Archive for July, 2017

Why Can’t Denial Just be for Bad Things?

Friday, July 14th, 2017

Heart Refuses to Believe I’m Blessed

I feel like I’m rehearsing for a play that will never open. I am packing for a move, and I can’t fully accept that it’s truly going to happen.

A few days back, I went to Home Depot and bought 40 small boxes. Home Depot sells moving supplies at acceptable prices. Since then, I have been stuffing boxes with books. I take a box, open it up, tape the bottom, put a big number on it, put bubble wrap in the bottom, and start putting books in. While I do this, I keep a list in outline form on a laptop. Each box gets a numerical heading, and the list of books goes under it.

I have filled 21 boxes so far, and I would guess I have 15 to go. I’m kind of disappointed in my dad’s books. There aren’t a lot of great ones, and some have plastic on them. He must have joined a book club at some point. Here’s how they worked: they offer you one book a month at a good price, and if you don’t make a choice, they send you garbage publishers need to unload. Looks like my dad didn’t make a choice every month.

I have a big collection of math, physics, and engineering books. I have books relating to tools. I have a certain amount of literature, and it’s not John Grisham or Barbara Cartland. It’s real literature. I don’t buy much junk.

My dad has some solid history books. He always found history more interesting than I did.

Maybe 45 years ago, he bought The Great Books of the Western World. This is a big set of books containing every piece of writing a bunch of academics thought a person needed to read in order to be considered educated. My dad wanted to throw them out a few years ago, so I took them. You never know when you might want to get up to speed on Marcus Aurelius. I also have the Encyclopedia Britannica I got for winning my area’s spelling bee. I can’t throw those out. The books remind me that I wasn’t a complete washout as a kid.

If you don’t make a list of the things you move, and you don’t label the boxes, you will be in for a treat when you arrive at your new home. You will have a colossal mound of boxes with contents you can’t identify. You won’t even be able to move them to the correct rooms before opening them.

Every box has five numbers on it. One on the top, and one on each side. No matter which side of a box is exposed, I will be able to identify it. Very exciting.

I read somewhere that movers charge $35 per hour to pack things. It must be great to turn strangers loose in your house, have them box everything up while you sit by the pool, and not have to lift a finger. Unfortunately, it’s expensive, you don’t know what goes into each box, your stuff is packed by people who don’t care if it breaks, and you don’t get a chance to throw out or give away things you really should not pay to move. For me, packing things myself is the way to go.

I am being ruthless with the furniture. The Salvation Army and the dump will be receiving a number of items. It may seem like furniture you hold onto is free, but when you’re paying someone to move it, every article has to justify its existence, because you are paying for it all over again.

My family is dysfunctional. That means familiar possessions aren’t always heirlooms. Sometimes a couch reminds you of the time one of your mother’s friends gave her furniture because she felt sorry for her. A crappy desk can be a reminder that someone always made do with junk instead of making reasonable investments in a pleasant home. There are quite a few things I will be discarding for purposes of catharsis as well as economy.

New questions keep popping up. Example: if the movers take our beds to the new house, what are we supposed to sleep on while the move is in progress? Maybe I should get a couple of air mattresses. Good things to have anyway. You never know when you will have guests. I was thinking of putting a convertible couch in the new house, but I decided against it. They’re heavy and expensive, and they’re terrible as beds. Air mattresses are cheap, and when deflated, each one takes up as much room as a suitcase.

Too bad they don’t make air tables, chairs, and houses.

Air families. Blow them up, enjoy their company, and when they start to get on your nerves, release the air. Actually, they do make something like that, but it’s not quite that wholesome.

The more I know about the new place, the more it seems tailored to our needs. Today a concern hit me. Will the bathroom situation work? I didn’t remember what all of the bathrooms in the new house were like. It would be bad to have only one full bath.

I looked at the ads, and they said it had one full bath and two half baths. Uh-oh. My dad will have the master suite, and that means he gets the big bathroom. I will not want to have to share it with him and anyone who comes to provide care for him. And overnight guests? Forget it. Not workable. Have to put a bucket in the woods by the workshop. Yes, we will have our own woods.

I found the house plans and checked. The upstairs has two real bathrooms. Thank God. Why weren’t they in the online ads? There will be total bathroom separation. I won’t have to push through walkers, hand rails, and other equipment that might pop up in the future, after making an appointment with a nurse.

There must be two hundred moving problems I haven’t thought of yet, but they will be handled. I will…will…WILL escape Miami. My blood pressure will drop fifty points. I will be able to sleep without earplugs. I will not hear salsa thumping on my windows at night. I’ll be able to understand almost everyone who speaks to me. People in restaurants will talk instead of yelling. People in movies won’t talk continuously in Spanish. Episodes of other drivers risking my life in order to save three seconds will drop by 90%. Other drivers may actually use their turn signals sometimes. I will be able to drive 10 miles in 12 minutes instead of 5 miles in 20 minutes. My car insurance will cost less than the car is worth. I’ll be able to take pleasure drives again. The air won’t smell like damp laundry. A McDonald’s breakfast won’t cost 10 dollars. I’ll be able to hire contractors and tradesmen who know how to do their jobs, instead of greedy slackers who promise the world and perform like monkeys in Army LSD experiments.

No leaf blowers! How about that? I can’t imagine life without leaf blower noise.

Cool nights! Miami doesn’t have those. Tonight it’s supposed to be 80 degrees here. Where I’m going, it will be 74, and that’s July. If you live in Tennessee or Missouri, that may not be exciting to you, but 74 sounds wonderful to me. Granted, Marion County is hot during summer days (4 degrees hotter than Miami), but the summer ENDS, and even in August, the average temperature at night is under 72. Hot nights are disgusting. Besides, the sun is less direct up there. The sun here is noticeably less bright than it is in the Keys, and it will be somewhat less bright 300 miles north.

Check this out: I’ll be able to get real barbecue without making it myself. Marion County has a bunch of Sonny’s restaurants, and one is very close to me. It also has one-off barbecue joints. More good news: I’ll be less than ten minutes from a Cracker Barrel. Filled with real crackers.

Miami is a funny place. The traffic is so bad, you defer short trips. If you need something from a place 5 miles away, you may put it off until the weekend in order to avoid killing 40 minutes in traffic. I avoid driving between 7 and 10 a.m. and between 2 and 7 p.m. It’s that bad. Miami has a lot of stores and restaurants, but what good are they if you can’t stand to drive to them, and you can’t stand to call them on the phone because they don’t understand anything you say?

Store Guy: Yo, dica me.

Me: Hi. I’m calling to see if you have Seastar hydraulic fluid in stock.

Store Guy: Yo, whatchoo say?

Me: Seastar hydraulic fluid. Do you stock it?

Store Guy: No meng, no stockeeng. Mareeng sooply estore.

Me: No, I don’t want stockings. Is there someone there who speaks English? Ingles?

Store Guy: [angry] YO peekee Englee! No stockeeng! Comprendes?

Me: I am sorry I made you angry by trying to do business with you. I will now try Amazon Prime, which is what I knew I would end up doing anyway.

You could change that last bit to, “I am sorry I tried to live in this area. I will now move north, which is what I knew I would end up doing anyway.” English speakers have fled this place by the hundreds of thousands. They have a popular bumper sticker here: “Will the Last American Leaving Miami Please Bring the Flag?”

