18 Hours of Electricity

This must be what the rapture feels like.

What is the rapture? A sudden translation to a place where your problems are instantly ended.

Last night I slept on clean sheets in an air-conditioned room, after a long, hot shower, and today I got up and ate eggs fried in butter, two big slices of toast made from homemade bread, and three slabs of Tennessee Pride sausage. And not I’m sitting in a leather recliner, thinking about how great I feel.

This is much better than yesterday. I almost had to bathe in the freezing 70-degree pool. I had to work on our generator with no running water to wash my hands. We had no air conditioning. Most restaurants were closed. There was no gas.

What a difference.

When I was young, I took things like electricity and cars for granted. I am not like that any more. Sometimes when I’m driving down the road, I tell God how amazed I am. I’m doing 70 miles per hour. It’s 95 degrees outside, and the inside of the car is at 69 degrees. I’m in the shade. I’m sitting on leather upholstery. If I want, I can have the great musical artists of the last hundred years sing and play for me.

That’s pretty wild if you think about it. Three generations back, the only way to travel faster than 7 miles per hour was to board a train. Nobody had air conditioning. There were almost no recordings.

I thank God constantly for dishwashers, clothes washers, and dryers. You shove your stuff in and walk away, and your electric slave does the work for you, better than you could.

My grandmother was an educated woman with a wealthy husband, and she had to wash 6 people’s dishes and dirty underwear. When I was little, she had a washing machine with a wringer on it. Imagine standing on your porch running your family’s used underwear through one of those with your bare hands.

I’ll be honest. She had a lady who came in and helped, but I doubt that took care of all the laundry. Granny did make my mom and her sisters do chores, though.

Anyway, somebody was washing other people’s dirty underwear.

My grandmother had washboards. She had one in her house when she died in 2003.

In Zambia, my wife used to bathe in a bucket a lot of the time. The Zambian power grid is not great.

I always ask God not to take wonderful things away from us.

I eat homemade bread because my wife hates American bread. I can’t say I blame her. The white stuff has no taste, and the brown stuff is like eating a welcome mat. I showed my wife how to make my white bread recipe, and now she’s happy.

Bread probably costs us $1.50 a loaf, and I have never had anything that compares with it, anywhere. It’s so good, I have considered making it worse so I don’t eat so much of it.

I was only without power for a day, but today I feel like royalty. Appreciate what you have while you have it.

The comedian W.C. Fields was on his own when he was a kid. He left home at 11. He found himself a hole in the ground and put a cover on it. For a while, that was where he slept. When he was old, he still got excited about beds and clean sheets. He described the feeling of settling down in a clean bed. He said, “God____, that’s a sensation!”
And he was rich.

I think about that every time I go to bed.

When I was a kid, and I didn’t have something someone similarly situated had, I thought God was unjust. I don’t feel that way now. I feel pampered, because I am. I don’t care if the guy across the street has a hundred times what I do. My life is great.

The natural thing is to become spoiled when God gives you things. That’s a choice you make. You can choose to become more grateful. The Bible shows that God punishes the spoiled.

If you have good health, a clean, safe, quiet, pleasant home, good food, good clothing, people who love you, and God, you are rich. It’s true. It’s not just something to put on a greeting card.

This is all true and wonderful, but now I have to fix the tractor and move the downed trees and branches from my yard.

Well. A lot of people don’t have a tractor or a yard.

HOT WATER!

We just spent almost 24 hours without electricity. It was harrowing. Imagine a whole day without a power recliner.

No one is wondering, but anyway, I’ll give a sitrep. Things are okay here. The storm actually nearly almost lived up to its potential until maybe 5 a.m., and then it disappeared.

This is not what they predicted. We were supposed to have winds of 28 or 34 mph right now, depending on which Chicken Little gave the forecast.

I hate doing without power, but I am too cheap to buy a real generator big enough to run the house. We have had two short outages in 7 years, so figure $2500 per outage to keep the power on. It’s a lot of money to pay to avoid two or three baths in the pool and throwing out some freezer-burned meat.

While I was out and about today, I saw quite a few wires on the ground, some under trees, so I started to wonder if we were going to get power back this week. I went to WaWa and bought about 6 gallons of no-ethanol gas for my generator. I was lucky to get the gas. I just drove about 40 miles looking for more, and it was nowhere to be found.

I hadn’t been planning to use the generator, but we both wanted to take showers, and the water heater and pump need electricity.

I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get the generator going. I did all the right things when I put it away, but small engines are cursed.

Sure enough, when I put a quart of gas in it to test it, it would not run. I took the pull cord assembly off and cranked it with a drill, and it still would not run.

I started going through the procedures. I decided to check the fuel valve, and I found that no fuel was going through it. I started trying to take it off, and it turned out to be really obstinate. I started to wonder if I was wasting my time. Maybe the gas wasn’t deep enough in the tank.

I thought that, and then I thought, “It has to be deep enough. I can see the drain below the surface of the gas.” But I tilted the generator anyway, and gas ran out of the valve.

I could not believe it. The generator will not run unless it has maybe a gallon of gas in it OR you tilt it.

China.

I must have spent two hours trying to make it run, and there was nothing wrong with it.

I had to cannibalize two cords from my tools to make a cord to hook the generator up to the house. I have a bunch of 50-amp welding sockets in my shop, so I made what I call a San Francisco cord. It’s male on both ends. One 50-amp plug goes into my 50-to-30 adaptor, which came with a welder, and the other goes to an extension cord, which goes to a wall socket. Worked perfectly, but I had to order two new plugs.

I got the generator going for one reason: I knew that two things were true.

If fix generator, power come back on right away.

If not fix generator, power come back on in a week.

This is how the universe works. I fixed the generator, and two or three hours later, we had power.

The generator is small; 5500 watts. As I recall, it was the only one I could get before Hurricane Irma went by us. Until today, I had never used it to power the house. I used it to run welders before I installed new wiring in the shop.

Today we learned it will run one water heater, the pump, the lights, and the refrigerators and freezers. It seemed unhappy when my wife took a shower, but it didn’t quit.

Should I get a bigger one? I can get one with about twice the capacity from Harbor Freight, and it will have electric start. I could spring for a real generator that runs on propane and powers both air conditioners, but I don’t think I will.

Bigger generator. Not bigger wife.

I live in what may be the greatest neighborhood on Earth.

When Irma came through, and I was going crazy with looking after my dad and moving from Miami with no help, a tree fell across our driveway in the same place where one fell last night. We had to drive around it while I tried to find a saw. It was almost impossible to get one, even online.

A day or two after the storm, someone cut and moved the tree, inside our gate. They trespassed to do us a favor. People we had never met.

This morning, I walked outside–frankly, I was looking for a place to answer nature’s call, because I didn’t want to carry a Home Depot bucket to the bathroom to flush the toilet–and I saw a grapple tractor in my gate.

My neighbor was driving it, and he started asking where he should cut it and move it. Like it was his job.

I talked to him for a minute and said I would get dressed and come back to help. He said he would probably be done before I got back. Sure enough, he was.

Today I told my wife that if a neighbor came onto my property in Miami after a hurricane, it would be to steal my generator. My neighbors here practice what I call reverse vandalism.

This was a $1000 job, minimum, and he did it for nothing. I could have done it myself with my compact tractor, and I will have to finish it myself, but it was a very nice thing to do.

I don’t know what’s going on down south. I know it’s bad, but I haven’t been able to watch the news today, so I am out of the loop. I spent a lot of time praying last night because I couldn’t sleep. I hope it helped.

Milton exceeded my expectations. It maintained hurricane-force winds all the way to the east coast. On the other hand, the storm surge was wildly overestimated.

I wish we lived in the kind of country where the president would lead us in prayer before natural disasters, using the name of Jesus. We would see great results.

At least we have DeSantis.

I’m really excited. I’m going to take a hot shower. What a luxury. Right now I smell like Antifa.

Never think you don’t have it good. If you have a pleasant home, a car, air conditioning, a dishwasher, laundry machines, and hot running water, you have luxuries that would have astonished people throughout most of man’s history.

What is Left to Accomplish?

Based on weather forecasts, I made plans to do nothing today, and I am sticking to my plans. But I think I made a mistake.

Hurricane Helene’s weak outer winds were supposed to produce sustained speeds of about 40 mph here. Far as I know, it never happened. I would say the situation this county ended up with is 10% worse than the aftermath of Debby, which left a few downed trees here and there. We got nearly no rain during the Helene crisis, so that’s a plus.

I have some cleaning up to do. Yesterday I checked the forecast to see when it would dry up, because nothing is worse than doing heavy yard work on a 90-degree day when the air is full of steam. The forecast pretty much said it was going to rain until next Friday. The probability figure for today is 88%.

Of course, it’s dry and breezy without much sun. The temperature is about 82 degrees, or 8 degrees lower than recent days. This would have been a good day to clean up.

I don’t understand precipitation probability, and it turns out neither do meteorologists.

At some point in the distant past, I looked it up, and I read that a certain chance of rain meant that there was that much likelihood rain would fall somewhere in the area the chance applied to. So if you were in an area with a 25% chance of rain, the chance that it would rain somewhere in that area was 25%. How much rain? Whatever I read didn’t say. I assumed it had to be a significant amount, because if not, the figure was useless.

I just checked again. A British site says a figure of x percent means x percent of sources have concluded it will rain in the area. How much? Doesn’t say. An American site says it means x percent of the area will get measurable rain.

Either meteorologists have no idea what their own metric means, or they are letting uninformed people try to explain it to us.

Experience has taught me this: if a forecast says the chance of rain will be 60% or more, expect a nasty, rainy day, nearly every time. That’s more useful than the weird things I’m seeing on the web. Anything over 20% is reason to avoid outdoor activities as far as I’m concerned.

I am sitting here doing nothing. I still feel some covid fatigue, and I’m not sure I can start the tractor, so I am in no rush.

I’m not sure what to do with my life these days. We are done traveling. I doubt we’ll go anywhere until far into next year, and we will not be able to go any place exciting because of the baby. We still need to fix the house up a little, but that’s about it. What should we be doing with ourselves?

