Archive for August, 2016

Trolling Jesus

Friday, August 12th, 2016

This Will not End Well

I can’t seem to learn from my mistakes! Today I looked at The Drudge Report again.

I found a link to a story about Oklahoma Satanists. They are planning to rent out a hall and have a blasphemous ceremony called “the Consumption of Mary.” I looked it up, and the reference I found–probably Wikipedia–said it involves putting a statue of Mary inside a triangle, dancing around it, cracking the head off, and eating a pig heart which has been concealed inside it. Yes, adults do this.

I completely understand atheists. The world is messed up, so they think it’s impossible for a good God to exist. A thinking person could take that position, wrong though it is. But what’s with people who believe in God and choose to hate him? How is that supposed to pay off in the end?

Why do they hate Christians so much? Is it because we run so many charities and fund so many hospitals? Is it because we believe in forgiveness and love? What, exactly, are we doing that gets under their skins?

When you work hard on creating an extremely offensive ceremony like the Consumption of Mary, you clearly have cruelty issues. You’re not looking for a peaceful way to express your views. You’re looking to torment people you dislike. You know there are emotional Christians out there who will lose their minds over your actions, and you delight in making them suffer.

A lady named Mary K. Baxter wrote a fascinating book in which she claimed she had been given a tour of hell. She said there were people there who were extremely disappointed in Satan. Maybe I shouldn’t put it so flippantly. She said there were people there who, during their lives, seriously thought Satan could defeat God, and that Satan would reward them with kingdoms of their own. They arrived in hell and were shocked to learn that Satan doesn’t keep his promises.

Is that the mindset of the unfortunate Satanists in Oklahoma? Is Satan their crooked retirement counselor?

If you believe Satan is real, you probably believe a lot of what the Bible says about him. The Bible says he’s a liar, and it also says God defeats him effortlessly, whenever he wants. How could you put your faith in a loser like that?

I am more disturbed by what’s happening in the hearts of the Satanists than by the ceremony itself. Mary is in paradise, and despite what some Catholic drivers may believe, she is not in a statue. You can’t put a pig heart in her. You can’t trap her in “the Triangle of Solomon.” I’m not worried about Mary, nor am I worried about the harm the ceremony will do to Christians (i.e. none).

Some people get very upset by sacrilegious acts directed toward objects. It doesn’t rattle me that much. If you want to burn Bibles or pee on crosses, I will be offended, but I will go on with my life. I wouldn’t do anything if I saw a demonstrator burning a statue of Christ. Statues and Bibles are things; viewing them as more than that is a gateway to idolatry. Muslims think the Koran IS God, and there are many, many Muslims who would kill anyone who harmed a copy. That’s not me. As long as you pay for them, burn all the Bibles you want. You’re supporting Christian publishers.

The rot in the hearts of Satanists is the real problem. They love evil and lies so much, these things are walls and strongholds to them. A person who doesn’t live in a stronghold of deception can be reached with reason and love. Once the walls go up, only supernatural warfare can bring them down, and most of the time, even that won’t work.

Here’s something else that disturbs me: Satanists use supernatural tools to fight Christians, and we fight back by carrying signs and making Internet comments. Occultists have way more faith than we do. They rely less on carnal tools. They know curses and prayers to fallen spirits work. We think relying on prayer is lazy or unrealistic; we actually criticize Christians who pray instead of “doing something.”

We should be praying and repenting all day. That would fix the problem. I don’t think those “Jesus rules” signs are going to help much.

Over the last day I’ve been thinking about myself and America a lot. I’ve noticed that the more I’ve turned to God, the more problems have fallen away from me. Even silly things, like the strange little flies that used to breed in my shower. I couldn’t get rid of them; nothing worked. They buzzed around me for years, and then one day I realized I hadn’t seen them in a very long time.

Defying God causes problems in life. They won’t be obvious to people who are spiritually blind, but they do pop up. Defying God gives your enemies power. They can go before God and get permission to defeat and abuse you. Defiance will make you sink lower and lower, and you will start to find that people and beings you used to defeat easily walk all over you.

This is what’s happening to America. Satanists aren’t using public buildings to hold ceremonies because we don’t wave signs or because our views on tolerance have “evolved.” They’re doing it because our defiance gave them power. They have God’s permission to do it.

It’s not just Satanists. It’s jihadis, illegal aliens, black racists, gays, enraged feminists, socialists, and every other type of confused, spirit-infested individual.

I love being raised up past my problems. It’s terrific. I want more of it. But it seems like America sinks while I rise. If that has to be true, then I’m fine with it. I can’t carry people with me, and there is no way I’m going to join them in defeat. But I do wish it weren’t happening.

We have a president who was raised by communists, and one of his best friends is a terrorist who admits he’s guilty. A person like that shouldn’t be able to get a job as a TSA agent, let alone as chief executive. We knew what he was, and we chose him over a war hero and a competent governor. People like Obama could not get traction in the past. God slapped them down. God doesn’t do that as much as he used to. The ground underneath us has changed, because we think we are the source of our own blessings.

The people I used to natter and grumble with in the conservative Blogosphere are chasing their tails. For the most part, they’re just making things worse. They think we need this carnal solution or that carnal solution. It won’t help. When God is against you, there is no rock big enough for you to hide under. He is the worst enemy you can possibly have. There is absolutely no way to stop him.

Inside God, there is complete protection and peace. Outside of him, everything is margarine and saccharine. Everything that appears good is poisonous.

I’m getting used to the stories about sacrilege and blasphemy. Obsessing on problems you can’t change is a curse. I just wish people would turn around before it’s too late. I know most of them won’t. It’s a certainty.

Whoever you are, and whatever you’ve done, the door is open to you. The sooner you apply, the better off you will be.

Good Morning, Heaving Pukes

Thursday, August 11th, 2016

I Miss Newspapers

I really have to quit checking the news as soon as I wake up.

Today I awoke and checked Drudge. I found a link to a story containing another link to a 2015 Milo Yiannopoulous story (I don’t even care if I spelled that right) about the destruction of the Nick Denton online empire. I went through a typical daisy chain of links, from one story to the next. By the time it was over, I felt sick to my stomach.

I’m not one of those people who say they feel sick to their stomachs when they really don’t. I mean I felt physical nausea.

Nick Denton created a site called Fleshbot. It was a porn site. I have certainly looked at porn, but I don’t know much about Fleshbot, except that it was very successful. Porn dealers are like drug dealers; their audiences can’t control themselves, so they keep showing up. It’s not hard to get rich selling something people can’t turn down.

Denton went on to create a bunch of oddly named sites that did well: Gizmodo, Gawker, Jezebel, Jalopnik, and Wonkette (possibly the most famous fake blog in history) are among them.

I’m not positive Fleshbot came first. You can check.

Anyway, the Denton conglomerate was (and is) a very sleazy operation. It exudes slime.

As everyone knows, Hulk Hogan killed the Nick Denton cancer. Hogan was videotaped committing adultery, and Gawker either published or linked to the video. Gay billionaire Peter Thiel, who had been outed by Denton, backed a lawsuit. Hogan won, and Denton was handed a fatal multimillion-dollar judgment, which is being enforced.

I’m going to check this time…I was right…YIANNOPOULOS made a list of people who should also sue Denton. It’s quite impressive.

Denton’s crew published a story about a man named Geithner–not a public figure, according to…Mr. Y….and suggested he hired a gay prostitute. They accused actor James Franco of raping a man. They helped leak a Quentin Tarantino script before the movie was produced. They published a lot of nude celebrity photos obtained from criminals. They published voyeur photos of the genitals of male athletes, without the consent of the athletes. Imagine how their wives and kids must feel.