I guess it’s not as popular as it was before everyone left. And how many Miamians can read it?

When I came here, Miami was full of Yankees, and most people were rude. Then it filled up with people from other countries, and people were still rude. No one ever came and improved the place. Haitians are nice to Americans, but they treat each other like dirt (one of their favorite things to joke about), and they drive as if other cars were invisible. When I arrived in ’69, the nice old Florida people had been moving out for decades . I knew a few. They were great. I wonder where they went. It’s like the Atlas Shrugged of nice people. Maybe there’s a nice-person compound in Colorado, made up of Florida crackers.

We are now filling up with a new crowd, and I don’t know where they came from. They look very, very ghetto. I think they must be South Americans. Not good. Call me intolerant, but no intelligent person wants to live in a place like Brazil or Venezuela. South Americans share my feelings. I know South Americans, and they are glad to be out. They came here, didn’t they? What more needs to be said? The problem is that when too many of them come here, their problems come with them, and Miami turns into Rio and Caracas. Also, it’s one more group for Cubans to not get along with. Cubans don’t like any Spanish-speakers or Latins except the Spanish. And they don’t like black people. Or people who look partly black. Or partly Indian. They are not easy to please.

I better get back to my many boxes. Closing is in 2-1/2 weeks, and the move will not lag it by much.

Next to Godliness

Monday, July 10th, 2017

Relief in a Jug

This is my second day as a member of a caregivers’ forum, and it has worked out very well. Unlike members of other types of forums, the caregivers actually read the questions, don’t insult me and say, “Google is your friend,” and provide useful answers I hadn’t already thought of.

I made a great discovery for bathroom cleaning. I don’t want to go into great detail, but the product is called “Urine Destroyer.” I apply it with a spray bottle from the hardware store. Works better than bleach, believe it or not. I guess the ultimate solution would be to follow it with bleach.

It deodorized a bathroom and also me. I spilled a fair amount of it on my shirt. The perfume they put in it is pretty persistent. I changed shirts and washed, but I think I’m going to smell like a clean kennel all day.

This product is very expensive, but believe me, it would be cheap at five times the price.

Along the same lines, I can’t praise my homemade shower cleaner highly enough. I haven’t scrubbed a shower in months. In the future, I plan to keep this stuff in my dad’s bathroom as well as my own. It is a miraculous cleaner.

Just to repeat, here are the ingredients:

6 oz. Zep soap scum cleaner
1 tbsp. dishwasher rinse agent
1 tbsp. Dawn dishwashing liquid
water to fill 1-quart spray bottle

I found this on the Internet, and I removed an ingredient which was expensive and unnecessary. You spray it on everything after you shower, and you leave it there. It dissolves all the typical things that stick to shower surfaces (over time), and it leaves a great shine and a fresh smell. It makes me seem much cleaner and more industrious than I am.

It might benefit from more Dawn.

I smell like a dentist’s waiting room. I can’t wait for this stuff to wear off.

It would be pretty neat if I managed to take good care of my dad instead of having the county come out three times a week and threaten to take him away because of the filth. With these two products, I am halfway there.

Generally, it is very hard to control other people’s behavior. When you can control things from your own end, it can save you years of banging your head against the wall. The right cleaners and precautions should bring me a lot of peace. We can hire someone to come in weekly and deal with whatever I don’t want to handle.

I am now five weeks from the blessed event. Can’t wait.

BUG OUT!

Sunday, July 9th, 2017

Moving Strategy Gradually Takes Shape

Plans for my move are progressing. Today’s big step: joining a dementia caregiver forum.

The new house has a crazy-big upstairs, and that’s where I plan to establish my headquarters. The downstairs will be arranged to suit my dad and his needs and pleasures. That means new living room furniture and the largest TV currently known to man.

Because the furniture will be new, I will want it to have the best possible shot at staying clean and undamaged. I don’t want to name the types of contaminants that can get on furniture in situations like this; you can probably figure that out. I realized there were millions of other people dealing with this problem, so instead of reinventing the wheel, I should reach out, via forum, and see what has worked for others.

I am fine with the fact that the downstairs will be maybe…not a prime example of the Martha Stewart ethos. That’s okay. I’m a man, and I am fine in a house with no indoor plants and no wall decorations. I think the best wallpaper is tile. But I want the furniture to be something better than Ikea, and I don’t want people to smell anything when they walk in the front door.

I’m amazed at how God has provided for me. I looked at a ton of properties, so they tend to blend together in my head. I no longer have distinct memories of every room in every house. I have the plans for the new house, and I see that it’s almost as if it were designed for me.

The house has a huge master suite on the ground floor, and it’s beside the kitchen. Problem, right? No. The bedroom is between the kitchen and bathroom, so if anything unfortunate happens in the bathroom, there will be three doors between it and the air of the kitchen. Yes, three. The bathroom has a toilet room with its own door. You walk in the bathroom, close the door, walk into the toilet closet, close the door, and get down to business. That’s civilized compartmentalization.

No matter what happens in that little room, I should be able to kill it by mopping it with bleach two or three times a week. If it damages the walls, so be it. That can be fixed in the future.

The upstairs has a “bonus room” which is…get this…thirty-four feet long. I thought it was more like fifteen by twenty. Big TV which also serves as a monitor, couch, two chairs, exercise bikes, stereo…paradise. And the top of the stairs serves as a choke point for killing zombies as they approach.

Oh, yeah. Are you kidding? Bring that on.

Even with my disgusting packrat habits, clutter should be a thing of the past. I should have ample room for my 93 tons of books. In addition to the bonus room, the downstairs has a study.

I am getting clarity on the workshop dilemma. I have two garages to choose from (attached and detached). I have learned that the attached garage isn’t all that big, so instead of dividing my power tools between buildings, I think the best course is to jam everything in the detached garage. It sort of makes sense. You don’t want to have to walk back and forth between two shops all day, and I don’t want to have to buy a second big compressor.

This would leave the house’s garage empty. What do you put in a garage, if not giant machine tools? Surely not vehicles. That would be asinine.

I can put a second set of house-only tools together and put them in the attached garage, so I don’t have to walk outside every time I need a screwdriver. Then, of course, I’ll need a third set for the upstairs, so I don’t have to walk down the staircase, and then I’ll need a fourth set for my bedroom.

Too much?

I was thinking the bonus room, soon to be known as the Oberbunker, needed a convertible couch, but there will be a couple of vacant bedrooms, so maybe it’s a stupid idea. Convertible couches are heavy and uncomfortable anyway.

Maybe a better name is “Masada West.” How about “The Fortress of Rectitude”?

“Rapture Staging Area.” “Base Camp.”

I know what can go in the garage. The nasty, awful lawnmower. Which probably won’t even have A/C. It really looks like I will have to learn lawn-mowing. Maybe Udacity has a course.

With any luck, I’ll have the hygiene problems solved today or tomorrow. I hope other caregivers can help me with my questions. It will be wonderful to have something resembling a plan.

Guess I’ll pack more books today. More than ever, I regret learning to read.

