I Feel Like an Old Person Under Obama’s Health Plan

It is 71.8 degrees outside. This is the greatest day of my life. Nearly. It’s supposed to be about 61° at ten p.m.

When you let your yard go to hell, hot weather is okay. When you actually care about maintaining your home, it’s another story. It’s very tough working outdoors in Miami in the months of June through October. Your sunglasses fill with sweat so you can’t see. You have to apply sunblock once an hour. The sweat makes the sunblock run into your eyes. This is why we have illegal immigrants; to them, the suffering is worth it.

I may go out and poison the yard today. It needs weed killer, fertilizer, and imidacloprid. The clouds of buzzing whiteflies are getting hard to see through. Something needs to be done.

I took a look at my plantains this morning. People told me my trees wouldn’t produce in Miami. I don’t know where they got that idea. My French Horn plantain tree seems to be more productive than my bananas. I can’t even guess what I’ll do with a long bunch of one-pound fruit, but I’m glad I’m getting them.

Now that it’s cool enough to do things, it’s hard to decide what to start with.

Maybe the best thing is to think it over while eating pie.

Okay, no pie.

Tires!

Here’s a snippet from an email from someone I know who travels around and meets a lot of Christians:

I’m north of Atlanta and I also met 4 ladies yesterday here in GA.
Again – Guns and God and preparation! And it’s not just talk now.
People are doing it. Amazing.

What on earth is going on? People aren’t conspiring to make this happen. It’s not deceitful, contrived, Obama-style Astroturfing perpetrated by professional liars. This is the real thing.

Yesterday my dad started talking seriously about moving north. A long time ago, I told him I was considering moving out of this seedy and unpleasant county, and he said he thought that was a great idea, so instead of looking for a relatively small place for me to buy, we started looking at a bigger place for him to buy. A compound! Now the plan is back on the table.

We’ll need razor wire. Motion sensors. Rottweilers. Soap cannons and deodorant mines to repel hippies. I have shopping to do.

I’m going to see if we can get out of Miami in the near future and look at some properties. There is nothing here for me. Most of my friends have left town. I no longer have an office. My only important connection is my church, and I could move eighty miles north of here and still be able to attend. Or I could find a new church.

I would absolutely love to move to south Tennessee or northern Georgia. I could never get my dad to do that, however, and I think he needs to have family nearby, so I can’t very well do it without him.

I stuck new tires on the truck today. Very nice. I could swear they ride smoother and more quietly, but that could be my imagination. They seem to track better. The old ones seemed to make the truck ramble around a little. Now I’m prepared for SHTF driving.

They didn’t charge me sales tax. Can’t figure that out. Maybe today is a tax holiday.

For a couple of years, Perry Stone has been predicting heavy-duty economic problems for the US. He doesn’t claim to know the day when it will hit, but he thinks food will be scarce. Back in 2008, he said he thought people who owned their homes outright would be better off than everyone else. I guess that’s always true.

I’m going to start canning sausage, and I have to think about other stuff that would be good to have around if the power went off. You can always buy prepackaged food, but why not have things you actually enjoy? Shuck beans! Pickled beans! Dried apples! Country ham! Live better on your survival rations than you do when you use stores.

What else do I need? Maybe another crate of ammunition for the K31. Unbelievably, I can buy GP11 locally.

I keep thinking a nuclear blast or WMD attack on US soil is on the way. The Fort Hood incident proves we are not doing enough to thwart Muslim kooks. We’re spending lots of money, but a huge percentage of it is wasted harassing harmless non-Muslims for the sake of political correctness. If an Army doctor can place calls to Al Qaeda and repeatedly announce his anti-American sentiments without even getting reprimanded, Muslims can bring an atomic bomb into New York harbor. Sooner or later, we’re going to reap the harvest of self-hatred and empty liberal grandstanding. We’ll turn on our televisions and see a smoking ruin that used to be the New York Stock Exchange or the US Capitol. Then the real recession will start, and the only people who will get through it without eating their pets and drinking from puddles will be the Bible clingers and home-schoolers out in the woods.

When people who should know better do unbelievably stupid things over and over, it means there is a spiritual cause. I believe that. I believe this is what caused the real estate collapse. A monkey could have seen it coming, yet brilliant investors and financiers could not. Now the people who are supposed to protect us are clamoring about a nonexistent anti-Muslim backlash instead of screaming about our failure to take action against domestic terrorists. Media “experts” are moaning about Nidal Hasan’s imagined “pre-post-traumatic stress syndrome” when they should be noting his Muslim fanaticism. When people behave this stupidly, the supernatural is at work. Our guard is being taken down by occult forces so we will be open to an attack a sane America would have prevented as a matter of course.

