My Behind is Moving Up in the World

I have passed another giant milestone. My couch has arrived.

For the last two months, I’ve been sitting on a molded Adirondack chair from Home Depot. I’ve been trying to conserve cash and be responsible, so furniture has not been a top priority. I ordered a couch for the downstairs area, thinking my dad would get tired of chairs, but it was damaged when Amazon delivered it, so I refused it. He said he didn’t care whether he had a couch or not. I haven’t made much effort to try again. A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a second couch for the upstairs room, and now I have it.

This is wonderful. I have fabric. I have cushions. I have two throw pillows. In two days, I’ll have a quilted couch protector I can throw on when the birds come to visit. Can life possibly get any better?

Actually, it can get better. I broke down and ordered a recliner. I needed it. I can’t have male friends visit without a second piece of furniture. I don’t want to look like Barry Obama in the famous college couch picture, in which he and another male were seated right up against each other, with the whole far end of the couch vacant. That just isn’t done. Obama is gay, if one of his private letters is to be believed, but I am not. I do not share furniture with men unless I have no choice. It’s like starting a conversation with a stranger at a urinal.

Unacceptable

I’ve learned that furniture is complicated. The bad cheap stuff looks almost exactly like the good expensive stuff, so you have to do research. Actually, that’s not true. The really cheap stuff looks cheap. But the stuff that’s one level up from really cheap can look very much like good furniture.

The first couch I ordered was an Ashley something or other. It’s a $500 couch, more or less. As I understand it, $500 is pretty much the dividing line between good cheap and bad cheap. Tons of people on Amazon loved the couch I ordered, so I figured it was a safe choice. It had some kind of fake leather upholstery, and that was important, given that a dementia sufferer would be using it. Sometimes you need a washable couch.

Amazon promised free delivery, to the inside of my house. They sent one person, alone, to carry a couch. He could not get it through the door. Then he pointed out a big forklift hole in the fabric under the couch. I sent it back.

While the couch was here, I noticed that the bottom was particle board. That’s not acceptable. I can deal with plywood or pine. Particle board is an insult. And it looks like head cheese.

Maybe that couch was okay, but I decided to move up one level on the next order. I went with Broyhill. My understanding is that there is total crap, crap, near-crap, and then, one stratum up, adequate furniture. Broyhill is considered adequate. That was fine for me and my man refuge.

I’m sitting on the couch now. My rear end is in ecstasy. I had forgotten what cushions felt like. The couch appears to be well-made. It looks nice. It has two great-looking pillows. The wooden feet were assembled skillfully from bits of real hardwood. The fabric is tasteful but not luxurious. Seems okay to me. If I wanted a 20-year couch that would impress shallow visitors, I would have spent three grand, but you can do okay for a lot less.

Once I had the couch, the need for the recliner was painfully obvious.

Here is the lowdown on recliners: anything under $500 is dubious. You can get something pretty nice for $1000. Really good ones cost considerably more. I believe I have that right.

Recliners tend to fall apart mechanically, especially when they belong to big balls of lard who weigh over 250 pounds. The cheap ones are more likely to fail. I think.

People criticize La-Z-Boy a lot, so I was reluctant to dive in. I found some great sale prices on recliners from better companies, but they weren’t hard core recliner companies. Would you buy a BMW water heater? I wouldn’t. I wanted a recliner-company recliner. I’m sure a Hooker Furniture recliner will last forever, but do they know how to make them mooshy and decadent, as they should be? I don’t know.

I found out that Barcalounger has a premium line they call “Vintage.” They claim they use better parts. I decided to check them out. For some reason, retailer prices vary wildly. A modest La-Z-Boy which I would not trust runs about $700. Barcalounger Vintage recliners sell for over a thousand. Usually. If you look around, you will find sites that sell them for $700-$800. You won’t be able to find every color you want, but on the other hand, the available colors won’t be crazy. It’s not like buying the orange Pinto no one else would take.

I don’t understand it at all. I found a Barcalounger Vintage for $750 on one site, and it was selling for over $1000 on other sites. I found a number of different models selling cheap.

I almost bought a Barcalounger Presidential. You have to Google this thing. It’s completely over the top. It’s all leather and nails. It has a tufted, winged back about five feet across. It’s so manly, it’s hilarious. At the last minute I decided not to get it, because I didn’t think that kind of upholstery would be sufficiently decadent. I went with a model that has leather arms and fabric cushions.

I know that sounds weird, and it’s not as tasteful as all-leather. But when you look at it, it screams “COMFORT!” You can tell a man designed it. “I don’t care if it looks funny. Shut up! Why aren’t you getting me a beer?” Turn Al Bundy loose in a furniture store, and he will make a bee line for this chair every time.

Because I have parrots, I’m going to have to use furniture protectors, and I read that they slide around on leather. Fabric will keep them where they should be, and it will be mighty cozy on cool nights.

It’s a power recliner. Reclining manually is just too hard. Not sure what happens if the power goes out or the motor dies. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

There are super-expensive recliners which are probably much better, but they would be overkill in an upstairs bonus room, and anyway, a chair like that would make my couch look bad.

I think it will be great.

I chose a recliner because I don’t want to fill up the floor. It occurred to me that a recliner contains its own disappearing ottoman, so it saves space. I will still need one for the couch.

Now I need an end table, a TV stand, and a table lamp. Or maybe I’ll just get a Home Depot torchiere. I don’t know if I’ll get a coffee table. They take up a lot of room. Couple of nice collapsible tables might make more sense. Like TV trays, only less crappy.

I considered getting a leather armchair and ottoman, because a leather ottoman would outlast a fabric ottoman that matches my couch. Oh well. I’ll just have to try not to maul the ottoman with my boots.

I wonder how Turks feel when they find out people call footstools “ottomans.”

I continue scouring Craigslist for breakfast tables. If I don’t find one, I’ll have to tell my friends Thanksgiving dinner is off. I bought a new couch because I don’t trust used cushions. When it comes to non-upholstered furniture, used is the only way to go. You can wash the baby pee and whatever else off of it.

By the way, if you buy a sleeper sofa, you’re stupid. I don’t mean that in a mean way. I’m just trying to help you get in touch with reality. I thought about a sleeper, but they’re heavy, they’re expensive, they’re uncomfortable, and they’re obsolete. For $150, you can get a wonderful air mattress that inflates and deflates itself, and which feels better than a real bed. Do not buy a sleeper bed. It’s a bonehead play.

