless one was the Peninsula Hotel. Everything else was either good or excellent.

Singapore is different. People claim it’s the food capital of Asia, but that’s completely baseless. There is good food there, and there is also a lot of really bad food. You have to talk to locals in order to find out where you should eat.

The Peninsula has a famous high tea service. This is a British thing. “Tea” is a beverage, but the British think it’s lunch. They have a pretentious custom of sitting down in the afternoon and eating really awful girl food with hot tea. Scones and cucumber sandwiches figure heavily.

The Peninsula’s high tea is a tourist thing. It has no redeeming features whatsoever apart from the nice atmosphere. It has no inherent value. They charge you around $250 for tea and a weird three-tier tray of worthless food. You take selfies and enjoy feeling important, and then you leave.

The lowest tier on the tray holds cranberry scones which are overworked. A scone is a sweet biscuit, and when you work biscuit dough too much, it gets gummy, sort of like Pillsbury canned biscuits. The Peninsula’s scones were okay, but not like the real thing. The second tray held cucumber sandwiches with the crusts removed. If you have to remove the crust from your bread, you made bad bread. The crust is supposed to be the best part. The cucumber stuff is just cucumber mashed up with something resembling mayonnaise mixed with low-fat sour cream. Pointless. You also get weird little pastries full of a similar condiment mixed with lumps of bad smoked salmon. It’s hard to make me dislike smoked salmon, but the Peninsula Hotel pulled it off.

The top tier contains about three pastries per person. They are small and not very good. All you need to know. They had something on there that was sort of like a tiny raspberry shortcake, and it was acceptable, but the other items were gross.

We took a food tour in Hong Kong the day after we arrived, and it was really helpful. We had beef brisket and noodles in a soup pretty much like pho. Very, very good. The name of the restaurant is Sister Wah. We also had dim sum at the Imperial. Excellent. We finished up with roasted goose at Ki’s Roasted Goose, which is a chain. We met Mr. Ki himself. He happened to be at the location we visited that day. Very friendly guy. Funny.

Ki’s taught me that America’s rejection of goose is a huge mistake. It’s far better than our standard poultry, including duck. It’s sort of like fatty, juicy, delicious pork. Chinese people gut and clean their geese, and then they slow-roast them. They apply stuff to the skin. I would guess it’s mainly MSG and some kind of sugar solution. In the end, you get a very, very juicy goose with a crisp skin that will make your eyes roll back in your head. Sort of like Peking duck, but much better.

We had roasted goose twice, and it was fantastic both times. The vegetables were also very, very good. If you go to Hong Kong and eat every meal at Ki’s, no one will be able to criticize your judgment.

They give pork belly the same treatment. It’s nothing short of amazing.

The meat is served with plum sauce and beautifully prepared rice. It doesn’t need anything else. Adding too much stuff to it is like pouring sauce on a good steak.

We assumed roasted goose would be all over Singapore, but it isn’t. They use duck because of bird flu issues. It’s good, but you can’t compare it to goose, and Singapore cooks just aren’t as good as Hong Kong cooks.

The dim sum was wonderful, but I would recommend staying away from the steamed barbecue pork buns Youtubers brag about. They’re not great. The pork is very sweet, and there is no acidity or heat to balance the sweetness. Steamed pork buns are popular for breakfast. I would sooner hit the nearest McDonald’s.

Hong Kong is also known for egg tarts. An egg tart is a tiny pie crust filled with egg custard. Maybe it’s exciting to Asians, but I’m used to flan and creme brulee, so I found it lacking. I would not order one again.

We didn’t eat any expensive food in Hong Kong, and by “expensive food,” I mean legitimate expensive food, not garbage like the Peninsula Hotel’s farcical tea. I don’t think there is any point in looking for high-end restaurants in Hong Kong, because the food is so good everywhere else.

Hong Kong is hot, and the wind never blows. Well, it blows, but you feel it mostly when you’re up on a hill or a building, because Hong Kong buildings are tall and close together. The humidity is amazing, and I am saying this as a person who lives in Florida. Laundry takes forever to dry. There is mildew everywhere. When you walk down the streets, water from air conditioners drips on you no matter where you are.

Hong Kong is built below some steep hills, and the buildings pretty much stop at their bases, so the hills are not very developed. We took a tram up the side of Victoria Peak and shot some video. We were around 1800 feet above the narrow streets, and the difference was amazing. The air was cooler, and it actually moved. And we were in the clouds part of the time. Worth the money and time. Victoria Peak is not an alp, but it punches above its weight.

I picked up some camera stuff in an area known for electronics stores. The selection was fantastic, as was the help. Much better than the US. Prices were about the same, though.

The subway and buses were wonderful. When you get to Hong Kong, you buy something called an Octopus Card, and you load it with money. After that, you use it to take you everywhere. We only took two cabs the whole time we were there.

The subway I know best is the one in New York. It stinks of urine, it’s a great place to get beaten or killed, and passengers are constantly harassed by young fatherless morons. It’s really dirty. You can’t use the restrooms because they never work, they are never cleaned, and they belong to violent drug dealers who don’t like visitors. Hong Kong and Singapore have clean, efficient, safe subways. Very different. Best way to get around.

The harbor is nice. You can take a ferry for almost nothing, and it gives you good views of the impressive skyscrapers and peaks. When tiny waves rock the boat, the Chinese people go, “WOOOOOOOO!” Makes a big impression on them.

We stayed in Sheung Wan, a real Hong Kong neighborhood a short distance from the busier areas. We used an apartment-hotel, so we had the luxury of access to washers and dryers. Unfortunately, the staff and other guests were always using them. In the future, I would choose a place with laundry machines in the suite itself.

The neighborhood was full of conveniences such as 7-Eleven, McDonald’s, and bakeries. Very livable.

American cities are full of grandmother-raised, fatherless minority kids who are constantly looking for victims. It was strange to be in busy cities where you don’t even think about things like that. It was very strange not to see ghettos. A typical big American city is MOSTLY ghetto.

Singapore was great, as always. They have cards similar to Octopus Cards, and we used ours to go all over. Our experience with the food was not all that great, though. Liars like Anthony Bourdain have polluted the world with corrupt reviews pushing bad restaurants, and we got burned again.

Bourdain and a popular food vlogger with a channel called Marion’s Kitchen have promoted Keng Eng Kee for seafood. We tried it. Disgusting.

They sold us a $95 chili crab. They said it was a whole kilogram. It looked like a crab, but it was really a collection of shell parts from unrelated crabs, piled up to look like one creature. It appeared they had boiled a lot of crabs in a sauce much like the glop in a can of Spaghetti-O’s. If you took that stuff and added a small amount of Texas Pete and a ton of sugar, you would have nearly the same thing.

There was no meat inside the crab body. The sauce was full of tiny slivers of overcooked meat, however. I believe over 3/4 of the kilogram was sauce and shell.

Our “crab” had three claws. They were poorly cracked, and the meat wasn’t worth the effort of extraction.

We also had deep-fried prawn rolls. Imagine balls of almost-decayed shrimp and vegetables, battered by a machine in a factory and fried in old oil. That’s what we got, as far as I can tell. No salt or seasoning. Worthless.

My wife ordered chicken wings seasoned with shrimp paste. Take several old chicken wings, salt them very lightly, and fry them in old oil. You will get pretty much what she got. The shrimp flavor was barely detectable. A total waste of money.

We also had pork ribs in coffee sauce. They fry boneless pork in breading. It’s almost certainly cheap pork shoulder. There are no bones. Then they soak it in a sweet coffee-based sauce. It’s okay, but the sauce takes all the crunch out of the breading. I think they let the ribs soak in it en masse instead of applying it right before serving.

Anthony Bourdain and the other people who recommended Keng Eng Kee knew they were lying, but I guess they got some cash. Locals recommend a chain called Jumbo. We didn’t try it.

Would I go to Hong Kong again? I guess so, if it were convenient. I would go for the food. My wife would go for the shopping. Hong Kong has huge Western-style malls. I don’t think Hong Kong can sustain a tourist’s interest for more than 5 days, but it’s pleasant.

Having visited Hong Kong, I now realize Singapore’s reputation as a food city is undeserved.

On our last visit to Singapore, we found some good places to eat, but we also found bad ones. Just like this time, Anthony Bourdain’s lack of integrity figured in our misfortune.

Singapore has facilities known as food centers or hawker centers. They are similar to American parking garages. They have no outer walls. They contain rows of food preparation stalls made of stainless steel, and every stall is a separate business. You can get many types of food in a food center. Chinese is most common, but you can also get Indonesian, Indian, Thai, and Malay food. Food centers are very cheap. You can get a good meal for about $7.50 US.

Before his ignominious demise, Bourdain the pretend regular guy hyped a food center stall known as Tian Tian Chicken. It sells Hainanese chicken, which is a bizarre dish consisting of limp, lukewarm steamed chicken draped over rice. For some reason, Chinese people love Hainan-style chicken. I don’t think anyone else does.

We went to Tian Tian, and we had to wait in line for about 10 minutes. It’s always busy. They sold us a plate of food, and we tried it. The chicken looked almost as though it had been boiled. It had almost no flavor. The rice was anointed with a sauce pretty much like the liquid from Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, only not as good. We threw out most of the dish and found a local guy who showed us better places. He said only tourists ate at Tian Tian.

I’m not sure Anthony Bourdain even knew what good food was. He raved about Waffle House. I’m not from Mars; I’ve been to Waffle House. They give you 20% of the pleasure you get from Cracker Barrel, for 80% of the money. Waffle House is where you go when Cracker Barrel and McDonald’s are closed. It’s kind of astonishing that a renowned food authority would be willing to endorse a place everyone knows is a dump, but somehow Bourdain did it and got away with it.

On this latest trip, we hit the food centers again. Some food was very nice. Some was pretty bad. Just like last time. You really need local guidance or the willingness to buy several plates of food and throw out the ones you don’t like.

We only saw one food center in Hong Kong, and we didn’t get around to trying it. Based on our other experiences in Hong Kong, I’ll bet the food is good.

We found a good Chinese chain in Singapore: Din Tai Fung. It’s based in Taiwan, where leftism has not yet succeeded in destroying the character of the people. Din Tai Fung is basically a dim sum joint. A huge variety of dumplings and similar items, served by hustling waiters who never stand still.

The big problem with the Din Tai Fung we tried is that it’s too busy. It’s in the basement of the Raffles City hotel, which sits on a mall, and there is a ton of foot traffic. You have to wait up to half an hour to get into Din Tai Fung there, and dishes you want disappear from the annoying electronic menu while you’re trying to order them. Nearby, in the Suntec City mall, there is another Din Tai Fung, and you can walk right in.

Unfortunately, Rhodah discovered Shake Shack during our trip. We ended up visiting twice. I don’t like Shake Shack. It’s a costlier version of Five Guys, which is a costlier version of Wendy’s. It sells pretty good burgers and fries, along with mediocre shakes and very bad ice cream. Unlike Five Guys, it doesn’t offset the enormous cost of the burgers by giving you three times as much fries as you actually want.

Rhodah thinks Shake Shack is wonderful, so I guess we’ll be buying more $25 fast food meals in the future.

We also visited Five Guys twice. I can take it or leave it, but Rhodah loves it. We paid about 45 US dollars for two burgers, a soda, a shake, and one order of fries. That’s even worse than the price here.

One of my big gripes with Shake Shack and Five Guys is that they serve big balls of grease that harden in your intestines and resist expulsion. I love fattening food as much as anyone, but there is a point where it becomes overkill. When you do something to a dish to make it fatty, there should be some purpose other than one-upping the restaurant next store.

We hit Ruth’s Chris again, but this is our last time, because it costs twice what it costs in America, and the food isn’t that great. Her steak was undercooked, which is inexcusable. What is Ruth’s? A steakhouse. How do you cook steak to medium doneness? Well, figure it out after 96 years of serving steak. I can teach a person how to do it in 30 seconds, so Ruth’s should be able to get it done in 96 years.

Ruth’s also served me crab cakes that didn’t taste great. Making a good crab cake is extremely simple. The final insult was banana cream pie made with green bananas. Singapore may well be the banana connoisseur’s Mecca. You can go into a market there and see numerous varieties of bananas. Ruth’s ought to be able to find decent ones for pie, and a competent chef will not put green bananas in anything.

If we ever go to Ruth’s Chris again, it will be in the US, and we will stick to steak and potatoes.

We ended up taking a food tour, even though we were familiar with Singapore. I arranged it because the Hong Kong tour was so helpful. We tried Malay, Indian, and Chinese food.

Malay food looks great but doesn’t have much zing to it. It’s on the bland side. They sometimes supply pepper sauce, and my advice is to ladle it on. When a plate of colorful Malay food arrives at your table, you may expect all sorts of powerful flavors, but it’s an illusion.

I can’t say enough about Indian food in Singapore. We tried it in a number of places, and apart from one food center stall, every place did a fantastic job. Whether the bill was $135 or $58 (Singapore dollars), the food was about the same.

On our first trip, we blundered into a place called HeritageOne, in Little India. The food was top notch. Better than the expensive places we visited. I recommend it highly, even though they don’t serve samosas. It was so good, we made a second visit when we returned to Singapore.

On our tour, we were given Indian pancakes and puri with various sauces. Wonderful. The food was so good, I was able to forgive the name of the restaurant: Kamala.

Having spent a total of around 24 days in Singapore, I feel like I know a little about it now. My conclusion is that you can get good food, and you don’t have to pay a lot for it, but there is also a lot of expensive food that isn’t great. It’s best to avoid tourist-heavy areas. The food will cost you twice as much as food elsewhere, or more, and it won’t be any better.

We did some things we didn’t do on our first trip. We rode the big Ferris wheel in Singapore, and we visited Gardens by the Bay.