The Internet tends to make people feel invincible, and it brings out their cruelty and arrogance. Denton’s lackeys developed a pattern of tormenting people online, for amusement as well as money, and as far as I know, the Denton apparatus has never expressed significant regret or a serious inclination to examine itself and make corrections.

The Yiannopoulos story appeared on the Breitbart site (Breitbart, himself, was no paragon of dignity or kindness), and the Breitbart site contains links to disturbing social media posts. It’s also full of poisonous comments from people on both sides of the political spectrum. I kept clicking, and I ended up reading a Slate story which was so mean-spirited I decided it should be my final destination for the morning.

The Slate article’s title: “The Heaving Pukes Who Write Gawker and Wonkette.”

This is public discourse in 2016. Slate is not a Blogspot site written by a tipsy anonymous accountant who likes to knock a few back after a ten-hour workday. It’s not a tabloid site. It’s the 2016 equivalent of a 1985 magazine you might have found in supermarkets.

“Heaving Pukes.”

The amazing conclusion I drew from my few minutes of websurfing was that I had underestimated the vileness of the Internet.

That makes sense, when I think about it. The godless leftist side of the Internet, which makes up maybe 80% of the bandwidth these days, is much more vile than the rest of the web. I have never been inclined to spend time on leftist sites. Even when I was behaving badly myself, I was put off by the astounding obscenity and cruelty of the leftist Internet. That means I didn’t get a representative sample of the Internet’s content. As bad as my experience was, it was filtered.

Many people have spent more time reading godless garbage than I have, and a lot of them don’t mind it. They don’t mind when a lesbian crazy threatens to sexually mutilate a conservative writer with her teeth. It doesn’t bother them when someone threatens to have sex with another person’s dead skull. Cruelty and filth bring them pleasure. They titter and smirk.

That’s what America is good at these days; tittering and smirking. We are losing our manufacturing capacity, but we have the Internet, The Family Guy, South Park, Deadpool, and The Hangover.

Man, this place is sick. And of course, I used to contribute to the sickness. I sowed; now I’m reaping.

People need to step back and think about what they’re making of themselves. This is not going to end well. And even if there were no lawsuits or other worldly repercussions to think about, what about the inward cost? What about the penalty of simply being the kind of person who swims gladly in a world of vomit?

To Shakespeare, the worst price a villain paid was to be a villain. People don’t understand that concept. Do you really want to wake up at the age of 60, hung over, in a bed that smells like cigarette ashes, with no real friends and nothing to show for yourself except herpes and a monument built from congealed bile? That’s the future for Internet denizens who love hate.

Unless you’re mentally ill–maybe even then–you can’t hate other people habitually without coming to hate yourself. Hate is a habit that operates without your conscious consent, and when you don’t give it a target, it will find one for itself. When you’re not ideating about cruelty to others, you will find yourself inwardly contemning and ridiculing the creature you have made of yourself.

You will be right.

America is like a hate slingshot. With the help of the Internet, we have been building up hate energy. We have been embracing, approving, and feeding our cruelty. We have outed ourselves as cruel, the way gays out themselves as gay, and like gays, we’re proud of what we are. We are pulling the slingshot pouch back. One day we’re going to release it without the buffers of keyboards and monitors. We will act directly, with our hands and feet, not just our words. We are being turned into the kind of people who can put other people in gulags and death camps.

Where do you turn when the world rains burning sulfur? Earth didn’t come with an escape pod. There is no natural shelter. When America turns into a killing field, there will be no other America to flee to. This was the last refuge. You better give yourself to God and find his protection while you still can. You’re not going to develop that kind of relationship with him overnight. It’s time to get started. It may be too late to get everything you need.

I feel like turning the Internet off and going to live in a hole, but the hate culture has penetrated TV and daily life, so it wouldn’t protect me completely. Increasingly, the world is an extension of the Internet. What do you see when you turn on the news now? Tweets, Facebook posts, and Internet videos. You might as well plug into the Matrix and stop eating solid food.

America is not going to change for the better, but you are not America. You can take measures that will affect yourself and your family. I plan to keep moving forward. What’s behind me is not worth the trouble of turning around.

My God is Better Than Yours

Wednesday, August 10th, 2016

You Can Have Zeus

I am taking the day off.

Monday and Tuesday were not pleasant at all. I am still working on getting my dad’s business straight, and I am also taking care of my own loose ends. Today I just want to level off and relax.

I took my problems to God this morning, and as always, he was helpful. He reminded me that voices of worry and stress don’t come from him. They are lies. My father above, who is in control, has told me things are going to be fine, and he keeps living up to his word. There is no point in allowing lies from other sources to rattle me.

When I was younger, I worried about bad things happening to me, and sometimes they happened. Usually I was wrong, but I had some serious failures. Life isn’t like that any more. Things work out. My problem isn’t problems; my problem is doing a poor job of receiving the peace that comes from knowing my problems are fixed.

Writing that, I feel like FDR. He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He wasn’t really correct, though, as a lot of World War Two’s victims could tell you if they were alive. He was just trying to make people feel better. What I’m saying is true, because I have someone who backs it up.

I’m going to be fine. I’m not going to be poor. Peace and success will increase. I will get more and more inner healing. My character will improve. God’s help will flow more freely. I will feel better.

God makes it happen, not just because I say he does, but because he says he does, and because I am submitting to him instead of demanding favors while living in rebellion.

It took me many years to build the stronghold of bad habits and wrong thinking. It’s not taking nearly that long to tear it down and build God’s stronghold in its place. Of course, this time, someone stronger is doing most of the work for me.

Once again, I have to say I’m glad I’m not involved in the political demolition derby any more. It was a source of frustration and anger.

I used to love being a self-appointed conservative Internet avenger, linking to other blogs, writing vitriolic essays, and posting silly memes. It’s nice to be out of it. It’s nice to realize that fixing myself is more important and productive than fixing the country. It’s better to focus on the roots than the leaves.

America is dying. I suppose it’s good that there are carnal people out there making themselves miserable, trying to slow down the disease’s progression. Thank God I’m not one of them.

I’ve finally received some control over my participation in Internet squabbles. I haven’t been writing much political stuff here, but I still felt an irresistible urge to comment on news stories. This week I’ve been deleting my comments. That means the deluded and vicious people I argued with will “win.” That’s okay. Should I even have to tell myself that? Sane, healthy people don’t lie awake at night thinking the world will end if they give up a flame battle attached to a story on The Washington Post’s website.

The devil is a square dance caller, and he pairs people up on the Internet so they can dance for him. Like most square dancers, they go in circles. I don’t want to do-si-do with Amanda Marcotte, Andrew Sullivan, or Ann Coulter’s slavish fans. Those people are trapped in a sick fantasy world where nothing improves. It’s a video game, and Satan keeps resetting it.

I have accepted the fact that I have to support Donald Trump. After McCain and Romney, Trump is an easy pill to swallow. The alternative is unthinkable. It’s amazing that America has sunk to the point where we are seriously considering making Hillary Clinton the commander-in-chief. Who’s next? Rod Blagojevich? Al Sharpton? Charles Manson?

If I were still involved in political blogging, I’d probably create a T-shirt with Hillary’s photo on it and big text reading “TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT.”