This is very nice. I feel great. I have missed upholstery.

My mother never had nice furniture. My dad would not spring for it, even though he made good money. She bought estate stuff and things that were on sale at outlets. The only new couches we ever had were pretty bad. This one is considerably better, in my opinion.

Maybe some day I’ll hang a picture on a wall. It could happen.

Sometimes Consent Doesn’t Help

Louis C.K.

Seriously? Louis C.K.?

Why, in the midst of the harassment apocalypse, are we not seeing the obvious names? Eddie Murphy. David Lee Roth. Frank Sinatra. Andrew “Dice” Clay. Sean Penn. Chris Penn. Russell Crowe. Kanye West. I’m pulling names out of a hat, here. I’m just thinking of celebrities you would pretty much expect to expose themselves or try to rape women. How did we end up with a real-life list that included Kevin Spacey and Dustin Hoffman, and not all that many well-known jerks?

Bill Cosby has always been a jerk. Ben Affleck has been fairly jerky. A number of the others don’t have that reputation.

I always thought C.K. was depressing and unfunny (except for the cult film Pootie Tang), but he never came across as an agressive pervert or bully.

More surprising than the multiple accusations: the confession. He says all of the stories are true. When I read that, I felt like giving him partial credit for manning up, but the more I think about it, the more I think his confession is just another sexual performance. I strongly suspect he got off sexually by admitting guilt.

Louis C.K. didn’t say, “I’m so ashamed I want to die. It is humiliating for people to know that I, a grown man, exposed my genitals to my coworkers. I can barely stand to discuss it. Please leave me alone with my pain.” He described what he did as showing women his principle organ of copulation, and he didn’t use a medical term to describe that particular item. He used a slang term. It was as if he was choosing the most arousing term he could. Like a man having phone sex. When you have phone sex, you don’t say, “I want to disrobe and engage in relations with you.” You use dirty language to heighten the excitement. At least that’s what I’ve heard. Shut up. Anyway, the confession reads a little bit like phone sex. I think writing it turned him on.

At least one female celeb tweeter is rejecting his statement. As she correctly notes, it was not a real apology. He just wrote about what he did and then said he was going to be quiet and listen to responses, as if he were asking for suggestions on improving a fallen souffle. I guess the lack of shame bothers her, as it does me.

Louis C.K. says the disparity of power between him and the women he abused made it unfair for him to ask if he could show them his member, as he describes his much-more-energetic actions. The tacit implication seems to be that there are circumstances under which it is perfectly fine to ask women you’re not married to if you can show that object to them and then gratify yourselve with it while they watch.

Am I out of touch? Is it normal, when you’re hanging around with female acquaintances who are your social and professional equals, to strip completely naked, grab yourself, and go to work in front of them? C.K. Seems to think his problem is that he doesn’t know the “right” way to do that. Is there a right way? Even if a man is not a Christian, I would think that even normal godless American morals would rule C.K.’s behavior out. Am I wrong? Is this something I should have been back before I turned back to God? Is this why I did so badly with women?

I’m a bad person. I have a lot of sexual sins on my record. I have done some crass and even gross things. Nonetheless, I feel that what C.K. did was insane and freakish. If a man did this to consenting women, I would think it was creepy and abnormal. I would think it was indicative of mental illness and a complete lack of social skills, such as you might expect in a person who was severely autistic.

Deep in our hearts, we all have shameful thoughts and desires (or maybe it’s just me), but most of us know they’re not healthy. C.K.’s bizarre statement makes me wonder if he’s a sociopath. They say sociopaths lack normal human emotions (like shame), but they learn to imitate them in order to get along with the rest of us. Maybe C.K. does not understand why his revolting actions disturb people. It’s not just the lack of consent, although that’s the main problem. It’s the fact that he would want to do what he did, with women he was not even dating, in the first place. Fantasizing about it…fine. There are some thoughts we can’t help having. But actually doing it? That’s a couple of standard deviations outside the pale.

“Excuse me; thanks for inviting me to your garage sale. Hey, would it be okay if I stripped naked right now and engaged in a frenzy of Onanism in front of you, or would you prefer I didn’t? I don’t want to do it if it offends you, so just say the word, and I’ll let it drop. No? Okay. Glad things didn’t get weird! Would you take five bucks for this tackle box?”

That would not be okay, even if the victim were a female billionaire with nothing to fear from C.K.

The other thing that surprises me is C.K.’s power. Former power. I think of this guy as a minor comedian. One tier below Ricky Gervais, who is two or three tiers below Woody Allen. In fact, C.K. had a relatively minor role in a Gervais movie that didn’t do all that well. Apparently, I’m wrong. They say people fear C.K., and I don’t just mean they fear he will turn their social events into soul-blistering traumas that will result in their having to have their carpets and furniture professionally cleaned. I mean he’s so successful, he can kill careers. He sells out Madison Square Garden. If he’s that powerful, how powerful is Jimmy Kimmel, a real household name with a huge TV franchise? He must be a sort of demigod.

Who’s next? Steve Buscemi? Michael J. Fox?

This thing is going to keep going forever. The gold will not run out, because male and female abusers have been filling the mine for eons. Kirk Douglas is a hundred years old, and there are stories about him which may still erupt, so that tells you about the shelf life of tales of abuse. We may be hearing about Ashton Kutcher and Ryan Gosling forty years from now.

I hope the disclosures will not convince us the actions and words of the abusers are normal. C.K. seems to feel that way already. If he pulls the rest of us around to his way of thinking, America will be even more disgusting than it is now.

Snorkeling in the Sewer

Last night I blogged about my horrifying visit to Miami. I am here to do some work on a condo and bring home some things the movers left here. I think I went a little overboard in my post. Visiting Miami is more traumatic than you would think. Once you get away, the thought of going back is nauseating.

I may delete that post. I was carried away.

The county is still messed up from Hurricane Irma. That surprises me. I went through a number of storms with tropical-storm-force winds here, and they weren’t a big deal. I suppose Irma’s tropical-storm-force winds were a little stronger.