The Turn of the Screw

Saturday, July 8th, 2017

Over the last week or two I have been learning about screwdrivers. I blogged about it on June 28. You would think that after a couple of days of Googling and asking questions, I would have learned everything there was to know. Not so. I’m starting to think universities should offer master’s programs in screwdriver studies.

I thought I’d put up a photo of some of the drivers I’ve used, so you can look at them as I complain and ramble.

The driver on the right (orange plastic) probably came from Harbor Freight. Somehow, my dad ended up with a set. Guess what? They work great. The tips are hard, the handles are reasonably comfortable, and I’m sure they were cheap as dirt. I would not hesitate to buy new ones to carry in my vehicle. If you think your tools will probably get stolen, these are a good choice.

I don’t understand how Harbor Freight pulled this off, but the facts are undeniable.

To the left of the orange screwdriver, you will see a crooked wooden-handled screwdriver. It came from China. My lathe or milling machine (can’t recall) came with two screwdrivers, and this is one of them. It has a long, graceful bend in the shank, and I can assure you, that bend was not created intentionally. Here’s the funny part: it works. The tip hasn’t stripped. The handle hasn’t peeled. It’s a very useful tool.

Seems like the Chinese (some of them) have learned an important lesson Americans can’t seem to absorb: when you make cheap tools, you put the quality where it needs to be. These Chinese screwdrivers have plenty of shortcomings, but the tips are very good, and that’s 95% of what makes the tool work. Americans don’t do it that way. When we make cheap things, we spend the money on making the whole tool look nice, and we don’t invest in the parts that count.

The two screwdrivers to the left of the Chinese no-name are Stanleys. I believe I bought a red-handled set some time ago, and the other one came from a set that belonged to my dad. I’m not going to complain about these. They worked fine, and they weren’t expensive. I wouldn’t call them good screwdrivers, but they didn’t fall apart when I really needed them.

Speaking of falling apart, the next screwdriver is a Craftsman I bought in about 1995, as part of a set. I have very few left, and I don’t lose them, so you can guess what happened. The tips on the Phillips screwdrivers didn’t last. I don’t recall, but I’m sure I threw them out. Yes, Craftsmans are guaranteed for life, buy why would you replace a tool with another tool which will also fail? It’s not worth the drive to Sears.

My Craftsmans looked very nice. Unlike Harbor Freight, Sears put the money in the appearance. Now I avoid Craftsman screwdrivers, but I heartily endorse Harbor Freight. This is what Sears should have expected.

Next comes a Klein with a rubber handle. The screwdrivers are more expensive than Craftsmans. The tip on the screwdriver is a little chewy, and I don’t abuse it, so what does that tell you? For the most part, my Kleins have held up fine, but this one is dubious.

People buy Klein because they expect something that will work better than a cheaper tool, so Klein should use very good steel and add useful features. The steel in this screwdriver seems questionable, and the tool has other problems. The shank is round, so you can’t put a wrench on it. It has no hex bolster. A hex bolster is another feature that will allow you to use a wrench. The rubber handle reacts badly to oils and solvents. The butt of the driver is plastic, so you can’t hit it with a hammer. Also, the tool is not insulated, even though Klein is known for electrical tools.

I have read that Klein had a temporary steel issue which has been fixed, but I don’t want to get caught up in a company’s confused voyage of self-discovery and recovery. I’m not Dr. Phil. I have more hair.

Add all that up, and you have to ask: why Klein?

“Well, you have to cut corners if you want to compete.” Really? Let’s look at the next screwdriver.

The yellow Phillips head next to the Klein is a Wera Kraftform 900 Chiseldriver. It doesn’t have a rubber handle that hates gasoline. It has a full-length shank which goes to a steel cap on the butt, so you can use a hammer to drive it into dirty screws. The shank is hex-shaped so you can use a wrench. The shank has a big hex bolster so you can use a bigger wrench. The handle itself is hex-shaped at the shank end. What more could you ask?

You can get a set of 13 of these for $85, shipped. And they’re made in China. No, they’re not! Don’t be so gullible! They’re made in Germany. Real Caucasian quality tools. Yes, they cost a lot more than Craftsman. If Craftsman made this set, it would be about $20. But you don’t have to throw the Weras out the third time you use them. To get 14 Kleins, you have to pay about $112. So you spend around 40% more, for something that isn’t nearly as good.

I haven’t looked at every screwdriver made, but I’ve looked at a few, and it appears that if you want something good, you have to spend $25 per screwdriver for Snap-On, or you can buy German.

That’s not completely true, and that brings me to my latest screwdriver lesson. After ordering Wera drivers, I was told that they’re not right for use on guns. Guns are among the highest quality things we own, and the screws are made very well. Ordinary screws have slots that are V-shaped when viewed from the sides. Gun screw slots have parallel sides. Most screwdrivers have tapered tips. Gun screws require drivers that have flat tips. If you jam a tapered tip into a really good screw, you open it up on the near side and deface the weapon.

Like life wasn’t complicated enough.

I found a relatively cheap solution. For about $30, you can get a set of US-made Grace screwdrivers made for guns. They have square wooden handles that don’t slip when you get oil on them. They don’t have hex bolsters, but they do have flats on the shanks.

Here’s how I see it now, and I am aware that this could change in ten minutes:

1. If you want screwdrivers that work, cheap, get Harbor Freight and check the tips to make sure they’re okay. For all I know, the screwdrivers they sell now are crap.

2. If you want quality screwdrivers that won’t put you in the poorhouse, get a German brand like Wera, Wiha, or Fela.

3. If you want to work on guns, get Grace.

4. If you want screwdrivers for electrical work, get Wera or Wiha and forget about Klein. Get insulated shafts.

5. Never, ever buy a Craftsman screwdriver, and forget about the stupid warranty. Sears is disappearing. Where are you going to go every time your mushy Phillips head fails? And how many companies DON’T have a warranty? Let me check Wera. Yes, they have a lifetime warranty. Same deal.

I don’t know what to tell you about the Stanleys. They seem to work, but they are low on features.

It’s sad that the topic of screwdrivers has to be so complex. Part of the problem is my upbringing in a culture where people don’t know anything about tools, but the bigger part is the ineptitude of an entire industry. When you go to Home Depot to get a saw or an axe, you shouldn’t have to ask (axe?) things like, “Does it work?”

Is it unfair for me to plug German tools without testing them? In short, nein. The Internet is full of people who will confirm their excellence. Besides, I have Wiha precision screwdrivers and Allen keys, and they’re very good.

If the Weras crumble like Craftsmans, you better believe I’ll blog it.

I feel like I made the best choices I could, with the information I have.

I’m going to sit here for a while and run my hands over my Weras.

Happy driving.

A Moving Experience

Friday, July 7th, 2017

Boxing Day 2017

Reality is sinking in, and for once in my life, that’s a good thing. I am really leaving Miami. I need to start packing!

I’ve been stupid enough to be present at maybe 15 moves in the last seven or eight years, so I have learned a lot. Here are some rules I plan to observe:

1. Small boxes. You have to be an idiot to put more than 30 pounds in one armload. I have seen people take boxes big enough for large microwave ovens and toss books into them until they were full. Guess what a box like that weighs? Maybe eighty pounds. No.

