Rapid Fire no Fun

I’ve had a weird morning.

Today I was supposed to go to the gun range with some guys from church. That’s not the weird part. The weird part is that my dad went. When he found out I was going to the range, he wanted to go, in spite of the fact that Christians would be there. How about that?

I wanted to go to Trail Glades, the outdoor county range I always go to, but John, the church volunteer leader who arranged the outing opted for an indoor range up north. This turned out to be a good thing. Trail Glades does not permit “rapid fire,” which means anything faster than once every five seconds. That means you can forget about three-shot drills. The range we went to is somewhat grubby and dark, but it has no speed limit.

I started out with the .45 and .38 Super, and I shot very nicely. Then I noticed that John was shooting faster, and I asked him about it. He said he was practicing shooting twice to the body and once to the head. We were using silhouette targets (another thing Trail Glades does not permit), so it was easy to see how the paper perp was faring.

I decided to try three-shot drills. It was pretty humiliating. Suddenly, I had to worry about target re-acquisition. I was using 5.5″ Caldwell Orange Peel targets over the heart and head of my victim, and when I switched to shooting three shots per burst, I started getting a lot of shots that were completely out of the black.

I noticed a few things. First, while my Glock 26 is great for slow-firing, it took longer to get on target when shooting fast. The results weren’t great. I tried John’s Glock 17, and the vast majority of my shots stayed in the black at about 25 feet. My .45 ACP 1911 also performed well. My 1911 .38 Super wasn’t that good, although it was the first gun I tried rapid shooting with, so it makes sense that I didn’t do well.

The other guy from church–his name is Joey–let me shoot a clip from his Springfield XD. I can see why people like them. The trigger pull is vastly superior to a Glock’s. And I shot it as well as the Glock 17. It was a short-barreled version in 9mm. Not sure which one.

My dad was shooting a bizarre 4-shot .357 he inherited. The brand name is “Cop.” He found that it didn’t always fire. No idea why. Good thing, I guess. Now he’ll know better than to rely on it. I let him shoot the Glock 26, and he really liked it.

On the way home, we dropped into a new gun store near me, and I priced a Glock 30. I think the thing to do is to get one, ditch the Glock 26, and practice rapid-fire drills. A laser now seems like a must. Why squint at tiny sights when you can look for a nice bright dot? Trying to use the sights is fun and challenging, but I don’t think challenge is a good thing when you’re ventilating an armed burglar.

This experience reaffirmed my faith in long guns. A pistol is way better than nothing, but a long gun with a green laser would be far superior to anything I shot today.

I think maybe I should give up on full-sized pistols. It seems like there isn’t much of a niche between compact pistols and 7.62mm carbines. A tiny Glock will do nearly anything a big Glock will do; if you need more oomph, you should probably reach for a folding carbine. That’s my guess.

After we shot, we hung around the front of the gun range clinging to our Bibles and bashing immigrants. Which didn’t go all that well, since one of us was born in Trinidad and another was Cuban. But we really tried. We felt we owed it to Janet Napolitano to prove how bigoted and ignorant Christians are.

Yeah, if there is one thing Yesterday’s events prove, it’s that Christians are the ones the government should be watching. I don’t know how we got a peace-loving Muslim to shoot up Fort Hood, but I’m sure Bill Maher could explain it.

“And Over There is Where the Garage Used to Be.”

Every time I crank up the ammunition press after a layoff, I find new ways to torment myself.

Let’s see if I can remember all the stuff that happened today. I was making .38 Super ammunition.

1. The plastic cylinder on the powder measure fell off twice. I finally taped it to the press. Perhaps I was wrong to use the Shop-Vac to clean up the spills, but after a while, when you make aggravating mistakes, you get so annoyed you would rather blow yourself up than be inconvenienced further.

2. I put the large primer feed tube on, but I was using small primers, which turned themselves upside-down in the tube.

3. Powder residue stopped up the primer feed slide and clogged up the tube to where I had to get a steel rod and force the primers out. Then I had to clean powder sludge out with brake part cleaner.

That’s all I feel like admitting.

It turns out No. 7 is a horror when you spill it. One or two microscopic grains can immobilize your primer feed slide. And when you spray it with Hornady’s expensive remedy, which is Hornady One Shot, it doesn’t really help. I think it may actually make it worse. It certainly doesn’t move the powder very well.

I was using pretty new Starline brass. This was a first. I suspect the primer pockets on new brass are tight. I had all sorts of problems getting the primers in. I had to squoosh a bunch of them in my bench vise. This may have had something to do with exposure to powder residue, though. I ended up priming and shaping the casings and then adding powder and lead in a second operation. Took forever.

Another weird thing: Starline .38 Super brass doesn’t seem to like the old-style Hornady Lock-N-Load shell plates with the spring around the casing bases. That surprised me, because everyone raves about Starline brass. I guess I won’t buy it any more. Maybe I should upgrade my press. But if I’m going to do that, I might give up and buy a Dillon. This thing is incredibly temperamental. Today I found two new design flaws, which I am too tired to describe.

If anyone from church asks to shoot my guns, I think I better tell them to buy their own shells. I have been known to manufacture questionable rounds, and I don’t want some noob shooting one round halfway down the barrel and then following it with a full charge.

I hate to waste my last boxes of factory 9mm ammunition, which I got for like $9 each. I know they’ll be that cheap again in a few months, but it’s irritating to shoot the last boxes I got at a decent pre-Obama price. That guy has killed recreational shooting. I assume. Surely people haven’t been rushing to the gun range with $25 9mm ammunition.

I’m pooped. Thank God I have piles of .45 ACP ready to go.

“Neighbors Regret Making Fun of His Enormous Truck and Pressure Canner”

It is a nasty, rainy day. What great news. In weather like this, the garage air conditioner will work better, and I won’t be tempted to leave home and do something fun. So it’s a perfect day to straighten up the garage and make piles of ammunition for tomorrow’s trip to the gun range.

I don’t have any idea whether I have .45 bullets. I’m afraid to look. I found Unique and primers. The bullets may well be the bottleneck.

Laser-Cast is giving 10% off on orders of over 1000 bullets. I don’t know why anyone would order fewer than that.

Hey, I forgot. I still have all sorts of Hornady .45 bullets that came free with my ammo press.

Does life ever get any sweeter than this? Hanging out in the garage, surrounded by an obscene glut of tools, with the stereo playing country music, making your own ammunition for a trip to the range with people from church?

If so, I probably could not handle it.

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How could I have doubted my own right-wing extremism? While I was cleaning the garage I found several hundred rounds of lovely .45 ACP reloads. Excellent.

Week Shaping Up

Name something better than getting up in the morning and having nova and cream cheese on a toasted garlic bagel! Bet you can’t.