There are a lot of mangled trees beside the roads, and I saw a FEMA truck roll by. These trucks have huge trailers, and they have cranes and claws to pick up trees. They’re still here, two months after the blow.

Our properties did’t suffer much, but the post-storm work bonanza made it very hard to hire people to fix things. I was quoted $2000 to paint a small condo and replace several $60 doors. I am hoping I can do 80% of the work today, in a few hours. Hope I’m not underestimating the job, but I used to paint that condo for my parents, and it was a half-day ordeal back then.

I can’t stand being around the people here. Waiting in line at McDonald’s was very unpleasant. Everyone was rude and/or ghetto. When I say “ghetto,” I don’t mean they were economically disadvantaged or that all people from poor neighborhoods are trashy. I mean they had that angry vibe you get from people in rap videos. I’ve known lots of great people who lived in bad areas, but they rose above their environment.

The “me first” school of roadway navigation has already gotten to me. I’ve had people cut in front of me more times than I can remember. No one has given me the finger yet, but I have a whole day to wait for that to happen.

In Miami, the motto is, “Get the other guy before he gets you.” If you think I’m making that up, let me tell you that I’ve known hundreds of Cubans, and I’ve heard them express that sentiment more than once. It’s the opposite of, “Go the extra mile.” When two people go the extra mile, each does his own work plus a little bit of the other one’s job, and the net result is that everyone is better off than they would be had everyone done only what he had to. When you do things the Miami way, one person does a little, the other does a little, and you end up with a big responsibility gap. When it’s over, at least one party has been mistreated and let down, and the things that needed to be done are unfinished.

In Ocala, a storm came, and my neighbors sneaked onto my property to remove a tree that had fallen across my driveway. That’s the difference between Ocala and Miami.

God, I can’t wait to go back. I feel something related to claustrophobia. I want to move out from under it.

The sad thing is that Miamians think they have it good. Most of them stay here all their lives, and they have no idea how decent people behave. If you’ve never eaten anything but dog food, you can’t imagine steak. Miamians get very angry if you knock the place, but they have no idea what they’re talking about.

There is such a thing as a person who can’t be blessed. In fact, that describes most people, since most people reject Jesus and go to hell. You can’t be blessed unless you are willing to acknowledge the need to be blessed. You will reject or discard every good thing offered to you. Miami-lovers reject better ways of life. You can’t get them to move. That’s a good thing, because if they moved to places like Ocala, they would ruin things for everyone else.

Miami is a demonic stronghold. A big percentage of the people here literally worship demons. They practice Cuban voodoo, Haitian voodoo, and other types of voodoo from other islands and Latin American nations. This place must be under a cloud of powerful demons. No wonder it’s so nasty. You would have to be nuts to want to live here.

A lot of people love evil, so Miami fits them very well. People tend to end up where they belong, on earth and in the hereafter.

Ocala is better than Miami. What’s better than a place like Ocala? Heaven. As nice as Ocala is, it’s still a flawed area on a cursed planet full of pain, decay, terror, and despair. I used to think how wonderful it would be to leave Miami for Ocala. I was right, but I’m still on earth. These days I think how wonderful it will be to die and be done with this miserable planet. No aging. No disease. No idiots. No reading glasses. No polarization; in heaven, no one thinks debate is healthy. Debate is a manifestation of God’s curse on the earth. Christians should agree on everything. Our disagreements expose our poor connection to the Holy Spirit, who resolves all disputes. God tells everyone the same things. Period.

I have to go to Home Depot now. I hope this effort pans out. I wish I could leave Miami right now.

If you live in a big city with a lot of creepy people, you need to move. Unless it suits you. Then by all means, stay. Don’t ruin the nice places by moving there.

The Stink of Miami Surrounds Me Again

I am in Miami. I can’t believe it. I feel dirty. The air smells like fungus. The people have the manners of rats.

I had to come down here to look after a rental property. I am staying in a house we have to sell. I thought my friend Mike would be with me, but I had to drive down alone. Another friend of mine is house-sitting, so I won’t be alone all weekend.

Tomorrow I have to get up and try to get a condominium painted. After that, I plan to do my best to pack up a significant fraction of the many items the movers failed to…move.

While the time to drive to Miami was drawing near, I started to think of a series of scenes from Schindler’s List. Schindler thought he was moving his Jewish charges to safety in Czechoslovakia, but there was a railroad screwup, and the women ended up on a train to Auschwitz. I keep thinking about that. Of course, I would rather drive to Miami every day than be put in a death camp, but while the degree of discomfort is not comparable, the quality of the sensation is surely similar. I thought I had escaped this! Here I am, back in the place I hate.

In Ocala, I go to restaurants. It’s wonderful. Yes, you have to weed out the many slow and dirty places, but the people’s manners…it’s better than going for a massage. Everyone is polite. Everyone seems happy to see you. It’s hard to get in and out of restaurants because people get tangled up, trying to hold the door for each other.

Because it was late when I got into the house, tonight I decided to go to the Wendy’s from hell, at the intersection of South Dixie Highway and Red Road in Coral Gables. I have been visiting this snakepit on rare occasions since the 1980’s. It’s the reason I stopped going to Wendy’s. They ignore you. They snap at you. They usually get your order wrong. One genius at the drive-thru asked me what I DIDN’T want on my sandwich. I knew what I was in for, but I was willing to go anyway, because I was in a hurry.

A little lady who spoke poor English asked me what I wanted while looking at someone else and standing two feet from the register. She was doing some job or other, and I guess she just figured she would remember what I ordered. After living in Ocala for two months, I fully expected to be called “sweetheart” or “honey,” but I didn’t even get “sir.” As for “thank you,” well, if you think there was any chance of that, you haven’t been to Miami. She looked like a scared rat, and she worked like she was trying to finish and leave before ICE raided the place.

While she was taking my order, a familiar smell wafted over me. A bittersweet reunion was about to occur. It was my old friend, the one-eyed bum who goes into Taco Rico and screams until they let him fill his filthy cup with soda! We didn’t hug or anything. He and the counter lady had an exchange which I did not understand, and like the benighted workers at Taco Rico, she waited on him instead of calling the cops. I got to enjoy his pungent bouquet the whole time I was waiting for my order. Just the thing to sharpen the old appetite.