2. Computerized inventory. Number the boxes, list what’s in them (fairly well), and put the list in a computer file. Do not use a legal pad. Trust me on this.

3. Remove the contents of all drawers and box them up. I have seen people tape their drawers shut and ship their furniture full of heavy junk.

4. Throw out, sell, or give away everything you don’t love. My dad doesn’t know it, but the Salvation Army is coming for about half of his furniture next week. It’s too crappy to move. They will also receive his golf clubs. At 85, he is not going to be hitting the links any time soon, unless it’s the sausage links at Bob Evans.

5. No Hefty bags. Come on.

6. Buy and bring every conceivable moving aid. I have a couple of handtrucks, plus those weird arm strap things, which really work.

7. Loose items are not acceptable. It may seem like it’s smart to jam your loose stuff between your big items as padding, but it will just get smashed and covered with moving grime, and people will step on it while you’re moving.

8. Never lift or move anything heavy. This is what movers are for. If you’re poor and desperate, you do what you have to, but if you can afford help, LEAVE THE PIANO ALONE.

9. If you have to move anything in an uncovered vehicle, wrap it securely, because it WILL rain. I don’t care if you’re moving in the Gobi Desert. And anything that can move will fly off into the road.

10. Pack the fragile stuff yourself, and try to move it yourself. Movers do not care about your crystal. They just want to get paid. Let them handle the books and furniture, and even then, stand and stare at them while they move it. Have a conspicuous pistol bulge in your pocket, and try to look mentally unstable. From time to time, look up at the ceiling, laugh maniacally, and yell, “YEAH, THAT’S A GOOD ONE, ROY!” Don’t explain.

When I left Texas, I got royally dinged on the price of boxes. I needed 22 small boxes for books, and it wasn’t like I could go into HEB (the grocery store) and find empty soup boxes just the right size, waiting to be taken. I bought boxes at U-Haul because I was desperate. I forget what they charged. Probably fifty dollars each. Maybe I’m exaggerating. Home Depot sells little boxes for 82 cents. I can swing that. I could drive all over town trying to save fifty dollars, but…I won’t. I have no wife and no kids, and my friends will be very little help. I am not going to suffer more than I have to.

Today I plan to pack books. I’m going to get Home Depot boxes and tape. I’ll identify the books I can live without for the next two months, and in the boxes they will go. I wonder what they weigh. A lot. That’s for sure. I will also try to pack my CD’s, which I have not used in maybe two years. MP3’s changed my life.

Some of my friends are offering to help as I write this. Maybe I underestimate them. I hope so.

I will be back before long, probably with a photo of a ziggurat constructed of boxes of books.

Mount Crumpet Farm is a Reality

Thursday, July 6th, 2017

I Can’t Say Hasta la Vista, so Let’s Just Say Adios

I’m in shock. I am moving to northern Florida. More importantly, I am LEAVING MIAMI FOREVER. The deal has been concluded.

So that’s it. No fireworks. No earthquakes. Just an email and a phone call from a realtor, and my ordeal is over. Shouldn’t someone be throwing me a party right now? Shouldn’t the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse be visible in the sky?

I tried to make this happen for so long, and I kept running into walls. Then I changed my prayers and started focusing on inner change. I started casting things out and asking God to do whatever he wanted in me, without restraint. Now the chains are broken. It was fast.

Today my dad and I met a boat broker and took my dad’s boat out to make sure it ran. We couldn’t get the generator started. We decided to go without it. The starboard engine wouldn’t shut down when we ran the engines to check the transmission oil. The broker found the engine-room shutoff and got it under control. The steering was out of fluid, and our bottle of fluid was nearly dry. A guy across the dock had a fresh bottle in a cabinet on his boat. The broker’s drone malfunctioned and flipped into Biscayne Bay, so I took pictures from a dock.

Got it done.

While we were fooling with the boat, my realtor up north called with the good news.

Now I have to move money around and get ready for our closing. What’s it going to feel like, sitting in that beautiful house, far from Miami, taking the keys from the seller? Overwhelming. Like watching the gates of heaven close behind me.

I don’t want to have unrealistic expectations of my new home, but I promise it will be much better than Miami. The people are nice. They speak English. Most are conservative. Most are Christian. There isn’t much traffic. I will have lots of land to disappear on. I will even have seasons, and the air won’t smell like wet socks every day.

With any luck I’ll be dead before America goes completely to hell.

I can’t absorb it. I may sit and look at pictures of the new place all day.

Thanks for your prayers. If you’re stuck in a bad place, my advice is to consider God’s advice. Put his kingdom and his righteousness first, and he will fix your problems. You don’t have to start an orphanage. You don’t have to go to Africa and be burned alive by communist guerillas while trying to convert the lost. Just work on your heart and mind, and the rest will follow.

Peace out!

Deal or No Deal

Wednesday, July 5th, 2017

I Can Almost Smell Freedom

Things are not looking too bad in the realm of top-level real estate negotiations.

Two days ago, I submitted an offer on a place. The seller did not drive down to Miami and spit in my face (unlike last time), nor did he fill my mailbox with horse manure. He came down to nearly to the maximum price I wanted to pay, and he asked for one concession. He wanted to be able to take two weeks to move his junk after closing. That’s fine with me, because I dread the actual process of moving, and two weeks will give me time to procrastinate. I will not procrastinate because I feel bad about leaving Miami. I will procrastinate even though I am eager to leave, because I dread dealing with moving.

I sent back a counter-counteroffer, not too far from his price, and I think he will take it. That is disturbing. It means I will be leaving Miami, for real.

I do not like this place. I want out of this place. Nonetheless, it will be jarring to leave permanently. If you’ve ever seen a video of a zoo animal that was released into the wild after 15 years in a cramped cage, you’ve seen me, getting out of the car at the new place.

Prison officials use the word “institutionalized” to describe prisoners who have a hard time leaving prison. Even though they hate prison, it’s what they’re used to. They know how to get by there. Miami is full of poisonous memories for me, but I am used to it. I am not a rock. I feel something when I think about leaving. I feel distressed about the way everything went wrong here. I am burdened with the sense of waste and the wish that my life here could have worked.

Still leaving! Don’t fool yourself. As soon as I see daylight, I’m gone.

I am not trying to hammer the seller. I think I could do better, but all I care about is getting a good deal. I do not have to get a killer bargain. As a Christian, I would like to be something of a blessing to the people I deal with. I don’t want them to be miserable because I took advantage of them. I think about that when I buy things off Craigslist these days. I pass on deals that are too good.

Sometimes you can’t help but get a killer bargain. Some people are cursed with poverty and failure, and they will push you to take things at low prices. For example, someone with debt may need to unload something fast in order to raise cash, and because it’s something you don’t particularly need or want, he will have to cut the price way down in order to make it interesting to you at all. You may buy a thing like that as a favor to the other person. Generally, though, I don’t feel I have to draw blood every time I buy anything.

It’s unnerving to deal with someone else’s money. I do my best to involve my dad, but he keeps saying, “It’s all yours now. I trust you implicitly.” You can’t imagine how strange it is to hear that.

I think I’m doing okay. I will be coming in way under the appraised price on this house, and I’m coming up with ways to save a bundle on taxes on his other properties. If he didn’t have me, he would be in a world of trouble right now. I’m sure there are many people who could do a better job, but I believe I’m on top of things.