Every Tuesday, I go out to breakfast with my father. I quit eating eggs because of my gall bladder, so I always have one of two things: a tuna salad sandwich, or a nova platter. Today was a nova day. It was spectacular.

Even more exciting than nova on a bagel: being able to tuck my shirt in. I suppose I could have done that before, when I was wearing bigger shorts, but for fat people, shirt-tucking never really works well. The flubber jiggles around and moves the shirt out of the pants in random areas. Now, thanks to the grace of God, my flubber is sufficiently thin that it’s not a real problem.

The hazard of tucking my shirt in is that the tail no longer covers the pocket where I carry my pistol. I suppose a clever and nosy person could stand right behind me and spot the gun. A little bit of the grip can be seen. Is that a violation of the concealed weapons law? I hope not. I really don’t want to go to a fanny pack.

I need (I should put the second word in quotation marks) a new Glock. I sold my .40 S&W to Mike, and I shipped it off to New Hampshire. There were bad memories associated with it, and I also felt that I had been sold a bill of goods RE the ballistically superior .45 ACP. When I got the .40, I chose it largely because experts said the .45 was hard to shoot. That’s a total load. I love shooting .45s. I should break down and spring for a Glock in that caliber.

I have a 1911, and it’s a joy to shoot, but let’s be honest. As a tool, the Glock is superior. It holds more ammunition. It’s lighter. It’s a cinch to strip and clean. I hate to say it, because it’s butt-ugly, and everyone loves the 1911, but come on. Truth is truth. I got my 1911s to shoot at the range, and the pretty .38 Super would be a great carry piece under a suit, but if I were in the house with a maniac searching for me, I would be a whole lot better off with a Glock.

Of course, I would not use a pistol for self-defense if I had a rifle or shotgun handy. I may as well admit that. The Vz 58 with 30 rounds of 7.62 x 39 plus a laser and blinding flashlight is hard to top, as is the Saiga 12. You really, really don’t want to be in this house after sundown.

Maybe the Glock is a stupid idea. Maybe I’d be better off selling my Glock 26 and getting a small Glock .45, whatever the model number is. I can’t see carrying a full-size Glock, and when I’m not carrying, a long gun is the weapon of choice. The small .45 would be nearly as portable as my Glock 26, and the stopping power would be better. Eleven rounds of .45 ACP in a small, highly accurate, easily maintained, extremely reliable pistol would provide me with excellent security with minimal hassle.

People always tell me the small Glocks are too small for their hands. I think this has more to do with male ego than fact. Men love to talk about how big they are, and how it makes life difficult for them. I can only get two fingers around the grip of the Glock 26 (the grip only has two notches), and I shoot it more accurately than either of my full-size 1911s. In all likelihood, having your pinky on the grip reduces accuracy, because it tends to move when you use your trigger finger.

I’m fairly certain the small Glocks are nearly identical to the big ones, except that the barrels and grips are shorter. If so, a man who can shoot the big ones should be able to shoot the little ones. My hands are average-sized, but I wear a 13 ring, which is pretty big. Ring-size charts only go up to 14. If my fat fingers fit on the grip, yours should too, unless you’re a circus freak. Gaston Glock is said to have very large hands. It would surprise me if he designed a gun he could not shoot.

Weird surprise: a guy from church just called and asked if I wanted to go to the range later this week. Fantastic. Maybe some of the ex-military guys can give me tips on shooting. I better go make some ammunition.

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Someone has suggested I try a Glock 30 before buying, but that may not be possible. Gun ranges that rent can be found, but locating that particular Glock would be difficult. The guy from church wants to go to an indoor range up north. I don’t know if they rent guns, but if they do, there is always a possibility that they might have a Glock 30.

As for accuracy, here are two targets I found on my hard drive. The first is a Glock 22 (.40 caliber, full size), and the second is a Glock 26 (9mm, very short barrel, short grip). As you can see, the compact gun shoots beautifully. I have no reason to think the Glock 30 would be any different.

Reaping

I got a nice email from Robert Morris. I used their contact info to send a message saying how much I had enjoyed and agreed with his work, and he emailed me personally and said this blog post (I had sent him a link) was “great.”

That was a good outcome. He didn’t call me a heretic or anything.

I’m reading his book on the power of words right now. Very sobering stuff. Things like gossiping, complaining, and criticizing can cause real problems for us. When you do these things, it’s like planting poison ivy in your yard. Problems arise later. If I can’t gossip, complain, or criticize, it almost amounts to a total ban on communication. I might actually forget how to write and talk.

He also noted that James advised us not to become teachers. The problem is that God holds teachers to higher standards. This is disturbing. I try to write about my testimony all the time, but it’s nearly impossible not to veer into amateur teaching.

Please forget everything I have ever written.

I don’t know if that will get me off the hook. It was worth a shot!

I keep thinking about fat Christians. I was afraid that I would come off like a judgmental kook, saying obese people are under bondage, and that where one bondage exists, others may be present, and that this might be a good reason to avoid accepting teaching from fat preachers. But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s right.

Addiction isn’t physical. It’s a mental illness. A cigarette smoker will say things that are just as crazy as the nonsense that comes out of moderately messed up mental patients. “The studies don’t prove anything.” “Some people can smoke forever and never get sick.” “I can’t quit until I get through this stressful problem I’m dealing with.” This stuff is pure idiocy. Fat people say, “I know how to lose weight. I just don’t do it.” “All men put on muscle after they hit thirty.” “I have big bones.” The dumbest thing they say is, “I’m on a diet.” If you’re on a diet, obviously, it’s a temporary solution. Fat is a permanent problem. Temporary can’t defeat permanent. You don’t need a diet. You need to not be a fat person any more. You need to have the fat person drive removed.

If food can make you think stupid things about food, who is to say something else isn’t making you think and say stupid things about religion?

So I am still leery of obese preachers.

Today I was watering my plants, and I realized I had to harvest some more peppers whether I wanted to or not. Here is the result.

The big ones are limes, obviously. The branches are from my gigantic prig ki nu bush, which I had to trim to save the habanero gold bush.

Here’s how it goes, in clockwise fashion. Yellow peppers: yellow habaneros. Next, habanero golds (hot, sweet, and delicious). Then Trinidad Scorpions. Then Tobago Seasoning peppers. Then assorted Home Depot cayennes and habaneros grown from seeds taken from Publix peppers. I didn’t harvest any prig ki nus other than the ones still stuck to the branches. There are a couple of Fatalii peppers in among the limes.

I throw limes out these days. I can’t keep up with the tree. The limes get ripe and start to rot before I notice them.

Is this the law of sowing and reaping, at work? Dunno. I gave the church offerings of every pepper you see here except for fataliis and Publix peppers. I gave limes, too. And here I am, with this pile of produce. My banana trees have two bunches on them, and a third just started growing. One of my plantain trees now has a bract starting. My nam wa banana trees aren’t fruiting, but the biggest one now touches a power line, and it has lots of pups.