I guess soon every big city will have a Ferris wheel. London has one, and so does Hong Kong. Singapore’s wheel is named the Singapore Flyer, and it has big air-conditioned cars. Not much to say about it except that I guess it’s worth the money.

Gardens by the Bay is a big landscaped area featuring a couple of indoor gardens and several big steel towers shaped sort of like trees. They’re actually shaped more like funnels. Little steel tornadoes.

The main indoor garden is not great. Just a bunch of well-tended plants with little signs on them. We didn’t see the second indoor garden. It’s based on the movie Avatar, and we both hate Disney. James Cameron makes fairly good movies, but as a human being, he’s kind of irksome. A billionaire whose moneymaking enterprises burn enough oil to run a major city, yet who preaches environmental asceticism to the peasants who pay his bills. He also claimed he found the tomb of Jesus Christ, which is pretty funny. I mean the tomb where his dead body was buried and rotted. Cameron apparently thinks any ossuary in Jerusalem with the name “Yehoshuah” on it must belong to Jesus. “Yehoshuah” was a common name in Israel during the life of Jesus. Like “Bob” in the US today.

The funnel towers look great in photos of Singapore, but in reality, they’re a lot like carnival construction in ordinary attractions like Six Flags. They’re also much smaller than the photos lead you to believe. You can go up to the top of the main funnel and take photos of Singapore. That’s fun.

We were suckered into riding on Singapore’s only cable car development. It takes you to a tourist island known as Sentosa. The cars are not cooled, so you get hauled up near the sun, right by the equator, in a little glass box.

The ride was okay, but Sentosa itself is run-down and boring. Not much to see. We paid for two cable car trips, but we only used one. We used it to get to Sentosa, and then we used it to leave.

Singapore is great, and I enjoyed both of my trips a great deal. If I sound negative, it’s because I’m mentioning the lows as well as the highs.

I feel like I was blessed this time when I found my flights. Nothing over 24 hours long. I still suffered quite a bit. My first flight went over the North Pole, and it lasted about 18 hours. That’s 18 coach hours. With no empty seats to speak of. On Cathay Pacific, which has tiny seats apparently designed for Asians. On the way home, I had to take a 15-hour flight from Dubai at 2:30 a.m., and it was jam-packed. If a flight leaving at 2:30 a.m. on a Sunday is popular, when are the slow times?

On the flight, I learned something interesting. Indians have body odor problems. That’s not me being racist. It’s a fact. For some reason, Indians have resisted taking anti-B.O. steps Westerners have come to consider normal. You can read about it on the web. The flight I took from Dubai was very popular with Indians, so there were some pretty fragrant people on board, including the guy sharing my row with me, who also appeared to be mentally ill. They always find me.

Will we return to Singapore? Not soon, I hope. In fact, I have reason to hope we won’t be traveling much in the future. Rhodah finally has her embassy interview appointment, so if things go as they usually do, she will be here before the end of October.

Our immigration saga has taught us to feel like making overseas trips twice a year is normal, and of course, it isn’t. We want to see Israel together, and I would like to take her to Europe, but this business of constant foreign travel will presumably have to stop. We have to have money to live on when we get old, and neither of us wants to work.

We both wonder if God has a reason for sending us to Singapore and making us like it so much. Sometimes I think he’s showing us a place we can escape to when perverted America becomes too dangerous for us.

It was very strange, being in a country where no one is afraid of sodomites or rioting punks.

While we were there, the city was having some kind of night festival, and there were activities and displays all over the place. One night while we were walking home, we went through Fort Canning Park, which is a big green space in the middle of town. We saw many people walking with their children, enjoying the festival. We never thought about street crime, except to notice that it wasn’t an issue. We didn’t have to worry about riots or fights. None of the parked cars we saw that night had broken windows. No one tried to sell us drugs. No whores accosted me. We didn’t smell weed. It was completely different from the filthy international disgrace which is urban America.

It occurred to me that life there was normal. It was the way it was supposed to be, and it was something I could not have in my own country, the world’s biggest Christian nation.

I don’t want to take Rhodah to New York. How would I keep her safe? I would be surrounded by armed punks, and I would not be allowed to have a pistol. We would have to play roulette with our lives and property. I can’t even take her to Paris or London without careful research about the safe areas.

We will never have safe cities again in America. That’s amazing. We just have to support the police, punish and restrain criminals, and allow people to carry guns. It’s that simple. But it will never happen. As long as this age lasts, our cities will be disgusting cesspools of cruelty.

I’ll probably write more about the trip when my brain gets over 12 hours of jet lag.

The Importance of Being Frank

Sunday, July 2nd, 2023

Clarence Thomas has an Heir

One of the things I hated about practicing law was watching lawyers rationalize.

People say lawyers lie all the time, and it’s not true in the way they mean it. They think lawyers lie to judges, juries, other lawyers, and opposing parties all day, as a matter of routine. This is untrue. Lying to a judge is a serious offense. Where I live, it can get you disbarred. Lying to opposing counsel will also get you in trouble with your bar association. If you lie to a jury, you can pretty well expect your opponent to have something to say about it, right then and there.

When lawyers deceive, they generally deceive themselves, their co-counsel, and their clients, about the facts and law surrounding their cases. Their untruths usually aren’t plain old lies. They are rationalizations. Things they can’t be punished for saying.

Example:

Lawyer Bill: So Tom, when you were driving home from the bar and plowed through the rec room of an old folks’ home, would you say your head hit the steering wheel?

Drunk Bob: Well, I think it may have brushed against…

Lawyer Bill: I’m sorry, did you say it DEFINITELY SLAMMED FORCEFULLY?

Drunk Bob: Well…

Lawyer Bill: Because if it did, then when you were found staggering around by the police, it may be that you were ADDLED by the blow and not stinking drunk on two-for-one margaritas.

Drunk Bob: Oh, it was forceful, all right. It’s amazing I didn’t get a concussion!

Lawyer Bill: Where did you go to medical school?

Drunk Bob: You mean before beginning my career hauling manure?

Lawyer Bill: Because if you’re not a doctor, you can’t possibly know if you had a concussion. So shut up about that. We will let my friend Prescription Factory Ben decide if you have a concussion. Let me get him on the phone. Ben, you’re on speaker. We need you to look at my client Drunk Bob and see if the steering wheel…

Prescription Factory Ben: Way ahead of you. Concussion for sure. Of course, I’ll have to examine him for the bargain price of $5000.

The unfortunate thing is that many lawyers actually buy into their rationalizations, so when they present them to finders of fact, they can’t really be accused of lying. And when rationalizations are being crafted, you don’t want to be the only one in the room who raises his hand and ruins everything.

I think about these things when I watch the nuts on the left, spewing their insane theories about victimhood and so on.

Today I saw a white girl say all white people are racist, without exception. When I say “white,” I don’t mean she was 100% white. She had olive skin, and she clearly had a few drops of black blood. But she was not nearly dark enough to be half black. She was white. Call it what you want, but if she has kids with a white man, it will probably be impossible to see any African influence in them.

She started talking about racism, which means animosity based purely on race. The definition of racism is old and correct, and I just gave you the whole thing. There are no asterisks. “It’s not racism if this.” “It’s not racism if that.” No. Doesn’t matter what the other facts are. Doesn’t matter whether the person with the animosity is white. Doesn’t even have to be a person. A dog can be racist.

She had a look on her face like she just figured out the cure for AIDS, and she started saying racism was about power. She said white people’s existence is racist because it supports a system that supports white supremacy.

She had convinced herself this was a brilliant revelation, but it was neither brilliant nor original. You can find all kinds of idiots on the web saying the same thing.

Today I feel very discouraged about humanity, because I am being reminded that there are billions of people out there who, when it comes to the capacity to admit error and improve, might as well be tree stumps. There is literally nothing you can say to these people, no matter how obviously true, that will change their corrupted, dishonest, arrogant, hateful minds. They start from anger and a desire to control and murder the rest of us, and that, not reason, drives their rationalizations. You can’t get rid of the lies because the hate which is their root can’t be pulled up.

The tribulation will be God’s last effort at evangelism prior to the millennium. He will not use gentle words or miracles. He will burn people with fire. He will starve them. He will let them torture and murder each other. He will give them agonizing diseases they can’t contain, mitigate, or cure. He will destroy their environment. He will even send animals to tear them up. The tribulation will be characterized by the harshest type of evangelism there is.

The Bible says stripes, meaning wounds from flogging, are for a fool’s back. It says, “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.” If you listen to counsel, you don’t need to be flogged, so you are spared. If you think you’re always right, get ready for the lash, because it will come, and if you’re lucky, it will only come in this life.

Satan is gaslighting leftists, and they are gaslighting everyone who doesn’t hear from the Holy Spirit and pray in tongues. Many people think Christians are protected from deceit, but that’s not true. If it were, Christianity would not be disappearing, and it is.

Only Christians who are guided by the Holy Spirit every day will avoid being persuaded to join the body of the antichrist. Christians who are complaining about perversion today will be waving rainbow flags next year.

I come here and write this stuff, and maybe 5 people believe it. I feel like holing up here with my wife and baking cookies until Yeshua comes to extract us, because trying to help people is like trying to befriend rabid dogs. Yeshua said such people were swine, and they would turn and tear us up. It’s happening every day, so when do you know it’s time to throw in the towel and avoid them?

I feel like every Christian who knows the Spirit will eventually have a Scott Adams moment, but unlike Scott Adams, they will identify the hate group correctly. It’s not black people. It’s people who aren’t Spirit-led. It’s a big group.

If you’re tired of secular gaslighting, I have a resource you might enjoy. The other day, my wife and I discovered him independently. I saw him on Youtube, and she saw him on TikTok. He’s a Nigerian named Frank Stephen. He puts up brilliant videos debunking leftist gaslighting. It’s hard to stop watching him, because it’s so weird to have someone tell sane people they’re right.

Example: a morbidly obese singer named Lizzo is whining because people pick on her for being enormous. In her act, she wears things like thongs. It is almost horrifying. She is physically grotesque, she insists on displaying as much flab as she can, and leftists keep telling her she’s gorgeous.

Frank Stephen points out that there are a whole lot of really fat celebrities out there, and they are not crying about being persecuted. Maybe the difference is their choice not to put naked blubber in front of the camera and tell people they’re beautiful.

In case you want to check him out, I’ll try to embed a video, but Youtube is persecuting him dishonestly by age-restricting his material, so you may have to click a link instead.

I’ll embed it anyway, since it is just barely conceivable Youtube’s propaganda/censorship squad might make a mistake and remove the restriction some day.

My wife says she has been binge-watching him. He reminds me of Trump’s Twitter glory days. No one tweeted like Trump. Set up, debunk, accuse, withdraw.

Secular material isn’t always helpful, but God is being attacked via secular arguments, so I believe Frank Stephen is a healer. The left throws sand in our eyes, and he washes it out.

Aroma Coma

Saturday, February 4th, 2023

Nose Caught in Kung Flu Grippe

I have fantastic news to report! This morning, I smelled coffee! And that’s no metaphor.

Earlier this week, I came down with what I thought was covid. It wasn’t severe. Mild aches. A mild headache. A mild fever. A very runny, stuffy nose. Fatigue in the afternoon. Not that bad.

A couple of days ago, I noticed that things didn’t taste normal. A sandwich tasted funny. The beer I had made was kind of gross.

As of yesterday, I couldn’t smell much of anything. I put Vaporub right up against my nose, and while I wasn’t sure, I thought I could smell a very faint menthol aroma.

Sure looks like covid. Other things can mess with your sense of smell and taste, but covid is the worst offender among common diseases, and my symptoms don’t match other illnesses well.

The web says I could have sinusitis, but I don’t think that’s true. We’re in a pandemic, for one thing, and it’s not a sinusitis pandemic. Also, I’ve had all sorts of upper respiratory bugs during my life, including bugs that affected my sinuses, and I have never lost my sense of smell to the degree I lost it this week. Not even close.

The weird thing is that some things taste almost normal. People like to tell us most of taste is really smell, but that appears to be an exaggeration. Out of self-pity, I’ve been eating breakfast cereal instead of healthy food when I get up, and Grape Nuts taste completely normal. I made beer cheese spread which I eat with Ritz crackers, and those things taste fine.

I always lose weight when I have a cold or anything like a cold, and it doesn’t matter what I eat, so I am indulging myself. I got an Entenmann’s raspberry coffee cake. It tastes just fine. Today I decided to have some coffee with it.

For some reason, I really like instant decaf. I made myself a big mug a short time ago, with sugar and real cream. When I opened the coffee jar, I decided to see if I could smell it. I inhaled deeply, and I was shocked by a strong wave of coffee aroma.

It was exciting. I inhaled more than once, just for the joy of smelling anything.

The sad thing is that I have two homebrews on tap, a third about to go into the keg, and three more waiting to be made, not to mention three factory beers I bought because I thought I was going to have a homebrew shortage. Drinking this stuff is like drinking thickened club soda with an extremely high level of hop bitterness. A waste.

I bought Boddington’s Pub Ale, Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, and Old Rasputin Imperial Stout. Boddington’s is a beer made with profit, not quality, in mind, but I still like it. Old Rasputin is extremely heavy and dark. It’s full of crazy smells and flavors. When you lower your nose into the glass, the aromas surround you and pummel you like an evangelist at an Antifa riot. Boddington’s is very mild.

Last night, Boddies and Old Rasputin didn’t taste much different at all.

The coffee I’m drinking tastes a lot like coffee, so at least I have that.

I ordered myself two new fermenters, which means I bought buckets. They’re a like Home Depot buckets, but they hold almost 7 gallons. I make 5-gallon batches, and beer makes foam when it ferments, so it’s not wise to use 5-gallon buckets. You need extra space.