By the end of the week, I should know if this deal will work, and I will be amazed if it doesn’t.

Leaving will not be complicated. I have two friends to say goodbye to. One will even help me out with moving. No church.

There isn’t a lot more to say today. I hope to have good news soon.

More

I watched the video, above, of a bear that was rescued from a bile farm, splashing around in a pond at his new home. Suddenly I felt a wave of emotion. I felt the weight of every rotten thing that ever happened to me in Miami. I didn’t see this coming.

When you go through a hard experience, you don’t let yourself feel all of the pain, even if the experience lasts decades. When it comes to an end, the feelings make it through your defenses. I should have expected it.

I won’t have a pond at the new place, but the house has a pool.

I will make do.

The Prophecies of Epimetheus

Wednesday, July 5th, 2017

Bill Gates Anticipates Captain Obvious

I read something interesting. Bill Gates made a bunch of predictions in 1999, and they are coming true. Amazing, right? He must be a genius.

Bill Gates may be a genius; there are claims out there that he got a perfect score on the pre-participation-trophy version of the SAT. Usually claims like that turn out to be BS, but it could be true. I know lots of people who got perfect math scores. Perfect verbal scores…not one. I failed to achieve that distinction myself, although I came closer than anyone I know.

Bill Gates may be a genius, but he is not much of a prophet. Look what he predicted. It appears that he has a genius for predicting the past.

1. “Automated price comparison services will be developed, allowing people to see prices across multiple websites…” I’m pretty sure these existed in 1999. Pricegrabber and Dealtime, for example. Yes, Wikipedia says Pricegrabber was founded in 1999. Get out of the office once in a while, Bill.

2. “People will carry around small devices that allow them to constantly stay in touch and do electronic business from wherever they are.” Uh…cell phones. I am a late adapter, and I had my own phone in 1997. Now that I think about it, I had access to my dad’s cell phone as early as 1986. By 1997 or 1998, I knew a guy who had a Quotrek, which was a mobile stock ticker. And let’s not forget Dick Tracy.

3. “People will pay their bills, take care of their finances, and communicate with their doctors over the internet.” Most of us were not paying monthly bills over the web in 1999, but I had e-trading in 1994 or 1995.

4. “Personal companions’ will be developed. They will connect and sync all your devices in a smart way, whether they are at home or in the office, and allow them to exchange data.” Personal Digital Assistants had been around for about five years before Gates made his astonishing prediction. I’m not including total-wonk versions that existed a decade earlier. Granted, they were not as good as tablets or smartphones, but it didn’t take Edgar Cayce to look at them and say, “Maybe these will get better!”

5. “Constant video feeds of your house will become common, which inform you when somebody visits while you are not home.” Maybe you couldn’t get a system like that in your area in 1999, but it was obvious that they were on the way. I guarantee you, banks and government buildings had things like that. Obvious, Bill. To get a patent on something, your invention has to be novel, useful, and nonobvious. Your prediction fails two of the tests.

6. “Private websites for your friends and family will be common, allowing you to chat and plan for events.” AOL was there in something like 1990. Where was Bill?

7. “Software that knows when you’ve booked a trip and uses that information to suggest activities at the local destination. It suggests activities, discounts, offers, and cheaper prices for all the things that you want to take part in.” Score one for Bill? Doubtful. Expedia, a travel site belonging to Microsoft, roared to life in 1996. Unless Bill was playing Donkey Kong in meetings, he had to know they were working on improving their marketing.

8. “While watching a sports competition on television, services will allow you to discuss what is going on live, and enter a contest where you vote on who you think will win.” AOL. Chat rooms. Come on, Bill. This is Chauncey Gardiner stuff.

9. “Devices will have smart advertising. They will know your purchasing trends, and will display advertisements that are tailored toward your preferences.” Don’t know when this started, but if Microsoft, which made a popular browser at the time, didn’t know about it in 1999, someone was slacking.

10. “Television broadcast will include links to relevant websites and content that complement what you are watching.” Obvious. Every intelligent person who got a good look at the web in the Nineties knew it would eventually merge with TV, the Postal Service, Radio, and telephony. Links were natural extensions of that merging.

11. “Residents of cities and countries will be able to have internet-based discussions concerning issues that affect them, such as local politics, city planning, or safety.” You’re kidding me, right?

12. “Online communities will not be influenced by your location, but rather, your interest.” See previous.

13. “Project managers looking to put a team together will be able to go online, describe the project, and receive recommendations for available people who would fit their requirements.” I had Amicus Attorney and Time Matters either in 1999 or not long afterward. Someone wake Bill up when the briefing is over.

14. “Similarly, people looking for work will be able to find employment opportunities online by declaring their interest, needs, and specialized skills.” Guess what year Monster.com was founded? Come on. Guess. I predict you will guess 1999.

15. “Companies will be able to bid on jobs, whether they are looking for a construction project, a movie production, or an advertising campaign. This will be efficient for both big companies that want to outsource work that they don’t usually face, businesses looking for new clients, and corporations that don’t have a go-to provider for the said service.” This was not part of my world in 1999, but based on Bill’s spectacular failures as a prophet, I will bet it already existed.

If this is genius, what does plagiarism look like? I am confused.

Let me predict stuff. I still say the distinctions between the Internet, phones, TV, and the mail will vanish. They are unnatural and expensive. I think Amazon will eventually open showrooms where you can go look at junk before buying it, but it will only be possible in large cities, because inventory costs money. They will also have a video chat facility that allows you to watch an employee demonstrate products you want to buy, but it won’t be available for every product. TVs will be even bigger than they are now, and it will be impossible to turn off the spy functions.

Later on, it will be illegal to turn off the Internet, and Uncle Sam will always know where you are and what you’re doing, “for your own good.” You will be required to have at least one social media account, and it will be your legal address for service in lawsuits and so on. You will be required to take legal notice of all communications to it.

The devil hates literacy, and IT marketers hate products that require end users to exert themselves, so tech companies will do their absolute best to develop devices that allow you to turn thoughts into text. Eventually, it will work, and the down side is that the habit of using these things will cause you to broadcast signals continuously, the same way you form words in your mind, allowing Uncle Sam or whoever to read some portion of your thoughts.

The government will collect a whole lot of biometric stuff, without our consent. You will have to submit DNA along with fingerprints when you get a gun permit, a real estate license, or any other type of professional license. It’s for our own good.

Come back in five years and tell me I was wrong. I hope you will be able to…but you won’t.

Bullish on Northern Florida

Monday, July 3rd, 2017

My Beef With Miami Coming to an End

Good news on the housing front. I am putting in an offer on a second house in northern Florida. I can’t steal Internet photos of it and put them up, because nuts would be able to search for the photos and find the address, but I can use some shots they can’t track down.

That’s the workshop. Here is what I like about that, apart from the fact that it’s a big honking workshop: it has a porch. A SHADED porch. Okay, so you spend your morning breaking things, failing to use tools correctly, making a mess, and sustaining minor injuries. All the things guys like to do in their shops. Then in the afternoon, you open the side door, lift the lid on your cooler, grab a Sierra Nevada, and sit in your swing, staring at the confused steers that ground your agricultural tax exemption.