While I was waiting, I looked at the restaurant. In the old days, they used to decorate it nicely, even though it was a horrible place to eat. It used to look like a typical Wendy’s, with decor meeting the standards handed down from headquarters. Now it looks like it was furnished from the dump. The tables and chairs are cheap, and for some reason, there is a huge empty space with no furniture. On a Friday night that should have been busy, they had ten customers, including the bum.

I keep thinking this must be a corporate store, owned by Wendy’s itself. It must be a social experiment. My theory is that they find the most off-putting, obnoxious employees they can, from the worst neighborhoods imaginable, and then give them jobs in order to puff up their philanthropic credentials. I can’t think of any other reason why this place is permitted to exist.

Anyway, it was the cherry on the top of my Miami evening.

I’M SO GLAD I MOVED TO OCALA. I WISH I WAS THERE RIGHT NOW.

Tomorrow I’ll get up, do whatever I can to the condo, and come back and pack. I’ll put whatever I can in my truck, and on Sunday, I…am…out.

Eventually I’ll return with a U-Haul and pick up every useful item which remains.

I am going to get this town out of my life. Count on that.

I prayed in tongues the whole way here. My jaws are sore from it. I feel like I didn’t do it enough.

Now I will inflate my bed and try to sleep. I am counting the seconds until I can leave.

Celebrities Openly Insult God on Twitter

This is just a quick post to document my amazement at the way leftists are succeeding in demonizing Christians and turning Christianity into the religion of hate.

A liberal atheist named Devin Kelley killed a large number of innocent people attending a church service. One victim was an 18-month-old baby. As always, people around the world responded by saying they were praying for the victims. Guess how leftists are responding. I’ll save you the trouble. They’re abusing Christians (and other people who believe in God) for praying.

Former (let’s be honest) actor Wil Wheaton put up a profane Twitter post claiming prayer doesn’t work, essentially attacking Christianity and Christians at a time when sane people would be showing us sympathy and some sort of solidarity. Keith Olbermann, the soul of compassion and quiet reason, said Paul Ryan should shove his prayers up his rear end. I guess we know where this liberal blasphemer stands on the God issue. Wheaton and Olbermann are not alone. Lots of other bigots are chiming in.

Isn’t this remarkable? Christians are murdered, and while the wounds are still open, how do leftists respond? By tormenting Christians! Maybe they should respond to the news about gay predator Kevin Spacey by castigating teenage boys.

What times we live in. It won’t be long before a big percentage of Americans start treating the Bible the way they treat the Confederate flag. They’ll throw fits and file lawsuits, claiming the sight of a Bible makes them feel threatened.

There is no point in lying about it; the Bible is anti-homosexuality. If being against homosexuality is hate, then Christianity is just as bad as belonging to the Klan or the Nazi party. If we, as a people, decide homosexuality is a good thing, then there is no honest way for us to approve of the God of Christians.

We are in the process of turning a corner, and around that corner lies a region in which God is generally considered evil.

Once we fall into the abyss of pervasive and open hatred of God, what reason will he have to continue looking out for us? He does look out for us, by the way. This is a fallen world, in which every person above the age of accountability deserves to be in hell. The world is full of pain and misfortune, but if God were not merciful and proactive, it would be much worse. If things seem bad now, wait till he abandons us completely. When that happens, we’ll understand how patient he used to be.

Leftists need to come out and admit it: they hate Christianity. They love homosexuality, and anything that gets in the way of that love must, in their view, be abolished. Leftists are too gutless to speak the truth. Eventually, they’ll realize they have more earthly power than we do, and then they’ll say what they really think.

The body of Christ is just like Israel and Jewry. There are problems the left thinks will go away if we cease to exist. Jews have to be killed in order for the left’s dream of a world without Jewry-related tension to exist. Christians could be considered somewhat luckier. It’s possible for us to renounce our faith and accept damnation, so it’s not necessary to exterminate all of us. Only the tough nuts who won’t crack will have to be done away with.

What I write will sound crazy to many people, but I would have sounded crazy in 2007 if I had said celebrities would soon be saying filthy, anti-Christian things to Christians in the wake of a massacre of Christians. What sounds crazy one day is taken for granted the next.

Can the people who are saying these disgusting things hold onto their coveted jobs now that they’ve exposed themselves? I don’t see why not. The journalism and entertainment industries are against God. I doubt Keith Olbermann will have any career problems (beyond those he already has) as a result of telling Paul Ryan to shove prayers–a human being’s sacred communications with God–up his anus. It’s not as Olbermann he did anything really bad. It’s not like he quietly went to a Bible-believing church on his own time or did a commercial for Chick-fil-A. It’s not like he tried to get a job at a tech company after saying he didn’t support gay marriage.

A prophet is a person who sounds crazy until his words come true. Satan gets a lot of mileage out of that truth. He can do a lot to a truthful person before everyone else realizes that person was right. Look whom religious Jews revere: a bunch of people they themselves murdered.

I’m not calling myself a prophet, but like a prophet, I’m predicting things that are going to come to pass, and the things I say would enrage the people I’m speaking honestly about, if they read my blog.

This world is completely nuts. America is so corrupted and deceived, it’s barely worth it to remain alive here. Christians have to keep moving to smaller and smaller areas and getting farther away from mainstream employment in order to avoid persecution. Maybe one day we’ll all be in one big pen in Montana, working for Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby while we wait to be gassed. We’ll be like the body thetans of Scientology, waiting for Xenu to nuke us into the next life.

I don’t think we’ll ever be concentrated in one little area. I was deliberately being absurd. But now that I write it, it doesn’t look as improbable as it did when I conceived the idea. Genocide tends to funnel and concentrate people.

I’m so glad I have someplace better to go. By the time they’re crazy enough, mad enough, and powerful enough to come after me, I will be happy to surrender so I can finally leave.

Liberal Murderer’s Facebook Page Evaporates Instantly

Question: why did Facebook immediately delete the page of Devin Patrick Kelley, the Texas church killer? They have allowed the pages of other murderers to stay online. I know that because I’ve dug up those pages out of curiosity.

Possible answer: they did it because the murderer was a leftist lowlife whom they did not want to help expose. Here are some things he endorsed or named as causes on social media sites: atheism, CNN, a psychic medium, environmentalism, animal rights, “Arts and Culture,” and “Civil Rights and Social Action.”