Hillary may lose, but even if she does, sooner or later we are going to be ruled by extremely slimy, disagreeable leftists. We are going to be humiliated the same way the Russians and Cubans were. Trashy individuals who couldn’t hold jobs at McDonald’s will show up at our homes with guns to tell us our property belongs to the people. They will sit in our offices at our former businesses, running them into the ground. People who were complete losers in a fair capitalist system will have titles and goons, and we will bend the knee to them, just as Jews bent the knee to Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, and Nazis.

I’ll be very grateful if Trump buys us a four-year delay; eight years would be an unexpected bonanza.

I don’t think Trump will be as bad as his opponents predict. When the responsibility of the office hits him in the face, he will surely take off his clown shoes and work to make his administration a success.

I never communicate with conservative bloggers. I mean, not one. I never look at their blogs. The last one I looked at was The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler. I used to love that blog. Last time I looked at it, I found it disturbing. I don’t want to share that kind of impotent fury any more.

In other news, the savage blow I took from The Aeneid still has me “bug-winding,” as people in Kentucky used to say. We don’t hear that expression enough. “Get off my porch, or I’ll knock you bug-winding.” I was something like 40% into Mackail’s horrific translation when I realized I was reading the wrong book. I got the Mandelbaum translation, and it was so much better, I decided it was best to start over. I think I’m on page 70-something out of 400.

Aeneas and Ulysses had to endure long, painful journeys filled with bloodshed and frustration. At times they felt they would never get where they were going. I can totally relate. I believe I’ve been working on this one-week reading assignment for a month. Or maybe it just seems like a month.

I’m still disgusted by the Greeks. I know Virgil was a Roman, but I think he captured the Greeks as well as Homer and the other Greek writers did. The Greeks were gung-ho about things like rape, enslavement, pillage, arson, and murder. They loved invading other people’s countries and destroying them. They were horrible people. But they loved calling each other stupid things like “pious” and “guiltless.”

What kind of religion calls you pious and guiltless while you’re running around murdering everyone you see?

The weird thing about the Greeks in the classics is that they moan and whine about the suffering that comes from war, while they’re in the midst of initiating or prolonging it. They’re just like the Crips and the Bloods. They want pity and admiration for self-inflicted misery.

The Olympics are in session right now; it’s a good time to comment on the Greeks. Like Olympic athletes, the Greeks were obsessed with things that have no real importance; things that do not last. If you criticize the Olympics, people treat you like you kicked a puppy, but the whole thing is a misguided festival full of neurotics and self-worshipers, and at night, it’s an orgy.

I don’t really care who runs a hundred meters the fastest. I can’t believe anyone can make a living doing that. I can’t believe people will make you rich for pole vaulting or lifting a barbell.

How can any woman be proud she spent six hours a day for twelve years, learning how to hop around on a balance beam? Think of the things she could have done with that time. She could have learned four languages. She could have learned to play and compose music. She could have had a social life.

What do you do at age 25, when your world-class gift no longer exists? Hello, public speaking! I guess. “Here’s a motivational story about something unimportant I did not nearly as well as today’s athletes, back before I gained sixty pounds…”

Here’s an interesting thing the Olympics and the games in the Greek classics have in common: they produced a lot of losers and very few winners. People love to say it’s a great honor to represent your country in the Olympics, and that no one really minds losing. That’s not very credible. No one who doesn’t mind losing has the temperament to exchange childhood and a normal hormonal profile for a chance at some plated medals. Top athletes can’t stand to lose. It haunts them.

When a huge number of people engage in an activity and nearly all of them emerge as dejected losers, it seems to me that it’s an indication that it’s not a good investment of time. Imagine what it would be like if you could feel all the heartbreak inside the Olympic athletes as they participate in the cruel closing ceremony.

P.S.: doping. Everyone since about 1965 gets an asterisk.

We took our unfortunate love of sports from the Greeks. I’m glad we’re not quite as vain and shallow in all areas of life.

I don’t care all that much what happens to Aeneas. He’s a miserable, violent, greedy, vain person. Reading about conflicts between the ancient warriors is like watching a boxing match between John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy. None of them deserve to win. A good ending to their stories would be to see their slaves revolt and put them in prison.

Ovid is next. The book I ordered is here. I took a look, and it doesn’t look too bad. Virgil is not a hard act to follow, though. After the tale of blameless Aeneas, Naomi Wolf would seem like a vacation.

I still dread Cervantes.

Nation of Hellraisers

Monday, August 8th, 2016

You Become What You Love

Someone directed me to an article about Popes Benedict and Francis. I looked it over. Popes are not really within my areas of interest. I see them as distractions, outside the will of God.

It reminded me of one of the major problems with denominations that exalt human beings: they discourage the rest of us from connecting with God directly.

God never wanted us to have popes and special people called “saints.” That’s not how the kingdom of heaven works. It’s not a system with lots of levels, like the military. In God’s kingdom, there is God, and then down one level, there is you. That’s how it’s supposed to work. The Bible calls us his children, not his grandchildren.

In the Bible, the Greek word translated “saint” just means “person who belongs to God.” It doesn’t mean you can pull rabbits out of a hat or turn water into Pepsi.

I used to go to Trinity Church in Miami, and then I attended a place called New Dawn. Both were screwed up. They exalted preachers above everyone else. They gave people the ideas that preachers were closer to God than they were, and that this was okay. It’s not okay. It’s not even a little bit okay.

Many preachers want to be worshiped. They want to be little gods to their flocks. They have teams of people who screen them from the masses. They keep their distance, except when they pop out to act for the cameras and convince people to send money or give them obedience.

At the churches I went to, “submission to authority” was the excuse. A centurion told Jesus he was a man under authority, so somehow, preachers turned that into a basis for Kommandant status. Preachers turn themselves into emperors. Criticize the emperor, and he tells the flock to ostracize you. He says God will curse you, although the real curse is being under a little man with delusions of grandeur. He stands in front of the people and says, “Touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm,” with no understanding of the word “anointed.”

The big cheese at Trinity had secret meetings about me when I left. When someone reported my Facebook account and got it canceled, the pastor at New Dawn put up a status that said, “God don’t like ugly.” I am completely serious. These characters questioned other people about me behind my back, as if merely knowing me were treason.

One preacher approached a friend of mine in the church parking lot and started yelling at him about me, waving his fingers in his face. My friend threatened to defend himself with a beating. Someone who was afraid the cops would get involved called me about it and asked if I could help.

When Moses was in charge of the Hebrews, some men prophesied without informing him first. Joshua, fancying himself the hall monitor of the Hebrew people, ran to Moses to tattle. Here’s the story, from Numbers 11:

But two men had remained in the camp: the name of one was Eldad, and the name of the other Medad. And the Spirit rested upon them. Now they were among those listed, but who had not gone out to the tabernacle; yet they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and told Moses, and said, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”

So Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, one of his choice men, answered and said, “Moses my lord, forbid them!”

Then Moses said to him, “Are you zealous for my sake? Oh, that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!”

Now we know he was prophesying about the baptism with the Holy Spirit, which most Christians will never receive. They don’t ask for it, or they think they already have it.

Look what Moses said. “Is your zeal for me, or for God?” That says it all.

Here is what Paul said about worshiping preachers:

Now I say this, that each of you says, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Apollos,” or “I am of Cephas,” or “I am of Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, lest anyone should say that I had baptized in my own name.

When a church tells you popes, “saints,” or priests have something you can’t have, they lie to you and keep you defeated. They put you to sleep so you don’t reach your potential. They convince you it’s okay to do as you please all week, as long as you show up on Sunday, like a pair of dirty underwear headed for the washing machine. You don’t have to be good; the priests do that for you.

Every one of us is supposed to be dedicated to God, and every one of us is supposed to have victory in life.