Here’s news that will make a tingle run up your leg. I’m giving the church pork chops! Long story, but I have eight pounds of frozen pork chops I need to get rid of before they get freezer burn. If giving the church peppers helps my pepper harvest, and giving the church limes helps my lime harvest, what will happen if I give them pork? Paradise, I suppose. Yards and yards of country hams, ham hocks, lechons, and maybe even Slim Jims.

I’m not saying it works that way, but I do have a whole lot of peppers.

I’m trying to give a considerable number of these peppers away. If I can’t do that, I have to freeze them or something. Or–hey!–time to start canning! Oh, man. That would be just sick. Power tools, a big truck, guns, frozen Costco prime beef, and to top it off, jars and jars of marvelous exotic canned peppers.

But for now I just need to get these things off the table.

Sleeper Cell?

I had such an astounding day yesterday, it’s almost pointless to try to write about it.

The day began very well; I attended to some nagging responsibilities. With that off my back, I went to a meeting with a lady from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. I gave them a little money, and their representative was in the area, so she called and asked to meet with me. I caught up with her at Starbucks.

I didn’t really want to meet with her. I don’t understand why charities have reps who run around talking to donors. If you give a charity money, presumably you don’t want anything from them, so why would they need to come see you? I figured the idea was to butter people up and hit them for more cash, which is sort of pointless in my case, since I only give when I felt led by God.

It turned out I was completely wrong. This lady is a Christian (like the overwhelming majority of donors). She attends a Christian church and a Messianic synagogue. And she’s very much on the same frequency I’m on, politically and spiritually.

She confirmed some of the strange things I’ve observed. She deals with lots of charismatics, and I’ve observed that they seem to be developing a lot of interest in things like tools, farming, storing food, and shooting. She told me about other people who are experiencing the same drives. Here’s something amazing. You know how I write about wanting to move to Central Florida and have a compound? Mike and I talk about how great it would be to have places near each other, complete with shooting facilities. Well, this lady knows two retired female missionaries who just inherited a cattle ranch in Florida. And if I understood her correctly, it has a gun range. Is that crazy or what?

She told me about the people who give to the IFCJ to help poor Jews. It’s not all rich people with piles of disposable income. She said she met with a lady who donated $30,000 at one whack. That lady lives in a trailer park. She said she just didn’t need the money. Donors say God leads them to do this, so they do it. And they’re thrilled to hand it over. No strings. Not even proselytizing.

This is real. God is up to something. The government is becoming increasingly hostile to Christians, Christianity, Jews, and Israel, and God is getting us ready for it. Maybe our government can be turned around through prayer. Maybe it can’t. But individuals can be part of the solution, and they can be blessed within the chaos and ruin.

Last night I started watching a new Robert Morris DVD. He mentioned Ezekiel 14. Here is the pertinent part:

13 Son of man, when the land sinneth against me by trespassing grievously, then will I stretch out mine hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof, and will send famine upon it, and will cut off man and beast from it:

14 Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord GOD.

15 If I cause noisome beasts to pass through the land, and they spoil it, so that it be desolate, that no man may pass through because of the beasts:

16 Though these three men were in it, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters; they only shall be delivered, but the land shall be desolate.

Ezekiel spoke of Israel, but the principle seems applicable to the US. When we turn on the Jews and God, our land brings curses on itself, but each of us can be spared if we are not part of the rebellion. It seems like many Christians are being set up to survive a future judgment. Psalm 37 says:

The Lord knoweth the days of the upright, and their inheritance shall be forever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time, and in the days of famine, they shall be satisfied. But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs. They shall consume. Into smoke shall they consume away.

Then of course, there is the story of Lot. His wife and daughters died in the destruction of Sodom.

I thought talking to this lady would be a drag, but the meeting probably lasted an hour, and I really enjoyed it. It reminded me that God is the ultimate grassroots organizer. He organizes people who don’t even know they’re being organized. I am part of something. I’m not just an eccentric kook with weird ideas. I’m more than that. Although the shoe does fit.

Almost as soon I got home from the meeting, I had to get on the road to TBN’s studio in Hollywood, where my pastor hosted Praise the Lord last night. Yesterday was kind of a breakthrough day for me, and for some reason, I felt like going to the taping was the thing to do. It was the churchgoer’s equivalent of going to a strip club for a drunken blowout.

I had a tough time finding the studio. There’s a big TBN sign next to I-95, nowhere near the facility. Go figure. West of 95, there’s a big building beside the road with “TBN Ministries” on the sign. Crazy me…I thought that might be it. But I pulled the Diesel Death Star into the parking lot and checked, and the place was deserted. Then I noticed the giant antenna nearby, and I realized it was in the middle of a huge trailer park. “Trinity Village,” or some such. I’m not kidding. The studio is in the middle of a trailer park. God-haters could have a real field day with that.

I went into the park and found the studio, and there were so many cars there, I had to park the Death Star on the grass.

The studio is maybe fifty by a hundred. The chairs…not good. When they said the taping would go two hours, I was worried. It would be like sitting in an airline seat for two hours, with the back completely upright. I can’t stand that. All my weight is in the top third of my body. I have to lean back. But when you’re a saintly person like me, you don’t complain about how awful chairs make your back hurt. I’m just not built that way. Stoicism and martyrdom are my bag.

The show was fantastic. Pastor Rich started with a local megachurch pastor, and then he interviewed an old friend of his who had written a book. They were hilarious together. Then Keith Craft showed up; if you haven’t seen him, you’re really missing out. He’s an extremely gifted speaker. Funny as he can be. Then John Gray came out; I was looking forward to seeing him again after meeting him and driving him around at our church’s “Girlfriends” conference. Once he opened his mouth, there was no stopping him. The creativity and the Spirit kept good things pouring out of him until the end of the show. I was laughing out loud, and so was everyone else. The church is having a men’s encounter thing in November, and I think he’ll be there. I’m already signed up.

Robert Morris says the gift of prophecy refers to encouragement and exhortation. Not correction. Not predicting the future. If that’s the case, John Gray is loaded with it. Although he also predicts the future sometimes.

I thought about the last time I visited the studio. I had been there before, but it had been so long ago, I had forgotten about the trailers. The last time I visited–the only time–was in 1997, the week my mother died from lung cancer. My aunt and I drove up there to donate my mother’s clothes to charity. The family didn’t want them around. They were a sharp reminder of our loss. How different yesterday’s visit was. The first time I went there, I was fresh from a terrible defeat. This time, I went in victory.

I can’t fit the whole day into a blog post. It was tremendous, but it was just too rich to capture in a few words.