How many conservatives are proud atheists? Not a big percentage. How many would “like” CNN on Facebook? Pretty much none. Are conservatives known for their interest in the occult? No. They are known for their opposition to it. Animal rights are a huge concern to leftists. Conservatives don’t play them up much; we keep it in proper perspective. We’re not the ones trying to ban goldfish ownership. Environmentalism…in its current extreme form, this is one of the things we hate the most.

To many leftists, “Civil Rights and Social Action” means rioting, harming people and businesses while using “social justice” as an excuse, and stealing things from stores whose employees can’t cope with violent mobs. It would be very odd for a conservative to list “Civil Rights and Social Action” as one of his big concerns in life.

We have not read anything indicating that Kelley “liked” any conservative pages or causes.

So why did Facebook move so quickly to get rid of Kelley’s page? Did Kelley say bad things about Trump? We already know he disparaged Christians.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Kelley’s wife deleted the page. I’m relying on reports from the MSM, and we all know their record for veracity and fact-checking.

One thing is certain. The MSM hive has been digging furiously for information linking Kelley to conservatism, Trump, Christianity, and white supremacy. When they don’t find it, what will they do? My best guess: they will let this story die fairly quickly instead of capitalizing on the bloodshed to attack our civil rights as strongly as possible.

Remember the black BLM mass murderer who shot a bunch of cops in 2016? I do; barely. We never hear about him these days, but we still hear a lot about the Sandy Hook massacre, which was performed four years EARLIER by the son of a white gun rights enthusiast.

This story is not good material for the MSM anti-civil-rights machine. The killer was very clearly not conservative. He was clearly not a Christian. He liked the occult, which is more or less owned by leftists. He was apparently a liberal nut. And he was killed not by the police, but by a private citizen who did not turn the situation into a “shooting gallery” or make things worse. Kelley was killed by hero Stephen Willeford, a plumber. Willeford did not shoot haphazardly and kill the innocent. The coward Kelley was wearing body armor as he shot women and children, so Willeford used a rifle to shoot between the armor panels and send a round tearing through Kelley’s guts. That’s not cop-grade shooting. That’s the real thing. And another hero, Johnnie Langedorff, helped him pursue the mortally wounded murderer.

When did the cops show up? We don’t even know. They were so late they weren’t a factor. And that’s TYPICAL. Cops only show up to help at a tiny percentage of active crime scenes. God bless the cops, but 90% of their work is sweeping up and collecting evidence.

Good guys with guns DO make a difference, over and over, every day. Some gun owners shoot after the violence starts, but most discourage crimes passively. Their presence scares criminals and keeps them away. It’s too bad we can’t measure the number of crimes gun owners prevent simply by existing, but criminals think about us a lot when they make their plans, and they work to avoid us.

Leftists will push for more gun laws. Problem: it appears that liberal Kelley was already precluded from possessing firearms. Like many cowards, he was a domestic violence offender. He beat his wife and baby. He was discharged from the Air Force over it. Background checks are performed by the feds, and the Air Force is part of the federal government. Uncle Sam blew it.

It’s starting to look like this was an Antifa-inspired massacre, and since Antifa is an ad hoc movement which does not have official membership rolls, that would very nearly make it an Antifa massacre. The killer wore black. He was clearly strongly opposed to conservative values. He shot up a church, and Antifa has a history of hostility toward Christianity; they used force to shut down a speaker at a church in Canada. If he wasn’t Antifa, he was basically on their side.

I saw a great meme today. It said that 90% of gun violence would go away if liberals gave up their guns. That’s true or nearly true. The vast, vast majority of violent criminals are leftists. Yet somehow conservative white Christian males are the big threat. In reality, if people like me were disarmed, the people who habitually murder, steal, and rape would keep their guns, and crime would skyrocket.

The idiot in our latest story probably thought what he was doing was “civil disobedience.” Antifa and BLM are in love with civil disobedience, and they’re too stupid to realize that rioting and other forms of violence don’t fit under that heading. It’s civil disobedience if you hold a sit-in. Putting on masks and throwing bottles at the cops is just battery and attempted murder. Burning things is just arson. The modern left is too stupid and violent to work or coexist with. The only answer is to move away from their gangrenous strongholds. You can’t get along in places like Baltimore and Berkeley. You can only live with abuse or get out.

I think this story will not stink as long as the Las Vegas shooting. It’s just not as appetizing to the gun control vultures. I will watch with interest over the next few days.

I Usually Drink Mine Standing Up

Good day today. I accomplished nothing whatsoever until after 1 p.m., and I call that a victory. Then Amanda dropped by, and she graciously helped me move boxes from the kitchen to the upstairs storage room. Since the move, I had been hoping elves would break in and move them, but they didn’t show up, so I resorted to physical exertion. Thank God I’m not the only one who suffered. I know how to treat a guest.

After Amanda left (I was out of jobs for her to do), I took her advice and used a new weapon on my immortal live oak stumps. She told me a fascinating story about the house she and her once-husband bought. The original owner built it around a tree. Smart! When the tree grew, the house mysteriously remained the same size, so something had to be done. Amanda and Co. paid someone to cut the tree and lift it out of the house, but the cable snapped, and it fell on the roof.

Anyway, she ended up with a stump that would not die. She used Roundup and I know not what else, and nothing happened. She then pinned her tree person down, perhaps physically, and forced him to tell her the real solution. It was two words: motor oil.

Roundup does not do a great job of killing stumps, and the hippies would much prefer seeing our houses replaced by useless trees to having us taint the precious water table with one part per billion of oil, so we don’t hear a lot about motor oil. Now I know the secret, so I used it.

I read up on it on the web. If what I read is correct, other petroleum products will work. One such product is diesel, which I always have on hand. You drill holes in your stump and you fill them with diesel.

I do not have a really good cordless drill right now, so I decided to bore-cut my stumps with a chainsaw. Beats dragging a generator across the yard. I fired up my little Jonsered and plunged into the stumps, scaring the crap out of a number of carpenter ants. I returned with the diesel jug a short time later, and I filled the stumps up. Except for one, which was apparently bottomless. I am now looking forward to seeing the results.

Using the chainsaw was a good move. I think. I don’t want to dull my drill bits on crappy live oaks, and anyway, drills make very small holes. The chainsaw made holes several inches long and about 3/8″ across. That’s a hole that means something.