If Popes were truly anointed, they wouldn’t be wrong all the time, and Francis definitely wouldn’t be a leftist. A leftist Christian is like a Nazi Jew. The left has always tried to kill us off and blot out God’s name. The Soviets used to teach kids to pray to Stalin.

As for the “saints,” they’re just replacements for the pantheist “gods.” “You don’t want to pray to Zeus any more? Fine. Now you can pray to St. Francis. Anyone but Jehovah.”

Any time you worship anyone or anything other than the Lord, you are worshiping Satan. That’s why Jesus is so intolerant. Anyone you pray to is an object of worship. The “saints” don’t answer prayers. If you pray to a saint and get an answer, it came from someone else.

Because I’ve been sitting around reading books by Greeks and Romans, I now realize pantheism is a bigger problem than I thought it was. I thought the Greeks and Romans had one set of “gods,” and the Egyptians and other heathens had different ones. That’s not true. The Greek pantheon came from Egypt. The names were different, but the basic pantheon was fundamentally the same. The Egyptians had temples dedicated to Greek spirits. The spirits rebellious Jews worshiped were the same spirits.

I haven’t checked, but I’ll bet the spirits Hindus worship are connected to Greek pantheism.

It appears that it’s wrong to think that there are lots of different pantheist religions. For the most part, it’s one religion with different names.

Rejection of pantheism has always been considered bigoted and extreme. The devil doesn’t mind if you worship Zeus, Krishna, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Elvis, and Gitche Manitou. You can even worship Jesus right along with them; lots of idolaters claim to revere Jesus. What Satan hates is the exclusion of the defeated fake gods. If you worship the Jewish God alone, you are a troublemaker.

The devil has millions of people worshiping Mary. Pagans conflate her with Venus. She must be appalled.

Anyway, I do not think the pope is a helpful influence. And that was probably three times as true during the years when there were three rival popes. If you can’t know God personally, and you have to rely on a man in Italy to tell you about him, you must be doing something wrong.

I now see the world as a porous, hollow sphere filled with filth. That may not be physically correct, but it’s spiritually right. Hell is beneath us. Our job is to keep it there, and to bring the ways of heaven down to earth. Instead, we pull hell up to the surface. It soaks through, as though the earth were a ball of cloth surrounding a lump of bloody pus. We are pulling it to the surface, like John D. Rockefeller pumping oil. Almost literally, we are raising hell.

We rejected God, so now we are becoming like the inhabitants of hell; we are striving to emulate the losers of the universe. We dress like convicts, who are the biggest losers in society. We love their shaved heads, chin beards, and tattoos. Our speech is so filthy it’s almost nauseating. We are in love with sexual perversion. We love pride and cruelty. We’re supposed to make God our father and come to resemble him, but the way things stand, Satan is our father, and we grow more like him every day.

We lower ourselves toward hell by following spirits. The only way to lift ourselves up is to follow the Spirit of God. We’re not interested. God isn’t cool.

Churches make it worse by teaching us we’re not God’s children. We’re more like his fans, sitting in the back row of the upper deck of a stadium, as far from him as a U2 fan is from Bono. We don’t expect him to go home with us.

Things are going to get worse. Look after yourself. The sooner you change your mind, the more you will accomplish during your remaining time.

One Bad Turn Deserves Another

Sunday, August 7th, 2016

Parts is not Parts

The lathe is still driving me nuts. Actually, I think Fusion 360 is the culprit.

I took a 7×14 mini-lathe and turned it into a CNC machine. It should be possible to cut parts to within maybe three thousandths of spec on this thing. So far, that has not worked out.

I had problems adjusting the steps-per-inch figures on the screws. I more or less got past that. Then I had problems with backlash compensation. Now the screws work reasonably well, but I am having lots of trouble turning ideas into parts. CAD and CAM are holding me back.

If I had a mill, I’d be sitting pretty. There a bazillion CNC mill jockeys out there, and the people who make software bend over backward to help them. I would have lots of resources to call on. Because I have a lathe, everyone is pretty much hoping I will go away and die.

Perhaps I exaggerate.

Anyway, as I’ve said before, CNC lathes are not that common, and it’s hard to get help.

I can draw stuff in Fusion 360 CAD. It’s a non-intuitive, somewhat annoying program, but as CAD goes, it’s a breeze. I can also create tool paths and G code using Fusion 360 CAM. What I can’t do is get the x-axis to work right.

No matter what I do, the CAM program decides to move all the x stuff toward me by about a third of an inch. Here’s the result: if I design a cylinder 1″ in diameter, and I try to make it from a 1.25″ piece of stock, the cutting tool won’t even touch it. It will move back and forth maybe 1.30″ from the lathe’s axis, doing nothing.

Here’s something weirder: the x issue doesn’t pop up when I’m facing. The word “facing” refers to putting a flat surface on the right end of a part. To face a part, you have to push the tool halfway across it. If you’re facing inward, as I am, you have to start at the outside and push the tool all the way to the center. My lathe does that, and it’s an x-axis process. When it tries to reduce the diameter of a part–also an x thing–it misses the part completely.

The x-axis works for some things, and it’s useless for others.

People are telling me it’s because I have Mach3 set up for radius measurements and Fusion 360 set up for diameter measurements, but that’s wrong, because compensating for that when I start the lathe doesn’t help, and anyway, it wouldn’t explain why facing works perfectly.

I accomplished quite a bit today, even though I’m still not able to make Fusion 360 turn out parts. I learned a lot, and I managed to enter specs for my cutting tool into the program. One measurement is off by a few degrees, but it looks like it’s the best I can do in this program, and it will probably never make a difference, since the very tip of the tool is the only thing that touches the work. Turning the tool insert 3 degrees in the xy-plane amounts to nearly nothing.

I will keep poking people until they give me answers. If necessary, I will just annoy them until they do the work themselves to make me go away.

The big lesson, which is really being driven home now, is that smart people do not build CNC lathes. You buy a commercial CNC lathe, you buy a mill, or you build a mill. Listen and avoid my pain.

If You Want Green Leaves, Feed the Roots

Saturday, August 6th, 2016

Rule Your House

I’m having the strangest morning. I feel wonderful.

I always feel good in the morning, but not like this. When I say I always feel good, I mean I always feel good physically, and I mean I don’t hate getting out of bed the way I did for the first few decades of my life. I don’t mean I always feel good inside. I’ve felt considerable stress lately. I had to fix it with prayer before I got started with the day. Today I felt stressed when I woke up, but now I feel like I just had a massage.

False doctrine is always a problem. Men who don’t know God make things up, usually because they love money, glory, and power. As a result, Orthodox Jews believe in reincarnation, and Catholics think priests shouldn’t marry. Charismatics believe God will give them a hundred dollars for every ten dollars they give Kenneth Copeland. Our religious authorities have made up a lot of poisonous doctrine, and we suffer because of it.

Testimony is better. If a truthful person testifies, we know that what he says happened actually happened. Testimony isn’t perfect, because people are often deceived by evil spirits and miracles performed by the devil; the Mormon church may have gotten its start through the appearance of a lying spirit. A person can give truthful testimony that misleads people. But when testimony is truthful, and it lines up with scripture and the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, it can’t be beat.

You can’t testify about something you didn’t witness. Nearly all of the world’s religious leaders haven’t witnessed anything. They repeat hearsay or deliberate lies. They give us strategies that don’t work. Instead of calling us up to walk on the water, they tie millstones around our necks. When we take their advice and fail, we are likely to give up on God altogether.