I feel like going to the range this week. I need to crank up the Death Star, throw some really offensive weapons into the bed, and bust a few laser-aimed caps.

Ha. The IFCJ lady just called. Left her Palm Pilot at Starbucks. I hope Janet Napolitano didn’t find it. Say a prayer!

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Prayer answered.

Food Seems Big

Today I had a new experience. I went to a restaurant, and when it was over, the waiter asked if I wanted him to box up the remainder of my food.

“The remainder of my food.”

My food never had a remainder before! I didn’t know what to do with it. I decided to let him stick it in a box. I felt like a woman. What man brings half-eaten food home from a restaurant?

The weight loss continues. I can turn down bread. I can turn down fries. All these foods that used to be stronger than me…they roll over and give up.

I am reminded of a story the psychologist Fritz Perls told. A violinist came to him and complained that he had cramps and discomfort while he played. Perls watched him play, and he saw the problem. The man was standing with his legs crossed, so his body was contorted. Perls made him stand up straight, and he found himself playing without discomfort. He started to cry, saying, “I won’t believe it. I won’t.” In an instant, his life was changed.

God confirms himself over and over and over, but the more blatant he is, the harder I find to accept what he has done. I’m down about 17 pounds now, and there is no end in sight, and it’s such a beautiful gift, a little voice in my head keeps telling me it can’t be true.

I had something really strange happen last night. A guy from church–his name is John–called on very short notice and said he needed some help with a business function in Fort Lauderdale. You can imagine how much interest I had in this, but Christians help each other, right? And he does all kinds of things for the church, and he was in a bind. So I got it together and drove up there. I had to borrow a car because the truck’s “check engine” light was on.

It was raining. I mean torrential rain. The kind of rain you only see in Florida and Texas. Cars were creeping. And I was all dressed up. I had put on some of my expensive lawyer duds. I was very worried that I’d ruin the jacket, walking in that downpour. The rules say that when you have a problem, no matter what it is, you pray. So I did. I prayed that the rain would stop before I got out of the car.

When I was less than half a mile from the hotel where the function was taking place, the rain was still hammering I-95. John called and informed me that there was a parking garage, so I wouldn’t get wet. That was a relief. Then I took the exit and turned right…and the rain had stopped. I looked at the windshield of the car, and I couldn’t find one new drop of rain. Looking out at the road, I saw a few drops landing here and there. I didn’t know what to do. I heard myself tell God that it would be a better story, for his testimony, if the rain stopped completely. And it did. And I didn’t need it! There was a garage!

That really happened. I should have said, “While you’re at it, how about filling the trunk with hundred-dollar bills?”

After the function, I got to talk with John and a couple of other people from church. They started talking about going to the gun range. Why is it all Christians shoot? We also talked about my cookbook. I enjoyed it a great deal. It’s okay to be the lone kook in the crowd, but sometimes you want to be with the other kooks.

I hope I get to shoot with them. While roasting a pig and using machine tools. That would pretty much combine everything I like.

The Ingredients of a Good Blog Post

My dad wanted me to cook for an old friend who is having a rough time. I went to the store to get ingredients to make stuffed pork chops. Which are unbelievable. They’re in my cookbook.

While I was there, I saw prime rib priced at $12 per pound. This is not an amazing price, but it’s not bad, and the meat was crying out to me from behind the glass, begging me to take it in my loving arms and bring it home with me.

I cracked. You know I cracked. I don’t have to tell you that.

I made the grocery guy go back and find me a new roast that had four contiguous ribs on it, and he hacked one out for me. Then he started trimming the fat and THROWING IT OUT. I put a stop to that in a hurry. I never turn down free fat. It went in the package with the beef. Just because I’ve given up gluttony doesn’t mean I’m going to cook lame food every day. Rib fat is magical. It’s the duct tape of beef.

The meat guys love being ordered around by people who know food. I think it makes them feel appreciated. There was a woman working there, and it disturbed her that I wanted a cut that wasn’t on display. The man…he understood. No surprise there. It’s a rare woman who understands prime beef.

Anyway, I brought this gorgeous piece of prime meat home, and then I was informed that my dad’s friend had not yet confirmed. After the chest pains subsided, I got on the phone and made sure this guy was coming. Although it would have been okay if he had put it off for a week, because that would have given me time to age this magnificent chunk of cow.

I’m going to go salt it down now and rub it with garlic. Tomorrow, it will be fragrant and ready to play.

This was a good move, except for the enormous expense. Prime rib is like boiling water. Anyone can do it. It’s much less work than stuffed pork chops. The pie crust is going to drive me nuts, so I don’t need any other problems.

The baking potatoes were beautiful today, so I grabbed some of those, plus a tub of sour cream.

My dad and my sister both like their meat burned. This is a tragedy, but since the roast has four ribs, I figure I can give them the outer ones. I’m going to cook the meat to 125º inside, and if the beef-incinerators complain, I’ll cram theirs in the microwave. Why not? If I cook it until it’s grey, it will be ruined regardless of how I do it.

Man, this is going to be good. And I got to send a photo of the roast to Mike, so he could eat his liver and be miserable and envious. I owed him that, as a friend.

Here’s how you make perfect prime rib. I’ve done it like twice, but it’s so easy, I’m qualified to tell other people how to do it.

INGREDIENTS

1 prime rib roast, preferably prime (not choice) beef
5-10 crushed garlic cloves
salt

If you have time, dry the beef and put it on a wire rack in your fridge, covered with a clean cotton cloth. If you can keep the cloth above the meat so it doesn’t touch it, do it. Change the cloth daily. Keep the temperature at or below 35 degrees. Give the meat a week if you can.

Three days before you cook it, salt it down well. This will not dry out the meat. Shut up. It won’t. Don’t put a crust of salt on it. I did this once, and it was incredibly stupid and made the meat too salty.

Preheat your oven to 250º. Rub the meat all over with the garlic. Use as much as you want. Butter it, too, if it makes you happy. I think I’ll do that this time! I’m tempted to cook a roast at 225º. I’m sure it would be better.

Put the meat on a broiling pan, cover it with a foil tent or something, and roast it with a probe in it until you get the internal temperature you like. I did 133º last time, in deference to my dad, but this time it’s going to be 125º, which is still higher than I’d like.

When the meat is ten or fifteen degrees below the end temperature, rip off the foil and jack the heat up to 550º. If this makes your broiler turn on, use the highest temperature that doesn’t make it do that. Or leave foil draped over the meat. Or something. Don’t burn it with the broiler. That’s the point. And you may want to do this earlier than fifteen degrees prior to the end temperature. Ten degrees worked okay for me, but as I recall, it was close.

When you cut into this baby, juice is going to pour out. The smell will summon the angels. And it won’t be tough and dry. Pay no attention to “experts” who tell you to cremate it at 325º. I tried that, and it was awful.