Is diesel good for the environment? Don’t bother me with trivia. Besides, my well is a good hundred yards away from the stumps, and I drink bottled water.

It would be nice to have a skid steer with one of those stump attachment things. They rip stumps right out of the ground in seconds. But renting one would cost money, and the diesel trick probably cost less than three bucks.

After I treated the stumps, I shocked the pool again and brushed the algae off. I hate pools. When I was a kid, my dad made me clean the pool at our house, and I rarely did what I was supposed to. He didn’t supervise me or anything, and I was the king of all procrastinators, so basically, every month or so, he would explode for an entire day. I can’t tell you how miserable this made me. Not sure why I didn’t respond by doing a better job. You know how kids are. I have been doing as little as possible to maintain our current pool, and it has worked out about as well as you would expect.

After the hurricane, the pool pump clock died. I don’t know if the death was storm-related, but that’s what happened. I replaced the clock, but I bought the wrong model, and it died again. I finally got the right one installed last week. By then, the pool had gone quite a while with irregular pump cycles, including the long period of inactivity that passed before I realized the clock was dead.

I have been keeping the pool alive with shock treatments, hoping I could avoid skimming and vacuuming, but today I gave up and got out the brush and scoop. When I removed leaves from the bottom of the pool (which is fully screened; go figure), little bits of white stuff came up with them. I wondered what it was. Then I realized I was looking at chlorine-eaten organic material. Stuff I had left in the pool had sat on the bottom, slowly turning white. Also, I’m sure a lot of things that would ordinarily have been sucked into the filter went to the bottom when the pump wasn’t working. My guess, at this point, was that this stuff was eating my chlorine. When you put chlorine in a pool, how well it works depends on the job you give it, and if your pool has a lot of crap in it, it’s not going to get much done.

I accepted my fate. I removed whatever I could, and I brushed the whole pool to get the crap into circulation so it would go into the filter. I am hoping I can backwash it out and get rid of it.

Right now the pool is about as inviting as Chernobyl the day after the accident. I’m pretty sure it will glow at night with or without the pool light. I did not skimp on the chlorine. It’s downright poisonous. That’s fine with me. I don’t care if anyone ever gets to use it. I just want it to be blue and clear.

Maybe I could have it filled with blue lucite. That’s genius.

I also checked my burn pile. I put some big logs on it yesterday, and in the evening, I poured nine gallons of water on it to put it out. This afternoon it was going great guns. It had come back to life. Maybe burn piles aren’t for big logs.

Tomorrow my plans include eating Mike-Sell’s Puffcorn Delites and possibly poisoning my pond. Hope your day is equally fulfilling.

With Christian Brothers Like These, who Needs Pagans?

It is Sunday morning, and I am not at church. Praise the Lord.

I suppose I sound cynical. In reality, I would like to attend church. I’ve been looking around online. I say, “Praise the Lord,” because I’ve been part of two cults in a row, and I’m glad I’m not currently being mistreated and milked by any preachers.

Marion County is filled with churches. It seems like everyone I meet is a Christian. That’s the reason the people here are so nice. I’m surrounded by churches, which is good, but I still have to be careful. I can’t just flop down in a chair in the first church I see, because I run the risk of being pumped full of greed-based Joel Osteen/T.D. Jakes/Benny Hinn/Paula White nonsense. Did I mention enough preachers by name? I want to offend as many people as I can.

I look at websites. I rule out all the websites that say, “We believe every individual is filled with the Holy Spirit at the moment he accepts Jesus.” That’s code for, “We can’t get the baptism with the Holy Spirit, so we pretend it doesn’t exist.” I rule out the “Jesus is cool” churches. If I wanted to go to church with confused non-black kids who dress and act like rappers, I’d go back to Miami. And tattoo preachers…no. If you got tattoos before you were saved, and now you can’t afford to remove them, fine, but if you seriously believe God wants you to look like the funny papers, you are way out of God’s will, and if I get around you, I will expect to be taught lies and possibly chastised for not “sanctioning your buffoonery” (to steal a line from Tommy Lee Jones).

I reject all churches that say members have to tithe. Tithing is for Jews, not Christians. Any church that gets excited about tithing is run by a pastor who is a) afraid God will let him go broke, or b) obsessed with money.

I saw a church with a site that advertised the importance of keeping the Sabbath. Not for me. The Sabbath is Saturday, not Sunday, and Gentiles have never been required to observe it. It’s a Jewish thing. It’s great to set aside a day for God, but pretending it’s the Sabbath, or claiming we are required to do it, is legalism and possibly replacement theology.

My plan, as I have said before, is to sit in the back, give just enough money to pull my weight, and be quiet. No volunteering. No church office for me. I want to meet Christians, but I don’t want to get into any more squabbles with carnal preachers and their spoiled wives or kids. I never want to feel that I can’t go home at a moment’s notice, or that I have to refrain from speaking the truth in order to avoid offending a preacher who is driven by greed or pride.

I saw a place that doesn’t look too bad, but they had a video of a lady screaming and waving her arms because…Holy Spirit. That’s not how it works. God doesn’t take away your self-control. The devil does. Self-control is listed in the Bible as a fruit of the Spirit. If you’ve ever been “slain in the Spirit” and rolled on the floor at church, you need to know that God didn’t make you do it.

I just had a thought. Imagine visiting heaven. Suppose God takes you up and shows you what happens there. You look out over the host of angels and the saved human beings…and they’re all screaming like monkeys, waving their arms and legs, and rolling on the ground.

Really?

Is heaven a mental ward?

If you wave your arms and scream in church, it’s not God. You’re just that kind of person.

Prayer in tongues sounds silly, and it’s normal to react to God’s presence with some odd facial expressions and semi-involuntary sounds. That ought to suffice. You don’t need to do the gator.

In all likelihood, I will not find a church that doesn’t have significant problems. I do hope God leads me to one that isn’t completely nuts.

Things are going well between God and me here at home. God keeps showing me things. And he does some impressive deeds. Remember how I burned myself and then had the blister disappear? It appears to be happening again. I keep finding new ways to burn myself on chainsaws. Yesterday I learned that you can burn yourself on the chain. I started a saw and ran it a little bit to warm it up, and then I tried to sharpen it. I grabbed the chain to move it forward, and a searing, inexplicable pain shot up my thumb. I let go and looked. My thumb was burned. Dang it. How do you prevent injuries when you don’t know they can happen in the first place? I didn’t know saw chains could get hot.