This shows how weak the flesh is when God is against you. We think we can take care of ourselves, but without his protection, we are as stupid as lemmings.

I hope I’m not here when things really start popping. I want to be at least a hundred miles away, with my shelves loaded with tasty home-canned grub and my Saiga 12 loaded with law-enforcement-only buckshot.

I Can Wear Long Pants

Cold weather is coming. I’m excited beyond words.

By “cold,” I mean below 80°. That’s sufficient as far as I’m concerned. It means I’ll be able to go outside for more than three minutes without worrying about my shirt sticking to me when I come back inside.

We had a hot September and August. Al Gore would be thrilled. Now we’re getting weather in the lower 80s, and it actually feels cool.

Yesterday I was able to load manure in the truck and put it on the fruit trees. I could have done this in the summer, but heat, broiling sunshine, streaming sweat, and airborne manure and fertilizer were not a combination I wanted to face. I put manure, fertilizer, epsom salt, and Ironite on the mangoes, bananas, plantains, and some of the other trees. I replaced my dying impatiens with new victims and manured the flowerbed. I feel like these were major accomplishments.

We are told to do stuff like this as though we were doing it for God himself. Arrgh. Okay! Okay! I’ll do it. But…arrgh.

I didn’t fully understand how high my truck’s bed was until yesterday. I had to stack big bags of manure in it, and the tailgate was at chest height. That’s not very convenient. I looked around on the web, and I found that some people lower their beds. Evidently, you don’t need to have your bed way up in the air unless you’re towing. Futhermore, I would guess that Dodge makes the bed higher than it has to be, for the strange people who jack their trucks as high as possible.

I don’t understand the truck-raising fad. It makes a truck less safe to drive, and it makes it hard to get in and out. It makes the bed hard to use. If you don’t use the bed, why get a truck? I think you have to be out of your mind to get a truck and then modify it so you can’t use the bed. Talk about expensive and totally useless fashion accessories. It makes a $10,000 Chanel suit seem like a good buy. If your truck is primarily a toy, and you like customizing it like a Harley, more power to you. I just want to be able to use mine. I already have a Harley. From a functional standpoint, it’s pathetic and useless. The footboards drag when I turn. I don’t need any more silliness in my life.

I don’t know anything about four-wheeling, but I have seen people claim that raising a truck makes it more suitable for going off-road. Is that really true? The ground clearance doesn’t change at all. The axles don’t rise with the truck. You can add axle height by using ridiculous oversize tires which don’t really work with your suspension. I don’t know why I’d want to do that. It effectively lowers the final drive ratio, and the tires are expensive, and it looks stupid.

When I was a kid, I rode in what I thought was the ultimate off-road vehicle. It was a dune buggy made with VW Beetle parts. This thing would go places a truck or Jeep could never go. It was just a cage with two seats. Two-wheel drive. You could go straight up the side of a hill with it. You could drive it straight into a curb a foot high and barely feel the bump when you went over it. Wonderful vehicle. I think if I had a desire to drive around in the dirt, I’d get something like that instead of ruining an expensive truck and getting inferior performance.

My truck has four spacers in it that raise the bed. You can take them out from between the rear springs and axle and put them above the springs. This drops the bed over an inch. I may do that. It’s reversible. It would be great to have the bed three or four inches lower, if there’s a cheap way to do it without causing problems when there’s a load on the springs.

People who lower their trucks get a lot of ridicule from people who raise theirs. Common sense has a way of drawing hostility from those who lack it. I would have to be demented to take this gigantic truck out in the mud and try to use it as an all-terrain vehicle. It will never happen. It would be like using an ocean liner to go bass fishing. I am never going to have to worry about rocks hitting the underside of the body. Might as well bring the bed down where I can use it.

When I was working on the truck, installing Nerf bars and a rear-view camera, I was amazed at how easy it was. I could lie on the ground under the truck and reach up without bending my arms much. The T-bird, on the other hand, was so low I couldn’t get a low-profile jack under it. I wouldn’t want to go back to T-bird ground clearance, but I don’t need two feet or whatever it is that I have now.

Last night I watched Robert Morris again. He did a sermon on faith. He says we should not have faith in things happening. I may be phrasing that wrong. Charismatics tend to venture into a practice called “name it and claim it,” in which they pray for things in the name of Jesus, state that they have them, and then wait for God to hand them over. I believe he was criticizing this.