Just to remind you, here’s how I bake potatoes. It’s much better than using foil or greasing the skins, which makes them limp and soggy. Preheat your oven to 450º. Scrub your potatoes. Put salt in your hands and rub it all over the potatoes while they’re still wet. Bake them on the top rack for an hour, if they’re under a pound each. Big potatoes go 75 minutes. Try to have something between the heating element and the potatoes so they don’t char. I serve these with garlic butter AND sour cream. And salt.

In other news, Natchez Shooter’s Supply just put out a great sale bulletin. If you’re not a snob who won’t shoot Wolf ammunition, you can do pretty good on 7.62 x 39 and .40 S&W right now.

More

Why do I ever listen to conventional thinkers when they talk about food? The Food Network (usually disappointing) says to cook prime rib at 325º, which is ignorant and positively heinous. On my own, using common sense, I came up with 250º. Now, via Google, I see that Cook’s Illustrated recommends 225º. Those guys are not fools. They don’t pass on gossip and old wives’ tales, like 95% of the professionals. If they say 225º works, you better believe they’ve put it to the test.

Hmm…I’m checking their site, and in 1995, they recommended 200º! I love it.

Non-Tool Stuff Starts About Halfway Down

I’m trying to figure out whether the stuff I’ve learned in machining videos is correct.

A long while back, I ordered an “as new” OSG carbide end mill off Ebay. Seemed to work okay, and it was really cheap, so yesterday I ordered two more. I also looked at roughing mills. I have a 3/8″ roughing mill, but now that I know about the fun of changing collets, I realize I should try to put together a few mills with the same diameter. I found a 1/2″ roughing mill, and I noticed that the tolerances were not impressive. I think the diameter was listed as within 0.003″ of spec.

That confused me, because–I have not confirmed this yet–I’m fairly sure some of the videos suggested using an edge finder to locate the spindle relative to the work, and then popping in an end mill of known diameter, and using that diameter for calculations when moving the table. If you’re a machinist, you know that a diameter that’s off by 0.003″ is going to give you errors half that big in your work. And that’s more than big enough to be a concern when you’re trying to be precise. It doesn’t matter with a roughing mill, but other end mills have the same issue.

On top of that, I’m almost sure the ATI videos I watched endorsed carbide end mills. Carbide is really hard, and it’s expensive. The benefits are that it lasts a long time and performs well and cuts faster. Now I’m being told it should not be used on manual mills, because you’re supposed to climb-cut when you use it, and that will make a manual mill flex. I hope I have this right. I believe I was told that if you cut conventionally with carbide, it breaks up over time, and you get bad finishes.

The upshot seems to be that edge finders are worthless for some of the uses I hoped to use them for, and I was dumb to buy carbide. Apparently cobalt is a better choice for me. A lot of people tell me not to get cobalt, because it costs a little more, but it seems to work way better than HSS. At least in drill bits.

I guess I won’t regret spending $10 each on two carbide cutters, since they’ll definitely work long enough to be worth the money.

If you can’t use an edge finder to locate a cutter precisely, you have to do it some other way. I believe that sends you back to the rolling-paper method. You embarrass yourself by buying rolling papers like a depraved stoner, and then you find edges by holding them between the work and the cutter. The edge finder will tell you where the spindle is, relative to the work, but that’s not the same as telling you where the edge of the cutter will be.

I’ve been trying to find a good used rotary table, but it’s not that easy. You also need indexing plates and a tailstock, and by the time you get done looking for this stuff, you’ve been shopping for six months. It may be time to bite the Enco bullet and go Taiwanese again. You can often save three figures by getting old American tooling, but what does that savings cost you in lost time you could have been spending machining? It amazes me that people brag about shopping a year for a taper attachment or a steady rest. How long do they expect to live? These are usually middle-aged or older guys. A year can easily be five or ten percent of their remaining time on earth. When you decide to dedicate a lot of time to something, you need to ask yourself how much time you have left. I find life so interesting, I want to live a thousand years. That seems unlikely, however.

A few months back, my dad was talking about getting a travel trailer. I’m very, very glad he still has enthusiasm for things like that. But my mother has been gone for 12 years, and he’s 77. A lot of the people we could have visited 35 years ago are dead or elderly. It’s late.

My grandfather once leased a house to a 67-year-old man, tying it up for a number of years. Someone in the family complained, and my grandfather said, “He’s an old man. He won’t live long.” When he said that, I believe he was 72.

He was right, but you can still see my point.

I guess it will sound funny, but one reason I bought a convertible is that we didn’t do anything fun when I was a kid. My uncle Jim had a couple of convertibles in the Sixties, and some family members talked like he had gone insane. That’s how boring most of us were. My dad, my mother, my sister and I were pretty dull. We rarely went on real vacations. We never toured the US. We didn’t have a boat or an RV. We had no regular activities, like shooting or bowling. We belonged to no clubs or organizations, apart from the country club. We didn’t go to church regularly. We never belonged to a church. Golf was the only sport, apart from games my friends and I played in the yard, and my dad was the only one who golfed. We watched TV; that was our main activity. Isn’t that awful? I hate to admit it. That was our life. I went to school, and then I came home and watched TV, and I refrained from doing homework unless I had absolutely no choice, and after that I went to bed. My mother was the only one who wasn’t a TV addict, but she didn’t really do anything with the time she saved. My sister and I didn’t have many toys, which is weird, since we were well off. Mike says the other kids felt sorry for us. I had no idea back then. My mother bought me a banjo when I was 15; that was nice.

I guess I wasn’t as bad as the others. I enjoyed shooting BB guns, fishing for inedible fish, breaking things, and fireworks. Mike and I used to get together and do the kind of stupid, aimless things kids do when they’re on their own. Like Beavis and Butt-head, I guess, except we weren’t that mean or stupid. We tended to do strange, creative things. I had another friend nearby, but he wasn’t bright enough to come up with things like that. We also had CB radios and other passing interests. My sister didn’t do much of anything, but that’s normal for girls.

I remember Mike somehow got ahold of a surplus parachute. We put it in his yard, on a busy corner, and we weighted the perimeter. Then we put a fan under it and put some lights inside. It blew up into a big, quivering white dome, and we went inside and hung out. Cars slowed down so people could see this glowing object and wonder why these two abnormal kids were doing something that wasn’t ordinary.

I got my first convertible in 1980, and Jim was part of the inspiration. His branch of the family had more fun than the others. I’m sure my mother told me the car would flip and burn immediately, and I would be trapped underneath it like a chicken in a roasting pan. Oh, Lord. A convertible. Please, don’t let this happen to my child. Next he’ll be base-jumping. My mother didn’t like electric windows, because she thought any car with electric windows would plunge into a canal at the earliest opportunity, and there she would be, unable to roll down the window and escape. Meanwhile, she smoked at least two packs of cigarettes a day. I was crazy about my mom, but I knew there her logic had its weak points. I’m ancient. So far, I’ve know ONE person who was in a convertible that flipped, and he didn’t roast. I don’t know anyone who has driven into a canal. You can keep a punch in your car to break your windows, if that kind of thing worries you. I think my Glock will also do the job.