Why did I suddenly veer off into the area of false doctrine? Because I believe I feel good today because I gave up a cherished belief of Christians everywhere.

We believe that a human being has three parts: flesh, mind (or soul), and spirit. I accept that. Some churches teach that you can command your flesh or your mind, in the name of Jesus. I accept that, because it works pretty well. Many churches teach that the spirit of a saved person is perfect and doesn’t need any improvement. They teach that it’s supposed to be exalted above the flesh and body, with no need for input from anyone but God. That, I do not accept.

The Bible tells us the spirit of a prophet is subject to the prophet, meaning it has to obey him. On the cross, the mind of Jesus sent his spirit to the Father. In English, the verse says, “I commend my spirit.” In Greek, it means something like, “I place my spirit beside you.” It comes from Psalm 31, and the Hebrew word used there appears to mean something like “commit” or “entrust.” He was sending his spirit to the Father. His mind had that authority.

A person who prays in tongues has the power to turn it on and off at will.

It sure looks like our spirits have to listen to us, but if preachers tell us our spirits are perfect, and that they’re in charge, we are not likely to take authority and get things done.

Today I started commanding my spirit to do this and that, and to stop doing other things. I can’t tell you how much better I feel.

I live in Miami, which is full of rude people, and I spend time on the Internet, which makes Miami look like a Care Bears picnic. I am constantly subjected to provocation. I don’t want anger in my life, and I don’t want to live with the sensation that I am always balled up in a defensive stance. I developed the habit of commanding my flesh and my mind not to be angry. I commanded them in other areas. It works, but the effect is not as powerful as it could be. I think that’s because I wasn’t going far enough upstream, to where the problem really starts.

I used to blame other people for my anger, and it was not a hard thing to rationalize. People are a mess. Under the polite surface, there’s always a food fight going on. People say and do nasty things all the time. Eventually, I learned that I could not blame other people. Anger is a choice, and it becomes a habit. If I blame other people, I cede power over my heart to them. That’s a bad idea. I have a responsibility to be an authority over myself. Why would an intelligent person give control of his heart to someone who is against him?

I know people who love talking about “righteous anger,” as if it’s okay to be enraged all the time. I don’t know if anyone is immune to anger, and I doubt such people exist, because we know God gets angry. All the same, it seems obvious that if anger has to exist, it should be brief, and it should serve a purpose. It should not be in control. If you pet it and feed it and shelter it, it sits inside you and eats you alive while the people you’re mad at enjoy life, oblivious.

This morning I felt unwanted anger and stress, and I commanded my spirit to knock it off. I commanded it to forgive and to submit to the Holy Spirit. I did this along with the other spiritual warfare strategies I use every day.

Commanding your mind and your flesh produces results, but it’s different when you command your spirit. It works better. That shouldn’t be a suprise. Jesus said the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. I think the spirit is quicker to obey.

When I was living in Israel, my kibbutz gave the volunteers a bus tour. I’ve written about this before. We went to the northern end of the country and visited the Banias, Mt. Hermon, and the nature preserve at Tel Dan. We went by the Sea of Galilee. The Banias, Mt. Hermon, and Tel Dan contain origins of the Jordan River.

Pure snow falls on Mt. Hermon, and it melts and goes into springs that contribute to the Jordan. The Banias is an old heathen shrine (named for Pan) at the base of the mountain. Its Latin name is Caesarea Philippi. There used to be a bubbling spring there, and pagans threw sacrifices into it, polluting the Jordan for the rest of its length.

Mt. Hermon (“Baal Hermon,” or “Lord of the Curse”) is where rebellious angels came down when they descended to earth and polluted mankind’s genes by fornicating with women. “Baal Hermon” is said to be the name of a false deity that was worshiped under the mountain.

The Sea of Galilee (farther down the Jordan) represents the earth, and the fish are people. The waters are the voices of men and spirits. The pollution of the Jordan is the spiritual pollution that bathes mankind.

When you command your spirit, it’s as if you’re going to the Jordan’s source and cutting off the unclean sacrifices.

I know that sounds strange, but God designed Israel to confirm his word.

Human iniquity starts in the spirit. If you don’t address it until it’s in your mind and flesh, you’re just stopping up a leak with chewing gum. What you want is to cut off the flow at the source. If your spirit is with you, then you don’t have to rely on your weaker parts to fix your problems.

The spirit is like a man in a marriage. It should be the head, not the tail. If a husband and father is screwed up, there isn’t much hope for the family. If he’s doing what he should be doing, the family will usually prosper. You have to get your spirit to wake up and move. That’s what I take away from this. You have to give your spirit feedback and call on it to live up to its obligations.

I don’t care if people think I’m crazy; that’s par for the course. The world will be against me no matter what I do or say, so I might as well be truthful.

Right now I can read the news without having to battle anger. I can think about my obligations without anxiety. I can consider the defeated state of the world without feeling despair. I want to hold onto this.

It’s nice to resist your counterproductive emotions, habits, and opinions, but it’s better to be rid of them.

Man-created doctrine tells us resisting temptation is the best thing we can do. Forcing ourselves to obey God, using willpower, makes us righteous. That’s not true. It’s better to have your heart changed so you don’t want to do evil. This is what God is talking about when he says he will write his law on our hearts.

Who would you rather have live in your spare room? A repentant pedophile who fights temptation every day, or a former pedophile who no longer has any interest in children? Which person would you say is “better”?

Before the crucifixion and Pentecost, we didn’t have much ability to change our hearts. We could choose to obey, but we couldn’t rewire ourselves. Now we can hack our character. That’s a much bigger blessing than a set of laws.

The things God is trying to give us are exponentially better than the worldly garbage we pursue every day. They are worth giving up ambition, pride, and pleasing the flesh. Earthly pleasures are like thin scabs on festering wounds. The Holy Spirit cleans the wound out and eliminates it. We are too deceived to realize this.

If you’re struggling with yourself, consider what I’m saying. No one expects you to carry everything by yourself.

Tony Stark is an Amateur

Friday, August 5th, 2016

Behold my Creation

Yesterday was a big day, tool-wise. I used CAD to design a part, and I managed to make my CNC lathe cut something using the design.

Notice I did not say I got a proper part; just that I got the lathe to use the design I made.

Here is the design; I’m not sure why I used a cell phone instead of a screen grab, but anyway:

08 05 16 first CNC design attempted on lathe in Delrin - fusion 360 screen web

That’s a tool handle. I don’t need a tool handle, but I figured it was the sort of thing I might want to make in the future, so I designed one.

Here is the part I actually cut:

08 05 16 first CNC design attempted on lathe in Delrin - actual part web

As you can see, it’s a wee bit off.

Here is how CNC works, at least in my mind. You draw a part in a CAD program. You open the file in a CAM (computer-aided manufacturing) program, and it tells the computer how to write a Gcode file that goes to your controller. The controller–in my case a board–tells the machine motors what to do.

Essentially, the CAM program turns a picture into a path a tool follows as it cuts.

Last night, I learned that it gets even more annoying. I use Fusion 360, Autodesk’s free CAD/CAM program. In Fusion 360, you have to create something called a “setup” before you make your Gcode, and you also have to come up with a file called a “post processor.” I found this definition online: “The software that converts CL-file CAD/CAM data to specific machine tool commands is called a Post Processor.>

I don’t know what “CL” means, but I’ll let that pass.

The post processor communicates with the machine control program, which is the software that tells the control hardware what to do.

I guess this is not easy to follow. I’ll make a list.

1. CAD file
2. Setup
3. Post processor
4. CAM program ==> Gcode file
5. Control program
6. Controller
7. Motor amplifier
8. Machine motors

I think that’s about right.