He pointed out that we sometimes pray for things and believe we will receive them, only to be disappointed. That’s true. He said we should learn that we’re supposed to use our faith to bring us close to God. He pointed out that lots of faith-filled believers have been martyred and tortured and so on, and that they did not lose their faith. Surely they prayed to be spared. The point of a faith-filled life is not to make God do stuff for us. It’s to get close to him and know him and receive grace to submit to him and do his will. Bad things will happen to us, and it doesn’t mean we’re failures as Christians. If we have faith, God will make these things work out to our benefit, even if we don’t receive that benefit in this life. I think I’m summing it up fairly well. Maybe not.

Anyway, he said we often believe for things that are not God’s will, and that when we do that, we’re effectively exalting our will above his.

Here is where I come down on this. I think he’s absolutely right, as long as you don’t read anything extraneous into what he said.

Our lives are supposed to be victorious, but not without suffering. Even the two witnesses in the book of Revelation–extraordinarily powerful prophets–will be slaughtered. Many men of God have been tortured and killed. Paul was flogged over and over. Stephen was murdered by an angry mob. It only makes sense that the rest of us should sustain painful losses from time to time. On the other hand, I know for a fact that it’s often possible to claim something God has promised to you and to maintain your faith and receive it. This has happened to me; I was miraculously healed back in 1987, and I actually saw the guilty spirit leave my body. The 91st psalm says, “His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.” I believe this refers to standing on God’s promises.

I think the important thing to consider is whether you have any right to what you’re claiming. Don’t ask for things that will distance you from God. For some people, even ordinary, reasonable blessings like a steady job and a reliable car can be causes for forgetting the real source of prosperity. And you have to ask yourself whether there is anything in your life that will prevent you from receiving what you ask for. I think repentance and fasting and casting out spirits are very important. Paul said receiving communion in an unworthy manner could cause you to be sick or die; I think that shows what failure to repent can do.

I also think that a truly mature Christian is likely to receive warning when he faces adversity that God will not remove. The Jews in Babylon were told to build houses and get jobs, because they weren’t going home any time soon. Paul was told he would be imprisoned. Jesus knew he would be crucified. I believe Peter knew he would be executed, although I can’t say for sure he didn’t hear it from human beings. I suspect we are headed into an age where we are in closer touch with the Holy Spirit, and people will receive more information from him. There is a spiritual gift called the word of knowledge, in which God comes right out and tells you things. I think we’re going to see it operate more often in the future, as our knowledge and obedience increase. As persecution increases, I should add.

I hope I’m right or at least close to it.

To my knowledge, so far, I’ve experienced five of the gifts of the spirit. I can’t say I’ve experienced the word of knowledge, but Robert Morris says every gift is available to every believer. He says the idea that some people get this and other people get that is incorrect. If so, I suppose a word of knowledge will come if I ever need it. It would sure be nice to know better than to pray for things that aren’t going to happen.

Bigger Pantry Needed

I guess people get tired of reading things like this about the food I make, but…the sweet pickles I made turned out to be the best I’ve ever had. Even better than my grandmother’s. I can’t believe pickles can be this good. After a day in the fridge, the salt and seasonings did their thing, and the result was magnificent. Now I’m worried about having these things around. Dills are virtually calorie-free, but sweet pickles are loaded with sugar. I was miraculously delivered from gluttony back in August, but that doesn’t mean I need to tempt myself.

I’d post the recipe, but it came from a cookbook, so you ought to just get the book. Besides, I’m sure there are a million similar recipes on the web. I omitted the onions from the book receipe, and I used white sugar instead of brown. Other than that, it’s exactly what you’ll find in Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken.

Church was amazing last night, and this morning, I got a startling answer to prayer. Unfortunately, I can’t describe it in any detail, because it involves another person’s private business. All I can say is this: when you know someone whose behavior is atrocious, and you want to change it, fasting and prayer will give you surprising results. People have free will; no doubt about it. But that doesn’t mean God won’t work his persuasive powers on them. Besides, some bad behavior is due to demonic oppression, and your fasting can clear that up in another person.

This morning it occurred to me that I should always attack problems spiritually before acting in my own strength. I can’t say all problems are rooted in spiritual causes, although maybe they are. I can say that all problems should be attacked via spiritual warfare before we step in and screw things up with our blind bumbling. I think maybe this was what Jesus was getting at when he talked about turning the other cheek and so on. It wasn’t so much that it’s good to be a loser. His point, I think, was that your first response to hostility or adversity should be spiritual, not fleshly. Maybe I’m wrong. Either God put this stuff in my head, or it’s wrong, and I came up with it myself.

Last night at church, I told my pastor and one other person that things are going so well for me now that I don’t have any real problems. I have relatively trivial difficulties, but nothing major. I said that these days, it’s the people around me who have problems. They’re the ones I think I need to apply the bulk of my energy to. I may have sounded arrogant when I said all that. I certainly hope not; I was trying to comment on God’s goodness to me.