The world has turned into an immense toilet. Americans have proven they really are stupid enough to put Kamala Harris in the Oval Office. Wokeness is getting worse, not better. We are giving birth to generations of soft, useless, cruel, incompetent, spoiled, godless perverts who will make the last decade look like the Messianic Age.

I don’t know what we’re supposed to do here. I am spending more and more time in prayer. We think about things like good food, medical appointments, and managing our practical affairs. That’s about it.

Lately I have noticed I am sometimes bored. That’s a problem I thought I had left behind decades ago. It’s strange to see it creeping up on me again. I find myself thinking, “I remember this!”

I think I had started believing I was immune to it. I took not being bored for granted for maybe 35 years.

I have zero enthusiasm about America’s future. I don’t want to live here. I don’t know how I’ll defend myself when my son asks me why we put him here, to face seventy-plus years of hiding out in a world gone insane. I can tell him God wants people to have children. Best I can do.

While we are here, we will have to devote a lot of energy to sheltering him from godless friends, Satanic entertainment, exposure to perverts, and so on. We will really have to have God’s help, because we can’t generate our own safe Christian bubble.

I don’t have any projects in mind. There is nothing I want to do here. I don’t want to start big things in a world which has no future.

I try not to imagine a future under Kamala Harris. Obama was an arrogant homosexual atheist who was hard on the church, the unborn, and Israel. Biden was dumb and without conscience, and he appointed godless nutcases to rule over us. Harris would make us miss Biden. She is a complete zero as a human being.

She’s a wonderful exhibit to use in order to prove democracy doesn’t work. When Biden gave her affirmative action and made her his running mate, she was extremely unpopular even among Democrats. That didn’t change during her time in office. Now she may get a legitimate majority in a presidential election. The people didn’t get to vote for alternatives. She was simply installed, and Democrats could either vote for her or let Trump win.

Imagine the kind of pigs she will appoint to abuse and control us if she wins. The worst choices imaginable. Disgusting, vile, incompetent, corrupt, and stupid.

It seems like there should be something to do other than praying and waiting for Yeshua, but if there is, I can’t see it.

Maybe I should prepare a rapture-ready will. Will it matter? Will the wills of raptured people be triggered when they leave? Will they be respected? Will whatever I could leave people be helpful to them in a world where demons and fallen angels are running amok?

I assume people will run around killing each other, squatting in each other’s houses, and stealing each other’s money, so I don’t think a will would be helpful.

There must be something useful for us to do right now. I just need to be told what it is.

What if the rapture doesn’t come, and I have to age and die in Satan’s America? Terrible thought. But I know from experience that if I pray in the Spirit enough, things will work out for me. I can’t do all that much for others, so it’s a limited blessing.

I can’t wait for this place to be wiped clean and remodeled. I don’t know what it is to live in a world that works. I’ve seen better times than the present, but I have always been surrounded by death, disease, injury, deformity, murder, accidents, poverty, and every type of emotional pain. I have always lived in a world ruled by Satan’s children.

My patience with suffering is gone. A couple of years ago, it didn’t discourage me as much. Now, every time I see someone with a terrible physical problem, or I hear about a terrorist attack or a natural disaster or some other cause of suffering, I think, “I have HAD it with this. Please get us OUT.” Enough. I have seen enough.

A few people can be helped, but almost everyone will continue to suffer and fail. Most of the people we try to help will turn our help into curses. They won’t turn to God. Not really. They won’t pray in tongues. They won’t repent. They won’t be accountable. Things won’t get any better for them.

The blessed will stay blessed, and the people who hold onto them like Titanic survivors holding onto floating planks will continue to hold on. Nearly everyone who leads a cursed life will continue to be cursed.

People who lead cursed lives generally don’t want to know God. They want money. They think money will fix everything and they won’t have to repent. It’s frustrating, because continued abundance comes from a relationship with God. You tell them how to fix their lives, they pretend to agree, and they don’t change.

When someone listens, it’s like you’ve found a big gold nugget in a manure pile the size of an apartment building.

We don’t have enough money or time to buy better lives for the people who won’t repent. We have to watch nearly everyone sink. Elon Musk couldn’t fix them. Look at his son, the pervert.

I like to prophesy, but I keep hearing about how God is going to destroy people who are against his children. That means the vast majority of human beings. I would love to hear about revival and miracles.

The human race is just too crooked to help. We have always been that way. God is always ready to bless, but almost no one is interested.

Guess I’ll go pray and then think about dinner.

Tennessee Looks Better and Better

Things are looking good, post-Helene. God took care of us. A tree fell over in my side yard, maybe 80 yards from the house. A smaller tree snapped about halfway up near the workshop, but it didn’t hit the building. We have a lot of leaves down.

There may be some trees down farther from the house. I haven’t checked yet. the lights went out for about 30 seconds, but they came back on. People here got very serious about tree-trimming after Irma, so power outages are not as common as they once were. I checked the power company’s site last night, and I saw a total of 14 outages on their map. That’s impressive.

My wife had a doctor’s appointment set for today, and they called and said they had no power. That was a surprise.

My big complaint is the upcoming weather. We expect a nasty, rainy week, so I’m not planning to do much about the debris right away. The general rule is that the weather gets noticeably better in October. Can’t wait.

The coast is a wreck. Not the entire west coast; just the areas where the surge was bad. It looks like the 20-foot surge that was predicted failed to materialize, to no one’s surprise, but I did see video of small houses floating around. I saw a lot of structures that are just plain ruined. I don’t know where people will go.

Sooner or later, coastal people will have to get serious about building for hurricanes. The people who own concrete houses on stilts don’t have much to be upset about today, but owners and occupants of frame houses situated on the ground have lost everything.

Everyone hates insurance companies, but insurance is a business, and it’s not realistic to expect insurers to offer good rates to people who know their homes will sustain catastrophic damage every 25 years or so.

I don’t know why coastal people got in the habit of building structures that weren’t ready for hurricanes. It’s bizarre. Everyone knows storms will come. Everyone knows how to build for them.

Another interesting phenomenon: rescuers were pulling people out of flooded areas late last night. Why were they still there? Two days ago, everyone knew these places would flood. Shelters were ready.

I saw a video of an airboat that had been removing people from an area where there was a Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. I don’t understand ghetto people. They did the same thing in Louisiana when Katrina hit. Stayed right where they were.

Ghetto people have a culture of helplessness. Can’t work. Can’t get through high school. Can’t take care of their kids. Can’t stay out of prison. Can’t evacuate before storms. Can’t recover after storms.

Helping the poor is hard mainly because they respond so badly to help. They turn every blessing into a problem. They are used to being rewarded for failure, so they put their energy into failing.

My aunt was a principal in Eastern Kentucky. They used to test the kids for ADD. She found out parents were telling their kids to fail on purpose so they could get aid money. I wonder how those kids are doing today. Well, I don’t have to wonder. Everyone who could add two and two left, and now the place is full of drug addicts and professional thieves.

The failure culture is found everywhere people have gotten used to government handouts.

I don’t understand the people who left their cars in flood areas. It’s not that hard to drive a mile inland. Now they’re pedestrians, and if they replace their cars, they’ll have to pay the deductibles.

Coastals need to learn not to move into homes that can’t withstand storms. Even if you’re insured, you have to move out and throw out lots of your belongings. You probably won’t be compensated for everything, because you won’t have an inventory, and you won’t be paid replacement cost. Even if they overpay you, replacing your stuff will not be a simple matter. It will take a very long time, and many things won’t be available. While you’re living somewhere else, there’s a good chance looters will come in. It’s better to start off in a home that won’t flood or disintegrate.

Insurance isn’t God. It can make things better, but it’s no substitute for prevention.

If you look at the web, you’ll see people promoting the notion that hurricane-proof homes require magical new technology, or that they cost too much. Not true. My dad’s house down south was built in 1951, and it took about 170 mph without significant damage. There are concrete stilt houses all over the Keys, and they don’t all belong to tech billionaires. I put hurricane doors and windows in a house for under $20,000, which is not much compared to decades of insurance premiums.

Houses built for hurricanes cost more, but not that much more, and they save a fortune. It’s not unusual for a modest home to cost $700,000 today. Adding $50,000 to make it safe from storms is a reasonable expenditure.

Why don’t schools in coastal states teach kids these things? Too busy telling them Heather has two mommies and that chromosomes don’t matter.

My house is hurricane-proof, by local standards. It wouldn’t work in Cedar Key a hundred yards from the Gulf, but it will take anything a hurricane can dish out in my area. It would take a tornado to take it out. I felt pretty good when I heard a storm was coming, because I knew the odds of a serious problem were extremely low.

If I had just moved in without thinking, I could be in a flood plain right now.

Later on, I’ll look around and see if any other trees need to be cleaned up. I already know I won’t have to file any claims.

You Can’t Sell Shamwows and Mighty Putty with Logic and Restraint

Another day, another Cone of Certain Death. The TV liars are brushing off their hyperbole and practicing pretending it’s hard to stand in 20-mph breezes. Anderson Cooper has a team out, looking for a deceptively-deep ditch for him to stand in.

Tropical Storm Helene is on its way up the Gulf, and it’s supposed to make its closest approach to me late Thursday night. So far, it’s not looking bad. The cone’s projected center is about 180 miles off at that time, and it would take a pretty horrendous storm to generate serious winds here from that distance.

Having butchered every big oak close to my house and shop, and currently living in what resembles a lunar landscape, I think I have little to fear. The juice could go off for a couple of days, and we could lose some trees far from the house, but the odds of anything big hitting anything important are vanishingly small.

My yard is not what it used to be. I obliterated a lot of the shade. But I had no choice. The trees were too close to the house, and they were also dying because they were worthless types of oaks that rot standing up. They looked nice and provided shade while the original owners’ kids were growing up here, but by the time I arrived, they were over the hill and could not be permitted to remain in place.

We went to Europe, which killed about three weeks. I’m still a little lightheaded from coronavirus, so I don’t feel like working in the heat just yet. A storm will be here shortly. All these things add up to an October start on fixing the yard, at the earliest.

This is about what I planned on anyway. I decided I wanted to rent an excavator for about a week and yank all the oak stumps, but I didn’t want to work in the summer heat.

If the storm knocks stuff over in my county, I may be delayed yet longer, because renting an excavator will become impossible. Everyone will want one.