I can’t find bigger buckets locally, so I gladly paid about $20 each for buckets with lids, spigots, and airlocks. With tax and shipping, I was up around $55. Insane, I know, but there was no cheaper way to do it. Ebay had nothing. I could drive to Orlando, but then I would only save the shipping fee, and the tolls and gas would cost more.

I discovered Hearts Home Brew in Orlando, and it’s now my go-to supply store. For big orders, it’s worth driving or paying for shipping. Their prices are low, and they’re fast. I ordered buckets yesterday, and they will be here today.

This week will be Brewapalooza, AKA Brewing Man. Today I’ll make an ale that ferments at room temperature. Tomorrow, I’ll make a lager. At some point during this time, I’ll put a stout in the keezer. Before the week is out, the ale should ferment fast enough to let me make another ale; something wheaty but based on a tripel.

I think I need to face reality and get one more freezer so I can do lagers properly.

The word “lager” means “to store.” I guess this is why prison camps were called stalags. I don’t know. When you make a lager, you ferment it, and then you let it sit for a long time at a low temperature. This is the lagering process. It supposedly kills off-flavors.

These days, there are new ways of doing things. By fermenting under pressure, many people are making lagers at higher temperatures and in shorter times. They say it works. There are also new yeasts that work better at high temperatures. I’m not sure what to do. I would like to get a lager in the box, so maybe I should take a chance. I have a pressure fermenter. On the other hand, because I’m still working out the kinks in my techniques, it would be safer to use the old methods for my first post-comeback lager.

I can’t lager anything in my keezer because the temperature is wrong. If I use my fermenting fridge, I won’t have any place to ferment things while the lagering is going on.

It looks like a lot of the changes in brewing have been driven by Australians. They started Kegland, a leading manufacturer of brewing gadgets. They made my pressure fermenter.

Australians drink way too much. Many have a bad attitude toward drunkenness, like high school boys who never grow up, and their alcoholism rate is very high. It is claimed they drink more, and get drunk more, than all the other nationalities in the world. Think about that. The world includes places like England, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium, Germany, Russia, Finland, and the Czech Republic. When you’re drunker than the British, you need an intervention.

I guess it’s not good that homebrewing has taken off in Australia. It should be about making quality beer, not getting ripped with your pals and passing out face-down while singing “Waltzing Matilda.”

Homebrewing should never be about drunkenness, any more than French cooking should be about eating contests.

If you’re determined to be a drunk, you should probably drink wine or screwdrivers all day. Cheap alcohol buffered with a lot of liquid and maybe some nutrients. Pretending you’re a brewer just adds expense and effort, and beer makes you fat.

When my senses come back, I may make a Boddies clone with Amarillo hops and a little bit nicer grain bill. Amarillo hops have a strong lemon flavor, and that’s just what Boddies needs. The problem, though, is that Boddies goes well with beer gas.

I have a 4-body secondary regulator so I can dispense beer with CO2 at 4 different temperatures. I also have a beer gas tank with one disconnect, so it will only serve one keg. I plan to have stout in the keezer, on beer gas, all the time. If I start fooling with an ale that needs beer gas, I’ll have to fix things up so I can run another keg off the same bottle.

That would mean getting another secondary regulator. I think it’s fair to assume I’ll never have more than two beer gas beers in my keezer at once, so two bodies ought to get it done.

If trying to keep 5 kegs going sounds extreme, think about the guy I talked to the other day. He has 27 active.

Whatever this illness is, it’s progressing fast. Every day I feel much better than the previous day. My nose doesn’t run now, the stuffiness is nearly gone, and I rarely cough. I didn’t hit the energy wall until around 8 p.m. yesterday, so I’m getting two more hours than I did earlier in the week. No fever, either.

Wilson Mizner Said it Best

Thursday, December 15th, 2022

“A Trip Through a Sewer in a Glass-Bottomed Boat”

Ordinarily, I don’t watch secular entertainment, but the other day, I felt an urge to watch the movie Le Mans. This is a 1971 film starring Steve McQueen. He plays a race driver participating in the yearly 24-hour race. I could not rent this movie on Youtube, so first, I rented Grand Prix, a 1966 movie featuring James Garner. It’s about drivers going through a series on the famous Formula One circuit. The next day, I found Le Mans on Amazon Prime, so I watched it, too.

Last night, I started to watch The Front Page. This is a movie based on a play written by a couple of leftists. One, Ben Hecht, was a newspaperman before he wrote the play. The movie has been remade several times. I watched the 1931 version which is now in the public domain.

I felt it was okay with God for me to watch this stuff. I removed Amazon Prime from my TV afterward.

James Garner was a folksy, self-deprecating, appealing actor. On the other hand, he was also a fierce leftist who smoked dope all the time. He was also very litigious, and he got into a road rage fight in which a former Army Captain and Green Beret named Aubrey Williams put him in the hospital. Steve McQueen seems to have been less politically involved, but he smoked dope a lot, too, and he treated women very, very badly.

Garner’s fight may not have been his fault, but the stories don’t smell good, and his own accounts vary. The man who beat him up was a veteran with no criminal record, and he provided a pretty credible story. He said he walked up to Garner’s car after they got into a dispute while driving, and Garner grabbed his necklace and jerked it down, banging his head against the roof of Garner’s trademark Firebird and putting him in a bad position.

This is exactly the kind of dirty trick a smart aggressor might pull, and it’s not one I have heard of elsewhere, so I am skeptical of claims Williams made it up. If it were me, and I were inclined to lie, I would just say he opened his door into me, jumped out, and started swinging.

In one of his varying accounts, Garner admitted he pulled the necklace trick, so you have to wonder what to believe. He claimed he did it in self-defense.

Williams had his sister with him, she jumped in, and they put Garner on the ground and broke his tailbone. Later, Williams was convicted of a crime. Of course, juries are known to be gullible, and who would convict Jim Rockford in California?

Maybe Garner told the truth, but it sounds fishy. Williams was also accused of stealing gold chains from Garner, so that diminishes his own credibility.

Williams is black, so that may have factored into his conviction and the acceptance of Garner’s dubious account. Afterward, he kept it classy, believe it or not. He said, “I used to really like him. I didn’t even recognize him during this encounter. I didn’t realize he was involved until I read about it the next day.”

In 1964, Garner, an ardent environmentalist, approached and threatened a 65-year-old politician who was three inches shorter than he was. The disagreement was about a property that was going to be developed. Garner was about 44, and he was 6’3″ tall. The police had to step in and prevent a fight, or more likely, a one-sided beating. Nice people don’t beat up old men.

Today, at least in Florida, doing what Garner did is a felony.

There is something about Garner I just don’t like. I feel like something is not right. I don’t trust his reputation.

McQueen would probably win a poll for coolest actor of all time. He was the highest-paid actor of his day. Female co-stars practically begged him to have sex with them, and he often agreed. He had the ability to do some of the impressive things his characters did on screen. He was so good with a motorcycle, he did stunts for The Great Escape. They could have used stuntmen, but it was too hard to find people as skilled as he was. He actually had to be filmed on two motorcycles, as Army Air Forces pilot Hilts and as a Nazi, chasing himself. He was also a skilled car racer. He was a fairly serious martial artist. When he wore things, other men bought them. Men are still paying huge sums to have old Ford Mustangs fixed up to look like the one he drove in Bullitt. He wore a big ugly Tag Heuer Monaco watch in Grand Prix, and they were still using him in ads long after he died.

McQueen and his teammate came in second at Sebring in 1970, so he was a legitimate pro racer, like Paul Newman. He’s not a duffer like Tom Cruise, who has raced without much success.

McQueen was a heavy smoker and drug user. He killed Ali McGraw’s career by forcing her to quit working at her peak so she could be a housewife. He beat his first wife and also put a gun to her head to make her confess an affair.

Garner was similar in some ways, but he had a real marriage and didn’t achieve the heights McQueen did. He had a brown belt in karate. He could have been a pro golfer had he chosen. When he trained for Grand Prix, his teacher discovered he had extraordinary talent, and he claimed he could have been better than most of the top F1 drivers. Garner went on to race cars in his spare time.

Grand Prix was not a great movie. Pete Aron, Garner’s character, was involved in an incident involving a teammate. The teammate wanted to pass Aron in Monaco, and Aron resisted, which was a faux pas. Eventually, Aron let him pass, but the teammate’s car hit his rear wheel, and both cars were wrecked. The teammate ended up with serious injuries, and he struggled to get back to work before the end of the season. He blamed Aron for his injuries.

The teammate’s wife hated racing because she feared her husband would die. She left him after the accident, and she then began having sex with Aron, making things much worse.

That about sums it up. Various racers had sex with various women. The teammate came back to work. An older racer died in a wreck.

The teammate’s wife asked a great question. She asked Aron why men risked their lives for something unimportant. Aron told her it was very important to them. His explanation was that he was only alive when he was racing. The rest of the time, he was just waiting.

Le Mans had even less depth. Steve McQueen played Michael Delaney, a Porsche driver. He had a rivalry with a Ferrari driver named Stahler. The previous year, Delaney had been involved in an accident in which a woman’s husband died. The woman returned the next year to see Delaney and the others drive.

Delaney wrecked again, ruining his car. He and the widow had some boring conversations and ended up in his trailer. His team’s manager came in and told Delaney he had to drive another team member’s car because he was the only hope of a Porsche victory. Delaney left the trailer, drove hard, and came in second. He and the widow never made it into bed.

So why write about two bad movies?

I got a message: people do stupid things with their lives. We strive for earthly glory. We sacrifice important things, including our bodies themselves, for what amounts to garbage in the long view.

Who won the Formula One championship in 2005? No one cares. How much good did it do other people? Was anyone saved from damnation? Did anyone get a miraculous healing? Were any addicts delivered? Were the poor fed? Did unwanted kids get families?

Some guy who drove a car got a little richer. Some endorsements were sold. Some big, fat companies that sold trivial things got more publicity. Then the next season came along, and the champion was not the champion any more. He had to compete again.

People are like monkeys, and Satan is the monkey trainer. He waves shiny prizes that have no lasting value, and we cut each other’s throats to get them. In the process, we give up our relationships with God, along with Spirit-driven accomplishments that would have stayed with us for eternity. We give up the chance to accumulate new brothers and sisters to take with us to heaven. We give up the chance to end suffering and set people free.

These movies reminded me of my dislike of professional sports. Ignorant people do not know that pro sports and God have been at odds since before Jesus. There are actually Christians who think football teaches people to be closer to God, which is the opposite of correct. Football teaches aggression, violence, pride, cheating, greed, lust, and obsession with fleeting things.

The Greeks conquered Israel, and they instituted nude athletic competitions. Social-climbing Jews joined in, defying Yahweh and the priests, and they even tried to undo their circumcisions. Look up “Hellenism” and find out about it. It was a very big problem. Athletes have been distracting people and teaching children destructive values for millennia, not decades.

The characters in these movies treated themselves like garbage. They made themselves disposable. They served a vain purpose for a few years, helping on one except themselves.

As for The Front Page, it disturbed me because it made me realize I did not hate leftism enough. After I watched, I apologized to God for this. God really hates leftism. Satan was the first leftist, and all leftists are his children.

Let me tell you about Sacco and Vanzetti, whose story was one of the motivations behind The Front Page.

Believe it or not, Italian immigrants were a big problem a hundred years ago. I used to think Italians formed social groups to defend the reputation of their ethnicity because of the mob, but there is more to it than that. Italy sent us a large number of terrorists who, instead of kissing the ground of the country that saved them, and instead of working to be good citizens, murdered a lot of American citizens and tried to destroy the government.

For some reason, anarchism developed a following in Italy. Anarchism is the ultimate leftistm. Anarchists believe there is no such thing as a legitimate government.

I’ll be blunt. You have to be an utter imbecile to be an anarchist.

Am I saying you’re an imbecile because you don’t like the government? No. I don’t like the government, either. I’m saying you’re an imbecile because you think it’s possible for human beings to exist without government.

If you put 10 strangers in a locked compound, a month later, they will form a government. We will always form governments. People want to control each other. They want to protect themselves from other people. They naturally form gangs and generate leaders in order to achieve these goals.

A government is just a gang with a flag.

Anarchists believe they can get rid of the government and then live government-free lives. That is beyond asinine. Kill every government employee in the United States today, and new governments will start to spring up in under 24 hours. And they will make you miss the government you eliminated, because they will be incompetent and much more cruel and amoral than an established government that has been honed over centuries.

It’s not just people. Put chickens or dogs together, and they form hierarchies.

The true choice isn’t between government and no government. It’s between different governments.

Only true idiots can be anarchists. It is incomprehensible that anyone can be that stupid.

Sacco and Vanzetti were part of a faction that killed all sorts of people. They set off a lot of bombs.

They were convicted of murder. Sacco shot someone, and Vanzetti was his partner. They were guilty as hell. Ballistics tests and witnesses prove it.

Still, their convictions and executions are controversial. There were supposedly improprieties in their trials. I don’t know the details. I am willing to stipulate that they may have been tried unfairly. The fact remains: they were worthless, despicable, dangerous human beings, and their kind needed to be sent a message. They deserved execution, and their executions probably did America a lot of good.

You can wrong a murderer by trying him unfairly and executing him. Doing such things is wrong, and we have to fight corruption in the justice system, but unfair trials don’t make murderers innocent. Oswald was lynched by Jack Ruby, but he was still guilty.

Leftists have been whining about Sacco and Vanzetti for decades. They have turned them into martyrs and heroes. Michael Dukakis, the inept former governor of Massachusetts went so far as to proclaim a day in their honor without consulting or according any courtesy to the families of the victims.

The Front Page is about Earl Williams, a leftist who is about to be executed for murdering a policeman. Williams is portrayed as a sweet, impressionable little man. A cuddly, vulnerable murderer you naturally want to hug. Most of the action takes place in a room at the penitentiary set aside for journalists.