Here’s a funny thing about Christianity. When you talk about the great things God is doing for you, other people may take it as boasting. We’re all trying to get our lives sorted out and walk in blessings, so when someone else does well, it may seem like that person thinks he’s a better Christian than you. That’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m just saying…this stuff is WORKING.

The Psalms say, “My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. The humble [or ‘needy’] shall hear thereof and be glad.” That seems to indicate the intelligent and constructive way to receive another person’s good news. If someone else gets something good, the smart thing is to try to find out what they did right.

I guess I was wrong to get up and do the Church Lady Superior Dance during the altar call. That, I regret.

I forgive the lady who sacked me and sat on me until the ushers arrived with the wheelbarrow. I wish I knew her name so I could return her weave. I probably shouldn’t be using it to dust my CD collection.

One of the funny problems I have right now is that my weight loss has made my skin break out. The weight loss has irritated my gall bladder, and the end result is slight skin problems. I guess I can live with that. It’s not like I have leprosy. Fifteen or twenty pounds from now, the weight loss should stop, and then I’ll be at equilibrium, so the stress to my body should go away.

Gall bladders are catch-22 organs. If you get fat, you become susceptible to gall bladder trouble. If you lose weight, during the process, you’re likely to have gall bladder flare-ups. Your gall bladder wants you to stay fat so it never gets well. Presumably, when I’m no longer fat or losing weight, I’ll be just fine.

I started taking a disgusting daily tonic of lime juice, olive oil, and oil of oregano, and I feel a whole lot better. And it gives me a use for my gigantic supply of fresh limes. Oil of oregano is loaded with terpenes, which are supposed to be hard on gallstones. It amazes me that medical science has absolutely no effective treatment for gall bladder disease. They know virtually nothing about preventing it. They don’t even try. I guess jerking gall bladders out at $5000 a pop is just too easy. Medical science has decided God made a mistake when he gave us gall bladders. They used to feel the same way about tonsils and appendices, but that’s changing. Bodies are like cars. I trust the engineers who design cars more than a slackjawed mechanic who tries to fix them.

More Peppers

Today I went to a meeting at church. On Saturday, one of the volunteer leaders invited me. I didn’t know what it was about, but I enjoy this sort of thing, and my morning was free, so off I went.

It was a meeting of the church’s leaders. If I understand things correctly, they have a practice of meeting on Mondays, and now they’re extending invitations to people who aren’t paid employees. I may have that wrong, but I think it’s about right.

I was relieved to see that they’re trying to communicate with people and organize them. I always complain about Christians using the Holy Spirit as a parachute. Don’t plan; don’t think. Just jump, and when you get in trouble, count on God to pull you out. The church is working to put together a hierarchy of volunteers with defined responsibilities, and it ought to make things run smoother.

On the way home, I picked up a copy of God’s Armorbearer by Terry Nance. This book was recommended to me when I indicated an interest in getting into the inner circle. I also got a copy of The Torah Blessing by Larry Huch. It’s full of stuff connecting Judaism and Christianity. I go through Christian books fast, so I figured one book was not enough.

Right now I’m canning Trinidad Scorpions in lime juice. What will I do with them once they’re canned? Danged if I know. But I canned those suckers. Oh, yes. They are canned. They’re not going ANYWHERE.

I want to dry apples so I can have dried-apple pies at Christmas. Is that too much to ask from life? I think not. But I don’t know how to go about drying them. If I had a junk car, I could dry them inside it, like my aunt used to do. I hate to spring for a dehydrator, but I probably will. It would give me a use for the tons of papayas I grow. Fresh, they’re not so hot. Dried, they’re excellent.

Tiny Jars of Magma

Okay, I have canned. Maybe.

I filled four half-pint jars with various peppers. I was going to use water and salt instead of vinegar, but I decided to use lime juice. I have so much. Why not use it? It doesn’t jar recipes the way vinegar does.

This pressure cooker is not easy to regulate. Apparently you have to twiddle the stove knob and find just the right position to get the pressure you want. This is not easy. It’s like steering a freighter. It takes a long time to respond, so you tend to over-correct. The canner spent a good deal of time at 14 psi, and then it spend some time at 9. The goal was 11, which I reached for most of the process.

There are things I don’t get. Headspace, for example. What happens if you screw up the headspace? I tried to leave an inch above the peppers, as per the recipe, but peppers stick up sometimes.

What’s the deal with air bubbles? The whole top of the jars were full of air. I’m not sure why I care whether there are bubbles elsewhere. I am trying to find out.