Once in a while, you have to do something. Just spend the money and do it. It isn’t going to do itself. I’m really glad I’ve had two convertibles and two motorcycles. I’m glad I lived in Israel for four months. I’m glad I published three books and got a bunch of tools and guns and learned to make beer. I can’t even guess how boring life would be if I didn’t do things like this. By and large, the strange and challenging things you do will be the things you remember with the most pleasure. That’s an extremely important lesson young people should learn. You shouldn’t be a sensation junkie or a hedonistic wastrel, but you should embrace opportunities to shake up your life. You should be conscious of their value and jump on them instead of avoiding them. You don’t want to leave your kids a diary that has entries like, “July 17: I celebrate 63 victorious years of resisting buying a motorcycle. I will celebrate by putting a small amount of real sugar in my oatmeal.”

I think a rotary table will be a real asset. Right now, I can drill holes and make straight cuts, and that’s about it. Not much utility for what I paid. A rotary table will let me cut arcs, and it will allow me to do tasks that require breaking circles up accurately into sections. Circles of bolt holes, for example.

I should take one of the bikes out today. I hope my mom will be too busy in paradise to notice.

DENIED

I just received a phone call that offended me.

The American Bar Association wanted me to rejoin. I shut them down fast. I said they were too liberal for me, and that they should give me a call when they ceased being a political organization.

This bit of pandering filth is from their own website: “The ABA opposes federal, state or territorial legislation to create special legal immunity for the firearms industry from civil tort liability.”

That, all by itself, is sufficient reason to oppose these overweening social engineers. You can find plenty of other reasons if you Google.

I joined the ABA when I was in law school, to get substantial discounts on a few things I needed. Bar-prep classes. Bar exams are idiotic; the ABA accredits law schools AND helps write bar exams. Does that make sense to you? “We vouch for this school, but we want to subject its graduates to an overly difficult test which bears almost no relationship to practice or to the materials they learned in school, to make sure they’re qualified to take entry-level jobs where they sit around looking at Westlaw all day.”

One of two things has to be true. The ABA’s accreditation is garbage, or the tests are unnecessary.

Very often, money explains this kind of foolishness. That’s probably the case here. It is virtually impossible to pass the Florida bar exam without a prep course. The crap on the test is not substantially related to the material taught in law schools, and you can’t pick it up in practice. So you have to spend thousands of dollars and waste months preparing. Where do the thousands go? Down here, they go to a company called Bar/Bri. It’s a great thing for them. No one else can get you through the test, and the test is mandatory. They could charge ten thousand dollars, and people would have to pay it. My guess–and it’s only a guess–is that Bar/Bri has been known to spend money cozying up to bar associations, to make sure this silliness continues. A lawyer who can make his “educational” services indispensable can become wealthy without ever entering a courtroom. That’s a fantastic temptation.

If law schools are producing people who can’t practice–and they are–the answer isn’t a redundant test. The answer is accreditation that means something. Law schools accept truly inept people because of affirmative action or because they have pull, and the result is a substantial number of graduates who are beyond hope. At my school, they flew affirmative action recipients to another state before their freshman years, to teach them in advance and give them a patently unfair jump on the rest of us. And a lot of these people still washed out or could not pass the bar exam or could not keep jobs because they simply did not have the mental horsepower to do the work. The others didn’t need the costly cheat, so it was a waste.

There was never any doubt that I would be able to practice law. That is true of the majority of law school graduates. It’s wrong to subject us to expensive tests, wasting months of our productive years, to weed out the people who were admitted and passed because of bogus accreditation. If a law school produces substantial numbers of graduates who can’t do the work, that law school should not be accredited. Aside from that, the free market is the best bar exam. If you’re not bright enough to practice, the free market will remove you from the system. You will not be able to earn a living. The inept graduates law schools should never have accepted eventually run into this natural filter, and it does a great job.

If you try to set up a solo practice, and you stink, judges will squash you, jurors will laugh at you, you will be sued for malpractice, people will refuse to hire you, and you’ll leave the profession. If you work for someone else, and you stink, that person will eventually fire you, unless he marries you. This is all much fairer than an exam process which costs a tremendous amount of money.

I needed the ABA to save money on the tests it helped perpetuate, so I joined. Like a lot of people, I did not renew my membership. I’m not paying these socialists to slander conservative judges and attack my civil rights. I’m not paying them to support bottom-feeding tort parasites in their efforts to bleed society dry. What are they thinking, taking offensive political positions and then asking moral, patriotic people to fund them? It’s crazy.

They claim to promote professionalism, in order to make the public happy. The public doesn’t hate lawyers because we’re unprofessional. Not primarily. They hate us because we’re greedy, ruthless bullies who destroy other people’s lives unnecessarily. No popular legal association will ever do anything about that. The foxes aren’t going to guard the henhouse.

I took the Bar/Bri course. I took two courses, now that I think about it. I’m sure my law school made money from it, because they supplied the facilities. I paid to see a lecture by a famous professor who travels around the country reciting the same spiel over and over. About 95% of the material I studied in the courses has been of no value to me in practice. And I have to wonder; if I paid $80,000 in tuition and still had to do this in order to be considered qualified, am I not entitled to a refund?

If you’re a conservative attorney, do not let the ABA have your money. If for no other reason, decline to join because I refuse to accredit them.

You Can’t Eat Bullets

I have new hope that the hoarders are running out of money. I’m only guessing, but I have three indications. First, Classic Arms says business is slow, and they have Wolf ammunition for sale. Second, Natchez Shooter’s Supply has 9mm and .40 S&W at near-normal prices. Third, Outdoor Marksman is starting to build up a good supply of 9mm.

I’m really peeved, because it looks like someone snapped up all the cheap Swiss K31 ammunition from Outdoor Marksman and Dan’s Ammo. Now it’s appearing on Gunbroker, the biggest ripoff site in the universe. I thought I had plenty of time to get more. And there is no 7.62 surplus sniper ammunition anywhere.

I should go ahead and sell the K31. It was fun, but I’m not going to pay $2 a round to shoot a $200 gun. I can get equal accuracy in a Savage .308 and make my own ammunition much cheaper. The PSL was a pleasure to shoot when quality sniper ammunition was dirt cheap, but once the financial advantage is gone, it’s just a bulky, temperamental gun that isn’t all that accurate.

I think the people who cornered the market are going to regret it. The boom is going to bust, and then they’ll have to decide whether they want to sell at a loss or live in homes so cluttered with ammunition they can’t walk.