Numbers 6 and 7 are pieces of hardware. My controller is a KFlop board, and my amplifier is a KStep board. The amplifier takes control signals from the controller and turns them into current that drives the motors.

LinuxCNC and Mach3 are control programs.

It’s a mess, isn’t it?

Fusion 360, like just about everything else in the CNC world, does not like lathes. At least it doesn’t like hobby lathes put together in garages. As a result, the creators made no effort–none–to make it work with Mach3’s turning software. That means it lacks a Mach3 lathe post processor file. I had to go dig one up. Other people had the same problem, predictably, so they came up with files that seemed to work. “Seemed.”

Installing a new post processor file in Fusion 360 is not fun. The program hides the location of its processor files. The trick is to open an existing file in Fusion 360’s editor, and it will display the path to all of the post processor files. Then you can move your file to that folder manually. Which I did.

There were problems.

First of all, the setup utility in Fusion 360 is not easy to work with. You have to set it for turning, and then you have to describe the uncut stock to it. You have to program a coordinate system into it, so it doesn’t run backward. You have to describe the tool you’re using. All the while, Fusion 360 will try to reset things after you’ve set them yourself. I have to get some help with that.

It uses language I don’t understand. I know about things like clearance and depth of cut, but Fusion 360 gets into “overlap” and “smoothing” and so on. It defines terms for you…sometimes. The way you bring up the definitions is to hover over stuff you don’t understand. If you’re lucky, an explanatory popup appears. But sometimes you’re not lucky.

I did the best I could, and I sent the Gcode to Mach3. I had three major issues.

First, the x-coordinates don’t work. I kept telling the machinery where the tip of the lathe was supposed to start, but it kept deciding the +x side of the work was an inch closer to me than it really was. This meant that if I ran the program on a 3/4″ piece of Delrin, it missed the work entirely.

I wanted to see something happen, even if it was wrong, so I lied to the machine about the x location, and my lying wild guess was about 0.100″ off. As a result, the part is a lot skinnier than it should be. Not a catastrophe. I’m happy it exists at all.

Second, the cuts are way too deep. In Delrin, which is plastic, a mini-lathe can do a 0.100″ cut without crashing. Try that in steel. No way.

Third, the Gcode crashed my controller. I think it died when it hit a G0 command. I looked G0 up, and all I found was “rapid positioning.” Whatever it means, the lathe stopped moving, and the control board locked up and had to be restarted. The part was not finished.

Now I have to know: did the code kill the controller, and if so, is it a controller problem or a Mach3 problem? If it’s a controller problem, then the post processor I found is no good, and I have to find out how to fix it. I already know Mach3 and the controller get along. So basically, I need to go to MIT for three or four years and then come back and solve the problem.

I’m happy, regardless. I designed something. I turned it into a part. That’s progress.

Life is not all peaches and honey, however. I got some news about my sister. She left a homeless shelter at some point this year, and no one knows where she is. Yesterday a letter arrived, at an address she left long ago. Someone showed it to me. I can’t say what it was about, but it was bad news for her financially and in other ways. It will catch up with her eventually.

I used to be concerned because she had been disinherited. I used to pray for her inheritance to be restored. Now I know that was not a good idea, and I understand why God didn’t agree with my prayers.

It made me think, and it helped me understand some general truths about wealth.

I’m not sure people think clearly when they make their wills. They work hard all their lives, and they store up wealth that can be a tremendous help to their descendants. What happens when you leave that kind of gift to a person who has immense debt, or who spends profusely? It’s as if you put it in a pile and set fire to it. It vanishes.

Think about it. What if you have two kids; one has zero debt, and the other owes someone $500,000? Say you leave $250,000 to each kid; what happens? Immediately, half of your wealth is gone. It’s as if you never had it. The creditor takes it, and then the broke kid goes to the other kid and tries to get the rest of it, bit by bit.

If you have more than one child, and you cut off the children who have debt, their creditors can’t do a thing. You never owed them, and neither did the other children. The wealth is insulated from attack. It’s common sense, but people don’t seem to think about it. They leave money to children who are essentially bags with no bottoms. It goes right through them and into the hands of other people.

People sometimes favor their irresponsible children, saying they “need” the money. That’s like saying Charlie Sheen needs more coke. If you want to be Santa Claus, give money to people who have nothing. If you want to conserve wealth and bless your kids, give it to people who look after what they have.

Children who have debts feel they’re more entitled to inherit. That’s just denial.

The conviction that you have to give handouts to people indiscriminately is also denial. It can make their problems worse and add to yours, especially if the people you give money to are abusers you used to pray to be freed from. It’s like inviting a vampire into your house.

It’s a bad idea to grab a tar baby once you’ve gotten loose. You’re asking for whatever misery ensues. Who will you blame? Will you go to God and ask him to free you again?

Some people have to keep repeating mistakes, and often, helping them is so costly, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not even help. It’s even worse when the people you try to help are folks who spend their time insulting you, lying to others about you, and scheming to take things from you. Generosity and compassion are extremely important, but you have to be very careful. You wouldn’t want to lend the bum on the corner money for bolt-cutters to rob your house.

I remember a time when I considered marrying someone who had debt. I didn’t know about the debt; I didn’t ask. Love conquers all! Thinking about money is tasteless and coarse!

That was stupid. Man, I was an idiot. I should have asked. If you marry someone who is debt-free, the cost of the wedding and honeymoon is your only immediate expense. If you marry someone who owes $100,000, you are immediately on the hook for the marriage, the honeymoon, and…$100,000. No one with any sense would spend a hundred grand on a wedding, but people do it every day without knowing it.

Instant cost of marrying debt-free spouse: $5000, if you’re sane. Okay, I didn’t include the ring.

Instant cost of marrying big spender: $105,000.

No.

Also, the debt a wastrel has at the time of marriage is just the beginning. It’s a tiny tumor that hasn’t blossomed yet. It will get much bigger eventually. No irresponsible woman ever decided that marriage was her cue to stop spending.

Marriage isn’t about money, but debt is slavery. It’s hell. Marry a slave; become a slave.

Jesus said those who had a lot would receive more, while those who had little would lose what they had. It’s true. People build or destroy, in every area of their lives.

I’m grateful for the people I can help. The rest just make me shake my head. I certainly hope I can be helped.

Blessings only go to people who can be blessed.

The Bible talks a lot about the fatherless. That’s me. You can have a father and be fatherless. If no one passes wisdom on to you when you’re young, you are fatherless. It’s disgraceful to be my age and to be surprised by wisdom other people accept at the age of ten.

God is a good father. He doesn’t just give you stuff you crave; that’s what pimps do to hookers. He teaches you. He improves you. He changes you so you have productive habits and thoughts. I wish I had known him decades ago, but, of course, fatherless people don’t have the wisdom to understand that they’re fatherless. I wasn’t interested.

I hope I still have enough time left to benefit from the things God shows me. If not, at least I get to relate them to younger people.

Jump

Thursday, August 4th, 2016

All is not Well

I feel like I should stop reading the news. The world is disintegrating around me.

The GOP rejected several excellent candidates and nominated Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton, whose husband was impeached and deprived of his law license, is ten points ahead in the polls. A Muslim immigration lawyer named Khan–a person who takes money in exchange for helping dangerous people remain in our country–has a Presidential candidate on the defensive less than a month after 84 people were killed by an Islamist truck driver.