The journalists are extremely vile. They’re supposed to be funny, but they’re disgusting. As they call their papers to send in stories, they lie without the slightest hesitation. They make sick jokes about the upcoming hanging. A prostitute who tried to help Williams shows up to criticize them for their callousness, and they ridicule her until she jumps out of a window. A paid shrink shows up to analyze Williams, and Williams shoots him. They joke about that while he’s in the operating room.

The interesting thing is that Ben Hecht knew the subject matter. He was writing about journalists as he had known them. I assume he exaggerated their faults to some extent, but he must have based their personalities on his real life experiences. Watching the movie will make you wish they were the ones being hanged.

They remind me of comedians. Comedians tend to be disgusting people.

I quit watching after a while. The characters were off-putting, and the movie was poorly done compared to the Cary Grant version.

Afterward, I read up on Sacco and Vanzetti, and I thought about Ben Hecht and the way he had portrayed his former colleagues.

It made me hate leftism more than ever. I certainly understand why people would be upset over an unfair trial, regardless of who the defendant was. But lionizing a couple of dangerous, vicious criminals who were also ungrateful and toxic immigrants? How can anyone do that?

I didn’t like the idea of writing a movie that made terrorists look good, and I didn’t like the godless, hellbound journalists. I hated their cynicism and the pleasure they took in the suffering, injuries, and deaths of others.

The word “leftism” comes from the French Revolution, but the concept is far older. It’s just rebellion. Any hierarchy that doesn’t have God at the apex is leftist.

When Satan tempted Eve, it was an act of leftism. Adam and Eve were leftists. They rebelled against their only legitimate authority.

The best government is a face-to-face relationship with God. After that comes submission to prophets and priests who obey God. After that comes submission to kings who honor God. After that comes rule by godly assemblies. After that come various forms of democracy, which is a degenerate and evil institution.

Adam was under the best government. Since then, things have gotten worse and worse. The Jews had prophets and priests, and that wasn’t bad, but they stupidly demanded a king. When the time of kings ended on Earth, the world descended into backward systems which put nations at the mercy of every moron who could pull a handle and cast a vote.

Moses was chosen directly by God. David was anointed by a prophet. Hitler was elected. Something to think about.

It’s astounding, where leftism and hatred of God’s authority has taken us. In places of power, we now have spectacular degenerates whose very nature we could not have conceived in the near past.

Have you seen the amazing specimen Biden appointed to be his deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy? You have probably been reading about him. His name is Sam Brinton.

Brinton has disclaimed his proper gender, calling himself nonbinary. It is impossible to figure out what he is trying to be. I will post a photo. It’s fair use.

What exactly is this?

As you may know, he has been fired for stealing luggage repeatedly. Gay men like luxury goods. I don’t know if the bags were Vuitton or what, but it makes sense that a person like this would want luxury bags.

Brinton claims to have “survived” brutal conversion therapy, but a person who interviewed him says his story does not check out.

He’s involved with our children. This freakish person. He helped create official policy enabling schools to hide children’s sexual confusion from their parents. Fox says he:

played a key role in developing a model school policy adopted in multiple states that instructs school districts to keep “unaffirming” parents in the dark about a potentially suicidal child’s gender identity or sexual orientation.

Look at him. And if you live in a place where his recommendations have been adopted, he has power over your relationship with your children. YOUR children. Not the states.

We paid him to do this. We voted for the people who gave him the power.

I live in a country where we paid this creature to give government the power to hide and nurture sexual perversion–abomination–in our children. It is inconceivable to me that anyone could be anything but shocked and distressed to know this happened.

It’s going to get much worse. If Jesus tarries, we will see creatures like this in the Oval Office. There is no limit to the oddities and abominations we can come up with and empower with Satan’s help.

Yesterday and today Rhodah and I were talking about the rapture. I told her I felt bad because I ate a lot of ice cream, but I said part of me doesn’t care, because I feel like the world is ending, so what difference does it make what I eat?

Today we tried to think of the things we would eat if we heard the rapture trumpet blow. I said I would rush to the freezer and open the ice cream. Or I’d be lifted to heaven with a slice of pizza in each hand. Of course, we were kidding, and we had some laughs, but the rapture will come, and most of the things people do in the weeks leading up to it won’t matter. They will be preparing, well or counterproductively, for a future that will not come.

If you quit working out right before the rapture, no big deal. You won’t be here long enough to go flabby and feel bad about it. If you spend your retirement money, no big deal. Stop mowing your yard? No big deal.

Stop touching up your roots. The rapture is coming. Don’t plant your crops. The rapture is coming. Don’t show up for jury duty. Speed. Quit your job. Throw out your contraceptives.

I’m not suggesting these things. Just thinking about actions that will stop mattering at some point.

People will be pulled out of jail cells, defendants’ chairs, operating rooms, and even wombs. More abortions will take place on that day than on any other day in the history of the world. God will have to remove the innocent from the wombs of degenerate women.

We also tried to think of things we would buy if we had all the money in the world. I had a hard time coming up with anything. Finally, I blurted it out. “I’ll start flying business class!” Not even first class. The extra money doesn’t seem to buy you much.

I thought of business class because I take a lot of long flights, and I really hate flying coach, but paying $5000 or more for one seat is more than I am willing to consider at the moment. Put a billion in my account, and I’ll spring for it.

I said I would also get Rhodah more rubies, but not really big ones, because ostentation is wrong.

I would make sure my home was in top shape, and I would probably try to move to Tennessee

That’s about it. No Lamborghinis. No gold Rolexes. No more Zegna suits.

To get back to the rapture, I really do not want to be here when the cabinet consists of a bunch of smirking, effeminate bald men with bro staches and tacky prom dresses.

I care less and less to be involved with this world, and I am having a hard time motivating myself to do anything but pray, eat, and work to bring my wife home. I assume this will pass and the rapture will come much later than I hope, because this is how things have worked so far, but my feelings are real.

I can’t wait for the day when it finally happens.

I Bought 40 Pounds of Junk Food for Nothing

Wednesday, September 28th, 2022

Expected Giant; Received Midget

The hurricane news today is generally good. If you live where I do. In Fort Myers, it’s a colossal disaster. It’s hitting the Fort Myers area right now. It will not be great for Tampa or Orlando, either. Assuming the predictions aren’t hype.

The NHC thought the storm would weaken before hitting the coast and come in at Category 2 or so, but the official measurement looks more like Category 4 or 5, so the pessimists are winning that battle. At least it’s not hitting Tampa, a large city, directly.

For me, the good news is that they are predicting maximum sustained winds of 29 mph where I live, and the winds will be from directions that are not favorable to a lot of property damage. If the predictions pan out, I probably won’t even lose my electricity. That would mean I could continue bathing. With hot water. Not pool water.

The storm is nearly as close to Tampa as it will ever get to me, give or take, and the winds in Tampa are not terrible: 44 mph. When the storm makes its closest approach to me, it will be a lot weaker, so the winds SHOULD be lower. But as the storm’s history shows, hurricanes like to change directions.

One source says 44 mph. Another says 9 with 14 mph gusts. How can that be?

It’s hard to tell what’s really happening. Cape Coral is about as close to the eye of Ian as Florida gets, and they are reporting 31 mph winds with gusts to 43. Can that be right? I would have expected something like 140 based on the maps. Cape Coral is well within the NHC’s hurricane-force band, meaning Cape Coral is inside the hurricane, so the sustained winds should be no lower than 75 mph.

I haven’t been able to find the Weather Channel’s usual hysterical, dishonest coverage. I have been trying to find videos of raincoated reporters pretending to have a hard time standing up in light winds, or reporters standing on their knees in 6 inches of water to make it look deeper, but I haven’t seen them yet. Maybe you have to have cable to get that kind of helpful informational edutainment.

It should be possible to get good, solid information instantly using the web, but it’s not.

I just checked the Weather Channel’s site, and they have privately-hosted videos. One features a guy named Mike Seidel, broadcasting live from Fort Myers. Supposedly the eye wall is coming ashore, and the storm has maximum winds of 155 mph. The little meter in the corner of the screen says 31 mph with gusts to 58. What?

When I saw his name, it rang a bell, so I Googled “‘mike seidel’ fake news.” Yes, I remembered him for a reason. He got caught lying during another hurricane, pretending to struggle to stand. I’ll embed a video.

He didn’t lie verbally. He lied with his body. As my friend Mike points out, he leaned the wrong way. He leaned to leeward. That’s not how it works.

Today Seidel, who still, incredibly, has a job, is standing and walking normally. I guess he learned something.

Here’s another classic:

I can’t stand it:

The Anderson Cooper video reminds me of Baghdad Bob. Remember him? “There are no enemy tanks in Baghdad, and our victorious army of Islamic holy warriors [boom] @*$^@(*@^$#!!! ALLAH SAVE ME!!!”

I have been praying for God to keep the storm from harming Christians and their property, and I am still okay with it leveling Walt Disney World.

Things are looking very good for me and most of the state, but now I have a giant stockpile of junk food to deal with, and I may no longer have an excuse to eat it. This morning I ate a big bowl of Sugar Smacks (now called Honey Smacks, which is no better) with milk and cream, and then I followed it up with Cape Cod potato chips and onion dip. And three Pepperidge Farm cookies. Lunch will be more like actual food. I’m planning to have a delicious half-pound cheeseburger.

I am seriously wondering if local charities take pretzels and chips.

Ordinarily, I would have had a normal breakfast, but you know how it is when you’ve been fasting.

There is really nothing to do here except wait for NHC updates and think about food. And, of course, pray.

The storm still poses a hazard for me. It will probably cause a mosquito explosion. The water it leaves behind may be here for a couple of weeks.

Time to make sure all my portable power banks are charged, just in case. I need to have cell power so I can talk to my wife.

More: 2:23 P.M.

Things still look pretty good here. The projected path of the storm has moved slightly to the north, but it’s still favorable for my county.

Here is the weird thing: the Internet says the wind speed here, right now, is 26 mph. When I look outside, I see a pleasant breeze. The trees are moving a little. Doesn’t look like 26 mph to me. I would guess it’s between 10 and 15.

Hope it continues this way. The forecast says we are looking at another 7 mph, tops.

Sitrep: 6:15 P.M.

I always tell people you can often predict hurricane behavior better than the pros if you look at the rawest data you can get. This has turned out to be true with Ian. Of course, prayer is the main reason every good thing has happened.

At around 3:25, I found a radar loop and checked it out. It showed that the eye of the storm was moving more to the east than the official reports were saying. I thought that was good news, because it was likely to move the whole cone of future misery eastward later.

Lo and behold, the cone has obliged me. The 5 p.m. cone indicated that the storm was projected to veer eastward from the previous cone. This increases the length of time it will have before it makes its closest approach to the compound, and it also makes that approach farther off. Time will weaken the storm, and distance is obviously helpful, as people in Wyoming and Australia could tell you right now.

The storm has moved so far eastward, it’s actually slightly to the east of me. The center is about 120 miles south of me, which is close by hurricane standards, the maximum sustained winds are at around 130 mph, and virtually nothing is happening here. The center is forecast to get within maybe 60 miles of me, but that will be after the storm passes over a lot of real estate very slowly, so it should be much weaker. NOAA says it will be at about 65 mph at that time, so people 60 miles away shouldn’t get much wind.

Tampa is way closer than I will ever be (twice as close as I am now), and it’s getting the best Ian has to offer. Its current wind figure is 32 mph. I talked to a potential tenant today, and he said his relatives in Tampa were saying not a lot was happening. Tampa was supposed to get a good beating.

Of course, if a storm can move east, it can move west, too, but the experts and models say that won’t happen. They have a consensus, and as we all know, when it comes to science, a consensus is always right.

What a burden off my mind.

The wife and I will keep praying for others. I hope you will, too. No prayers for Disney World, though. It ought to be obliterated. I don’t want to see homes or businesses that don’t promote evil harmed, but if Ian wiped Disney World and Universal out without harming anyone around them, I would be content.

Ten O’Clock Update: Ian Now Weak Category 2

Hurricane Ian continues to puzzle me. The Weather Channel says the wind here is moving at 38 mph, but when I go outside, I don’t see it. The trees are bouncing around a little, but it’s not unpleasant.

Tampa is in a much worse location, but the Weather Channel says its winds will top out shortly at a mere 52 mph. After that, Tampa is expected to wind down. For Tampa, Ian is at its peak right now.

I am still trying to understand what’s happening. I had to dig to find information on Irma, which made a mess here. I relearned a few things.

Irma was Category 3 when it landed in Florida. It came ashore on Marco Island. This is nearly the same place where Ian landed today. Marco supposedly had 155 mph winds when it landed, and Irma’s winds were clocked at 120, so much lower.

Irma was huge, though. People are calling Ian big storm, but Irma was about twice as wide, so being 100 miles from the center of Irma, at a given maximum sustained wind speed, would be like being 50 miles from the center of Ian. In other words, Ian has to be twice as close to give you the same wind speed. That means Ian is much less dangerous to me than a storm like Irma.

Irma moved about 1.5 times as fast as Ian, however, so it spent less time wherever it went. A fast-moving storm does less damage in any one area. So Ian’s strong winds will hit less of Florida, but they will spend more time in every location than they would were Ian traveling at Irma’s speed. On the other hand, the smaller diameter of Ian reduces the destructive impact of its lower speed. It’s not a simple picture. The destructive power of storms depends on a number of variables.

Irma traveled a long way before it dropped to tropical storm speed. When it knocked my trees over, it was close to where it crossed the threshold. And the center was close to me. Probably 30 miles away.

Ian is now dropping 5-10 mph of wind speed per hour, and it will be maybe 10 hours before it gets close to its nearest approach to the compound. I don’t know if it will keep dropping speed as fast as it is now, but it will probably be a tropical storm in 10 hours. Weather Underground thinks it will be Category 1 in less than 4.