Nothing can be done. You do what you can, and you relax. If I have to wait for November or December, the world will keep turning.

Choosing to cut the trees was a pretty mature decision, because the shade was really nice, and they made the property look better. I could have left them alone for a couple more years. But I would have been sweating every time a storm went by.

Yes, I have insurance, but that doesn’t mean letting trees fall on my house would be intelligent. I have a deductible, it takes time to fix things even when someone else pays, contractors are the lowest form of life not known to wear suicide vests, and some things can’t be replaced.

The sensation of NOT worrying about an approaching hurricane is hard to get used to. Florida residents get used to sweating bullets every year, over and over.

Other people are not as blessed as I. As I saw a meteorologist point out today, late-season storms tend to be wider, so this one could bring high winds and a lot of storm surge to a long stretch of coast.

Once again, homeowners will be playing developer roulette. “Did my developer care enough to put my house above the storm surge”? “Is the drainage up to par?” “Will my roof fly off?”

After the last storm, we saw a familiar site. Devastated neighborhoods right next to neighborhoods where things weren’t too bad. Some developers put homes on raised lots. Some didn’t. Some homes were built better than others. Many homebuyers didn’t do their homework. They didn’t check to see if they were in floodplains. They didn’t think about storm surge or construction quality. We saw videos of houses where the water was a couple of feet deep in the living rooms.

My house is around a hundred feet above sea level, in a place that has never seen hurricane winds, on a lot the government says can’t flood. Before my dad bought it, I made sure it was not in a floodplain. It’s also a couple feet above the the lot itself.

It’s surprising how few people make any effort to vet Florida homes for hurricane safety before buying them. It doesn’t take much time, and it saves people from disaster, literally. If it looks pretty and the price seems right, they jump in, and realtors and sellers smile quietly and take their money. It’s not fraud. You’re supposed to look after yourself and do your due diligence.

It’s sad. You can throw away your life savings so easily, and it’s not necessary.

I always expect life to bite me in the rear end, because it does, so I was very careful. I did my best.

Not many people would defoliate half of their beautiful yards like I did. I feel like a beautiful actress who got a prophylactic mastectomy.

I’m used to being concerned about myself and my dad. I’m sorry to say I didn’t think that much about people in other areas in the past. I was too disturbed by the thought of what could happen to me. Now I am making an effort to think about others and pray for them. This storm will probably be a horror for a lot of people who didn’t prepare.

If you decide to move to Florida, think first. You can avoid nearly all storm problems by staying off the coasts. Apartments are nothing like as problematic as houses. Trees near houses look nice, but they fall over. Concrete is better than wood. You can check and avoid floodplains. You can check and make sure your house is built well and not too low to the ground. You need a roof that will stay on; steel is the way to go. A whole-house generator is a big blessing. Find out about insurance costs before you buy, not after.

Do things right, and you will be at peace while your neighbors are living in hotels at night and guarding against looters during the day.

If you don’t look out for yourself, do the rest of us a favor, and don’t blame the government like the folks in the video below. Believe it or not, the government can’t control hurricanes.

Him is on the Way

I wasn’t going to write about this part of my life, but maybe I should. Today we got some test results back, and we are going to have a boy. Also, so far, all the genetic tests look fine.

Talk about relieved.

These days, when you’re expecting, they scare you to death. My wife is a young woman, but they told her she had a “geriatric” pregnancy. They were not referring to me. If you’re a feminist, and you’re convinced you’re supposed to be building a killer career instead of reproducing, and you think you have lots of time, here is bad news: you don’t. Get yourself a husband and become a traditional wife.

You think Kim Kardashian is great because she got rich and then had kids? Guess again. She’s only 43, and three of her kids are products of geriatric pregnancies. “High-risk,” they call it. She could have gotten started sooner, but her porn-heavy career as a professional slut delayed things.

My wife and I were under different constraints. I could not accept the possibility of my wife giving birth in Africa, so we had to wait until she got her green card. I did not want to see my child take his or her first steps on a video chat, and I wanted to be present in case I was needed. I definitely didn’t want to find out that my sick child was in a Zambian hospital.

It felt wonderful getting negative test results after all the hype about potential problems. God protected our child from the consequences of our sins. He took them on himself.

Today we had to take a long drive to retrieve Marvin from a bird boarding place, and on the way back, the test results came through on my wife’s phone. The website asked if we wanted to know the baby’s sex, and we agreed. That’s when we got the news. I had to hear it while I was stuck in traffic in Orlando with a parrot trying to chew its way out of a box.

I miss the days when people found out what they were having on the day of delivery. We are overloaded with unneeded information now. My wife wants to start shopping, however, and you can’t buy all that many things for a baby of unknown gender. Also, we pray for our son a lot, and I bless him and my wife. We are both really tired of referring to him as “my child” and “he or she.” Finally, we have pronouns. Correct ones, not nonsense words or inappropriate pronouns like the ones we see applied by people controlled by demons.

We also have a name. We are naming the boy after my mother’s dad. My wife wants to put a II at the end of his name. I can’t name him after my father, because even though God changed him late in life, I still have memories of my mother using his name as an insult. When my sister or I behaved badly, she would call us by his name. Also, when I was a kid, hearing his name put a knot in my stomach. I can’t go through that for the rest of my life.

I love my dad, and we reconciled completely, but there are still consequences for his behavior earlier in life.

My grandfather was more of a father figure to me than my dad was. My mom was his favorite child by a mile, and I was his favorite grandchild. I was the closest thing he had to a son, and I am still grateful for all he did for us. I can’t think of a better person to honor in this matter. He had no boys, and his other male grandchildren either have serious issues or identified with a paternal line.

I’m the one he used to take shooting and hunting. He said I was the reason he bought two ponies. I’m the one he used to put in the truck and take to his farms and on visits to friends, over and over.

He also did a lot for my sister, but he couldn’t stand her. He threw her out of his house because of the way she treated him.

I imagine seeing his name attached to a child of mixed race will gall one or two of my relatives. If so, that will be their problem, not mine, and maybe it will be a chastisement from God. A reminder that trying to put someone else in my favored position didn’t work.

Based on what I know about my cousins, it looks like I am the male descendant who got my grandfather’s patriarch mantle, albeit unexpectedly and without asking for it or knowing such a thing existed. I am the eldest son of the eldest daughter. I embrace it and try to do well, invoking God’s help every day. It’s very intimidating. I know my faults.

Merely producing children does not make you a patriarch. You have to have a sense of duty. You have to want to raise kids with ethics and introduce them to the Holy Spirit. You have to be a man who admits his immaturity and his faults and works to get God to cleanse him so the next generation will be improved. You also have to have a lot of wisdom, given to you by God, directly, you can pass on to your kids. You have to be able to accept and transmit a supernatural inheritance. A patriarch raises mature, decent children who don’t go to hell. Anyone else is just spilling seed on the ground.

Doesn’t matter if your kids are smart, successful, handsome, talented, famous, or impressive in any other unimportant and fleeting way. If they don’t know God, they are failed launches who will not succeed at producing nations. They and their seed will disappear.

You can’t be pretty much the same guy at 40 that you were at 15. You can’t live life with a 12-pack of Bud Light under your arm. You can’t have given up your family. You can’t be filled with victimhood fantasies or think every bad thing you do to other people is fine because you imagine you were cheated. You can’t be a crook who never thinks of anyone else. If your whole life is things like beer, adultery, blood sports, corruption, and money, you’re not a patriarch.

Did I want a boy? Seems like every man wants a boy. I was ambivalent at first. I thought girls would be less challenging to raise. Being a man is harder than being a woman. Given my age, I thought raising a boy might be more trouble than I wanted. Then I thought about patriarchy and the significance of male heirs to one’s legacy. I also thought about my family, which has been cursed with psychopathic female eldest children who abused and dominated males. I didn’t want that curse to continue. And I thought having a male eldest child would be good for whoever came later. He could do more for them. In the end, I felt a male child would be more of a blessing.

I delayed the beginning of my family. That’s why it took so long to happen. I was stupid and immature. I conformed to unprofitable hillbilly culture; sorry for using a slur. I also made disgraceful, damned morons my fathers. People like Hunter Thompson and the staff of The National Lampoon. Henry Miller. Fritz Perls. Others I could name. God reached out to me in spite of my punk attitudes, and it took me about 17 years to understand and apply his guidance. I did turn the corner, though. I can say that much for myself. I know people who will never turn.

Now you know the news. I hope I can control myself and avoid putting too much family content on the web. The world doesn’t have to know everything.

Maybe the Grass Really is Greener

Reader Tiomoid of Angle left a comment referring to a Youtube called Nomad Capitalist. The comment says, “Go Where You’re Treated Best.”

That’s really interesting.

I know nothing about the channel. I sort of skimmed the “Videos” page, and it looks like it’s a guy who tells people about countries where they might be better off than where they are. Maybe it’s aimed at Americans.

I’m writing to relax, so I have no plans to do unpleasant research that resembles work.

What I perceive, perhaps incorrectly, to be the thesis of the channel is interesting. Why stay where you’re not wanted? Why stay and be treated the way a lamprey treats a bass?

Today I had a revelation, which I posted here. The brief, generalized version is this: bad people want to stay close to good people, but good people want to get away from bad people.

To understand why this is true, you only have to refer back to the lamprey/bass simile. A bass would be way better off if every lamprey died right now, but lampreys would shrivel and die without fish to eat alive.

This is the kind of interaction Scott Adams had in mind when he made the remarks that changed his life.

He says he’s not a racist. He says he was being “hyperbolic.” I don’t know what’s true. I do know that people with a ghetto mindset are parasites, and the people who support them are hosts. This is also true of spoiled Antifa kids and most Palestinians.

He said people should stay the hell away from blacks. That’s ridiculous, but if he had said we should stay away from racist blacks who prey on everyone else, he would have been correct, and he should have extended the notion to other parasitic groups. For example, no honest person can say it’s smart to live near gypsies.

America the nation is parasitic now. I mean the government and cultural establishment. As policy, it torments, libels, censors, imprisons, beats, and robs people who are its biggest assets, in order to feed vicious common trash who happen to be of voting age. So why not leave?

Is it really that big a deal to be an American citizen? What do you really get?