The price of copper has dropped something like 40%, and with a depression or very deep recession likely, it will probably be even lower next year. I know Obama’s handouts are masking our problems, but like I always say, borrowing against future taxpayer earnings to pump up the economy is like eating your own leg. You’ll stay alive, and you may feel better, but you won’t gain weight.

Ignore Him and He’ll Go Away

Apparent coincidence is one of the hallmarks of effective Christian living. The deeper you get into your faith, and the more trust you put in God, the more weird things happen.

Here are a couple new ones, from my life.

Last week, I got an email from a guy who sells machine tools. I ignored it, because I figured I was being spammed. Also, he had a Millrite listed for over two thousand dollars, which suggested his prices were not too good. I didn’t realize a regular reader of this blog knew this guy, and he had told him about me.

Later on, I got on Ebay, looking for a 4-jaw lathe chuck. I needed an L00 mount, and I needed an 8″ chuck. This is the usual size for a 12″ lathe, which is what I have. A seller had an unused (new old stock) Skinner chuck from a 13″ South Bend, and he also had a back plate. We negotiated, and I bought the parts. I got a good deal, and I didn’t have to buy Asian or used. Guess who the seller is? The guy who emailed me. Out of the hundreds or thousands of people on Ebay selling machine tool parts and tooling, I found him.

What does it mean? I don’t know. It must mean something. It’s not a small coincidence. Many, many people sell lathe chucks on Ebay.

Second story. Last week, I received two self-defense DVDs from Gunvideo.com. Looks like good stuff. But I didn’t order it! Some guy named Ray did. His name was on the invoice. I figured someone who meant well had taken the kind but somewhat creepy step of finding out my real name and where I lived, and that he had sent me the DVDs as a present. Either that, or it was a gay stalker.

I decided to email the people at Gunvideo. They said there was a screwup. I had ordered something from them a year ago, and this Ray person owned the company that produced it. They had it drop-shipped to me from his company. Then recently he ordered something from them, and somehow my address ended up in the ship-to box. They said they’re still trying to figure it out. But they told me to keep the DVDs.

I keep feeling like I’m supposed to have guns and tools. I can’t figure it out. I wonder what’s on those DVDs.

When you’re a Christian and you live by faith, your life becomes like the Bible. Almost everything in it has meaning. It makes it harder to be disappointed or rattled or angry. When something goes wrong, instead of getting mad, you think, “There must be a reason for this. I wonder what it is.” And you look forward to finding out, which usually happens.

This is often extremely irritating to non-Christians, even though there is nothing aggressive or inherently provocative about it. It should elicit no negative response whatsoever. Why should it anger you that another person takes misfortune well? Marcus Aurelius found the complacency of Christian martyrs annoying, and he increased their suffering because of it. Why is it so aggravating to non-believers? I would say, but that would aggravate them even more. Most Christians know; I don’t have to tell them.

Christianity is funny. It looks better from inside than outside. Even backslidden Christians who should remember how rewarding it is tend to forget, and they dread returning. I was there; I know.

Thanks to You, I Stocked Up

Every morning, out of habit, I check the Classic Arms site. I got my C&R license quite some time ago, and I almost immediately lost all desire to use it, but I’m so used to looking at Classic Arms, I can’t stop.

All week, they’ve been writing about the ammunition crisis. I don’t understand it. I have all the ammunition a person could want, and I got it at great prices. I even have primers. If I were a truly accomplished right wing Christian potential possible terrorist, instead of a highly ineffective one, I could mount a really spectacular standoff and shoot up every cop car in Coral Gables.

That’s what leftist nutballs think bulk ammunition buys are for. But sane, intelligent people realize that the real motivation is stinginess. Why pay seventy-five cents each for 20 bullets when you can pay thirty cents each for a thousand? I don’t run around taking hostages and shouting about Ruby Ridge. I go to the range and shoot targets. That takes a lot of ammunition. Actual murderers generally spend very little on bullets. It’s probably pretty rare for 90-pound crackheads and career burglars to go to gun shops and load up on the latest frangible rounds. “How many Cor-Bons can I has for this Blaupunkt?”

Honestly, I don’t know what goes on in the heads of urban liberals. They seem to think that if you have one gun and one bullet, you’re armed as well as you could ever need to be. That’s because most of them have never fired a gun and know nothing about firearms. They don’t realize that people miss, or that criminals usually can’t be incapacitated with one shot, or that you need a lot of ammunition just to learn how to use your weapon safely, accurately, and responsibly.

You know what? Liberals who know nothing about guns should quit telling the rest of us what to do with them. Do I go to their houses and tell them how to work their bongs and bondage gear? Do I tell them how to apply their VD ointment or cook their heroin or beat their three-tooth-having common-law wives in front of their subsidized housing? Do I point at their buttcrack tattoos and say, “That’s not how you spell ‘Obama'”?

“I really think you have too many bullwhips and ball gags. I honestly believe you don’t need this much weed and smack. I think four guys in a men’s room stall is plenty. How many decks of tarot cards can one person use?” Imagine me, butting in to liberals’ lives to say these things. It’s like Dr. Phil telling people how to lose weight. Stick to what you KNOW.

I realized last night that I really need a pistol laser. Some strange person parked in the driveway while doing something that made their car make odd sounds. I went outside with a pistol to check the car out. I kept it concealed, but it was ready to fire. I realized the darkness was a real handicap. The car pulled away, but what if there had been a problem? A laser would have simplified things greatly. I better look into that.

I have long weapons with lasers (finally), but I am not quite ready to walk out onto the porch waving a shotgun every time someone comes near the house. That kind of thing doesn’t fly with the neighbors, and it’s a bit of an overreaction. I’ve paused in people’s driveways for perfectly legitimate reasons; I would have been highly disturbed had they come out brandishing long guns. But it’s proper and correct to have a gun handy when you investigate a problem on your property (after all, I carry mine when I shop for groceries), and you need to be confident of hitting your target.

I also realized that when you go onto another person’s property at night–a bad idea to begin with–you really need to be nice. This individual probably had no idea he was ten seconds and one mistake away from the Promised Land. I would do just about anything to avoid harming another person physically, but sometimes situations go bad in a hurry, and in a contest with some doofus who doesn’t train with his gun, I will prevail in a big way. And when the cops arrive, they will give me a high five (or as we call it in Miami, a “cinco alto”). This is Florida.

I got my rifle and shotgun lasers dirt cheap, but I doubt Hong Kong has caught up with Glock laser technology, so I’ll probably have to spend some coin to get ready. Maybe I should grit my teeth and move to a different caliber, too. The 9mm isn’t all that great for shooting through car doors, and last night I saw that such things can be legitimate concerns. I used to assume there would be no reason to shoot through a door, since a person in a car is not likely to be on your property. But what if you go out to check on a suspicious car, and they shoot? They can be completely off your property and still require a response. Maybe the best answer is to stick a laser on the .38 Super, which does a bang-up job on sheet metal, and use it in those situations. If you use the right caliber and load, a car is about as hard to penetrate as a styrofoam cooler.