Category 1 runs from 75 to 95 mph, and Ian is now at 100, so it should cross the line quickly.

So, weak storm. Twice as far away as Irma. Half as wide as Irma, so it will be as though it were 4 times as far away.

Irma also rained like crazy, and Ian may not match it. Rain helps trees fall over because it loosens the roots. They are predicting 4″-6″, but my feeling, based on observation, is that it will be less.

Irma didn’t do all that much damage here. The house was untouched. So was the workshop. I lost trees in the woods, but no one cares about those. I wasted a lot of time cutting them, but I should have let them rot on their own.

I believe I had two trees that landed on fences between me and the neighbors, and only one tree was large. I had one large tree land on my own fence between my house and pasture. I had another big tree land on a fence between my parcels. I would not want to go through Irma again, and Irma caused me a lot of work, but it was no Andrew.

I think very little will happen here. A much worse storm than Ian wasn’t all that bad.

Hope I don’t seem self-obsessed because I am not writing much about the problems in Southwest Florida and Cuba. I am well aware that many other people are suffering very badly. I can’t do anything to help them except pray, and I have done that, so I am studying the storm for my own benefit.

Let’s Go, Epsilon!

Sunday, October 10th, 2021

As Bad as Your Life may be, at Least You’re not Joe Biden

Before I say anything else, here: they are saying food shortages have arrived, so if you haven’t prepared, you might want to visit Wal-Mart. I am considering loading up on pasta, Velveeta, and protein powder. I already have a lot of beans and rice, as well as canned fish. My jerky supply is poor, as is my dried apple supply. I’ll have to see what I can do.

I talked to Rhodah in Zambia. She was in a grocery store at the time. Lots of food. No price increases. So now America is the third world, and Zambia is the promised land. They had rows of Black Forest cakes in a display case, ready to go. I can’t find that here without driving to, maybe, Orlando.

I am still not quite well. My symptoms come and go in waves. They are always very faint, but they are still annoying. The worst thing is having days when I lack energy. That is not like me. I want to get out and walk the farm every day. Ordinarily, I can’t wait to get out there, but on low-energy days, I’m a different person.

On normal days, I tromp around for about 45 minutes with a .22 on my shoulder and a pistol in my pocket. Just so I can enjoy not being Australian. Or European. Or Chinese. Or a yankee.

Boy, those Australians turned out to be sissies, didn’t they? Remember Paul Hogan? What a tired fraud. “That’s not a knife. THIS is a knife!” Yeah, uh, except you’re not allowed to carry a knife in Australia.

If I were, admittedly amazingly, attacked by crocodiles on one of my walks, even at the bank, where the rifle wouldn’t be allowed, I could realistically hope to kill 11 before changing magazines, and I would be prepared to skin them on the spot for anybody who had a family to feed. And I’m a huge creampuff by rural American standards. Even in his prime, in Australia, Paul Hogan would have had to lock himself in the toilet.

My advice to Australian men is this: if you’re going to be docile, dependent sheep, be docile, dependent sheep. Don’t pretend you’re the kind of man they produce in places like Tennessee and Wyoming. Macho talk and too much Foster’s don’t make you Marcus Luttrell, girls.

I wonder what the Australian men of a century ago would think of their descendants.

I read that they now think bad dental hygiene makes coronavirus hang on longer. I won’t make the obvious jokes about England. I think there was a link from The Drudge Report, also known as the Trump Hate Report. What happened to Matt Drudge? Bet he got a vegan girlfriend.

The theory is that viruses live in the crud in your mouth, so it acts like pus in an abscess, reinfecting you over and over. This proposition disturbed me at first, because I have had several nights when I simply flopped into bed without brushing my teeth. After I got over it, I felt encouraged, because it seemed like this new knowledge might be helpful not just for covid sufferers but for anyone with an infection involving areas connected to the mouth.

The person pushing this theory says you can improve your lot by using mouthwash, which kills viruses.

It sounds a little weird, because we are always told there is no way to kill a virus. Antibiotics supposedly have no effect, and doctors never tell us to gargle to kill them. Antiseptics do kill viruses, however, as we now know after America’s great cleanliness revival. Alcohol, bleach, benzalkonium chloride, and other chemicals destroy coronaviruses on surfaces. It stands to reason that they would also kill them in our mouths and throats. Whether it does us any good, I can’t say.

If it works for covid, wouldn’t it also work for other viruses and strep? One would think so.

My grandmother’s best friend used to tell me to gargle with ST-37 every time I got sick. I don’t know if they make this product any more. It seems like they quit making it. It’s probably full of dioxin and thalidomide. Anyway, I took her advice, and it seemed to help. Maybe she was ahead of her time. Sometimes ignorance can put you a step ahead of doctors.

I plan to start flossing twice a day instead of once, and I will use mouthwash. I had read that mouthwash might have adverse health effects, but I don’t know it to be true, and killing microbes seems like a good idea.

I feel good today, and my energy is flowing, but I woke up with swollen nasal passages, and I can feel something going on in my head. I know I’m not completely over this.

My big project today, now that I’ve fixed my Cold Steel Swift knife in CTS-XHP so it actually opens as designed, is to get more food. I’ll be going to Wal-Mart shortly.

I have looked over my existing supplies, and I should be able to go a couple of months without suffering much. One thing that concerned me: Velveeta. I checked, and it looks like my cheese expired 9 months ago.

Am I worried? No. A Youtube prepper has a video in which she made Velveeta shells and cheese using a package that got its burn notice two years earlier. Her advice? If it looks okay and doesn’t stink, eat it. I’m going to buy more Velveeta anyway. If times get hard, I’ll try the old stuff first, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll still have the new stuff.

Is this the end? Will human beings be at each other’s throats, fighting over Chiclets and old cans of Libby’s pumpkin puree in three months? I wish I knew.

I had a wonderful, comforting thought today. I have had concerns about becoming poor, starving, and having to shoot urban visitors, and I am not all that happy about watching other people starve and murder each other even if I’m safe and fat. Here’s something that occurred to me, however: the tribulation is supposed to last 7 years, during which time, the elect will be in heaven at the wedding supper of Jesus. That means 7 easy years. If we return, as the Bible seems to say we will, we will have a thousand more easy years on Earth, because Satan and every other evil spirit will be bound, Jesus will rule in person, and the world will be blessed. If not, we’ll still be in heaven.

Either way, things brighten up for good once the rapture comes. If it’s imminent, as it seems to be, then so is the end of my problems. Forever. That makes the whole process look much less intimidating.

When we say the end is near, maybe we should be thinking of the end of our suffering, not the end of God’s patience and protection. What the apocalypse brings you depends entirely on which side you’re on.

Things aren’t looking good from a secular point of view. Biden’s poll numbers are sub-Trump, and it looks like he’s not even pretending he wants to get along with us. He just hosted a press conference about his dismal job numbers, and when it was over, he turned his back on his fawning press wet nurses and shuffled away without responding to questions.

Have you heard about, “Let’s go, Brandon!”? A NASCAR driver named Brandon something or other won a race, and an MSM meat puppet interviewed him at the track. While they were talking, the crowd was screaming, “F__ JOE BIDEN!”, very clearly. The meat puppet told a lie rivaling the famous Villaraigosa convention voice-vote lie. She said they were yelling, “Let’s go, Brandon!” Now, thanks to her dishonesty, “Let’s go, Brandon!” is one of the right’s new slogans. You can’t chant the other thing wherever you go, but you can send your nine-year-old to school in a shirt that says, “Let’s go, Brandon!”, and no one there will be able to do a thing about it, even though the teachers will know exactly what it means.

Public discourse hits a new low every week.

God is punishing us for electing Biden. No doubt about it. His precious presidency is dissolving. Biden has been paying people to stay home, and because they’re staying home and eating taxes, taxes will go up, and products and services are in short supply. Wages have gone up a great deal because no one wants to get off the couch. Gas prices are crazy because Biden killed American oil production, the Chinese stupidly banned Australian coal, and God personally strangled the wind farms in England. Inflation is killing our savings, and the stock market and real estate markets are in dangerous bubbles. It’s bad, bad, bad. Unless God is with you.

All we need now is an epsilon variant that laughs at vaccines and kills the healthy, and the picture will be rounded out.

Here’s hoping Jesus comes soon and takes as many people with him as possible. Once I’m gone, you can help yourself to my Velveeta and ammunition. If I’m sufficiently blessed to be taken, I won’t want it any more.

Turkey Trot

Saturday, September 25th, 2021

Make Sure You Wear Your Mosque

I am getting comments from concerned readers. I better tell you what happened.

As some of you have guessed, I poisoned myself while ingesting the dangerous horse medicine ivermectin, washed down with entire six-packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I became quite ill and rushed to the hospital, where they were unable to treat me or even get to me. They couldn’t climb over the dunes of dead, maskless, red-hatted bodies that cluttered the grounds.

I had brought my My Pillow with me for comfort, and I rested my head on it in the parking lot and used a Confederate flag for a blanket. I was so sick, it was all I could do to raise my head every fifteen minutes or so to shout racial slurs, vaccine misinformation, and baseless claims of election fraud.

After several hours, I died, but not before giving a blockbuster, amazingly unwitnessed interview with Bob Woodward, who has an uncanny knack of showing up unnoticed at the deathbeds of conservative figures who can’t stand him yet call on him to come hear them refute everything they have ever said and stab everyone they know in the back.

Sobbing, I told him how much I regretted refusing vaccines and encouraging everyone else to do the same, based on my belief that the vaccines were created by Louis Farrakhan in an effort to make white men impotent. I said I regretted these things even though I hadn’t actually done either of them, and I also let him know I had personally shot video of underage Russian prostitutes relieving themselves on mattresses as Donald Trump and Alan Dershowitz looked on while sucking on crack pipes.

Before dying for good, I coded briefly, visited heaven, returned, and gave confirmation to Woodward: God had assured me that all he really cared about was social justice and environmental extremism, and he said everyone who didn’t support Antifa, BLM, and sexual perversion was going to hell. He also said no one would be allowed into heaven without a mask, a vaccine passport, and carbon credits.

This could all be true, or maybe I just spent a couple of weeks in Turkey on my honeymoon.

Rhodah and I stayed in the Sultanahmet area of Istanbul, and we also visited othe seaside city of Kusadasi, which we used as a base for a guided day trip to Ephesus. We enjoyed Turkey a great deal. The Turks turned out to be charming, friendly, helpful people, even when they were not trying to sell us things, which was not much of the time. The food was pretty good, the exchange rate was excellent, the hotel where we spent most of our time started to feel like our home, and by the time we left, we had made a whole bunch of quasi-friends from among the neighborhood entrepreneurs who accosted us regularly.

I’m too sleep-deprived to write much. I left my hotel at 4 a.m. Eastern time on the 24th, and I got to my house at 3 a.m. on the 25th. Since then, I have slept 4 hours.

I also have some sort of respiratory illness. Covid? Who knows? About 5 days ago, I started feeling nausea, and then things progressed to diarrhea and a sore throat. Eventually, I had bone aches, a slight headache, and a stuffy nose. The final insult was the production of large quantities of disgusting substances inside my nose, which had to be harvested several times a day. I am still not completely done with that.

I also had a low fever, but I will never know the temperature, because I could not find my thermometer to pack it. I know I had a fever because I stopped sweating, and then one night I woke up and saw I had started again. That meant the fever had broken.

Of course, I wonder if coronavirus is the problem. I’m having nearly the same symptoms I had early in 2020 after meeting with a bunch of maskless, pre-vaccine, hands-laying Europeans at a religious event. I feel better this time, and I have been spared vomiting, conjunctivitis, and bottomless watery nasal discharge, but other than that, it’s very similar.

Trying to diagnose myself on the web, I can’t find any other diseases that fit the symptoms. Colds, the flu, and strep throat are out.

Just like last time, the digestive problems only lasted a few hours and submitted right away to loperamide pills. Thank goodness for that. Nothing is worse than using public toilets in foreign countries.

Well, actually, that’s probably wrong. America has some of the filthiest toilets on Earth. Georgia and New York, in particular, stand out in my experience. I’ll bet Toilet Duck doesn’t even have brand reps in those states. It would be like paying people to promote pork in Mecca.

In order to reinfiltrate the US, I had to take a PCR test about 3 days back. I was concerned that I might get stuck in Turkey, but I passed. Suspicious, I Googled. I read that for tests performed during the first few days of infections, the false-negative rate is about 2/3. Information like this helps explain why I believe so little of what our overlords and THE SCIENCE tell us. How can tests be useful when they are USUALLY wrong, in the most harmful way possible, when administered during the time when most patients choose to take them?

Incidentally, a PCR test costs $19 in Turkey, and they come to your hotel. Try getting one that cheap in America.

It’s amazing, the transparent idiocy they shovel at us. Here’s another example: we need to wear masks on planes. Ignoring the fact that masks do virtually nothing as worn by the majority of real human beings, why do mask Nazis never mention the constant replacement of airline cabin air? Every time I get on a plane, I am told it’s nearly impossible to get coronavirus while flying. They say all of the air in a plane is replaced every three minutes, so the viruses get shot out into the sky. If that is true (which I doubt), how can an uncomfortable, irritating mask provide an increase in safety which is worth the misery it causes?

United Airlines says the likelihood of getting covid on a plane is something like 0.003%. Or maybe it’s 0.0003%. I forget. Anyway, it’s basically zero, according to them. THE SCIENCE says a real-world mask worn by a typical person may reduce transmission by something like 15 percentage points, meaning the mask reduction is barely perceptible statistical noise compared to the ventilation reduction.

Imagine this. The government says air bags reduce critical accident injuries by–wild guess–75%. Then some scientist finds out placing live scorpions in your underpants raises the protection to 75.02%. Would you pass a law forcing people to use the scorpions?