1. Stability. Well, that is off the table now that civil war is approaching. And having a continuous line of government doesn’t mean individuals have stability. The USSR was around for a long time, and people there lived in terror and never knew when they might be whisked off to camps or places of execution. And lots of countries are stable.

2. Wealth. That sounds fine, but the fact that your country is wealthy doesn’t mean you are, and the fact that it’s poor doesn’t mean you’re poor. You can be wealthy anywhere, and it’s best to be wealthy in a place where half of the population isn’t trying to take what you have, claiming falsely that you stole it. One in six Swiss citizens are millionaires by American standards. That’s not bad. There are several countries where it is easier to get rich than it is in America. And maybe you’re already rich, so all you need is a country that won’t rob you.

3. Quality of life. This is a slippery quantity, because the people whose efforts to define it are generally not conservative, but still, the US is not at the top of most lists. Here’s an important part of quality of life: not having racist, anti-Christian, antisemitic, murderous terrorism-lovers constantly threatening to take what you have and turn you into a voiceless slave.

The weather in most of America is bad for a big part of the year. The food is not very good except for prime beef. The people in most areas are rude. We have a couple of large demographics, plus some small ones, that run around shooting, robbing, and raping everyone else plus each other. This is not paradise.

What if you travel and a foreign country locks you up or otherwise mistreats you? Uncle Sam will save you! No, he won’t. I mean, he might, but don’t count on it. Foreign prisons are full of American citizens. If you’re a famous lesbian who willfully committed a stupid crime with a severe penalty, you might get help, but in the process, a far better person might be left imprisoned in the foreign country for political reasons. Not that this has happened recently.

Is it heresy to criticize our food? No. Go to Europe or the Far East some day and look at the produce. We breed plants that taste bad but generate higher profits. They breed plants that taste fantastic, and often, they also look better than ours.

The produce in Singapore (where there is virtually no farmland) and Hong Kong (also almost no farmland) is magnificent. Wonder why we can’t do that.

Consider the Red Delicious apple. I loved them when I was a kid. Now they’re disgusting. I can’t understand why stores sell them. They bred the flavor out of them and made the texture sort of like a mixture of sand and wet styrofoam. They apparently ship quite well, however.

Our Granny Smith apples are like sour croquet balls. Can’t remember the last time I saw a ripe one. They’re great for constipation.

We have the Second Amendment! True, but then we need it more than many countries. I don’t think the Czechs and South Koreans worry too much about carjackings and home invasions.

One of the videos on Capitalist Nomad’s channel is titled “You Don’t Owe Your Country Anything.” Wow. In America, that’s blasphemy. But is it true? In many cases, yes.

I obey the law. Mostly. I cost the taxpayer virtually nothing. The police don’t come to my house three times a week to make me stop beating the putative mother of some of my illegitimate children. My kids aren’t in “the system” because I abandoned them. I don’t get affirmative action. I paid full tuition when I was in college. I don’t get student loans and then force better people to pay them off. The amount of tax I pay is really extraordinary because of the nature of my business. It’s fair to say I work for the government. When my grandfather died, my country confiscated enough wealth from his heirs, who had done nothing wrong, to make a person rich. When they brought the Selective Service back, I signed up, agreeing to give my life if they ordered me to. I wasn’t called to serve, but I would have. That’s not a small thing to offer.

Help me understand why I would think I owed America anything. I think our military people have done more for me than anyone except my parents and my mother’s parents, but is our military “America”? Most people have never served.

I do a lot for other people through taxes, but people don’t do anything for me unless I pay them. If I pay them, how can anyone say I owe them for what they’ve done for me?

I benefit from the taxes a certain percentage of Americans pay, but they benefit from mine, too. We use the same roads. I would say the rich benefit me more than anyone, because they pay way more than I do. Thank you, billionaires. Someone appreciates you.

Thank you for infrastructure. Thank you for hospitals and universities. Thank you for aircraft carriers. Thank you for all the things disgraceful politicians bought us with your confiscated money. Thank you for all the corporations that provide great stuff. Thank you for taking risks I won’t take and working harder than I want to.

I’m surrounded by people who cheat the rest of us every day as a matter of routine. Welfare scammers run into the tens of millions, at least. I live in a country where people with no conscience use EBT cards to buy liquor and cigarettes while better people buy their own ramen noodles.

There are whole neighborhoods that are nothing but wealth sinks. The government raises their kids. In prisons, it houses a huge fraction of the adult males and quite a lot of the females. It hands out food, medicine, phones, apartments and all sorts of other things. It pays for programs that help almost no one because almost no one wants to be helped.

Some people owe this country. I am not one of them. If I move somewhere else, America will be worse off, I will be better off, and the country I move to will be improved.

I’m assuming I can move to a decent location. That is still possible.

I don’t often hear people saying they don’t owe America anything, but it’s true for many of us.

I can understand immigrants saying it, provided they didn’t come here from places like Luxembourg or Japan.

Funny thing: I don’t even owe God. That sounds bizarre, but it’s true. He paid the debt I owed him. I don’t owe him for anything in the past, but I definitely have a son’s duty to serve him in the future. And I want to serve him. He’s wonderful, and serving him is a joy. Every good thing in my life came from him, and he gave it all in spite of my revolting attitude and slimy deeds.

I don’t claim America owes me, except that it has a duty to do what our stupid, cruel, clumsy government has promised in return for being a good and loyal citizen. I have done a lot for the citizenry, but I was forced to do most of it, and I don’t consider anyone to be indebted to me for it.

Saying I don’t owe America isn’t the same as saying I don’t love America. I do. Or, rather, I love what America was. I love what little vanishing bits of it still are. I can’t love the whole country. No one in his right mind can love Chicago or Newark. It would be like loving kidney stones.

I suppose I’ve written enough. I have unwound. I don’t know whether I have guessed correctly about Capitalist Nomad’s content. Maybe tomorrow I’ll actually watch a video.

Don’t Say “Insured”

Let me play the salesman to any Florida readers who may be trying to get insurance right now.

Buy home insurance without windstorm (hurricane) coverage.

Financial guru Suze Orman has a high-rise oceanfront condo close to Boca, AKA the Jewish Palm Beach (built in response to antisemitic ordinances and deed restrictions), and they tried to nail her for $28,000 per year. She’s a person people look to for responsible advice, and she more or less told her audience to forget home insurance, if only by example. Why?

I spent a month in a high-rise in Boca on the beach. Belonged to a rich Jewish family. They let my mother, my sister, and I shelter there during a crisis. There is zero possibility any windstorm that isn’t the product of a nuclear blast 100 yards away will hurt a building of this type. They are 100% reinforced concrete from top to bottom. Trees can’t fall on them. Their roofs are relatively tiny compared to house roofs, and they are flat and strong. They can’t flood. It’s impossible for flying debris of any size to make it above the third floor, and flying debris is not much of a problem anyway. I went through Andrew, and even at 180 mph, the bulk of the damage was from wind against structures. I was in a house that got over 160, the front was largely unprotected glass, and there were no projectile issues.

What did the insurer want $28,000 for? Theft and fire, I guess. Way too much. They were just looking for a way to make Orman pay for other people’s hurricane claims.

When was the last time a high-rise burned down in Florida? It’s extremely rare. Theft is a problem, but you would have to have a lot of stuff in a little condo to make $28,000 per year make sense. In five years, you would pay $140,000. In 10, $280,000. Come on. If you have Klimts and Picassos, you can insure them independently.

There is no way she could ever have had hurricane damage in that place. I’m surprised she ever chose to insure against it.

A high-rise in Miami Beach collapsed a while back. Should she worry about that? Insurance is not the answer for a building that is about to fall over. The answer is to get out and avoid buying a similar home. Insurance isn’t going to lift 15 floors of collapsed concrete off you. Since the panic that followed the incident, inspectors and county officials have been in high gear, identifying and fixing dubious buildings, so you should be able to avoid properties that have issues.

What I’m getting at is this: she would have gotten nothing at all for her wind insurance premiums, and spending $28,000 to insure for wind, theft, fire and liability is ridiculous when wind is most of the cost.

I think she should have looked for fire and theft insurance. I’ll bet it would have been an acceptable deal.

Here is what Orman said: “I’m not paying $28,000 a year when the insurer will probably contest any claim I get anyway. Luckily, I have the money to self-insure.” That is true for her personalty, but she can’t rebuild a high-rise if it burns. She’ll have to eat a loss that is probably in the area of 3.5 million dollars. If she can insure against that for a few grand, it’s worth it.

If you reject windstorm coverage, suddenly your rates will implode, and insurers that gave you silly pretexts for refusing to insure you will suddenly find that you’re a good prospect.

That’s what is happening to me, anyway.

The last year I had an insurance premium I thought was reasonable, I paid about $3400. The next year (last year) I hit $8000. Too much, but I thought I had no choice. Then they said they would not renew at any cost, supposedly because I was too far from a fire station. That was a lie; it was obviously because of hurricanes.

This year, I sent my agent a request, asking for insurance without wind coverage. He expressed doubt because I was allegedly non-renewed over fire. Then on the same day, he sent me an offer. Get this: $1300.

Dude.

So much for that fire story.

It is possible I may not qualify because they may not consider my neighborhood a proper subdivision, which it, technically, is. But it shows you have to be stupid to get hurricane insurance when you are not in danger of having hurricane damage.

I have other properties that don’t have hurricane coverage because they’re not the kind of properties hurricanes hurt. There has never been a problem. The money I save could pay the mortgage on another property.

I wiped out all the trees that could conceivably land on anything expensive, and now I don’t need hurricane insurance. My roof is not going to come off in the kind of maximum sustained winds this area has suffered since the dawn of history. I made sure this area was flood-proof before I moved here. Worst case: I have to move downed trees and repair some fences. Big deal. Did that already in ’17.

I guess a claim should have been filed for the cost of debris removal. It wasn’t a big deal. Might have netted a grand or two after the deductible, but probably not. I would have had to find people to move the wood, which didn’t seem possible. They would never pay me for moving it myself.