One more reason to be nice when you drive.

Anyway, there is no ammunition crisis in my house. Unless you’re talking about closet space.

UPS Brings Obama-Era Treasure

Want to hear some unbelievable news? I have small pistol primers! I guess Midway USA found some under a desk or something, because for a while they were advertising them as “in stock,” and I just happened to be using their site at the time! Some creeps are selling these for $50 per box, because of the Obama gun craze. Midway was charging the usual price, and I got a discount on top of that.

I didn’t go crazy, like some people have. I got enough primers to keep me going for a few months; that’s all.

Oh, this is wonderful. This is just what a wannabe far-right possible kook terrorist needs. I think I’m going to make some ammunition, go to the gun range, shoot at paper targets, and pretend they were made by union workers!

Forget Al Qaeda; Stop the Serial Worshipers!

Last night I had the strangest dream. For some reason, I was forced to move to South America. I had a little house there, and it was built in such a way that you could be inside it and still have a clear view of what was going on in the yard. As if some of the walls had been left out. The place was a mess; my junk was everywhere, because I hadn’t gotten the house together yet. And because I am a slob.

While I was in the living room, I saw some clown in the yard aiming a gun at me. I don’t mean he was dressed like a clown. I just mean he was a stupid person. I drew my Glock and shot him in the forehead. Then it turned out he had friends. They kept showing up, and I kept popping them. I thought, “Wow, this really works.” I was so glad I had put in time at the range.

I shot several of them, and I realized I still had enough ammunition in the Glock to take care of a few more, but I thought I ought to look around for other options. Due to my housekeeping style, which was fairly true to life in the dream, guns and bullets were not hard to find. The main problem was that I didn’t keep them together, so I found myself dumping .38 Super rounds into my pocket and then looking for the gun, and I located my .45 and then had to look for bullets.

I don’t know what these idiots wanted. Maybe they were mad at me for defacing an Obama poster. Turning the “H” in “HOPE” to a “D.”

It was very enjoyable. And it drove a comforting point home: this house is one of the most dangerous places in Miami! IF you’re a criminal. I feel great about that.

This dream clearly confirms the worst fears of Janet Napolitano and her left-leaning thoughtcrime squad. My terrorist inclinations are beyond question. I read the Bible, I go to church (like that other terrorist, Jean Assam), and I am willing to use force, in my home, to defend myself from violent criminals (terrorism of the worst kind!). I should be taken to Gitmo and gently interrogated by sensitive vegan operatives trained by the late Leo Buscaglia. We don’t waterboard now, supposedly. Maybe they could threaten to withhold Joni Mitchell music until I snapped. They could deprive me of bad leftist music, altogether. “IF YOU DON’T SPILL THE BEANS [SOY], IT WILL BE A LONG TIME BEFORE YOU HEAR MIDNIGHT OIL AGAIN!”

It has occurred to me that maybe the thoughtcrime squad has a point. Granted, almost all terrorists in the US are Muslims; they dropped the ball on that. But most of the rest are probably far-right nuts. And why is that? Because the left-wing nuts got what they wanted. They have nothing to terrorize for. Hey, maybe appeasement works. All you have to do is let the kooks choose your President. That means we can get rid of right-wing terror by electing Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter.

If we want to see left-wing terrorism rise again, all we have to do is pass laws making bathing mandatory and forcing the cops to take marijuana laws seriously. Cut off their dope and deprive them of their soothing layer of grime, and in no time, the hippies will be bombing Colgate-Palmolive factories.

In case the Ministress of Propaganda or whatever she is still has doubts, let me give her probable cause to haul me in. I’M GLAD I HAVE A SEPTIC TANK, BECAUSE IT SAYS EXACTLY HOW I FEEL ABOUT MOTHER GAIA! I SET MY THERMOSTAT TO 68 DEGREES…IN AUGUST! I BUY MEAT AND THEN THROW IT OUT, JUST TO INCREASE GLOBAL WARMING AND KEEP THE SLAUGHTERHOUSES IN BUSINESS! I FILLED MY BATHTUB WITH AMMUNITION, STRIPPED COMPLETELY NAKED EXCEPT FOR AN NRA CAP, AND TOOK A “BULLET BATH”!

Oh, I am bad. The Angel of Change passed over my house! I didn’t cook a lamb, but there are usually a lot of pig bones in the trash.

Incidentally, rural Southerners use the verb “change” as a euphemism for castrating livestock.

I can’t believe I postulated the existence of sensitive vegans. Have you ever known a vegetarian who wasn’t consumed with rage? They’re the angriest people on earth. They make the Taliban seem laid back. When are we right-wing terrorists going to start setting fire to SUV dealerships and throwing fake blood on people? I have not received my orders yet, and the vegans are getting way ahead of us.

Why are vegans so peeved all the time? Maybe it’s the gas and bloating. If we really want to protect the atmosphere, we should make hippies eat more meat and lay off the legumes.

I saw an interesting Perry Stone video last night. He seems to think God is going to deliver a beating to areas of the world that displease him. Isn’t that happening already? Miami is a fairly evil place, and we got mashed by a whole bunch of hurricanes. New Orleans has an economy based mostly on sin, and it’s the voodoo capital of the US, and look what happened. Remember the tsunami? Thailand is famous for child prostitution. Indonesia is the biggest Muslim nation, and they persecute the daylights out of everyone else. Burma has an official state policy of eradicating Christianity, and they ran off all of their Jews, and a typhoon wrecked the whole country.

And think of the most sinful places on earth, and consider their vulnerability to natural disasters. It’s interesting. San Francisco could disappear in about ten minutes, and Manhattan has two faults under it.

Stone thinks God is going to help Christians relocate, so we don’t end up like Lot’s wife. I find that fascinating, because this is something I pray about every day. I want out of this place. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a city where half of the population worships Santeria demons and another twenty percent practices other types of voodoo. They have “churches” where they sacrifice goats and chickens here! Seriously, look it up. Doctors and accountants and schoolteachers and all sorts of seemingly normal people are caught up in this filth. Oh, yeah. That will end well. For them and their kids.

I guess I’ll close. I have all sorts of potential-terrorist things to do. Grocery shopping. Straightening up the garage. No end of subversive activities. I may actually pray! They can’t stop me! I may get in the car so I can deliberately pray WITHIN A THOUSAND FEET OF A SCHOOL!

I’m not joking, here! I am totally capable of doing this. If my demands are not met.

That reminds me. I have no demands. I better write some up.