We have a couple of problems. First, the data THE SCIENCE provides is clearly bogus a lot of the time. For example, a person who falls off a cliff while sick with covid may get put in the “coronavirus death” tally. Second, the policy makers who use THE SCIENCE to tell us what to do are too stupid to understand and make good use of data, even when it isn’t bogus, and they’re also too biased and dishonest to make intelligent rules even when they understand things correctly.

I really hate wearing a mask on a plane. The mask starts to stink before two hours are up, hot air roasts my face, and more hot air shoots upward under my reading glasses, which makes my eyes hurt. The hot air also fogs my glasses, making reading difficult. On a flight that lasts over 10 hours, it’s like one of those loophole torture methods countries use to abuse prisoners of war without violating the Geneva Conventions.

I have learned how to cope. I buy the flimsiest, least effective masks available. I keep an eye on stewardesses, and as soon as they turn their backs, I pull my mask down below my nose. When I see them coming my way, I pull it back up. I think they know I’m doing it, but after dealing with people like me all day for months, they don’t want to get into it with me. When they offer food and drinks, I put them on my tray table and eat and drink unbelievably slowly with no mask. Sometimes I’ll go half an hour, lifting a cup of warm ginger ale to my lips and pretending to sip while my mouth is closed. When that gets dull, I may get up and go stand in the bathroom for 5 minutes with my mask in my pocket.

I learned the slow-eating tip from my friend Mike, who flies more often than I do. Genius.

Another helpful move: taking that darned mask off and fiddling with it for several minutes because it’s just so hard to adjust so it fits the way Papa Joe wants it to.

When all else fails, there’s always, “Mask? Oh, sorry!” Like you didn’t realize it was under your chin. Pull it back up and then wait for your next opportunity to grab more air.

Only amateurs fight with stewardesses. A real master doesn’t resist. It’s like aikido. You look at the natural motions of your attacker and use them against her, to your benefit. You yield and pretend to comply, and by the end of your flight, your face, or at least your nostrils, has been tasting that sweet cabin air at least half of the time.

If you resist, some snippy steward who has a makeup channel on Youtube will smirk and prance while the police drag you down the aisle at his command. You don’t want to go out like that. Remember Ferris Bueller. What would Abe Froman do?

Am I a bad guy for cheating? Well, not according to THE SCIENCE.

A) Everyone on the plane has been tested very recently, assuring that very few infected people are aboard. I am probably not capable of spreading viruses.

B) Everyone on the plane has either been vaccinated or has recovered from coronavirus, and either type of person has a low probability of being infected anew, MULTIPLIED by a sub-1% chance of having severe symptoms.

C) The airlines claim the chance of being infected regardless of immunity and masking is so low it’s essentially zero.

D) Everyone on the plane risks infection every single day, and all of them risked it getting to the airport and breathing the airport’s filthy air and touching its nasty surfaces. Sitting near a vaccinated, tested person with no symptoms should, if THE SCIENCE is to be believed, be one of the least-risky things a traveler will do during his day of flying.

I would also add:

E) General principles, et cetera, et cetera.

All this being said, I do take the disease seriously. I got the Johnson shot. I got a flu shot because I read it was associated with milder covid symptoms, and I tried to get a pneumonia shot for the same reason. I wash my hands all the time. I try not to do anything stupid. I’m not against intelligent precautions. It’s the other kind that get my goat.

Today I got another PCR test. I don’t trust the test I took in Turkey, and if I’ve been infected, the knowledge could be useful. Proof of surviving covid gives you added social credit which might be helpful in some situations. Israel supposedly gives survivors better treatment than vaccine recipients.

Finding out I’m positive would be better than finding out I’m negative. It would tell me I beat covid, and that would make me feel better about possible future bouts.

I just found out antibody tests are available. If I can get one, and if it won’t be skewed by my status as a vaccine recipient, I plan to take one. If there is any possibility I have had covid, I want to know.

Incidentally, I intended to take ivermectin in Turkey, but I didn’t do it. I told Rhodah to bring some pills for me, but she misunderstood, so she left them at home. Because I thought she was bringing them, I didn’t bring my horse medicine. I really missed it when I started getting sick.

Last night, before going to bed at 4 a.m., I took a dose. When I woke up 4 hours later, I felt much, much better. It was remarkable. I was surprised. Was it the ivermectin? Did God heal me? Was it my body overcoming a disease that wasn’t that tough to begin with? I don’t know, but there is a ton of evidence suggesting ivermectin has helped many people, so maybe it helped me, and I plan to keep using it.

Although I’ve been ill, I haven’t felt very bad. I have felt tremendous enthusiasm for getting out and walking. I felt a strong drive to get out and walk several miles a day in Istanbul. I preferred it to taking trains. I felt sleep-deprived because the sore throat interfered with sleep, and I felt a little worn-out on the nights of high-mileage days, but I didn’t feel fatigued during the day, except when watching my wife try on shoes. I’ve felt lots of physical strength. My worst problem was joint pain that popped up after a day or two. When I walked, I felt like I had mild arthritis. Every time a foot struck the ground, I felt a little pain.

I’m afraid I overworked Rhodah. She was happy to get exercise, but there were times when she wanted to sit down and rest. Even though I was sick, I was usually the one who wanted to keep going. She got short of breath a few times, but I didn’t.

I lost weight while eating baklava and cake. I went down a belt notch. If Rhodah had been as gung-ho as I was, I would have walked more and lost more. I don’t think she was ready for what I kept telling her was “old man strength.”

I hope she starts to have the same feeling. It would be very helpful to her to develop an urge to walk. Apart from the health benefits, it’s a very beneficial urge for a traveler to have, and Rhodah likes travel.

I thought I didn’t feel like writing, but I’ve written a lot.

I plan to go buy Mucinex and soak in a tub of hot water. Hopefully I can expel some of the horrible stuff that is coming loose inside me. Maybe tomorrow I’ll write a little about Turkey.

Pigs with a Purpose

Tuesday, September 29th, 2020

Getting too Southern for my Own Good

My oldest friend is a guy named Mike. Just to show you what a rotten friend he is, I will post a photo he sent me recently.

This represents part of his output for one week. He bought a Masterbuilt smoker, and he has smoked his weight in pork and chicken.

These days, I stifle my interest in cooking. It’s not good to be a lover of pleasure, and gluttony is an invitation to inhabitation by demons. I rarely cook anything impressive. But here is Mike, telling me one more rack of ribs won’t hurt.

I live in an area where even the worst barbecue is pretty good. It’s not like Miami, where Cubans and yankees think only of money when they prepare food. Still, the obvious truth is that I make barbecue better than any restaurant I’ve been to. Also, it’s much cheaper, and if I barbecue at home, I won’t have to go to restaurants, which are considered prime coronavirus transmission hubs.

These are the thoughts I had as I pitted Mike against mere reason.

Of course, Mike won. I ordered a smoker.

Years ago, I built my own smoker: the Hoginator. I took a big Char-Broil grill and cut holes in it so I could mount to electric heating elements. I cut another hole so I could feed smoke into it. I fabricated a steel smoke box that sat behind the smoker, and it had a hinged door in it so I could shove wood into it. I smoked with flaming wood, the way you’re supposed to, but the smoke box was over a foot away from the smoker, so not much of the heat got into the smoker. I was able to maintain a nice low temperature.

This time, I thought about building another smoker. For about three minutes. Yes, I think men who buy things they can fabricate are really women, but you have to choose your battles. In order to make a really good smoker, I would have to bend and weld a lot of stainless sheet, and I would have to make it double-walled so I could put insulation in it. Forget that. I already paid my dues with the Hoginator. This time, I’m going to let someone else do the metalworking.

Digression: yesterday I finished straightening the mounting tabs on my middle buster and welding gussets in to keep them from bending again. Metal still bends the knee to me.

I ordered a Smokin-It smoker. They’re made in Michigan, hopefully by Southern immigrants. They have double-walled stainless cabinets. People swear by them. I ordered the second-smallest model. I wanted to be able to jam a turkey into it, and the little one did not look promising. Also, when you buy the cheapest model of anything, you’re usually asking for a bunch of after-purchase Band-Aid modifications and add-ons that take the fun out of it. This smoker will come with everything it needs, including wheels.

I believe it’s a little smaller than a waist-high fridge. We shall see.

While I was trying to figure out what to buy, I learned some things.

First, people say Masterbuilts fall apart in a few years. I didn’t want to take a chance. There are competitors such as Pit Boss and Cuisinart, but they look to be of similar quality. I don’t want to drop $250 on a new smoker every three years until I die. The box I bought should last for eternity.

Here’s another thing: propane smokers are hard to use. The temperature fluctuates. Forget it; not interested.

I learned that electric smokers don’t produce smoke rings in meat. A smoke ring is a layer of reddish meat just under the surface. I was upset to read that I wouldn’t be getting one, until I learned that barbecue judges all agree that a smoke ring doesn’t improve the flavor of the food.

Smokin-It has a close competitor called Smokin’ Tex. Smokin-It gives you a lot more for the money, so that’s why I chose their product.

The smoker will be here Thursday, God willing. That means barbecue on Friday. I need to get some ribs.

I don’t do baby backs. I don’t get them at all. I think they’re for suckers. Spare ribs are much cheaper. They’re bigger. They have more fat and flavor. They’re not dry like baby backs. I plan to pick up a rack of spare ribs.

I’m about to dig up my rub recipe. I’m considering adding a little black cardamom.

I would post my rub recipe, but in all honesty, they’re all about the same. Sugar, salt, mustard, pepper, cumin, garlic…it’s not rocket science.

Actually, I shouldn’t say that. A barbecue celebrity named Myron Mixon opened a joint in Miami, and his rub was disgusting. Very litte salt. No flavor. This was after he talked a lot of smack, belittling the competition. His place went bankrupt, even after a lot of Miami people who knew nothing about barbecue posted ridiculous positive Internet reviews.

I prayed before ordering the smoker, and my impression was that God likes it when I entertain friends and that he was in favor of me buying it so I could barbecue for them and still have time to talk about Christianity. I hope my friends don’t read that.

The Hoginator was a lot of work to use. The new smoker should be much less bother.

I should be able to barbecue for 30 people with this thing, so the small gatherings I am likely to draw should be no problem.

Here’s a neat hint for applying a rub: use a bath towel. Drop your ribs on the towel, add the rub, and use the towel to contain the mess while you press the rub onto the meat. When you’re done, roll the towel up with the excess spices in it and put it in the laundry. It won’t stain. This is my original idea, so make sure you send me royalties when you use it.

What about sauce? Here is my conclusion. Store barbecue sauce is so good now, there is not much point in making your own. Yeah, I said it. Stubbs, Sweet Baby Ray’s, Cattleman’s…you name it. There are lots of good ones. Buy four brands every time you barbecue, and make notes on the ones you like.

I will post pork photos eventually.

The Paper Chase

Monday, April 20th, 2020

Fluffy Herald of Relief Appears

I have earth-shaking news. Real American toilet paper is available from Amazon. I don’t mean weird Chinese paper which is somehow puffed up so it takes three rolls to do the job of one real roll. I mean actual American toilet paper. I saw Angel Soft in the listings, and it’s in stock. Other brands must be on the way.

Surely the clouds have parted.

I thought this would happen two weeks ago. It did happen, though, and that’s the main thing. America’s garages and spare rooms can only hold so much toilet paper. People couldn’t keep buying huge quantities forever. Eventually, we had to see a change.

Now what are the hoarders going to do with their house-choking stashes? Check Craigslist next month.

I have a cousin in the Chicago area, and she says she’s down to two rolls. Apparently, the good-natured midwestern folk of Chicago have treated each other very badly during the last month or two. She says they cleaned stores out. Things many Americans were able to buy easily were not available there.

I’ve heard people say Chicagoans are wonderful, friendly, helpful people. Nothing like New Yorkers.

Whatever. The proof is in the pudding.

The other day I heard a quote about hard times. I can’t find it. Paraphrasal: hard times don’t change a man; they reveal him. That’s what I have to say about Chicago’s hoarders, as well as all other hoarders. There is no point in virtue-signaling after you’ve been exposed. Makes you look worse.

The hoarders here are completely nuts. If you go to one store, you’ll find it completely stripped of one type of item, but if you go to another, you’ll see that item for sale, along with things you couldn’t find at the first store. Example: my local Winn-Dixie had a run on potatoes, but a Publix a few miles away had plenty. Two days ago, the only dish powder I could find at Publix cost $14 for 37 loads, so about 38 cents per load. It was that weird encapsulated kind. Anyone who buys that is begging for poverty. I drove a mile to Walmart and found I could get almost whatever I wanted. I bought two boxes of the store brand, which is very cheap and works just as well as Cascade. Paid about half what the fancy stuff cost. I would guess you use half an ounce per load, so 300 loads at 2.58 cents per load. What drives a person to buy pods? It’s madness.

Walmart had paper towels, too. I bought two rolls, just for the thrill. The beef had been raided (unlike Publix and Winn-Dixie), but they had a magnificent, highly marbled cowboy rib eye for a good price, so I jumped on that. It was excellent.

If there were any sense to the hoarding, every store would lack the same things. And no, it’s not a supply thing. It’s not like Publix has a secret potato farm surrounded by guard towers. Hoarder obsessions vary depending on location.

I do not read newspapers, but several times a week, I try to go to the local paper’s website to see if I’m under martial law or anything. I check the COVID-19 numbers. It’s really creeping here. The known total for the county is 121, or about one in 2500. We’re never going to get a major epidemic among the general population. That’s my prediction, anyway. It may find its way into senior facilities, but if we’re at 1/2500 as of April 19, I don’t see us ever ending up like New York.