Removing the dangerous trees this year cost me $7500. Very, very cheap. If I am able to get the insurance I was offered, paying the new rate plus $7500, I will save about $6000 in the first two years alone. And having a tree land on your house is terrible, even if you’re insured. You don’t want it. Far, far better to avoid the problem entirely. Insurers will try to cheat you after your loss. They will not be able to replace the irreplaceable. You’ll have to move for a while. Forget that. Cut the trees.

I had to remove the trees anyway. Some were rotten. All were too close. If I had decided to continue to pay for hurricane insurance, I would still have had them removed. I’m going to stay on this personally from now on cutting trees myself before they become problems.

I have a 50-foot oak beside my driveway right now. It’s sick. Bet you I can have it gone in three hours. Just me and the saws and the tractor. It’s easy, as long as nothing breaks down. A tree surgeon won’t touch it for under a thousand. I know.

What if you can’t cut the trees that endanger your house? What if you have a mortgage and have to have insurance. Move to Tennessee, I guess. I don’t know what else you can do, unless you’re so rich you don’t care.

I may have my roof bulked up from below. I have wind straps that are not the very best. Better ones can be installed in existing roofs. But it would take an extremely strong storm to remove my roofs, and we just don’t get those. A tornado would do it, but what are the odds? One in 10,000?

My choice isn’t wind insurance versus no wind insurance. It’s no insurance at all versus insurance that doesn’t cover wind. The choice seems pretty obvious.

When I travel, I want to know there is some chance I will be compensated for whatever people steal. Theft is very unlikely here, but it would cost me a lot. I want to know that if my house burns, I’ll get at least most of a new house. The other stuff is not important. Insurance payments are generally half-assed, inadequate efforts to put Band-Aids on severed limbs. I want a decent Band-Aid at a decent price. I am not stupid enough to think insurance will make me whole.

I admit, sometimes insurance is pretty good. A property of mine was damaged by leakage from an upstairs property. I wanted to have a contractor fix everything at the insurer’s expense. Easy. They wouldn’t have it. When I quibbled, they offered me over $8000 for work I thought might amount to $4000, and I took it. They wanted to settle and get out fast. But they do cheat people whenever they can.

I am no expert, but it seems to me every Floridian who wants homeowner insurance, and who can reduce hurricane damage risks to near zero, should look into getting rid of wind insurance. I’m going to do it if I can work it out.

MORE

I am blogging again in order to avoid heat stroke. I’m yanking the awful hedges the original owner of this house put in by the driveway. Should have done it 7 years ago. My mouth got dry, and in the house I came.

I thought I’d comment on a story about Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s business partner. He is supposedly worth $2.6 billion.

His advice? Never pay for insurance. He says he doesn’t have home insurance because he can write a check and build a new house.

I have mixed feelings about this advice, because he’s wrong. Sometimes insurance is great. Examples:

1. Your house’s value is NOT less that 0.05% of your net worth. This applies to a shocking number of people, Mr. Munger. To many people, losing a house is worse than dropping a pizza. If my current insurance offer goes through, I can get a new house and new stuff for $1300. I may live 30 years, so ignoring inflation for obvious reasons, I might have to come up with $40,000 over that time to pay for a house that would cost way more than that to replace, along with new stuff. I would have to be quite stupid not to take that deal. It would take me lifetimes to pay the insurer the value of what I could lose. If I were worth $2.6 billion, I would still take that deal. Fires do happen.

2. You live in an area where morons like to fall down and sue people. That covers a lot of the US. If you’re worth $2.6 billion, maybe you’re not afraid of a $2 million verdict for a con artist who says he can’t work because he fell in your driveway, but many people are worth considerably less than $2.6 billion and would feel the impact of a $2 million loss more than the loss of a coffee mug.

3. You rent cars when you travel to other states or countries. If you can rent a car for $300 without insurance and $375 with insurance, take the insurance, especially in a foreign country. American insurance generally doesn’t work in other countries. Do you really want a rental agency in some Stan country to put you in jail until you pay for a wrecked 2004 Scion with chicken manure in the glove box? I wrecked a rental car once while traveling. The lady in the other car claimed she had medical issues. I don’t know much about it, because they gave me another car, and when my trip was over, I flew home. I didn’t know she claimed she was injured until months later, and I had zero involvement with the whole business because I paid for insurance.

4. You travel abroad. See above. You can get a huge amount of insurance for a couple of hundred dollars when you go abroad for three weeks. Medical. Evacuation. Liability. How can you turn that down? I must stress that this is another situation in which my advice is intended for people worth substantially less than $2.6 billion. Travel insurance is just too cheap and helpful to pass up, unless you are filthy rich. The potential downside of not being insured is huge.

5. Sometimes a product is so awful, insurance is a smart idea. This used to be true of laptops. Maybe it is now. They broke down all the time. I bought an expensive laptop a long time ago, and I had no problem with the price of insurance. I would never insure something like a washing machine, but some products just can’t be trusted, and sometimes the cost of insurance is unrealistically low.

You may think your homeowner’s insurance covers stuff like this. Okay, sure. Do you know what your deductible is? I had a $2000 problem, and my deductible was $2500. This is why I keep my car deductibles as close to zero as they allow. A low deductible doesn’t jack the premiums up much at all, and it makes claims pleasant.

6. Dealing with a loss is just too much of a pain. What if you’re a contractor, and your ladder or impact driver breaks? Do you want to lose work while you send it to the factory, or do you want to pay 15% extra and have them hand you a new one at the store, no questions asked? Think carefully. This is not supposed to be a tough question.

If the downside is tolerable and the insurance is expensive, don’t pay. If it’s the other way around, pay. That’s what I think.

My dad taught me never to pay to insure anything I could insure myself. Basically good advice, but oversimplified. When Best Buy asks me if I want to pay $50 to insure a $200 item, it offends me, but I pay when the deal is right.

Maybe I’m missing something here. It has been known to happen. I do think extremely rich people should pursue different strategies from the rest of us. If I were Kim Kardashian, and I wrecked a Bentley, I would have a new one brought to my house, have an assistant file a claim, and give it away when it was fixed. If I were the assistant and I wrecked my 3-series BMW, I would probably take a different course.

So This is How Other Americans Live

This year, I am having a very welcome experience. I am sitting through hurricane season with the same degree of worry as a referee in a murderous MMA match. I no longer have skin in the game.

When I moved here, there were oaks all around the house and shop, and some were well over 100 feet high. Most were rotten, because they were trash oaks. Unlike live oaks, which live hundreds of years, trash oaks grow quickly, get eaten by bugs, and fall apart piece by piece. Here, they say they live for 20 years and die for 80.

I had oaks over two feet thick at chest height, held up by cylinders of sound wood with interiors made of something like rotten papier-mache. They were close enough to the buildings to fall on them if they blew over.

People call these oaks “water oaks,” although some are other species and even hybrids. Water oaks generally don’t fall over even if they’re rotten. Instead, they start dropping dead branches from near their tops. Sometimes the branches are a few feet long. Sometimes they’re 20 feet long and weigh a lot.

A typical water oak will self-destruct more or less in place, with the dead material falling close to their bases. But sometimes they just plain fall over. They can also fall just because they’re too tall and the soil here is too weak to hold them up in a blow.

We never, ever get hit by hurricanes here, but we do get hit by winds in the tropical storm range. Former hurricanes pass over us, and hurricanes that are still strong pass by within 100 miles. Tropical storm winds can’t blow a roof off or pick up a tree and throw it. They’re not dangerous to houses unless they can blow heavy stuff onto them, and that, they can do. If they are sufficiently close to tall trees.

Every year as the season started, I watched the NHC maps, wondering if I was going to have to file an insurance claim.

This year it’s very different. I paid a crew a lot of money for a day and a half of work, and now the odds of my buildings being damaged are right up there with the odds of Biden being reelected.

The first month of the season has been a big nothing. When we finally started to see activity, I was excited. Because my house might be crushed? No. Because I thought we would get some rain to fix the yard damage the tree service did. I actually HOPED we would get a tropical storm. That felt weird.

It wasn’t a smart thing to hope for. I can still lose electricity for a few days, and I shouldn’t hope for something that will harm people who are less prepared.

I still have properties in areas where hurricanes hit with full force, but they are not houses. I don’t care what happens. Andrew hit them about as hard as a hurricane can, and they weren’t harmed.

Because winds other than tornado winds (rare) can’t hurt this house, I don’t need wind insurance, and I don’t need flood insurance because before my dad bought this house, I checked the government’s satellite maps. This property can’t flood. There is one area where I can get a little standing water, but it’s maybe a quarter-mile from the house, and we’re talking about a couple of inches of water.

I am now looking for a company that will insure my house for everything except hurricanes. I don’t want to pay for insurance I will never use. Insurers are cutting customers off, citing stupid pretexts like the distance to fire stations. The real reason is fear of paying off storm claims. It seems to me there ought to be someone out there who will want to take my money, knowing they will never have to rebuild my house unless it burns.

They ought to love insuring people in my area because the storm risk is so much lower than it is in coastal areas. I’m not sure they know what they’re doing. Maybe the problem is that so many people in areas that don’t get really strong winds let trees grow close to their homes.

I’m turning into what most Americans already are: a person who isn’t interested in hurricane news. It feels great. I pray when I read about any disaster, impending or otherwise, but from now on, I won’t feel I have a personal stake in any of it.

Mower Buyer Battles Iron Dome of Incompetence and Lies

Buying used stuff online seems to be getting harder now that Facebook has taken over.

I don’t have a Facebook account, so I don’t have Facebook Marketplace. If I signed up today, it would probably be 6 months before they would let me use Marketplace. They don’t accept new users, and you have to have “friends,” i.e. strangers you have no interest in knowing yet who read about your life every day. To look at items, I have to use my wife’s account, which she needs to delete for her own good.

Maybe I shouldn’t complain about the strangers, given that I blog, but here, no one is collecting my data, and I don’t have to worry about college and being looked up by old acquaintances I’m hoping I never hear from again.

Craigslist is drying up, and Facebook won’t let you play unless you join the slimy collective.

My mower saga started with a rude lady who treated me like a terrorist. Then I messaged another seller, and she didn’t even answer. She just changed her listing so it said the mower was sold. I reported her for not responding. You can do that.