I work very hard to protect myself. I study tool safety. I read up on poison ivy. I wear pretty decent protective clothing and gear. When I cut trees, I do my best to figure out which way they’ll go after they’re severed, and I prepare. Then I burn myself on a saw chain. Come on. Is that even fair?

Anyhow, I kept working, and I prayed and commanded my flesh to be healed and so on. I kept thanking God. Over the day, the pain decreased. By the time I went to bed, the burned area seemed flatter and less messed up. I checked it just now, and I had to look for it. I am hoping the healing continues.

I am not satisfied to leave it as it is. Should I grovel and drool and stop praying? Should I say I’m so grateful for what I have, I should be ashamed to ask for more? In short, no. If I did that, the primary reasons would be laziness and lack of faith. I don’t want to spend the day praying and thanking and so on, because I’m lazy, and I’m afraid God won’t finish the job, because I lack faith. The thing to do is to keep going forward and see that God gets as much glory as possible, even if I’m perfectly content with what has already happened.

Jesus didn’t do any half-healings.

Interesting thing…I told my friend Amanda about the other blister that healed, and not long after that, she burned herself. She fought it supernaturally, and it went away. No mark. No blister. How about that?

My character is still disappointing. That’s to be expected. I made self-corruption my special project for half a century, and I did a great job. God has definitely improved me, however, and I look forward to being substantially less contemptible.

My friend Mike is coming down tomorrow to spend a few days. I look forward to that because Mike knows a lot about construction, and I want him to fix my chicken house for nothing he’s a good friend, and I haven’t seen him in a while. He lived near Ocala for a long time. He and his dad raised racehorses. He loves this place and wants to move back. He’ll be beside himself the whole time he’s here. He’ll get to have Krystals and Sonny’s BBQ. He’ll get to go to Rural King. Maybe I’ll let him drive the tractor. No, I think I’ll just let him sit in the seat with the ignition off and go “VROOM VROOM.”

Along with Amanda, Mike has been very helpful with my turbulent Ocala transition. They disagree on one issue, however, and that is the goat question. I would like to have a couple of goats here to eat weeds. Mike thinks it’s a good idea. When I mention it to Amanda, her head spins 720 degrees and flames shoot out of her eye sockets.

I think she’s against it.

We will agree on a few things, however. Sonny’s. Krystal. Rural King. Sonic. Carhartt. Mike-Sell’s Puffcorn Delites. We agree that Miami is a swollen can of pus.

Next weekend, I am virtually certain to be in Miami. Disgusting. Has to be done, however. Miami, like a colonoscopy, is one of those things that has to be confronted head-on. So to speak. I hope I’m not there long enough to let the stink rub off on me.

I have to paint a rental condo. If things go really badly, this is a six-hour job. I know that from experience. The materials cost eighty bucks. Possibly a hundred, if I need primer. The slackjaws in Miami want $2000 for this service. Unacceptable. I’ve painted many condos, and I can’t stomach that price. I figure I’ll paint as much of it as I can, and then even if I have to pay someone to finish it, they’ll be ashamed to charge me a lot.

Well, let’s be serious. It’s hard to shame a slackjaw.

The tree removal work is going well here, but I can see that I’m not going to get the county to move much of the debris. It would take me months to get it to the highway, and I have only weeks.

Yesterday I cut a couple of big oaks that fell by my fence. I cut one section about seven feet long and two feet thick. I tried to roll it onto the timberjack so I could cut it in pieces that might be small enough for the tractor to carry, but I couldn’t do it. I’ll be more accurate here: I could not do it at a level of exertion I considered safe. I refuse to exert myself hard enough to injure myself. I push to something like 75% of my capacity, and after that, I figure it’s time for a helper or a new tool. I don’t want artificial hips or knees, and I don’t want a bad back.

I have a number of oaks just as heavy as the one I worked on yesterday, so progress will be slow. Maybe there’s a better machine for the job. I could rent something once I have all the wood cut up. I should look into that.

I think it’s time to consider the unthinkable: serious exercise. I may get some weights. I don’t want to be so flubbery and soft I get hurt easily. My current workout is paying off about a hundred times as well as expected. I operate one exercise bike with my hands and another with my feet, for a weekly total of about half an hour. Unlike the rest of humanity, I am treated to a full view of myself in the bathroom mirror as I get into and out of the shower, and I am not the same person I was three months ago. But weights would be much better for strength.

I have a Bowflex, which is a fine machine for lazy people who are happy with moderate improvement (me), but I don’t know if it’s possible to get real strength out of it. I have not tried lately. I need to move it out of the garage. I forgot to have the movers (slackjaws par excellence) do it.

In the past, I refused to think about resuming weight training because I was so lazy I knew I would not persist. Now, however, I am getting used to a higher level of mandatory activity, and lifting weights a few times a week would not be much of an increase.

I have to move logs. I have to lift full fuel containers and hold them while I fuel machinery. A little extra strength would be helpful.

When I was in law school, I was pretty sturdy. I maxed out all the machines at the University of Miami Wellness Center. Now I feel like it’s a victory when it only takes me three tries to get out of a chair.

One great thing about exercise equipment is that it’s cheap. Very few people buy it and the use it. Generally, it ends up being used to hold clothing on hangers. I should be able to do quite well on Craigslist for a couple of hundred bucks.

I better get with it. The day is slipping away, in spite of the death of Daylight Saving Time.

Hope your Sunday is going well.

But You Can Still Smell my Feet for Old Times’ Sake

Halloween has, mercifully, passed once again, and I barely noticed it. For some reason, in his old age, my dad decided he liked kids and was obligated to hand out candy, so he has been passing out treats for years, but I want nothing to do with the holiday, so I’m glad to be done with it. I’m not a kid person, and aside from that, this holiday does not appeal to me.

In Miami, you have to hide your car on Halloween to keep the egg patrol from damaging it, and you are better off not driving. If you don’t pass out candy, you could be inviting vandalism from punks. Here, no one can get onto my property without scaling a fence (essentially forfeiting their lives), and aside from that, the people are less trashy, so trick-or-treating and vandalism are not realistic options. I am totally safe. Go, me!