That, my friends, is living.

Here’s another interesting shot.

That is the “wet weather pond.” The listing agent claims it’s a feature. I would think of it as more as a pedestrian hazard/snake and mosquito breeding pit, but then I am a suburb person. There is a big berm right near it, and I’m guessing the berm came from the pond, so that would mean someone actually built this hole deliberately. I don’t know about that, but I know what a berm means: no gun range fees.

Here is a partial view of the cleared side of the property. Here is what it contains, that I like: distance. I can be on this lot, a minimum of say 120 yards from anyone who is a) yammering in Spanish and angry with me for not speaking a foreign language in my own country, or b) just generally being rude to me. In practice, that distance would typically be more like 175 miles, but 120 yards is about as small as it could get in a worst-case scenario.

Here’s another great shot.

That’s one of my driveways. Notice that it does not go anywhere. That’s the beauty part. Aggravating people will make it 15 feet down the driveway and then find themselves in dirt and leaves, behind a gate which I will probably have welded shut. There is a gate that works, up by the house. I may weld that one shut, too.

Now I know what to call the place. “GET THE HELL OFF MY LAWN FARMS.” If not that, then “GRAN TORINO ACRES.”


“No. I don’t believe Steve is interested in buying any Girl Scout Cookies.”

Why do people name their farms “farms”? If you have one farm, it’s not “Sunny Hill Farms.” It’s “Sunny Hill FARM.”

I am hoping I may be able to retain the farm’s staff. Here they are on a break.

Actually, they may be working in that photo.

The lady who showed us the property called those creatures “bulls,” but I suspect they have had some minor surgery, along the lines of what Bruce Jenner recently had. It would be a little odd to put two bulls together on one lot, even in 2017. I have spent most of my life in the suburbs, but I am pretty sure bulls hate each other.

My grandfather had two in one herd, though. I guess I don’t know everything.

This ought to work out. The appraisal came in close to the asking price, so the owners aren’t living in a fantasy world. I want a little money off, because the place has been on the market for 400 days, but I don’t expect them to give it away. With God’s help, we will have a contract next week.

How do you get a property inspected from 300 miles away? I guess the owner will deal with the inspector. They always miss things, anyway. Inspectors make you feel good, and then they leave you holding the bag. A lot of the money we pay to professional people is mainly intended to make us feel good.

Getting out of South Florida is like being released from hell. By that I mean I felt like I was trapped here. My dad agreed to get out four years ago (when I started looking to move and leave him here), and then reasons to delay kept coming up. Then he forgot our agreement. Now he’s all about leaving. He hates Miami. It’s like it was his idea to leave.

I’m going to sell every last thing we have here, as soon as tax considerations permit, and I will cut every remaining tie. After that, forget this place. Let global warming come and drown it. I’ll be safe and secure, at a lofty elevation of nearly 80 feet. Like the Grinch on Mount Crumpet.

“MOUNT CRUMPET FARMS.”

If, for some reason, this place doesn’t fall into my hands, I have another one lined up, and it’s even more rural. I’m talking Deliverance without the perversion and inbreeding (I assume). That place will suit me just as well. It has a workshop you could build a space shuttle in.

I’m thinking of getting a remailing service. The Florida Bar requires me to maintain a mailing address, but I don’t practice, and I don’t want spammers and idiots bothering me. For $15 per month, you can have your mail sent to a service, and they scan it and send you pictures. Then you tell them to throw it out.

Hannibal Lecter used remailing services. How could I ask for a better referral? I’ll see if I can have my mail sent to “Get Lost, Florida.”

It’s an exciting day. God really comes through when you start getting with the program. Unfortunately, most people can’t do that, because no one is telling them what the program is. Preachers just beg for money and drive people into bankruptcy.

I hope soon I can post a photo of me enjoying a beer with my staff, either on the hoof or medium-rare with Bearnaise sauce. Pray for me.

Gals and Gossip

Monday, July 3rd, 2017

Only Three Inches of Paper Between me and Freedom

I feel I should update the world on my progress with the Columbia College Literature Humanities reading list. I am tunneling my way out of it like Abbe Faria in the Chateau d’If. Unlike him, I expect to emerge soon.

Paradise Lost is behind me, so I feel sort of the opposite of the way Adam felt when he got kicked out of Eden. Freedom, at least from that stage of my torment, is sweet. Reading books that (sort of) make sense, and then running into Milton, is like digging through soft sand and then hitting rocks. Milton was a terrible writer who punished the reader with his pedantry. Enough said about that.

Now I’m bogged down in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It’s the Nineteenth Century equivalent of a chick flick, and it’s nearly as painful to sit through. It’s about a bunch of upper (but not too upper) class British people who have nothing to do but gossip. There are lots of female characters in the book, and Austen shows her gender no mercy, putting all of its characteristic flaws in a blazing spotlight. Her women are petty, shallow, conceited, vain, spiteful, envious, conniving, manipulative, deceitful, vengeful, cruel, and a bit stupid. That list gets longer every time I review it.

I don’t know why the book was included. They could have chosen Dickens. Well, I’m wrong. I know why it was included. Jane Austen was a great literary titan because she managed to write passable books in spite of the monumental handicap of being female. That, surely, is the reason she was included. Affirmative action. She’s the Gal Gadot of her age.

Tangent time. What’s with all the fuss about Gal Gadot? If you don’t know who she is, let me burden you with some useless knowledge: she is the star of a recent Wonder Woman movie. People are acting like they’ve never seen a woman in a movie before. They gush over her. It’s silly. There are tons of women with female protagonists, and some of these protagonists are based on actual human beings, not the absurd fantasies of the least talented men in the fiction industry. Some of the movies have discernible depth, which is not something you have to fear encountering when you watch Ms. Gadot.

Even comic book movies have had strong female characters. There was a whole Cat Woman movie. You’re lucky if you didn’t see it, but it exists. The X-Men movies are jam-packed with scary women, including one who is so strong she’s a sort of manic-depressive god. The fuss over Wonder Woman is bizarre and probably due to some supernatural cause.

When you work too hard to promote what you perceive to be a disadvantaged group, often you end up exposing your sincere, hidden belief that people in that group are inferior. If women are as talented as men, professors shouldn’t have to force people to read their books.

I don’t know what Austen’s book is about. I’m something like 70 pages in, and nothing has happened. A single girl named Elizabeth has met a man named Darcy, and he is too rich to marry her. She has the hots for a young army officer named Wickham. Darcy’s dad left Wickham an income, and Darcy took it away from him. Elizabeth thinks Darcy is a filthy beast. Darcy is trying not to fall in love with her, but it’s not working. That’s all I know. Aren’t you glad you didn’t have to read 70 pages to learn that?

Maybe she will turn out to be wrong about Darcy, and Wickham will have some awful secret. Maybe they caught him prancing round in Darcy’s mom’s underthings. Maybe Wickham is a great guy, and Darcy will use his wealth and power to get him sent to Crimea or wherever and blown to bits. Then Elizabeth will marry Darcy, not knowing what happened, and then Wickham will turn out to be alive after all, and he will come back and expose the whole mess. Like Edmond Dantes. Then Wonder Woman will jump out of her invisible plane, land at Darcy’s house, and punch him in the mouth.