I found a mower with 22 hours, listed under what looked like an individual’s account. In reality, the listing came from Crystal Tractor, one of the only two big Kubota networks here. They have a store in Deland, and that’s where the mower was, supposedly, at one time.

I messaged the account holder, and he said he would check on the mower. That was days ago. I messaged him again yesterday. No answer.

I Googled to find out who really advertised the mower. It wasn’t hard, because the ad photos and video matched photos from Crystal Tractor’s website.

Today I called Crystal Tractor, and they said the mower had sold long ago. They didn’t offer me anything else. Small wonder, because their online used inventory is pathetic.

I reported the guy who advertised the mower falsely and did not respond.

Why is Crystal Tractor advertising under individual accounts?

I think I understand why my local dealer has a whole herd of unsold mowers. It looks like Kubota doesn’t require franchisees to maintain basic competence or ethics.

I went to Ocala’s inaptly-named Florida Coast Equipment, and the nice lady I dealt with had no idea what she was doing. Didn’t know how the products worked. Didn’t seem to know Kubota made garden tractors. Didn’t know what mower buyers need. Didn’t offer to scan the chain’s inventory to see if they had anything I might want. It was like they had just hired her away from Olive Garden. How do they sell anything?

To sell people expensive machinery, you have to know your products. People don’t want to hand over 5 or 6 figures without some reason to believe they’re getting what they need and paying a fair price. You have to make them comfortable. The guy who showed me Scag mowers knew everything about them, and he clearly knew what mowing was like. If I decided to buy a mower from him tomorrow, I wouldn’t have to ask him a thing.

I’m so frustrated, I have considered the unthinkable: buying a John Deere.

I dislike the John Deere company because they treat customers so badly. Other companies make products that are just as good or better. Nearly all small tractors, for example, are of equal quality, regardless of what people with green hats and face tattoos tell you. But John Deere, like BMW, promotes a perception of nonexistent exceptionalism. As though they’re doing you a favor by selling you something exclusive and exciting, which is not an accurate description of their run-of-the-mill products.

John Deere charges way too much for parts. They fight people who want to repair machines they paid for. On the other hand, they do make good zero-turns, and if I had one, I could probably do all the repairs myself and never see the inside of a dealership.

I could paint it orange.

I like Kubotas for their quality and the easy availability of parts, but I also like a feature their zero-turns have. The decks lift up without floor jacks. Kubota builds jacks into the decks of some models. I don’t want to buy a mower without this feature if I can avoid it, because blades have to be removed and replaced once in a while.

My Bronze Age Deere tractor is repaired, maybe. I started it up, and it did not leak. I’m going to see if I can cut my waist-high grass, and I’ll keep looking for something better.

What if it keeps running? Should I forget about a new mower? I don’t think so. I don’t trust my mower, and thanks to leftists and their demented king, product prices keep skyrocketing. I think I already lost about $3,000 by not buying a couple of years back.

I really don’t like the idea of spending money on a gas zero-turn when a used diesel what will outlast it can be had for less money.

I have learned what a good used diesel should cost. With a few hundred hours, no more than $10,500. A mower with very low hours…maybe $12,000. In terms of what you get, there isn’t a big difference between new and 500 hours.

Hope the old mower will get me through a few more months. It will probably take me that long to find a replacement.

A Bargain that Robs You of Peace is too Expensive

I’m learning more about buying and selling online.

I was interested in a used mower. I contacted the person who claimed to own it. She was really rude and gave me problems over things like photographing her ID. She wouldn’t give me useful answers to questions. She did not make a normal effort to make things work, as you or I would. There was no way to work with her, so I cut her loose. I couldn’t figure out what was happening. I wondered if she was a criminal or maybe a drunk.

I discussed this with some people online, and most thought she sounded like a scammer, but some thought I was the problem. They thought it was crazy to ask someone for an ID, and one even said I looked like a scammer because I had no trailer and would have to send a truck.

These people have no common sense. They’re like people who have successfully gone through dozens of sex partners without catching a disease or getting pregnant. They recommend stupid practices because they haven’t been burned yet.

If you get on a motorcycle without a helmet right now and weave through traffic at 150 miles per hour, the odds you will be fine are over 99%, assuming you know how to ride. If you do this and come out okay, should you then tell people what you did was smart? Should you come down on people who won’t do it? If so, you’re the reason doctors call motorcycles “donorcycles.” You are not smart.

We are always surrounded by people who seem fine even though they do stupid things. People who have nice homes, cars, phones, and toys and owe hundreds of thousands or millions to credit card companies and banks. People who have had hundreds of sex partners. People who bought British cars. You have to see through the surface when you make decisions.

You don’t know who has herpes, HPV, or HIV. You don’t know whose car is leased. You don’t know who is going to end up paying $20,000 for an $8,000 couch because of interest.

I’m talking about a principle Christians should understand. We are surrounded by people who ignore God’s warnings, and most of them don’t spontaneously combust or get sucked into the bowels of the earth as soon as they sin. They seem fine a lot of the time. Many never seem to face consequences. It’s an illusion. A trap. God is not mocked, and mercy isn’t approval.

Beyonce Knowles, who promotes slutty behavior, seems fine. Taylor Swift, who promotes perversion, seems fine. Sean Combs, a proud criminal, seemed fine until recently. Kanye West, who says he is “the god of me,” appears to be in good health, and he’s still rich. Elon Musk keeps a demonic charm on his nightstand, and he’s doing well. Their current status doesn’t mean they’re not in trouble or that they’re in any position to serve as role models.

I can tell you some things I have decided. These things apply to substantial purchases, not little things like lamps and drills.

1. Always insist on an ID from a seller unless there are circumstances proving he is legitimate.

2. Never, ever do business in cash.

3. Always try to meet at a police station the first time around.

4. Accept the fact that you may have to let someone see where you live and enter the driveway. You can’t hide in a hole if you want to sell things. If you’re dealing with something large, accept the fact that someone will probably have to know someone else’s address and enter their property. That being said, don’t let anyone in your house if you can avoid it. It’s usually not necessary to let them inside. Keep your garage door closed. Don’t show them your tools or anything else they don’t need to see. You should probably avoid going into other people’s houses.

5. Be aware that if you receive stolen merchandise, you may be charged with a felony, not a misdemeanor, even if you didn’t know the merchandise was stolen. You need a signed bill of sale stating that the seller owns the property outright. You can be convicted because you didn’t do your due diligence, and a bill of sale with an affirmation of ownership will be something the court looks for. Put any guarantees or conditions on the bill of sale. Every party has to have a copy.

6. Never deal with snotty people unnecessarily, online or elsewhere. It makes you a man-pleasing self-sellout with no self-respect, and nasty people often cause problems later. They rob you of peace, and peace is not a luxury. It’s a basic need.

7. If you buy something big, and you have to send for it, give the seller a $100 deposit to hold it, good for a specified period, after which it becomes his. On the bill of sale, specify that the deposit will be refunded in full if the item disappears, regardless of how it happens. Pay in full when the item goes on the truck.

People with no common sense told me I looked like an identity thief because I wanted to see an ID. That’s just plain dumb. If I pay you 4 or more figures for something, I am eventually going to know who you are, and I will be able to find out where you live in a couple of minutes. This is the Internet age. You might as well show your ID when you meet to make the exchange, because you’re not sharing information the other person won’t eventually have, and criminals hide their identities.

You can’t sell someone a table saw or tractor anonymously. Life doesn’t work like that. They’ll see your face. Your car. Your license tag.

As for cash, look at it from a criminal’s point of view. A person is going to a known location, or departing from a known location, at a known time, with over 4 figures in cash. Let’s get rid of the police station argument right away. Who looks after you on the way to and from the station? Who looks after you when you leave the bank? A criminal who may be totally uninvolved with the purchase may force you off the road and take your money. It happens every single day. Google it.

Who will keep thieves out while you’re keeping the money in your house, waiting to deposit it?

I don’t care if you exchange the money in a bank lobby or in the White House with the Secret Service watching. Sooner or later, you will be on your own.

Even if you’re sure you won’t be robbed, don’t take cash. Counterfeit isn’t something that only exists in movies. It’s all around us. Remember George Floyd? Counterfeiters make phony bills in many denominations. Do you want to trust yourself to examine dozens of bills? You’d have to be an idiot.

That means I was an idiot, because I did it twice.

No cash. Period. There are cashier’s checks. There is Zelle. There are wires. There are credit cards. You want a data trail.

As for meeting at a police station the first time around, it will give you a chance to check each other out, exchange ID’s, and, if things are going well, exchange the item for the money electronically. You should to it if you can. But it won’t protect you from cash thieves.

If you can’t stand the idea of someone else knowing where you live or parking in your precious, secret driveway no one could ever, ever find unless you told them where it was, the burden of moving the goods somewhere else is on you, so work something out. But they will still be able to find out where you live if they want.

If you want guidance about dealing with sellers, look no further than Florida’s Pawnbroking Act. A pawnbroker has to copy a seller’s ID and make him affirm that they own whatever it is he’s selling. You should do no less.

In Florida, a pawnbroker who receives stolen merchandise and an ordinary citizen face different penalties. The penalty for you–felony prosecution–is worse. It’s not worth it just to get a good deal on a guitar. You should know the law where you live.

What if you can’t prove the seller owned what you bought? Does that sound unlikely? Women who have had breakups or divorces sell marital property every day. People who owe money on things sell them. People who are in bankruptcy sell things. Addicts sell things that belong to their relatives. Whether the thing you bought is stolen or just obtained improperly in a way that is less incriminating, you can lose it.

As for new rule 7, what do you think a seller will do if you give him $5,000 for a trailer, and when you or your agent arrives to pick it up, it’s gone? Would you expect him to give you your money? He’ll say you assumed the risk. Meanwhile, your trailer is sitting behind his brother’s house.

No delivery, no money.

People who won’t do business responsibly will make you suffer if you deal with enough of them.

This is where I am now. If anyone has corrections or additions, please put them in the comments.

More Proof Will Rogers was a Liar

I got my John Deere mower working, so I SHOULD be able to keep the lawn down until I get something better.

The repair was surprisingly easy compared to other problems this tractor has given me. I would say this should be a 45-minute repair for a professional who has done it before. I took maybe two hours. Couldn’t find my smallest inch-pound torque wrench, so that slowed me down.