All over the news I see the pronoun “she” being used to describe men who want to use women’s bathrooms. Journalists are bending the knee to self-deluding people from a violence-prone movement that supports criminals like Michael Brown against the police. News stories feature foul language in their headlines. “Serious” websites are full of picture links to stories about “wardrobe malfunctions.”

Is this reality?

I feel like I woke up in the world of Idiocracy, a film by Mike Judge, the creator of Beavis and Butt-head. In that world, everyone is stupid and vile. It’s as if everyone on earth had been sterilized except for the Occupy Wall Street crowd, and their foul offspring had multiplied to fill the earth.

I don’t know why Mike Judge felt qualified to comment negatively on the debasement of American culture, since he got rich pouring gasoline on the fire.

Here’s a bit of the movie. Expect bad language.

How filthy are we going to get? I don’t think there’s a limit. The human race has produced people who killed others and then saved their dead bodies for posthumous rape. It has produced pedophiles who tortured children to death and recorded their agony to enjoy later while pleasuring themselves. It appears that the bottom is pretty far down.

Any slimy, vicious thing a chimpanzee can do, a human being can surpass. Without the Holy Spirit, we are just frail chimpanzees with higher IQ’s.

I feel bad for the world, because I know what’s happening. God’s patience is coming to an end. We are almost at the point where he will withdraw the mercy that has kept this planet functioning since the fall of Adam. He will look down and decide the return on investment just isn’t there any more. Destruction will come, and we will react not with repentance, but by hating God even more.

I wish there were a bus terminal I could go to, for a ticket to some place else.

The earth is much more like hell than heaven. Hell is literally on earth, under the surface. Heaven is far away. We should be pushing the stink of Satan farther down below the earth’s crust. Instead, we’re doing all we can to bring it to the surface.

Is Kim Kardashian really getting rich, appearing on reality TV and exposing her tiresome body on the Internet? Is that actually happening? Are millions of Americans really sitting down every week to watch this imbecile? I can’t make my mind swallow that.

Are we really putting Satanic displays up on government property? Did I dream that?

I’m imperfect like everyone else. From God’s standpoint, I’m a nasty item. I have done all sorts of immoral things. I have caused a lot of suffering. I don’t want to hold myself out as a morally superior person, but I know that I’m entitled–obligated–to observe and criticize what’s happening around me.

God puts us through things to show us what his job is like. I made the inside of myself filthy, and for decades, I didn’t listen to God. It makes sense that after turning back to him, I would get to experience the sensation of being surrounded by filthy people who don’t listen and can’t be fixed.

This place is a mess. I know God leaves us here so we can reach others, but whenever he decides my job is done, I am ready to go. Keep my stuff; you can have the rattle and the soiled onesies. Just let me out.

It’s a bizarre situation. The more God corrects you and makes you useful and ordered, the more the world hates you. This place makes no sense at all.

Well, that’s wrong. It makes sense, and it’s predictable. But people behave extremely irrationally.

I’m thinking about the people who jumped from the World Trade Center. They hung on as long as they could, and when the flames got close enough, they decided death from a fall was better than death by burning, so they let go.

This world is not worth hanging onto. It will not help you; it has no mercy. If you belong to God, you’re like a splinter it’s trying to expel from an infected wound. It doesn’t want peace. It doesn’t want coexistence. It wants you gone, the way Muslims want Israel gone. The way the Germans and Austrians wanted the Jews gone.

I feel like I’m walking on a vast plain of pure, deep dog excrement, wearing snowshoes. I have to be here a while longer, so I want to avoid sinking any farther than I have to.

What must it be like, to live in a world that works? I can’t imagine it, any more than I can imagine being part of a healthy family.

Judges are stupid and dishonest. Presidents are incompetent. As much as I detest Black Lives Matter, the police are so crazy we had to craft the Bill of Rights to keep them from destroying us. The world is completely insane; our authorities are as unreliable as thin ice. What will it be like when Jesus returns to rule? I wish I could see it.

Imagine having a one-world government with a king who has unlimited power and never makes a mistake. That’s the future, after the purge. I would give anything just to spend a week there and look around.

Turn away from this disaster. Don’t hold on too long. Your side lost; you can’t make it work. God’s people will be driven off the earth temporarily, but after that, we receive the eternal victory which is already assured. Don’t sell your future for a bowl of soup.

Proof that All Socialists are Evil

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2016

My Mind has Been Violated by a Pedantic Bolshevik

I feel like I owe Virgil an apology.

I got my copies of The Aeneid from Amazon. I was looking for a translation by Allen Mandelbaum. That’s the translation Columbia University uses.

I did my homework. I searched by ISBN and everything. Unfortunately, Amazon has a problem with Mr. Mandelbaum. When you try to buy his translations, they sell you books translated by a person named Mackail. It doesn’t say “WARNING! MACKAIL!” in big red letters on the front, either. I never found it on my paperback version, and the Kindle version I bought concealed it pretty well.

I was reading, and criticizing, the Mackail translation. I thought I was looking at Mandelbaum.

The paperback I bought is so cheap it’s not worth it to return it. I’m throwing it out. I did get Amazon to refund the 99 cents I spent on the Kindle version. I ordered the Kindle version of Mandelbaum’s translation, but I was afraid to order a new paperback because of the confusion at Amazon, so I went to Barnes & Noble.

I read a little bit of Mandelbaum’s work today. What a relief. It’s much less opaque than Mackail’s constipated wall of compressed and convoluted verbiage. Mandelbaum seems considerably less likely to throw out words that are obscure even to a national spelling bee alumnus such as myself. Mackail used “guerdon” and “foison,” like, yeah, people just KNOW those words.

“Inly.” Who says inly? Even inly?

It reminds me of William F. Buckley, who used to memorize obscure words and repeat them just to make himself look smarter. My feeling is this: if you have never seen it in the Sunday New York Times puzzle, it’s probably a word you will never find useful, and you shouldn’t go out of your way to use it. Unless it’s math or science. “Holonomic” is useful to some people, but it doesn’t pop up in puzzles.

Check this out; you won’t believe it:

‘Am I then to abandon my baffled purpose, powerless to keep the Teucrian king from Italy? and because fate forbids me? Could Pallas lay the Argive fleet in ashes, and sink the Argives in the sea, for one man’s guilt, mad Oilean Ajax? Her hand darted Jove’s flying fire from the clouds, scattered their ships, upturned the seas in tempest; him, his pierced breast yet breathing forth the flame, she caught in a whirlwind and impaled on a spike of rock. But I, who move queen among immortals, I sister and wife of Jove, wage warfare all these years with a single people; and is there any who still adores Juno’s divinity, or will kneel to lay sacrifice on her altars?’

Oops; I accidentally cut the line that says, “Foison foison guerdon inly.”

According to Wikipedia, Mackail was a socialist, so I guess there was nothing good about him at all.

Here is Mandelbaum’s version of the above text:

‘Am I, defeated, simply to stop trying,
unable to turn back the Trojan king
from Italy? No doubt, the Fates won’t have it.
But Pallas–was she powerful enough
to set the Argive fleet on fire, to drown
the crewmen in the deep, for an outrage done
by only one infuriated man,
Ajax, Oileus’ son? And she herself
could fling Jove’s racing lightning from the clouds
and smash their galleys, sweep the sea with tempests.
Then Ajax’ breath was flame from his pierced chest;
she caught him up within a whirlwind; she
impaled him on a pointed rock. But I,
the queen of gods, who stride along as both
the sister and the wife of Jove, have warred
so many years against a single nation.
For after this, will anyone adore
the majesty of Juno, or, before
her altars, pay her honor, pray to her?
Foison, inly, inly, guerdon?