Don’t give me any spoilers. Don’t make this book any more boring than it already is.

I assume Pride and Prejudice will turn out to be a condemnation of the British caste system, along with capitalism, the church, God, apple pie, heterosexuality, fossil fuels, and accurate gender pronouns. Lit. Hum. has helped me understand how long academia’s hostility to everything good or traditional has existed.

My experiences with the Lit. Hum. reading list make me feel like I hate literature. I’m always saying the books are boring. Herodotus was okay, though, and Shakespeare was great. I haven’t been a lover of literature since I was about 25, but I don’t hate it. I just hate most of the books on the list!

I’m looking at the list. I didn’t mind Thucydides. Euripides was not that painful. Boccaccio started out okay and then got repetitious and dull. Dante could have been worse. These, along with Shakespeare and Genesis, were my positive experiences.

I don’t have any insecurity about saying I don’t like most of these books, or about questioning their merit. My record proves I’m smart (considerably smarter than the vast majority of literature professors). I’m educated. I have reasonably good taste. I don’t read trash like Dan Brown and John Grisham, for the same reason I don’t have coloring books.

You don’t have to think Cervantes is a good writer in order to be intelligent or informed.

Blech. Cervantes. I wish Trump would put a copy of Don Quixote over Vince McMahon’s face in the now-famous video and release it again.

I want to put Jane Austen behind me, but beyond that frying pan lies the fire of Dostoevsky. I have never been able to finish one of his books. I only tried once, I admit, but I failed. I was too busy going to tractor pulls and not believing in global warming.

Austen is not hard to read, thank God. It’s just unpleasant to visit her world. It’s like spending time with your wife’s friends, whom you can’t stand. “Oh, come on. It’s just one night. So what if Rain won’t let us go to restaurants that serve meat, and she makes us all do yoga breathing before we touch our salt-free Quorn patties?”

I can get through Austen as long as I have no distractions. This weekend I took her to the car wash, and I tried to read her book for maybe 45 minutes. It was very hard to do. People around me were talking, I could hear the radio, and there were windows to look out of. Everything around me was more interesting than the book. To read Jane Austen efficiently, you need to lie in a sensory deprivation tank and have the words projected on the ceiling.

Audio books! Why didn’t I think of that! I’m going to look into it. It’s legit! If I were blind, Columbia wouldn’t expect me to read real books. I am so doing this.

So far, there has not been one laugh in Austen’s book. Now that I think about it, there have been no laughs in any of the Lit. Hum. books. King Lear has some jests, but they’re not funny. They’re cruel. Herodotus was lighthearted but not really funny. Cervantes is supposed to be funny, but he’s not.

Academics are sour people who enjoy bringing other people’s spirits down. They are humorless and sanctimonious; always hoping for a revolution so they can put the “right” people up against the wall. I wonder if the lack of humor in these books is a reflection of their grey and mildewed inner workings.

It probably is. When I didn’t know God, my inner workings were greyer than grey. They were moldy, damp, tenebrous, and cold.

“Great” literature is generally gloomy and pessimistic. It’s whiny. The world of fiction is an unrealistic world where God is absent and hopelessness is realism. To God-hating academics, it must be a comforting affirmation of all their self-destructive notions.

The reading list calls for Virginia Woolf, but I canned her and inserted William Golding. I malewashed the reading list. Good thing, I guess. Woolf was a miserable person, and she drowned herself. She didn’t do it quickly, either. She prolonged and savored her suffering. She filled her pockets with rocks and walked into a river. Her book must be a knee-slapper. I’ll bet Golding’s black tale of murderous children is cheerier.

Imagine walking into a river with rocks in your pockets, thinking you were ending your misery, and waking immediately in hell, with an eternity of worse suffering before you and no one to praise you for your toxic talent. This is probably what happened to Virginia Woolf. I wonder what she would say if she could come back and be a guest lecturer at Columbia College. It must be strange to be in hell and know that people back on earth are buying your books and heaping compliments on you.

Wherever you go, heaven or hell, the people you influence will follow you, and knowing that will make the experience even better or much worse.

When Woolf learned that the poet T.S. Eliot had accepted salvation, she wrote this: “I mean, there’s something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.”

That’s chilling. Woolf is not living, she is always near fire, and she believes in God more than you and I do.

Dead to the flesh, alive to God. And vice-versa.

I don’t recommend Jane Austen, except for the purpose of broadening yourself or propping up a short table leg. If you like soap operas, you will probably enjoy it. It’s not for me.

AUDIO!

Check this out! The whole miserable book is on Youtube! I am saved!

We Elected Screwball Squirrel

Sunday, July 2nd, 2017

“If Your Enemy is Quick to Anger, Seek to Irritate Him”

Wow. What country did I wake up in today?

Donald Trump just posted a doctored video–humorous doctoring, not typical leftist-media deceptive doctoring–of himself beating a man with a CNN logo for a head.

The video comes from a WWE appearance in which Trump attacked Vince McMahon and did a “ground and pound” on him just outside the ring.

What to say about this?

On the one hand, one of the funniest videos ever. On the other, something resembling an admission that the world has gone to hell.

Of course, liberals are pretending the video encourages Trump fans to beat up journalists. Problem, and I know this will make some people mad: virtually all of the folks who have been caught on camera attacking journalists in the last few years fall into two categories: Muslims and black people. I am sorry to say it, but it’s true. For some reason, people in these two groups are least likely to take journalistic neutrality seriously.

There is one big exception to the rule that conservatives don’t attack journalists, and oddly, he is a new member of Congress. This nut, who was running for office in Montana, grabbed a journalist and threw him to the floor. Also, a politician who was later convicted of some sort of corruption threatened to break a journalist in half, but he didn’t actually touch him.

Trump and other conservatives are constantly accused of encouraging violence against this group or that group, but it never pans out. On the other hand, Al Sharpton and Maxine Waters have encouraged people to riot, and at least one man was murdered as the result of Sharpton’s exhortations. Also, there has been a wave of violent attacks on conservatives by leftists who didn’t really need anyone to incite them. Black people have been known to attack people who simply looked like they might have voted for Trump.

I suppose someone, somewhere, will get a beating from leftists over this video. Trump should have thought of that, as well as the dignity of his office, before he released it. We may see a whole lot of beatings. Thank God I carry a gun. I should probably throw a rifle in the back seat and keep it there for a while.

Here’s one thought I want to get out before everyone else writes an opinion piece: I suspect that Trump just guaranteed his reelection in 2020. Whatever Trump’s failings are, he is right about CNN and the other leftists information censors. They lie, they omit, they exaggerate…they poison our minds with their false version of the truth; their fake news. Republicans are sick of it, and many of us (myself included) have wished we could see a president communicate openly about the press. Trump has finally granted our wish. I believe that in spite of our better instincts, many of us will be so grateful to Trump that we will commit to keeping him in office for another term.

I always longed to see a president open up about bias, but there is a difference between longing for it and thinking it was a good idea. Trump goes farther than he should, and he doesn’t admit fault when he’s wrong and the press is right. Posting this video was silly. It was over the top. I believe it will harden up and enlarge his base, but it will probably heat up the partisan cold war and push us closer to a violent and even more tawdry future. It won’t inspire conservatives to violence, but it will move leftists to ramp up their pattern of physical attacks on us, and that is likely to lead to a conservative backlash that will bring us down to their level.