In the meantime, I have experienced a big disappointment. A lady who is advertising a Kubota diesel for a very nice price appears to be a no-go. I can pay for the mower up front, right now, but she is just too weird to deal with.

When I asked if she still had the mower, she replied, “Yes,” without punctuation. No new details. No greeting.

I asked if she was okay with electronic transfers and said I couldn’t show up at a stranger’s house with cash. Check this out:

“I would never bring a stranger to my house. [My own neighborhood, misspelled] isn’t far from here”

What? What does that mean? Do you take electronic transfers or not? Why are you telling me you’re not far away? Are you planning to deliver?

I sent another message saying I would draw up a bill of sale, and I said I would need her ID. I said I would produce mine. So she would know I wasn’t a scammer, I provided evidence I was a lawyer. I also said I would need her to hold the mower until I sent a truck for it.

Here is what she said:

Great! I have no problem providing ID or signing a bill of sale. Please make sure it says the sale is “as-is.” I can take Zelle, a cashier’s check, or whatever works. We have a trailer, so we can do the sale at the police station, and we’ll drop it off at your place. Let me know if you what day is good for you.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Of course that’s not what she said. That’s what about 95% of the people in this area would have said. They’re really nice. Here is what she actually said:

You sound like a lot of work. You either pay [price] on Zelle or cash when I meet you somewhere or no deal. It’s that easy

Man, I really want that mower now. She’s a dream seller. I just know I can trust her.

It’s too bad, because the price was good.

All kinds of guesses are rolling around in my head.

Guess #1: this person is an alcoholic who is too drunk to respond coherently and too filled with bitterness and self-pity to be polite. She rolls over in bed occasionally and fires off a rude, terse response before passing out again.

Seems like self-pitying bitterness is a big thing among drunks.

Guess #2: this person is a couple of guys from Nigeria, and they want to kill me and take my money when I show up at the location of their choice.

Guess #3: her ex-husband bought the mower, and it’s obvious why he is gone. This is what his life was like every day. She says she is selling it because she moved to a smaller property, so that would be consistent with a divorce.

Guess #4: the person who owns the mower is on vacation, and her Facebook account is being used by a person who lives in her house. Maybe a junkie daughter who wants to sell it for drugs.

You can’t buy an expensive mower without the seller’s ID and a bill of sale guaranteeing the seller owns the item free and clear. You would have to be stupid. You could find yourself happily cutting your grass when a couple of big guys, at least one of whom is sleeping with the lady who sold you the mower, jump your fence and threaten to beat you up for stealing it.

I could save several thousand dollars by buying this mower, if it exists, but a long time ago, I decided not to let any more abusive people into my life. I’m not going to grovel before a person who seems like a nutcase in order to save money I don’t need. This is one of the greatest perks of not being poor.

I got a final message. She says I don’t need an ID. I assume she means her ID. Yeah, I do need it. This brings me back to guesses 2 and 4.

Her account doesn’t have any posts since 2022.

Said I had decided to buy something else. Meaning some as-yet-unidentified mower that does not involve this lady.

It’s so rare to encounter a jerk here. It’s like spotting a bird you thought was extinct.

I feel better already. It’s like this lady took me back to Miami for part of a day. It’s like my sister broke in my house and had to be removed by the police.

The account shows a lady who competed in an obscure beauty pageant. Maybe it’s just me, but I think that world is flypaper for people with narcissistic and borderline personality disorders. If you’re fortyish, which means you have no chance of winning a serious pageant, and you have to be Mrs. Acme Fertilizer Queen 2020 for Northern Idaho, and tell the world, in order to smother your self-hating inner voices, something is very wrong. You probably competed against 5 other people, none of whom is a day at the beach, or they wouldn’t have been there.

An obscure beauty pageant is a big nothing to everyone except the contestants and the people who make money from it. The whole point of a beauty pageant is to choose someone who competed against the cream, not the sour milk. Anyone who is quality will shoot for Miss America. Or would have, before they let misfits and tormented, sick men compete.

Miss America is the only real American pageant that ever existed. The rest are like Festivus, the holiday “for the rest of us.”

It’s nice to be old and know how to spot trouble. There are so many people I should have avoided when I was young. I wish I could go back, get between them and my young self, and deploy bear spray.

My Continuing Search for a Solution to a Problem God Already Solved

The mower saga drags on.

My old John Deere 430 tractor/mower is an end-of-life product, and it breaks down over and over. I need to put an end to my mowing problems.

I am torn because I love resisting impulsive purchases. I was a real spendthrift when I was a child, and I can’t help thinking of myself as one now. I like the idea of fixing things over and over and beating the repair-phobic system. It makes me feel righteous. On the other hand, I want to have faith in God’s provision. I don’t want to be cheap when I have more than enough money to spend fairly liberally.

I definitely want to give, because God has made it obvious that prosperity is connected to the generosity we show other human beings. By using the term “human beings,” I exclude greedy preachers. I think they’re another species.

Things that are rolling around in my head:

1. I can fix the JD forever if I want. I’m a machinist, so even though JD has discontinued some essential parts, I could make them when I need them. There is a guy who built his own 1935 Bugatti Aerolithe automobile from scratch. Fixing the JD repeatedly would cost very little.

2. Fixing the JD repeatedly would be a lot of hard work, and it would still mow slower than a new zero-turn mower and be a pain to maintain.

3. God does not want us to work hard. I don’t care what other Christians say. Hard work is very clearly a curse. When you have to work too hard, it means something is wrong with your walk with God. If you don’t think hard work is a curse, you should really read the Bible some day. God literally says it’s a curse. It was part of the first curse he pronounced on man.

I say “man” in order to stand up to the pronoun nuts. I will never say “humankind” except derisively.

4. If God gives you abundance, and you refuse to use it, why should he continue to send it? I can buy the nicest diesel mower on Earth without affecting our lifestyle. I don’t think I should, because it would be excessive, and it would not fit through our gates. But I could. It would be like buying a modest new car, and I can certainly afford that. The other day I was tormenting myself with mower thoughts, and I realized God had already solved the problem. I was just prolonging things by overanalyzing it, as though it really mattered whether I bought new or fixed old.

5. Ostentation is a sin. I never thought it was good, but recently God showed me it’s actually a sin. This is bad news for women, because their main goal when they get dressed is to show off clothes, shoes, and jewels in order to put other women in their places. Men are not quite as bad about ostentation. Anyway, I shouldn’t spend twice as much on a mower as I should, if people who come here will be bummed out about their own mowers if they see it.

Trying to impress people with a mower would be somewhat pathetic.

6. I don’t care too much about “waste.” I don’t think God cares. What we call waste is built into the nature of the physical universe. It’s written in the laws of thermodynamics. Unavoidable. God built it into our bodies. A man produces about 300,000,000 sperm cells every day, for example. I wonder who counted them. Even Elon Musk doesn’t have 300,000,000 kids. If an oak tree produces a hundred million acorns over its life, in all likelihood, none of them will become trees. The disciples caught a huge number of valuable fish when Yeshua showed them where to cast their nets, and then they walked off and left them to rot. God approved. Fish that could have fed the poor.

God approved when a grateful woman put maybe $30,000 worth of perfume on his feet. Judas the thief, on the other hand, practically had kittens.

God loves human beings, but he keeps creating people he knows will go to hell. Most people go to hell. It seems clear he considers it worth it in order to produce a smaller number of children he can enjoy forever.

I think destroying things for no reason is bad, and the word supports that, but I don’t think God is concerned about me throwing out uneaten food or mistakenly buying more mower than I need.

Worrying too much about economy can cause you to waste something really important and irreplaceable: your time.

7. If God doesn’t want me to work hard, why shouldn’t I hire someone to mow? That’s a good question I ask myself. I could do it, but I would feel helpless, which is something I buy tools in order to avoid. Also, it seems better to spend on something you can touch and maybe sell later than on someone else’s labor. When you pay a worker, the money goes away forever. All of it.

8. I think I blew it by not buying a new mower several years ago. Prices have gone up by thousands of dollars, for the same equipment. It’s natural to think delaying a purchase will save you money, but there are $19,000 mowers out there that seemed expensive to me when they were selling for $15,000. If I had bought one, I could have been enjoying it since maybe 2019. Do I want to have to say the same thing to myself when mowers go up another 30 or so percent?

9. I want to avoid buying too little machine, but what if I’m overcompensating because I’m not familiar with zero-turn lineups? What if I spend x and then find out 0.5x would have worked out just as well?

Sooner or later, I’ll have to reconcile all these things.

I thought I should go ahead and get a gas mower. I hate gas equipment, because it’s just plain inferior, and I have this stubborn notion that used gas engines are much less trustworthy. That’s probably true. Diesels are built for professionals, so they are built to run longer without problems. My Kubota tractor has 1,200 hours on it, and it shouldn’t need much of anything until 4,000. A low-end gas mower may start pooping out at 500, and a good one is doing well if it doesn’t need serious repairs before 1500.

I thought I should get a gas mower anyway, because they cost WAY less, and I’ll probably be all done with mowing, forever, before 1500 hours. But I hate gas. I hate it. Less torque. An ignition system full of parts that can go sour. Problems with leftist corn fuel.

A used diesel is probably better than a new gas mower, and they can be had for less. A good zero-turn can last 6,000 hours, apart from the engine, so as far as the body is concerned, it doesn’t matter much whether you buy new or used. If you buy a used diesel with several hundred hours, you still have a body which will last 20 years, and your engine is likely to last just as long in residential use, whereas a gas engine may have to be replaced, to the tune of maybe $3,500.

I was afraid of buying a used diesel because the JD was a used diesel when I got it, and it has been a spoiled, useless, sickly princess. But it was 27 years old when I got it, and in my opinion, the design was unusually stupid. JD made it hard to maintain and work on. Zero-turns are very simple, and in recent years, at least, they have been designed to be easy to deal with.

The JD has two PTO’s and front and rear hydraulics. You don’t need that junk to build a mower. The JD’s extra parts are jammed into the frame like JD was being charged by the cubic inch. A mower has more room for everything.