When I was a little kid, Halloween was a lot of fun. Then when I was maybe ten, we started hearing stories about LSD in candy and razor blades in apples. I doubt these things actually happened, but by the time I was in high school, Halloween was making people nervous. Since then, the fun has gone completely out of it.

When I was in the sixth grade, I could go out after sundown (alone), trick-or-treat at every house for blocks around, stay out until ten, wear any costume I liked, and not worry too much about what would happen to me. Now parents do the unthinkable. They drive their kids around in minivans, to houses they’ve already cleared. The process starts right after school, and by sundown, it’s pretty much over. And God help you if you get your kid a costume which is homophobic, dismissive of global warming, upsetting to midgets, sexist (unless you’re woman dressing like a slut), equipped with a toy gun or sword, related to any ethnicity other than your own, or which indicates that at some point in your life, you might have eaten meat. Am I forgetting anything?

Halloween is now a big, long, leftist lecture which takes place under the cloud of the threat of pedophilia. Maybe kids should dress as Kevin Spacey. Who is not, technically, a pedophile. But leave me alone. I’m on a roll.

I’m complaining about Halloween, but I’m glad it’s dead, because it’s a huge Satanic holiday. Witches and other pagans get together and perform sick rituals to mark the occasion. It’s not a joke to them. They take holidays like Halloween and May Day very, very seriously. No wonder so many antisocial, destructive acts are performed on Halloween. It’s like the devil’s Christmas.

A lot of people think people like me are uptight for criticizing Halloween, but then they’re not hard core Christians. They don’t see anything wrong with celebrating demons and other evil spirits, because they don’t really believe they exist. I’ve seen demons, so I would feel stupid and disloyal taking part in their big day. Jesus visited me on two occasions. Can you blame me for taking spirits seriously?

Imagine you could see Jesus and Satan. Say you’re sitting in your living room with Jesus, feeling horrified by all the bad things you’ve done and thanking him for saving you. Then Satan knocks on the door and asks if you want to celebrate Halloween. What would you say? The fact that you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not real, or that your debt to Jesus is imaginary. Why would you even think of celebrating the spirit that played the most prominent role in getting Jesus tortured to death?

There are churches which try to capitalize on Halloween. Some have Halloween celebrations, which is kind of sick. Here’s a wild idea: how about if people just abandon the holiday without trying to fill the void? Life will go on without Halloween. We have more holidays than ever before. It’s a wonder anyone gets anything done at work. Why not dump Halloween and put more energy into Thanksgiving? Or go out on Halloween night and have some magnificent rib eyes at a high-end steakhouse. You won’t be home listening to the doorbell, and you won’t be dragged into a holiday you find repugnant. And it will be very easy to get reservations.

I did absolutely nothing for Halloween, and I feel okay. I don’t think I harmed myself.

I don’t owe strangers’ kids candy. There, I said it! There’s nothing wrong with sitting inside with the lights on and refusing to come out. The obligation only exists in other people’s minds. That doesn’t make it real. Thank God we’re not expected to hand things out on other holidays. What if your neighbors decided to create a holiday where they knock on your door and you give them jewelry?

This year I read something really upsetting about Halloween. Idiot parents load their kids into vehicles and drive them to better neighborhoods where they expect to get more candy. Really? Who decided that was okay? Your kids, who I don’t know from Adam’s housecat, are at my door trying to guilt me into giving them Butterfingers, and you’re looking around my yard to see if I leave my lawnmower out where you can steal it. No. This is unacceptable. There are limits even during this orgy of entitlement. If I felt like giving out candy at all, I would only want it to go to local kids. I would not load up on candy to feed trashy invaders.

I think I’ve finally escaped Halloween. I’m hoping I never feel pressured to deal with it again. I’m also down on large birthday and Christmas presents as well as forced Valentine’s Day expenditures. If your wife has to have a special holiday in order to feel loved, roses and an expensive dinner aren’t the solution. You’ve been blowing it all year. You can’t fix it in one day. And where is the romance in being jammed into a restaurant with two hundred other sheep who can’t think for themselves? There is no such thing as herd romance.

Romance is supposed to be spontaneous and, at the same time, routine. Romantic gestures should occur throughout the year, and your spouse shouldn’t see them coming because they happen on certain preordained days. What could be less romantic than a gift you’re required to give? If you have to give it, it’s not a gift. You’re paying a bill.

The IRS has a Valentine’s Day of its own: April 15. On February 14, you have to give your wife roses and food. On April 15, you have to give the IRS your taxes. Both payments are equally grounded in love.

Anyway, the lack of Halloween hassles is one more reason to love Ocala. It’s like a Hurricane just hit another state.

My escape is not without interludes of pain. I may have to go to Miami this weekend, to move some junk up here and deal with some real estate hassles. I think I’d rather stay here and have a painful, embarrassing, expensive medical procedure. I dread the traffic, the Spanish, the rudeness, and the heat. But sometimes you have to do things you don’t like.

The other day I was thinking about how I feel when I think about visiting Miami, and I wondered if heavenly spirits feel the same way about visiting the earth. If I were in heaven, you could not drag me back to this rotten place unless the alternative was damnation. It must be very unpleasant for God and the angels to spend time here. Similarly, Miami is a step backward for me. It will be like visiting prison after a year on parole. I hate that place more every day.

I already look forward to leaving Miami again. What a rathole. I wish such places did not exist. The more I experience the warm, gentle people of northern Florida, the more contempt I have for Miami morals and manners. It’s not a matter of taste. Cities like Miami and New York are, objectively, inferior places to live, and the cultures are inferior.

I’m sitting here trying to think of something Miami has that will redeem the trip. “At least I’ll be able to get this. At least I’ll be able to get that.” No; it’s not coming. There is no restaurant, no store, no park, no church, no natural feature, no nothing that I miss. New York is disgusting, but at least I could look forward to the food. Not that it would justify the trip.

I’m also going to miss New Year’s Day! That will be great. No explosions. No drunks. Man. That will be a welcome experience.

I hope your cars and houses were not egged, and that your kids didn’t make you get them Harry Potter costumes. If you gave in this year, you can always turn it around in 2018.

Dang. I better get out of here. CVS probably has chocolate on sale.