I added a bit at the end to give it flavor.

Anyway, it’s considerably more readable. I don’t know what Mackail was smoking when he wrote his version, but I can see why it’s available free on the Internet (as a socialist’s goods should always be), while Mandelbaum gets paid.

I feel better now, but then I’m not focusing on the time I’ve spent suffering with Mackail. If I thought about that a lot, I would be pretty miserable.

Best not to dwell on misfortune. Cervantes is on the way, and I don’t want to be depressed when I collide with him.

The Foul Wind That Blows From Ausonia

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2016

Ex Libris Ant Man

People must think I’ve stopped blogging again.

I am still buried in my dad’s business affairs. It’s as if I’m treating a sick calf that keeps vomiting up garbage it ate before I showed up. A lot of things got screwed up over the last year and a half. I am untying the Gordian Knot with tweezers, one strand at a time.

Prioritizing is not easy. I set time aside for this or that, and then I get sandbagged by something equally urgent. The people I deal with must think I’m just lying on the couch, eating fun size Snickers bars all day. Good guess. No, I’m chiseling away at the job. It may look different to the people I deal with. Each one of them only sees his little corner of the maelstrom.

I have a few major tasks to finish this month. Once that’s done, my life will probably seem as featureless as limbo.

I haven’t looked at C programming in several days. By the time I get done fooling with Quickbooks, creditors, flaky contractors, and ordinary bills, all I want to do is space out and watch Misfit Garage.

I’m keeping up with The Aeneid, sort of. I let it go for a couple of days. The paperback I ordered arrived. It’s really something. It’s supposed to be a long book, but the version I got is about 3/8″ thick. I opened it up, hoping I had made an impossible error in judging the poem’s length. No, sorry. It turned out I bought the microprint version. You have to read it with a proton microscope.

The print is slightly bigger than phone book print, and there are no gaps to speak of. I’m not sure why anyone buys this version. I tried to read it for a while, and then I gave up and went back to my phone.

It’s boring. It’s so incredibly boring. I don’t care if saying that proves I’m a clod. It’s terrible.

Aeneas is in Sicily. He sailed there from Carthage, where ***SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER*** he jilted Queen Dido, who proceeded to kill herself (because anorexia and self-cutting hadn’t been invented). In Sicily, he ran into other Trojans, and he decided to hang out a while. As usual, the top priority for these Hellenists was naked sports.

I don’t actually know that they were naked, but I’m willing to assume it out of laziness.

Aeneas had a bunch of ships full of really tired people who want to found a nation and relax, so of course, he decided to hold games.

It’s the usual stuff. Tedious narrations of unentertaining events in which the self-pitying, diaper-worthy losers cry like fat girls who didn’t make the cheerleading squad. Really off-putting.

Here is my position on men crying: if you cry because your mom got run over, fine. If you cry tears of joy because your son was just born, great. If you cry because you lost a stupid foot race, you are a pansy, and someone should slap you.

Once again, I find myself filled with contempt for the values of the Greeks (yes, they were Trojans, but same culture). The shallowness is profound (I love a good oxymoron). All they care about is winning and being admired. It’s like reading about a bunch of neurotic, narcissistic, superficial Olympic athletes. This is what hanging out with Lance Armstrong must be like.

I have no respect for people like that. Zero. I have no desire to be around them. Egotistical people ruin the world. They are idiots.

Virgil is very long-winded. I keep wondering…is this because ancient people had no entertainment and long attention spans, or is it just that he was a bad writer with no understanding of pace?

I lean toward the latter explanation. You’re not allowed to criticize the classics, but I do anyway, so I will say it: Virgil needs an editor. Bad.

I don’t really need to know everything that happened in the boat race between Mnestheus and Sergestus. Wrap it up. Keep it punchy. Five hundred or a thousand words will do it to death. You don’t need five thousand.

To prove my point, let me remind you that Shakespeare lived before TV, and he wasn’t a bore. Lots of respected pre-technological writers weren’t bores. Virgil is a bore. He is an epic bore, in more ways than one.

Today I saw an interesting article on the web. Some guy thinks he has found the 40 smartest people who ever lived. I checked the list out. I saw something astounding. The guy whose IQ may have been 400? No. The guy who could recite The Aeneid WORD FOR WORD.

What on earth was wrong with him? How could he stand it? How could he bear reading this miserable work over and over until it was committed to memory? What possible reason could he have for wasting that much time? Who sat beside him for four days holding the text as he recited, checking his accuracy?

Here’s a secret: it’s a lie. No one can memorize 400 pages without a mistake, and no one would sit still to check his memory. I can’t prove any of this, but then there are a lot of crazy stories I can’t disprove.

People tend to lie about geniuses and people they simply want to pretend are geniuses. John Kennedy told a reporter to say he read 2,000 words per minute, and now we accept it as gospel. There are some crazy-smart people out there, but no one memorized The Aeneid. I won’t believe it without proof.

Some of the genius stories are credible. If a kid goes to a reputable university and gets a doctorate at 13, I believe it’s legitimate. Things like that have happened. I think. It’s not all that shocking. People tend to underestimate the capabilities of smart kids, so they don’t teach them as much as they could. It happened to me. A super-brilliant kid (or even a kid who is merely really smart) with attentive parents should have no problem graduating from college before puberty. But I do not buy the memorization story.

Maybe I’m wrong; maybe it’s easier in Latin. Maybe it rhymes. But what a thing to do to yourself. What use is it? It’s not like your friends are going to beg you to come over and recite a boring poem for 19 hours. No one will pay you for it. “Come over and remind me how bored I was in college.” No.

It’s kind of a bummer, reading about all these smart people. It’s obvious that many of them had parents who made a responsible effort to cultivate them. No kid walks into a university admissions office alone at the age of 9. I love my parents and all that, but they did a very bad job. I can’t memorize The Aeneid, and I don’t think I was ever in any danger of revolutionizing physics, but I had a certain amount of potential, and my parents let about 90% of it go down the toilet. On the up side, I saw every episode of Star Trek at least five times, I didn’t have to play organized football, and I got to eat a lot of ice cream.

Here’s something else that’s interesting: a lot of the smart people in the article didn’t achieve much. Some did great things. Others hid away from society. One works at Home Depot.

The guy Will Hunting was based on took a civil service exam and got a low grade. Seems like no one is safe from underachievement. I don’t know how you get a low grade on that type of exam. I assume he forgot to breathe. Maybe they put the thermometer in the wrong end.

I can relate to these people, from my own relatively amoeba-like level. I may well be the least ambitious person on earth who is not in a coma. Ambitious people give me the willies. I wouldn’t want to be in a room with Reince Priebus or Hillary Clinton for more than a few seconds.

Leonardo da Vinci was known for underachieving, if you can believe it. He had a reputation for starting things he didn’t finish. I suppose the ideas were more interesting than the implementation. You have an exciting idea, you do enough work to prove it’s good, you say, “Yeah, I can do that,” and then you wander off and play Grand Theft Auto…feeling successful.

Leonardo did not understand Latin. He was spared the Virgil experience. Lucky guy.

I guess it’s time to call more flakes and do more bookkeeping. I hope to be done with Virgil soon. When things settle down, I may just climb into the refrigerator and stay there until September.

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Here’s horrible news. Amazon’s listings for The Aeneid are screwed up. They claimed they were selling me a translation by Allen Mandelbaum, but they actually sold me one by a guy named Mackail. So now I’m 39% of the way through the book…with a translation I wouldn’t wish on Hitler.

Arrggh. It’s hard out here for a classics scholar.