I didn’t can any Trinidad Scorpions. I realized half-pint jars are pathetic for peppers. You can get like eight of them in one jar. I’m going to use pints for the Scorpions. I figure I can put up at least two pints. What I’ll do with them, I can’t say. It might be fun to can them in pineapple juice instead of water or lime juice or vinegar. I don’t know what color the resulting deal will be, however.

I’m going to cool the jars down and see how they look. In a day or two I’ll open one to see what the peppers are like.

I have to make pork sausage! I have to. Surely you can understand that. And pickled beans. And pickles.

Maybe in a month or two, I’ll look into food dehydration.

No Biscuit Today

I love my weekly McDonald’s breakfast. I got in the habit back when I observed “fat day.” I limited my calories during the week, and then on the weekends, or just Saturday, I ate whatever I wanted. You can lose weight this way, but if you’re not careful, one day of gluttony can overcome six days of starvation, and you’ll add fat.

I don’t do fat day any more, but I still like to have my Mickey D’s on Saturday morning. My yankee uncle taught me that ketchup and eggs go together, and when I eat McMuffins and McDonald’s biscuits, I dip them in ketchup, and it’s heavenly. The rest of the week, I eat senior citizen fiber cereal, to avoid becoming a colonic casualty. Cereal is okay, but it’s not exciting.

Today I decided not to go to McDonald’s. Just because I had the power to say no. God delivered me from gluttony, and I’ve lost a lot of weight, but I’ve eaten a little more than I should on Saturdays, and I’m afraid I may have plateaued. I’m not having that. I want to lose thirteen more pounds. For the first time in my life, I have complete control over what I eat and drink, so I’m flexing my muscles and saying no.

I feel like I’m showing off, spiritually. Not to you, but to myself. It’s almost a snotty thing to do. I’m confident there are little beings assigned to me to make me overeat, and this is my way of shouting, “In your FACE.” I would rather enjoy that than have the food. Yesterday my sister said she wanted to get ahold of a demon some day so she could beat the tar out of it. What Christian hasn’t felt that way? I wish I could pummel one, too, but for now, I am enjoying frustrating them by not gorging.

I don’t care if I ever have another McMuffin. I suspect I will. I think you can bet on that. But if I don’t, I do not care. God has made McMuffins my McFootstool. I got something better than McMuffins.

Which is really saying something.

I picked up some canning equipment yesterday. It was either that or throw out a great number of hot peppers. I’m going to try to can them today. When you can stuff, you can do it at 212° for acidic foods or 245° for non-acidic foods. Acid keeps botulism down; if you don’t have acid, you need high temperatures to kill the spores. I don’t want to put vinegar in all my peppers, because it will affect the flavor when I use them in food. That means 245°, so I’ll have to use a pressure cooker.

I already had a pressure cooker, but it’s an expensive Magefesa with a small bottom. Not great for canning. I picked up a much cheaper Presto yesterday. I doubt it will get as hot as the Magefesa, but it will be fine for canning.

It amazes me that I found this stuff locally. No one cans in Miami. Everyone in Kentucky does it. There are some foods you pretty much have to can for yourself, if you want to have them at all. Pickled beans. Canned pork sausage (way better than it sounds). Sweet pickles that beat the daylights out of store brands. My grandmother and aunt and lots of other female relatives canned stuff. Some men up there can, too. Women aren’t the only ones who like food. Anyway, canning supplies would be easy to find anywhere in rural Appalachia, but finding them in Miami…that’s shocking.

The place I went to is called Goodman’s. I found it on Ebay, and I noticed they were in Miami, so I saw no point in doing mail-order. They were very helpful. The girl who took my order even carried my jars to the truck!

I think I’m supposed to get a special chemical to keep stuff crisp. Calcium chloride or something. Other than that, I’m all set.

My dad and my sister will be all excited. They miss home-canned stuff as much as I do. I can’t wait to try my hand at sausage. I loved that stuff. I thought I’d never see it again.

The jars are insanely expensive. I suppose intelligent people amass collections and take good care of them. I got 24 half-pints and 12 pints. I don’t think quarts are practical for me. Maybe if I start making tomato juice. If I could find ripe tomatoes, I could make incredible tomato sauce. Maybe I can use grape tomatoes. They’re fantastic, and they’re fairly cheap at Costco. Cheap enough to justify the effort.

I got a couple of pepper recipes. We’ll see how it goes. If it works out, beans and sausage and pickles won’t be far behind.

Local Find!

I can’t believe this.

1. I turned on my DVR’d Robert Morris show from yesterday, and it was all about grace. Same thing I wrote about today. He even mentioned Abraham, the same way I did.