Before Trump was elected, I said he would be the most entertaining president in history. You can’t fault me there. My prediction has come true in spades.

What’s next? Maybe this week Al Franken will moon Mitch McConnell.

The very existence of Senator Al Franken is proof we don’t care if our leaders have any dignity.

I know of two people who will be very put out about the video: Mika Brzezinksi and Joe Scarborough. This will knock their self-pitying, juvenile bickering right out of the headlines. When you’re an unremarkable person selling a commodity that can be replaced by virtually any unemployed celebrity who can speak, you need to be in the news as often as possible.

Have fun, Mr. President, but please keep appointing conservative judges, helping Israel, and doing what you can for Christians and the unborn. You are going to do whatever makes you happy, but please don’t forget about the rest of us.

Namaste, Dirtbag

Sunday, July 2nd, 2017

On Earth as it is in Heaven

I find metaphors for the supernatural all around me.

Lately I have been getting huge mileage out of “casting out.” I wrote about this. I cast this and that out…of myself. It works. I feel better. I get more done. I’m losing weight. My self-control has improved tremendously. Things keep going my way.

I didn’t know anything of use when I was young, but now I know we are surrounded by stupid people, vicious spirits, and our own treacherous flesh, and they never stop trying to wear us down. They tempt us, discourage us, make us ill…around the clock, every day. When you speak defeat to your problems and enemies and use the power of casting out, you aren’t doing anything new. You’re doing exactly what your enemies have been doing to you, continuously, since before you were born.

My telephone situation reminds me of this.

I take care of all my dad’s business now, and I use his phone and his office. It used to be intolerable. He had given his phone number and God knows what other personal information to hordes of hostile people who wanted to scam him. The phone rang all day, and sometimes, the calls worked (at least when he was in charge). A company called Mellberg got him to look at annuity plans.

Do you know what an annuity is? I’ll explain it to you. Say you have ten million dollars. You give it to an annuity scammer, and he pays you $800,000 until you die. Then he keeps the remainder. Guess what your wife and kids get? Nothing.

It’s a beautiful scam. You find someone who is almost certain to die within five years, and you convince him he’s getting a guaranteed income for life. Then if all goes well, he dies a year later, and everything he has is yours.

Let’s say my dad’s first name is Mel. People would call, and when I answered the phone, warm, friendly voices would say, “Mel?” As if they were his best pals. They had some bad experiences when I answered the phone.

Scammer: Mel?

Me: Who are you and why are you calling?

Scammer: Is this Mel?

Me: Don’t you know Mel’s voice?

Scammer: Who are you?

Me: I’m the guy who answered the phone. What are you calling about?

They really hate me.

A big percentage of the calls come from India and Pakistan. Sometimes I answer the phone with that in mind.

Phone: RINNNG.

Me: (Slumdog voice) Hello? Hello, Devadip? Is that you, my good friend? Hello? I am wanting to speak to the chai wala.

Sometimes I order the chicken vindaloo.

They get very angry, which is okay with me, because it may encourage them to get real jobs where they don’t annoy people and steal their savings. Also, it’s really funny to take a chance and drop that bait out into space and then hear an outraged voice with an Indian accent.

The guys who use my dad’s first name are typically selling “energy investments.” Sometimes I beat them to the pitch.

Scammer: Mel?

Me: (cheerful, booming voice) HI! Are you selling ENERGY INVESTMENTS?

Right away they know they’ve stepped in it.

They’re like the Omaha Steaks people. Thankfully, that company seems to be doing poorly. Their “franchisees” borrow money to buy refrigerated pickups, and then they ring your doorbell. Their clever trick is to start walking backwards when you open the door. They say, “Hi, I’m from Omaha Steaks, and I have some great products in my truck for you!” Something like that. The idea is that you’ll naturally start following them. I watch them walk back into the yard, say, “Not interested! Thanks!”, and shut the door.

I know someone who bought their steaks. They are little, thin, frozen steaks I would only use if I needed meat for soup. Not good at all.

It’s too bad, because the franchisees aren’t just scammers; they’ve been scammed, themselves. They have to buy all that junk, and what percentage of them make a profit? You know what happens. They and their relatives eat the food, and the trucks get repossessed. I can just hear the higher-ups in the Ponzi (sorry: “multi-level marketing) hierarchy talking to them. “You just walk backward to your truck, and people will pay you ten dollars for a three-dollar steak! We only take 65%! The rest is PURE PROFIT!”

Perhaps I am wrong. I say that so they can’t sue me.

If I get sued, when we approach the courthouse, I’ll start walking backward to my car to make them settle. “I have a crisp, fresh five-dollar bill I want to show you!”

Oh no…I’m Googling, and I see claims that the truck people don’t really work for Omaha Steaks. In that case, I’m sure Omaha Steaks is a fine, reputable company that sells wonderful products (which I will never, ever buy, because I know what a grocery store is).

I wonder if there was anything bad in the meat I ate.

Anyhow, Satan’s children are just like him. They use the same techniques. Spirits buzz around us like flies all day, trying to get us to allow them to land and feed. Scammers call old people all day, for the exact same purpose.

I hooked my dad and myself up with Nomorobo, a service that runs all calls through servers that keep the scammers from getting through. It’s almost fun when a scammer makes it to my ear, because then I can report his number to Nomorobo, and after that, he has problems. If you report a number to the Feds, nothing at all happens. The government is very stupid. Nomorobo is a private company, so it gets things done.

Reporting a number to the feds is like calling the cops when you’ve been burglarized. The cops show up, take notes, and shoot a couple of pictures. Then they go back to the police station, do nothing whatsoever to help you, and wait for their pensions to kick in so they can buy motorboats. As far as I know, except for murder, most crimes are solved only when a civilian calls, turns someone in, gives directions to the criminal’s house, and threatens to blog it if they don’t get action. I have known a lot of crime victims, and I have never known anyone whose property was found and returned by the police. If the feds are doing anything about scam calls apart from making a list no one looks at, I am unaware of it.

I’m looking at a log of calls I’ve been blessed to miss. Some company calling itself UPLIFT calls over and over. The caller ID number is (214) 453-68xx. No idea what they want. When you see that Nomorobo is blocking a caller, you can block it manually as well, and then you don’t even hear one ring when they call. Too funny.

I also get calls from Grangeville ID, at 208-494-16xx. No idea who it is. The log says, “Grangeville, Grangeville, Grangeville.” It must be pretty important.

“Monetary Gold” is another caller I will never speak to directly. Maybe it’s a Jewish guy, and his first name is “Monetary.”

Demons are a lot like the scammers my dad let into his life. They come in through doors we open. You don’t have to invite them. Unfortunately, by the time I understood how things worked, I had broadcast invitations throughout the known universe.

I look forward to getting rid of my old phone number as well as my dad’s. Then Devadip and Bakhtiar can call someone else and pretend to know them. “By Jove, are you sure this is not my good friend Mel? It seems like only yesterday that we were bathing together in the Ganges.”

I will keep closing the windows and doors and spraying fly repellant. I suggest you do the same.