Speaking of New York, there are a lot of Northerners who live here during the winter, and they’re gone, presumably reducing the travel between here and the north. We had a high percentage of travel-related cases. If you think about it, epidemics can only spread to new areas through travel-related cases.

The median age of the cases here is 50, and it’s probably close to the average, too. Is the virus hitting older people more often? Could be, but it may also be that because most cases are mild or asymptomatic, the people who are reporting their illness are generally those who don’t do as well as the average victim. That would lead to over-reporting of old people, smokers, diabetics, and fat people.

This is not a healthy county. Smoking is everywhere, and the people eat garbage. Obesity almost seems fashionable. Add these factors to the large number of seniors here, and you have a bomb waiting to go off. But it hasn’t and probably won’t.

I have to hand it to the people who run the ALF’s. I know these places are not as clean as typical homes, but someone here must be doing something right. We don’t have a single ALF death cluster, but Massachusetts is jam-packed with them, to the point where they overwhelm statistics for everyone else. Massachusetts has had a bona fide ALF catastrophe. They must be doing very little to protect the elderly.

I would have expected worse performance here.

Apart from having a low population density, I don’t know why we’re doing well. Traffic here is just about normal. It’s not like we’re imprisoned, the way people are in other places. There is still a lot of mingling. I’m considering looking into a haircut next week. The ponytail look is not for me. The Seventies are over, and we should do all we can to put a stake in their heart.

The Johns Hopkins USA graph was still on a plateau last night, which is the last time it was updated. The graph was turning downward again. A plateau is good. We can’t have a true disaster if the transmission rate is sufficiently low.

I wonder how my Ebay bench grinder poverty index is doing. Last time I looked, there were 44 items listed under “Baldor bench grinder.” Let’s see.

It’s down to 41! We’ll see what it looks like after a week or so. Still higher than it was before the epidemic.

Still not ONE major celebrity death.

I suppose I should talk about the supernatural approach to epidemics, since it’s the most important approach.

We got here by neglecting the supernatural, and we should focus on the supernatural to get out.

Disease comes from sin and poor relationships with God. Idolatry, including atheism, is a major cause. Epidemics come to countries where not enough people are repenting and praying. They’re not random things that happen to “good people.” Calling yourself good is actually a great way to invite disaster. The word says God is near to them that are of a broken heart and saves such as be of a contrite spirit, and it says he fights the proud.

The word also says God will heal a country if his people will pray. It doesn’t say, “if everyone in the country will pray.” It says “my people.” God was willing to spare Sodom for 10 righteous people, but he couldn’t find that many.

We should be attacking the epidemic with prayer and repentance. Those of us who are already trying to live God’s way should be praying for revival and repentance, not just an end to the epidemic. Of course, we will be attacked for saying sin is in any way involved in epidemics, even though everyone knows how VD works. Sin even contributes to non-infectious diseases like cirrhosis, lung cancer, COPD, and obesity-related illnesses. The connection between sin and disease should be obvious even to atheists.

Most Christians don’t bless or curse. I guess they don’t know they can. You can speak defeat to problems. You can speak help to people. Isaac did it. Balaam did it. Peter did it. Jesus did it. We should be doing these things.

We should be saying, “I speak defeat to the spirits and people contributing the panic and selfishness.” “I speak defeat to the spirits that spread the disease.” “I speak defeat to the hoarders and the spirits they serve.” “I speak defeat to Satan in his effort to use this disease to turn people into servants of the Beast.” “I speak victory to God’s servants and those who speak the truth about the epidemic.”

Even jihadis know curses and blessings matter. They gather in groups and curse the USA and Israel. Somehow, we don’t think our words have power.

I pray for the epidemic to end, and I also pray for God to defeat the spirits and people who are using it to train people for Satan. I ask God to destroy this plan, and I ask him to spread revival and repentance. I ask him to free people from crooked pastors and dependence on churches, and I ask him to spread true Christianity like a disease, outside of church, from person to person, so people will know him personally, as they are supposed to. I ask him to take Satan’s training exercise away and make it his own.

The Bible mentions several epidemics. Were any NOT caused by sin?

Let’s see.

The Egyptian plagues were caused by sin, and two were bodily afflictions. The hemorrhoid plague in Gaza was caused by sin. The Revelation plagues will be caused by sin. A plague killed 185,000 Assyrians in one night, and it was because they were against God. A plague struck Israel because of David’s sin.

It’s strange that so many Christians think an epidemic is an unjust attack on an innocent society. Where, exactly, is this innocent society? Is it America, which has killed at least 60,000,000 unborn babies since Roe v. Wade? Is it Israel, which has generally rejected Jesus? Is it China, which leads the world in abortion and infanticide?

What does the Bible say about protection from plagues? It says that if you dwell in the secret place of the most high, you shall not fear for the pestilence that walks in darkness. It says that if you make God your refuge, no plague shall come near your dwelling. It says the Hebrews were spared the plague on the firstborn because they obeyed God.

Sometimes famines are epidemics. They can be caused by crop diseases. The Bible says famine comes from curses related to disobedience.

It sure seems like plagues are connected to our attitudes toward God.

If the pandemic is an end-time thing, it will happen again. It may not come as a coronavirus epidemic, but some other global disaster will hit, and it will be followed by others, because the end will be a series of birth pangs. They will precede the emergence of the Antichrist and the return of Jesus Christ. Labor pains get more frequent and more intense, so if you don’t like COVID-19, you will really hate what comes later. It’s time to come inside.

Biscuit Technology and God’s Grace

Tuesday, April 9th, 2019

Plus Ham Info

I am trying to avoid getting back into cooking, because the love of pleasure is a bad thing, and I have been gluttonous in the past. Nonetheless, I keep getting ideas whether I want them or not, and I’m glad I’ve developed a collection of my own recipes.

Today I decided to make a few biscuits. I was out of bread because of the trip, and I didn’t want to drive to McDonald’s for breakfast. I found a recipe I created a few years back, and I decided to try it.

The biscuits were very good. They’re certainly better than any homemade biscuits anyone else has made for me. I think they can be better, though. Let’s face it; McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A make really good biscuits, and the rest of us should be up to their standard. Here’s the recipe, as it stands after today:

INGREDIENTS

1 3/4 cups biscuit flour (not self-rising)
1/4 cup starch
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar
4 tsp. baking powder (not soda)
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 tbsp. bacon grease
2 tbsp. butter

A little starch makes the biscuits less rubbery; biscuits shouldn’t feel like bread. The sugar isn’t there to make them sweet. It’s just enough to round out the flavor. Chick-fil-A uses a great deal of sugar in its biscuits. Too much.

The important thing is to burn and chill the butter. You can put it in the microwave in a Pyrex cup and burn it a little. You don’t need the junk that settles out. Combine 2 tablespoons of lightly burned butter with 2 tablespoons of bacon grease and chill it until it’s solid. Burning the butter a little gives it a lot of flavor. Bacon grease makes the biscuits flaky.

It’s a lot of trouble, but you have to ask yourself whether you want good biscuits or amazing biscuits.

You mix the dry ingredients and then cut the fat in until you have crumbs. Mix the buttermilk in, roll the biscuits out, and bake them at 450 for around 13 minutes.

The only thing I’m not thrilled about is the texture of the tops of the biscuits. I think I know what to do. McDonald’s brushes biscuits with melted butter. I think that’s the answer. I don’t know when I’ll make biscuits again, but when I do, this is what I’ll do.

My grandmother used to put a small amount of grease on top of her biscuits before baking. I’ve tried this, and the fat disappears into the biscuit. Sorry, Granny.

Baking at 450 seems to be important. I used to bake biscuits at 400, but it’s a mistake.

You may not need to use all of the buttermilk, because the actual amount of flour and starch you measure may vary. Truthfully, flour should always be weighed, not measured in cups. When you use a cup, you will get inconsistent results because the flour may be compacted to different degrees. You won’t know how much flour you’re getting. Weighing is the way to go. Use a gram scale. They’re cheap. I need to correct this recipe and turn the flour and buttermilk measurements into weights. It would also be helpful for the hard fat, because it’s not easy to get hard fat into a cup.

You can’t throw up your hands at grams and weighing, just because your great aunt measured everything with a coffee cup with a broken handle. Tradition is great, but being stupid is never a good thing. Your great aunt may also have used a stove heated by burning wood, and you don’t do that. I hope.

This recipe is a work in progress. I don’t know when I’ll be completely satisfied.

I’ve been Googling around, and it appears it’s possible to cure a country ham at home. You have to have a fridge where it can stay for a few months, but after that, the cure keeps it preserved, so you can hang it anywhere. I may try it, if I can get my grandmother’s recipe. There are two kinds of hams available commercially: expensive ones, and bad ones. The real thing at a decent price would be better.

She used to keep saltpeter in her kitchen, so I think that’s what she used instead of pink salt. We used to think she bought it to put in my grandfather’s food, but maybe that wasn’t the case.

Things are going very well today. I have already been used to help two people for God, and it’s not even 11 a.m. Can’t complain about that.

Yesterday a wonderful thing happened. I felt tempted to do something stupid, and God helped me. I was getting close to home on the drive south, and I kept feeling temptation. I used my supernatural tools, and it seemed like I wasn’t winning. Eventually, I spoke God’s help and victory to me, and I spoke his opposition to the people and spirits that were against me.

It was raining very hard when I approached the house. I turned into my driveway, and I pushed the button on the gate remote. Nothing happened. At the same time, I got a message from my phone, saying the power at the house was out. No power, no gate. There was no way I was getting out to climb the fence in the rain.

I reported the outage by phone, and when I checked, the online map only showed one tiny outage in the whole county.

After a while, a pickup showed up, and a man from the power company approached my car. He said he had looked at all the lines near my house, and he couldn’t see anything wrong. He said he was going to turn the power back on in a few minutes.

After another 10 minutes or so, my phone told me the power was on, and I went in. The temptation was gone, and I was fine.

This experience was neat in more than one way. First, it showed that God was really there. He came through for me, fast. Second, it showed that speaking things into existence works, when you do it in accordance with God’s will. It’s a very powerful thing. Third, God did everything for me. He was glorified. I would have failed without him.

This is the kind of Christianity I want. I don’t mind failing and having God take over and give me victory. It’s how things are supposed to be. We’re told to glorify Jesus all the time. That only makes sense if we’re glorifying him for things he does. He would not ask us to glorify him for things we do using willpower. It would be stealing.

When you say, “Glory to Jesus,” you’re really saying, “This is not my job. Jesus will have to do it, and he gets the credit.” Churches have taught us to be tough little soldiers who lift themselves by their own bootstraps, but that’s what the Jews who rejected Jesus taught. It’s pride, and God hates pride. The Bible says God will fight you if you’re proud.

I feel much closer to God today. I feel his reality more intensely, and it’s paying off.

I’m also much less stressed than I was while my dad was alive. Back then, I knew Christians were supposed to have peace, but I couldn’t hold onto it. I was in an unequal yoking I had chosen years before. I chose physics and law and my dad’s company over God, so I had to spend years being pulled out of that mess. I sleep better now. I don’t feel the worry I had to fight last month. I can’t tell you how great it is.

When you get into something God doesn’t want you to be part of, he may not deliver you quickly. You may get a sentence of many years. This is especially true when you marry or reproduce outside of God’s will. I’m lucky it was a parent who didn’t have long to live. What if I had a crazy wife with 40 more years left on her clock?

My dad was transformed at the end, and he became a wonderful father, but that amounted to about a month and a half. Before that, there was always tension.

A real Christian doesn’t get puffed up and tell everyone what he does for God and how “sold out” he is. A real Christian is like a 35-year-old man who lives by taking money from his mother’s purse. God gives us charity, not wages. We are the reason he was crucified. We haven’t earned anything good. If our work pays off, it’s only because God chose to allow it. Many people work hard and fail.

God taught me to say I’m “pleased,” not “proud.” After he taught me that, I thought of the baptism of Jesus. God spoke, and he didn’t say he was proud of Jesus. He said he was “well pleased.”

We have been taught to be self-reliant because our ancestors could not get God’s help and could not teach us how to get it, either.

I think worry will continue to wither.

I don’t know if I’ll go ahead with the ham project or not. Something to think about. I sent an email to a local grocery company to see if they sell uncured hams. If I follow through, I will write about it here.

Water Works

Friday, January 4th, 2019

Love of Food Still Suppressed

I don’t know if my spam filters are deleting legitimate comments. It’s hard to tell, because I don’t see the same things readers do. When I want to find out what’s happening, I have to log out and make comments. The system seems to be working. If it’s killing your comments, you can email me and let me know.

I’m blogging today about my baptism experience. I went to Clearwater to have my water baptism redone correctly, and it produced clear results. The problem with receiving supernatural help from God, though, is that it doesn’t always last. We are ignorant about things like miracles, healings, and deliverance, so we aren’t good about holding onto the changes God makes in us. People get healed and then relapse. Addicts get delivered and then fall back into addiction. You have to be careful not to be too quick to assume you have a lasting result.

On the day of the baptism, before I even went to the tank, I got re-delivered from the love of food. It happened before lunch, and the baptism took place later in the afternoon. My eating habits changed. I felt as though an inner voice was rising up in me to counter the drive to obtain and consume food and drink.

As of today, it’s still working. In fact, I have something interesting to report: I seem to be in danger of eating too little.

Yesterday I had breakfast and lunch, and I figured I was pretty well set for the day. Later on, though, I started to feel like lunch had not been big enough. I felt like my blood sugar was on the low side. It seemed that I needed to eat something more. I had a nearly empty container of ice cream in the freezer, so I took it out and finished it off. After that, I was fine.

I’m very happy about it. A person who had to be reminded to eat is very blessed.

Skinny people love to call fat people undisciplined, but the truth is that nearly all of them weigh less because they don’t like food as much. We all know skinny people who are irresponsible and weak. If people like that really liked food, they would be as big as houses.