2. I looked for canning supplies on Ebay, and I found a store…FIVE MILES AWAY.

Canning supplies? In Miami?

Amazing.

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!

More

Prayer answered.

Try Bacteria

I took a bunch of Tobago seasoning peppers, pureed them, stirred in a spoonful of yogurt and a little pressed garlic, and put the mixture in a container on the kitchen counter. A smart person would have nuked them first to kill whatever exotic bacteria were clinging to them, but you know me. I smirk at death.

After a week or two of fermenting, they smelled fantastic. But I couldn’t figure out what to do with them. Today I plopped a load of this stuff on a sub, and it was fantastic. Much better than banana peppers.

I didn’t make this idea up. They do it in the islands. Some people leave it in the sun to rot.

It would be even better with Home Depot cayenne peppers.

Give it a shot.

Miami: Funhouse Without Walls

I’m glad to say I’m not having too much soreness after yesterday’s accident. I barely feel the leg injury, although I can’t say I enjoyed washing it in the shower this morning. I might as well have been pressing it with a hot iron. The sore place on my back hurts whenever anything bumps into it, so I’m trying to watch it.

The pastor called and explained what was going on. His son usually handles projects like stage demolition, and his son is a good organizer. But he’s away this week, and a guy he usually supervises decided to get this done for him. On top of that, he decided to surprise the pastor’s son by getting a two-weekend job done in one day. If that isn’t a recipe for death, I don’t know what is. This guy works hard but is not used to leading, so the job was chaotic. And it turns out he was the one who dropped the set on me. It’s strange that he didn’t identify himself or talk to me after he did it. Maybe he was embarrassed. When you injure somebody, you should say something, if only for the sake of your own character. Sooner or later, we’re going to meet up. Then it will be awkward for him.

I was afraid this was how things always went at the church. I know they have some organizational problems, and the financial picture is not great right now, so things are a little hectic, and I figured what I saw yesterday was typical. But the pastor says they don’t do business that way, and that this was an embarrassing aberration. That’s a relief. I was starting to think they were really floundering.

One danger of walking by faith is that you may find yourself counting on God a little too much. Often, you’ll have to get into things without a lot of preparation or support, knowing God will take up the slack. Think of the disciples who headed off down the road without money or changes of clothes. When you’ve taken that path often enough, you may start to feel like you don’t have to think or prepare. I was afraid that was what I was seeing yesterday. I’m glad I was wrong.

Now I feel bad about pointing out the problem. I don’t want to cause any friction up there or alienate anyone. I felt I had to say something. I could have come home in a bag, and other people were in danger, too. I don’t know what kind of insurance the church carries, but I’m positive a lot of the neighborhood kids who were helping have none. You don’t want to see someone end up on life support in a county hospital, because safety rules were not observed and there were no hard hats on the premises.

It’s remarkable that I was positioned so only about a quarter of an inch of me protruded into the path of the thing that hit me. It was just enough to remove skin, without tearing through it into the flesh. I am so lucky. I keep thinking about how different it would have been, had the set landed on my head.

I have been thinking about my dad’s new interest in moving up north. I just checked the weather here in Miami. It’s 81º and 89% humidity. I nearly fainted. I then checked Melbourne, which is not far from the area we’re considering. It’s about 80º and 70%, which is not good, but it’s certainly better. And here’s the real difference: several nights this week, the temperature will drop into the sixties. Oh, man. What I would give for a week of that. I’d lie naked in the yard all night.

Not really.

People always say humidity is worse than heat. That’s not the whole story down here. Another problem is the sheer intensity of the sunlight. You can work up a sweat just walking around your house once in direct sun. If you wear a light-colored shirt with dark parts, you will feel the dark areas heating up, because they absorb heat so fast. Last year, I was stupid enough to work in the yard in June and July. I’ve taken it easy this summer. The bugs benefited from my reluctance, but I saved myself some unpleasant times. Now that things are beginning to cool off, I can get out there and fertilize and spread poison.

When the weather is this hot and the sun is this merciless, you feel it even when you’re inside your house. When you lie in bed at night, the memory of the heat on your head will bother you.

Brevard County would be nice. Maybe north Georgia or southern Tennessee would be even better. I’d have to give up tropical fruit, but I’d have tomatoes, peaches, and apples. Maybe blackberries.

Tropical fruit is overrated. Mangoes are great, but peaches are better. Papayas have a funky smell. Guavas have an off flavor. Mameys taste like they have tiny hairs in them. Citrus is fine, but there is a good possibility that it’s about to become nearly extinct, due to citrus greening. Some clever Miamian brought illegal plants here, and they had the wrong bugs on them, and now Florida is likely to lose its citrus industry. That means no juice for the rest of the US and much of the world.

Bananas are also in danger. There’s a fungus attacking them. Here’s what I’ve read. No wild banana is worth eating, because they have gigantic seeds. All the bananas we have now come from one seedless ancestor, so there is little genetic diversity. That means a blight that will harm one variety will probably harm another. The blight is in Asia, and that means it will get here eventually.

If I’m up in Georgia surrounded by normal fruit, I won’t have to worry about stuff like this. And I’ll hear a lot of English, which will be soothing. Seems like every day I get this phone call three times:

Me: Hello?

Caller: Allo?

Me: Yes, I said hello.

Caller: Allo? [“If I say ‘allo’ twice, the person I called will magically speak Spanish!”]

Me: Hello.

Caller: Allo? Who ee dees?

Me: No hablo espanol.

Caller: [click]

Phone: RING! RING!

Me: Hello?

Caller: Allo? Who ee dees?

Me: La migra.

Caller: Ay! [click]

Then there’s the fun of playing charades at the store, trying to mime your desires because the “bilingual” clerk speaks no English. You have to be Marcel Marceau to order a hamburger. Okay, not Marcel Marceau. More like Cantinflas.

One other benefit is that I’d be less likely to get MRSA, also known as flesh-eating bacteria. It’s a problem down here. People bring amazing diseases to Miami. After I got scraped at church, I had to buy antiseptic, and if what I read on the labels is right, Bactine kills the MRSA bacteria. Good thing to know. I applied it liberally. It stung like you would not believe. I can’t understand why they put “no sting” on the label. If you’re going to lie, why be obvious?

I better go have a banana while I still can.

Up the Indian River

In a comment, someone said something about how I should use the new Dodge for something other than the McDonald’s drive-thru. I really don’t think this thing will fit in the nearest drive-thru. Taking the Thunderbird through it makes me nervous. It’s very tight.

The other day, I encountered one of the incredibly stupid, dangerous, and wasteful traffic islands the mayor of Karl Goebbels Coral Gables has put in our streets, and I had to back the truck up and correct the angle in order to get through it. Then I realized I could just run over it, so that’s my plan for next time. I won’t mash the little palm tree in the middle of it, but I’ll run my tires over the masonry. Sorry about that, Mayor Slesnick. You should have known better.

Suddenly I’m glad I bought the lifetime wheel alignment over at Firestone.

The mayor hates pickup trucks already. He was highly distressed when Coral Gables got dinged in the now-famous pickup lawsuit in 2007. For weeks, he could barely stomach his tofu. The guy who sued is the brother of a lawyer who beat me and my dad in an employment case. That lawyer handled the pickup case. I guess I can forgive him now. Thanks to him, I can park an aircraft carrier in front of my house. God bless him. Before the lawsuit, pickups were illegal, so the law was slanted in favor of vehicles such as Mayor Slesnick’s pink Prius covered with Miami City Ballet bumper stickers. I assume that’s what he drives. What else could it be?

I’m kidding. I guarantee you, it’s a Mercedes or a BMW. I don’t even have to look.

I can’t stand those traffic islands. They’re supposed to slow traffic down. I would guess that part of the purpose is to slow people down when they’re running from the cops. Miami is slowly sinking under a pile of traffic impediments intended to stop crime. Hopefully they’ll never block the streets to the point where people can’t leave for good.

Some of the islands are funny. I guess I should describe what they are, so you’ll understand. It’s a circular concrete thing in the middle of an intersection. It’s about four inches high and twelve feet across. They build the curbs up around them so, in theory, you’re forced to turn and go in a circle. But some of them are constructed incorrectly, so I just zip right through at 40 miles per hour. It’s not my fault they can’t build them right. I wish I could fly through one while Slesnick was on the sidewalk, walking his poodles. I would love to see the look on his face.

One of the islands near me was too open, so they rebuilt it. And it’s STILL too open. So I still shoot through! For some reason, I find that incredibly funny. It probably cost the city $15,000 to rebuild it, and they achieved absolutely nothing. It’s legal to drive fast through these things. There are no reduced-speed signs.

My sister has a standing offer to represent anyone who gets injured, running into one of these silly things. No charge. I look forward to the day when the Gables gets hit with a $50 million verdict. Then the islands will be removed, and hopefully, so will Slesnick.

I don’t really care. This place is beyond fixing. Either you like small lots, crowded streets, high taxes, and Nuremberg-worthy zoning laws, or you don’t. I don’t.