Think of all the thin celebrity drug addicts and alcoholics. Here are a few: Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, Robert Downey, Whitney Houston, Keith Richards, Jim Carrey, Shia Laboeuf, James Taylor, and Jackson Browne. Not models of self-control. If these people had loved food, they would have been morbidly obese.

We know of drug addicts who also became obese. Think of David Crosby, Robin Williams, John Belushi, Jim Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, James Gandolfini, Chris Farley, Elvis Presley, and Artie Lange. John Belushi used to go to restaurants and order entire fried chickens, somewhat like his character in The Blues Brothers.

Many people simply don’t care that much for food. It’s a great thing. It’s completely positive. It doesn’t lead to starvation, because even though they don’t care much for food, their bodies drive them to take in what they need. It just keeps them healthier, more fit, and better-looking than the rest of us.

I love the idea of not loving food. It will bring me a lot of things I want. Who doesn’t want their clothes to fit better? Who doesn’t want to avoid having two sets of clothing: the fat clothes and the “real” clothes? Who doesn’t want to be able to go up a set of stairs without breathing hard afterward?

I’ve never been huge, but I don’t want to be fat at all.

Here’s something interesting: the Bible is very hard on lovers of pleasure. Take a look at this:

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!

Paul criticized lovers of pleasures in the same sentence with blasphemers. Wow.

The kind of pleasure he is talking about is the selfish pleasure of the flesh, not pleasures like the good feeling you get from being in God’s presence or doing good.

Let’s check the Greek.

It comes from the same root as “hedonism,” and here is what Strong’s says about the pleasure involved: “pleasure, a pleasure, especially sensuous pleasure; a strong desire, passion.”

It’s not what you feel after a good prayer session or a miraculous healing.

These days, I find that I sometimes try not to cook as well as I can. I’ll be working on a dish, and I’ll think it’s important to get the very best ingredient or use the best method, and then I’ll correct myself. Food doesn’t have to be sublime. Good is sufficient. Why should I make food that intoxicates me? I don’t need that, and it usually takes more work. I don’t need to be my own drug pusher. The food I make is so good, I may be able to overcome my deliverance if I tempt myself too much.

All the things I’m writing apply to temptations like sex, covetousness, and provocation to anger, too. In modern America, we yield to temptation as a matter of course, but we should be toning it down. You don’t need the best sex possible. You don’t need the nicest car made. You don’t need to be around people who provoke you; it’s not really necessary to have a Twitter account.

Food isn’t the only thing I resist better now.

So far, the baptism seems to have been a big success. Our ignorance about baptism may explain why Christians are so much like other people. We divorce just as much. We look at porn. Many of us are as fat as pigs; we even follow obese preachers who are clearly controlled by their flesh. The Bible says we’re not supposed to be slaves to sin, and it wouldn’t say that if God hadn’t given us the tools to get free.

In order to stay free from an addiction, I believe you have to refrain from tempting yourself with occasional plunges into self-indulgence. I believe you also have to go easy on other people with the same problem, because if you’re self-righteous about it, God may let you fall back into your old habit.

I’m about two and a half weeks into it. I can’t tell you where I’ll be a year from now. I feel very hopeful.

The outfit that baptized me is called The Last Reformation, and I found them on Youtube. I had a habit of looking up street healers and watching their videos. Here’s something strange: I found a number of healers before I found TLR, and now I’m seeing Youtube comments that indicate that they know the TLR people. Some of them have attended TLR events, and some are just friends of TLR veterans.

I think God is knitting people together outside of churches, just as I have been predicting for years. I believe God told me it would happen.

I will never join TLR. I’ve said that before. I’m all done following men and movements. I won’t join a church, either. I know TLR will eventually fall into corruption unless Jesus comes soon, and I’m sure they’re not correct about everything. I don’t want to be part of the mess if they fall. Nonetheless, they seem to be part of a very solid quasi-denomination that has arisen without much human planning.

Once you put a name on a movement and name officials, things start to go south. I suppose it defines a target for Satan and gives him a choke point to attack. It’s normal, and it should be expected. It has never failed. I don’t want to be permanently identified with anything that is likely to fail, but TLR does very good work for the time being.

I will keep reporting on my status. If you want help with your own compulsions, consider getting yourself baptized properly.

Moonshine Killed my Grandfather

Monday, December 31st, 2018

There Go my Whole Frame, Outlook, Way of Life, and Everything

I had a fascinating online conversation today. I communicated with a cousin I have only seen a few times in my life.

I do not have a Facebook account, and I count myself blessed for that. My dad didn’t cancel his account after he became demented, and I thought it might be handy to preserve it, so when I got rid of his Twitter account, I left Facebook alone. On occasion, people he knows say things on his timeline. He had a birthday not long ago, and he got messages from a high school friend, a former partner, and a niece. I will say her name is Martha.

I blew off the messages from the school friend and the former partner. I didn’t see the point in encouraging them. I decided I should acknowledge Martha’s post, however. I sent a Facebook message explaining that I didn’t post things publicly, and I thanked her and so on. She messaged me back, and we started talking.

Her mother–my Aunt Norma–was my dad’s older sister. She died at age 82, in 2014. Like my dad, she had vascular dementia. I drove my dad to the funeral in Tennessee. Actually, we flew to Atlanta and drove from there to Oak Ridge. At the funeral, I talked to Martha. My dad was not diagnosed until 2015, but I knew his memory was fading. I wanted to learn about Norma’s illness, in case my dad turned out to have the same thing.

Norma died pretty quickly. You would expect a woman to outlast her brother, but Norma was even fatter than my dad. She may not have had the same grade of health care, either.

Norma’s history is complicated. Her first husband was a man from the town in Kentucky where she and my dad grew up. They had a daughter I will call Lulu. Norma got a divorce, and she married my uncle, a man I will call Melvin. Martha is his daughter from an earlier marriage. He also had several sons. In the end, the household was made up of Melvin, Norma, Lulu, the sons (I’m not sure of their names even though they’re my first cousins), and Martha. After Martha was an adult, Norma and Melvin had their first child together. I will call her Dagmar.

Martha was the last child from Melvin’s first marriage. She never knew her mother. I don’t know if she died in childbirth or what. Maybe she just ran off.

You can tell I’m not close to these people. I don’t know much about them. I’m not sure it’s right to call Martha my cousin. We are not related by blood.

After my mother had her first child, she was surprised that her husband’s mother and sisters didn’t come to help her out. Eventually, one of the sisters let her know that they were distant because they were so glad they didn’t have to deal with my dad any more. I have had very little contact with my dad’s relatives.

I barely know Martha, but on the few times we have communicated, we have had a special rapport. I remember a family picnic back in the Sixties; we went off by ourselves, away from the hard voices and quick hands, and talked. She is a gentle person with a kind heart. That means she’s not much like Norma or Melvin. Norma was a lot like my dad, meaning she was abusive, and Melvin is a spoiled Ahab figure who treated his kids like pack mules.

I was not interested in trying to get to know Martha when I sent her the message, but she isn’t like me, so she responded quickly and started engaging me. We had a long messaging session, and I learned a lot of fascinating things.

First of all, the rest of my dad’s family didn’t know we had a domestic violence problem. I guess when I was a kid I assumed the whole world knew. Martha had to ask me about it, so I told her some horror stories. She surprised me by letting me know Norma (her real first name) used to beat her black and blue.

I never would have guessed. I knew Norma was mean to her kids, but I had never heard anything about physical abuse. I have seen Norma rap her kids on the head with her knuckles, and that’s not an acceptable method of corporal punishment, but I didn’t know she beat Martha.

Norma hated Martha for some reason. She was mean to all the kids, but she really laid it on Martha. In addition to the beatings, she showered her with verbal abuse and humiliated her.

After Martha grew up, Norma told her something amazing. At one point during Martha’s childhood, Norma tried to murder Martha. When she told the story to the adult Martha, she said Lulu persuaded her to stop. Lulu said that if Norma killed Martha, Norma would go to prison, and Lulu would be alone in the world. That stopped Norma. When Norma told Martha this, in her house with Martha’s four kids, she didn’t apologize or show remorse.

This is not a story about a white trash family that sold meth out of a stolen camper. Norma was a respected schoolteacher, and Melvin was a professor of radiation embryology. The problem wasn’t caused by a lack of education or sophistication. It sounds like Norma was a true sociopath who had a hard time understanding right and wrong.

Long ago, my sister told me a strange story about Norma and Lulu. She said Norma used to buy Lulu candy and have her eat it in front of Melvin’s kids.

Melvin was not a great dad. He made his kids pay for their own clothes. He and Norma made them do all the housework. He refused to let Martha go to the doctor when she was sick, forcing her to go to school instead. He didn’t protect her from Norma.

His kids grew up to be independent and hardworking but also full of unnecessary pain.

While I was conversing with Martha, I learned some things about my dad’s father, who died in 1942.

There is a fable about my grandfather (it feels strange to call him that). It goes like this: He died from pneumonia or food poisoning. Later on, the pastor of the church his kids attended told Norma to stand up and tell the congregation her dad died from drinking bad liquor. The pastor was wrong.

I always thought the fable was true, and I thought it explained my dad’s hatred of Christianity. I believed something other than liquor killed my grandfather.

Here is what Martha told me: my grandfather used to get drunk and beat my grandmother. My aunts and my grandmother told Martha about it. He died from uremia caused by drinking bad moonshine.

Moonshine can contain chemicals that injure or destroy kidneys, so uremia could be explained by bad moonshine. Uremia just means your blood is full of urine ingredients. If your kidneys quit working, you get uremia.

The pastor was right about the cause of death. He wasn’t a slanderer. He was just an enormous clod.

Melvin is a Mormon, and Norma joined up, but she was really an atheist. My dad was an atheist for nearly all of his life, and although he asked for salvation in September, I don’t think he really believes at this moment. I wonder if sociopathy is the main reason for their problems with God. Sociopaths think everything they do is right. How can you want or ask for forgiveness if you don’t believe you’ve sinned?

It sounds like my grandfather may have been a sociopath. I wonder. He was not stupid. He educated himself as well as he could, and he went into politics and provided well for his family. It’s not like he grew up in a shack with a chicken tied to the kitchen table. His father had a lot of property, and almost all of his mother’s children went to college. He knew better than to beat his wife.

I also learned that my dad’s remaining sister has Parkinson’s and dementia. She looks better than my dad, but then women dye their hair and wear wigs and makeup.

I’m very glad I talked to Martha. My only other sources of information on the family are my dad, who is demented and in denial, and my sister, who is a compulsive liar.

My dad thinks his father was a saintly man everyone admired. At least that’s what he pretends to believe.

Tonight I told my dad I had talked to Martha. He had no idea who she was. He took a minute to remember her dad, whom he has known since 1962, and he could not recall his last name.

I told him his remaining sister has Parkinson’s and dementia. My feeling is that he needs to hear things like this so he can come to grips with his mortality and secure his salvation. It may sound cruel, but my dad is not the kind of person who would feel alarm over a sister’s dementia. He didn’t start crying and talking about how he loved her. He wasn’t upset when Norma died. The only thing that really bothers him about his sister’s predicament is that it reminds him of his own situation.

I did not tell him I found out his dad died from drinking moonshine, and I didn’t say I knew he beat my grandmother. I may mention it one of these days, just to see if it gets a reaction. It may offend him, but I don’t care about that. When a truth is important, you say it, and you don’t accept responsibility for the way other people receive it. Besides, he would probably forget about it later the same day.

Sociopaths feel little or no remorse, and they apologize rarely, if at all. My feeling is that Norma and my sister are in the category of hard core sociopaths, and my dad is on a slightly lower level. Maybe if he hears a little bit about the bad things his dad and his sister did, it might jar something loose and make him consider his own sins.

As a Christian, I assume there must be a demonic component to sociopathy. Either it indicates demonic control, or demons are attracted to young sociopaths and set up house in them. Serial killers, the best-known sociopaths apart from building contractors and telemarketers, often say they felt foreign presences driving them.

Can you fix a sociopath by casting a demon out? I don’t know. I believe a person who enjoys being evil and approves of it will continue to do evil regardless of whether a demon is present.

A person who wrote a convincing account of a visit to hell said there were people there who, in spite of the flames and torture, still hated God and refused to accept responsibility; they were basically sociopaths. They could not connect their suffering with their moral failings.

They were not full of demons. In hell, demons aren’t invisible beings that live in you and influence you in sneaky ways. They’re visible there, because people in hell are spirits, just like demons. Spirits can see each other. In hell, demons live outside of you; they don’t hide inside you and whisper all day. Presumably, whatever personality you have in hell is 100% you.

Martha has four successful married kids and 13 grandchildren, so it looks like she overcame her background. She says Melvin has a bad attitude toward her family and complains that she praises them too much. He says he still puts her down. She thinks he has always resented her for not being male. I told her it looked like she had a fine legacy and did not need his approval.

Martha is a very nice person. She is also a serious Mormon. When everyone got together for Norma’s funeral, I overheard Martha talking about the Lamanites. This is the Morman term for American Indians. They think Indians are descended from the Hebrews, which is pretty incompatible with modern DNA data. You can’t believe the preposterous Lamanite story without being a very sincere Mormon.

It’s terrible that she is caught up in the cult. I prayed for her, but I don’t see how I can talk to her about Mormonism.

Melvin raised his daughter as a Mormon, but he doesn’t buy into it, himself. A long time ago, he and Norma went to their high priest or whatever Mormons call their clergymen, and they told him they didn’t believe. The high priest told them to stick around for the social life. It’s too bad the pitch that didn’t work on Melvin and Norma succeeded with Martha. One more thing they did to mess up her life.

Now I know my grandfather died from drinking bad moonshine, and I know the abuse problem in my family is even worse than I believed. I won’t whine about it. It’s good information to have.