My dad is making noises about leaving Miami. A friend of ours up in Brevard County wants us to come up so he can show us around. I’ve been wanting to get out for a long time, but I didn’t want to leave my father here. A year or two ago, he got on the bandwagon, and we decided to look for a compound which we could fortify with Claymores and machine gun nests. But we never got it going. Now he’s saying he wants to drive up there. And we finally have a vehicle in which we will be considered presentable.

“The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.” Maybe that applies to me, as well as to men who are actually good. I feel like the pieces of my life are falling into place. A move out of this unpleasant city would be a wonderful example. I am tired of living in a city that has voodoo temples and goat sacrifices and nude beaches. And the country’s worst traffic. If I could get up every morning and look out over an acre or more and see a huge pickup truck and a whole bunch of fruit trees, I would think I had arrived in paradise. The land of Bible clingers and McCain stickers.

Is it too much to hope for?

Prosperity is a Lot of Work

I must have 25 bags of frozen lime and key lime juice now. I wanted my trees to be productive, but I’m starting to wonder where the juice is going to go.

I just put away five half-cup bags, after slicing and freezing a Costco beef loin. I’m turning into my grandmother! I have a pressure cooker, I grow food, and I’m considering learning to can. What next? Knitting?

You have to be a good steward. That’s the pitch. Back in the 80s, they used to say God would bless you with prosperity and health as long as you sent Jim Bakker and Robert Tilton enough money. It didn’t really matter what you did the rest of the time. And of course, it did not work. Oddly, God did not reward people for buying evangelists purple Bentleys and mink toilet seat covers.

These days, the message is somewhat more balanced. Give alms; don’t just send checks to questionable TV preachers. Repent. Pray. Fast. Go to church. Behave responsibly. Robert Morris writes and speaks about this stuff, and I think he’s right. It’s a little insulting to claim you can be a monumental jerk and get God to bless you, but it’s also insulting to say God doesn’t reward people. So anyway, I am afraid to throw out the fruit and herbs I grow, and I try not to spend like a total fool. Hence the freezing and bagging.

It seems to pay off, at least with regard to bananas, limes, herbs, and peppers. Actually, things are going very well with me in general. People close to me have it harder than I do at the moment. I can’t talk about every good thing that’s happening in my life. Wish I could.

Hey…what if I had paid more attention to my elders when I was a kid? I would have been doing a lot of this stuff a long time ago. Doh!

I’m going to try to get a flu shot now. I was going to take two friends to church, but they both got the flu. Coincidence, I’m sure. It’s not like there are any forces out there that try to keep people from turning to God. Never. Couldn’t happen.

We’re still on for next week.

Big Piles of Dead Cow

Here’s one thing I did today.

How do you like that? That’s two rib eye roasts from Costco, going into freezer bags. Prime beef! Cheaper than choice at my local store. I refrigerated it for a week in its vacuum packaging. That ought to be enough aging to have some impact. I should have let them go another week. Beef is no good until it develops a little smell.

I will never understand why people perpetuate myths about steak. They say frozen beef is no good, unless you freeze it instantly in liquid helium or something. Ridiculous. These steaks will be sublime.

I cut three two-inch steaks, for special occasions. The rest are about an inch and a half. I should have cut them thinner, but it’s hard to force your hand to do something your stomach knows is wrong. Two inches is the perfect thickness for a steak. You can burn the outside slowly, to the perfect degree of doneness, without overcooking the inside.

I also froze some Orinoco bananas. These things are frustrating. They all get ripe at once, and they last about two days. Yesterday, I tried to eat one, and I couldn’t do it, because it was too green. Today I had to slice pieces out of the ones I froze, because they were too ripe. But they’ll be great in baked goods.

I think I’m going to dedicate more land to bananas. They’re free, they’re extremely useful, and they look better than bare grass.

I have some bread rising. I am sorry to see that my ability to make fattening food has turned out to be important for my sister’s health. It’s not a very cheery reason to bake. But I’m glad I know how to do these things. If anyone can keep weight on a chemotherapy patient, I can.

I can’t really recommend that Tilia vacuum sealer in the photo. It works, but it’s expensive, and so are Tilia bags. If I ever need a new sealer, I’m going to try one of these jobs from Sorbent Systems. I already buy their bags. I think. Not Tilia’s, anyway.

It has been a truly great day. Maybe I’ll explain eventually. I’m so grateful for the way things are going, in spite of the problems. I think this is how we were intended to live. I fired off a rough draft of the first section of the book I’m helping my pastor with. It would take me a day to explain what went through my mind as I worked on it, and why I’m so glad I’m doing it.

Hope they take my offer on that truck. If not, I’ll have to bolt a bed to the T-bird.