I’ll just reveal a figure. I looked at a $12,500 gas mower. That may not seem expensive to you, but it’s hard for me to believe a figure that high is possible. I can get a Kubota diesel with under 600 hours for a lot less. That’s a mower that runs $19,000 new. The gas mower would probably give me 1,500 more hours without real trouble. The Kubota would probably give me maybe 3,500, and then I could sell it and get more back than a gas mower with a dying engine would bring. I can save a lot by tempering my justified fear of used machinery with reason.

The local Kubota dealer is not great for repairs, but they do get the work done, and I probably would not need any work for 10 years.

I found a Kubota near me for a very good price, but the deck is 72″ wide. I wanted a 60″ deck like the one I have. I have to go out in the yard with a tape measure.

I have to have some blades spinning this week. That much is certain.

You Only Pay for Concrete Once

I got off my behind and looked at mowers today.

My prehistoric John Deere 430 diesel garden tractor is about as reliable as MSNBC. John Deere itself has moved the 430 to end-of-life status. They haven’t announced it, but when you stop selling hydraulic cylinders for a tractor you designed to have cylinders that can’t be rebuilt, the truth is obvious. They are still selling other parts, perhaps to get rid of existing inventory or because they also fit models that are not quite at the edge of the abyss.

I ordered parts to fix the mower’s suddenly-leaking injector pump, but I think I’ll still get a new machine. I can’t keep spending months at a time with no mower and tall grass and weeds.

Somewhat remarkably, I learned that one of my concerns with the mower is, perhaps, not all that valid. I was upset because I had to remove the deck to change the blades. It’s a dangerous job for one person, and I hate it. Well, today someone pointed out that I could jack the front of the mower up and remove the blade screws from underneath.

This seems really obvious, so I’m not sure why I never tried it. I must have considered it. Maybe I had concerns about being killed by a 1500-pound riding mower slipping off jackstands in a driveway. I don’t mind dying a Southerner’s death, but that’s just too stereotypical. It’s like being in a NASCAR infield and getting hit by a flying tire.

Also, you have to get the deck maybe a foot off the ground in order to get an impact driver on the screws, and you have to find a way to hold the blades on while starting the screws with your fingers.

It doesn’t sound great. It’s not necessarily intolerable, either.

If I get a new zero-turn, I will still have to lift the mower’s front end, but the screws go in from the top, so I can knock the nuts loose and probably drop the blades even before I lift. I will need to lift it to put the blades back on, but the process will be way easier, because instead of trying to insert long screws into spindles, I’ll be putting little nuts on screws.

“Little” being a relative term.

I should only have to lift a zero-turn a couple of inches.

A while back, I made the perhaps self-indulgent purchase of a commercial-grade chainsaw, and the main reason I chose the one I did was that the dealer was more competent than his competition. Seems like the same thing is happening now.

What I have gathered from other people, and which may be completely wrong, is that the two best brands of commercial zero-turns are Kubota and Scag. I am familiar with the local Kubota and Scag dealers. I have dealt with them before.

My tractor had a problem, and I took it to the Kubota people. They are very, very nice, very, very helpful people. I’ll say that up front. They agreed to fix a problem I caused, bending the rules somewhat in order to save me a lot of money. On the other hand, they were very slow. They said I could expect the tractor in a certain amount of time, and they were way off. And they could have done it faster. It wasn’t a tough job.

They also turned it over to me with a lot of rocks and wet sand in it, and it had some bad scratches I had never seen before. They charged me hundreds more than they quoted, and they charged me extra for “shop supplies.”

To me, “shop supplies” charges are like the tipping option at a burger joint. If you want more money, just put it on the menu. Don’t wait till I order, let me relax, and then try, with no hope of success, to shame me by spinning the tablet around while you watch me choose an option. If anyone is going to be shamed, it will be you.

If you want $1500 for your work, don’t tell me $1300 and then put $200 on the bill for shop rags and WD40. It’s shady, and it makes me want to go somewhere else next time. American mechanics have a very, very old tradition of not charging extra for little things which should be part of their cost of doing business. Imagine if I were practicing law, and I charged clients to sit in my chairs. What if I charged them for coffee?

I never charged anyone for things like paper, pens, copies, stamps, or envelopes. I never charged anyone for driving time or gas. When my dad traveled for work, he got reimbursed for some travel expenses, including food, but he ate gas station bills.

The Kubota place is more or less okay, and now that I know how they operate, there will be no more surprises if I go there again, because I will have them tell me about everything they could possibly charge for. As a potential mower buyer, I am still concerned about how long they take.

The other place fixed my chainsaw. It was a small job which literally took them 20 minutes or less, unless they started learning to fix saws the same morning. They took 4 weeks to get the saw to me. They also sharpened the chain, which I asked them not to do, making it unsuitable for manual sharpening. I bought a new chain.

This means the other place is also sort of okay, but it’s somewhat more okay than the Kubota place. They delayed me, but not as badly, and the things they did wrong were not as important. And they charged me what I expected, as I recall.

My understanding is that professionals get the fastest service because they need their tools to make money. That’s great, but homeowners who can’t get their tools also lose money, and their yards and farms fall apart. You can’t let a tree fall on someone’s house or car just because he’s not a professional tree surgeon. I routinely do thousand-dollar jobs with my own stuff. What if I had to pay crews whose tools were turned around faster so they could use them?

I went to the Scag place and checked out a Tiger Cat II mower. Most of their mowers were indoors, but the Tiger Cat was in a nearby building, in the heat. They moved it to the shade outside the showroom so I could see it. It looked pretty good. It seemed to me the company had worked very hard to add thoughtful touches. They tried to make it easy to operate, maintain, and repair. It seemed very sturdy. It had a Briggs & Stratton Vanguard engine, and they are highly regarded. The guy who showed me Scag mowers knew everything about them. They quoted me a firm price which was significantly lower than prices I had seen on the web.

I went to the Kubota dealer. I had to look at their mowers in the burning sun. The lady who helped me spoke what I would call B-in-ESOL English. She was fairly fluent, but not completely. She was very nice, but she didn’t seem to have any idea what I needed or what it was like to run the machines. She tried to show me a 25-horse diesel tractor, for mowing my lawn.

They didn’t have the diesel garden tractor that interested me. She showed me pictures in a catalog and on a website. She had to ask the guys who worked there how it worked.

She showed me a Z781 mower. Very nice. Comparable to the Scag. She did not show me all the thoughtful features. I don’t think she knew what they were. She didn’t know anything about the Kawasaki engine.

The dealership sells big machines. Hundred-horsepower tractors. Real excavators unsuitable for trailering behind little pickups. Could it be that she didn’t know what she was doing because I was looking for a small machine? I don’t think so. If you can understand an excavator, you can understand a zero-turn mower and a garden tractor. A lot of the vocabulary is the same. She spoke like a salesman’s wife, not a salesman.

She wrote me up a quote for the zero-turn and said she would email me a quote for the small garden tractor. I left the dealership feeling very unfamiliar with both products.

I had to go home and Google, which is what she was supposed to help me avoid. I’ve been Googling for days. I was ready for a different experience.

When she quoted me for the zero-turn, she added a $1200 warranty extension without asking me if I wanted it. So how much of that goes to her? Maybe $400? Salesmen should not be so obvious.

It makes me wonder if the “shop supplies” thing was an honest mistake.

She never sent me the tractor quote.

I wonder if they deal with a lot of rich idiots. Travolta lives here. Maybe he goes in once in a while and buys a $300,000 excavator without looking at the invoice. There are wealthy people here who pretend to be horse farmers, and they buy Kubotas.

I don’t think I looked rich. I haven’t worn an expensive watch or any watch in maybe 25 years. I never wear jewelry of any kind because it’s dangerous and effeminate. I wear Carhartt pants, hiking shoes, and a T-shirt everywhere I go. I showed up in my old Ford.

I went home and researched more. I figured out that the Kubota was about $1000 more expensive than the Scag, oranges-to-oranges. The Scag has a better motor. The Kubota has a better warranty. Kubota is an old, solid company. Scag is newer but doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

So that’s it. I’m buying a Scag or not buying anything. There is no point in fooling with the Kubota people, because I have to have a dealer who knows what he’s doing and provides information instead of just charging a markup for delivering a machine. A dealer that doesn’t tell you anything is a lot like a vending machine. You pick your product as well as you can, put your money in, and walk away hoping for the best. I might as well buy a mower from Amazon.

If the mowers sold for the same price, or the Kubota were $500 lower, I would still go for the Scag. I’m afraid to buy from people who don’t seem to know their jobs.

I would like to see both businesses do well. It is frustrating to watch people crash and burn unnecessarily when you want to work with them. The Kubota people could do so much better. I’m sure they could sell a lot more machinery.

I wonder if the machines on the lot are paid for.

I love the name of the mower. “Tiger Cat II.” If I ever start a toilet company, I’m going to name our flagship bowl the Tiger Cat II. It sounds so dramatic. TIGER CAT II! LET YOUR INNER BEAST OUT!

It’s a lawnmower. Come on.

It even has tiger stripes on it.

I guess it can’t hurt to make a menial job seem like an adventure. It probably helps.

I can still pave the yard and paint it Hialeah Pink. That option is still on the table.

Deliver me from John Deere

I am relaxing in a recliner today, and not by choice. TMI warning for those not interested in the medical issues of strangers. I had a hideous skin thing dug out of my back earlier today, so I am not allowed to bend over or do anything strenuous because of the stitches. I guess I won’t describe the skin thing, but I will say it was not cancer. And if you ever have the same problem and your skin thing opens up, afterward, you may never again be able to eat or be in the same room with Gruyere cheese.

I didn’t get a skin thing because I’m filthy. I scrub my back with soap every day.

As a Floridian, I am not very scared of skin cancer. People up north think it’s real cancer, but except for melanoma and maybe whatever it was that got Jimmy Buffett, it’s not. The vast majority of skin cancers are squamous and basal cell, and unless you let them go practically forever, they amount to nothing. You can actually cure little ones yourself with a can of computer keyboard spray. Freeze them, and they die and peel off.

If you get squamous and basal cell and you let it go until it burrows into your body, well, then you have real cancer.

Dave Portnoy is running around calling himself a cancer survivor because he had a superficial lesion cut out of his neck. Not impressed. That’s like saying you survived the Las Vegas massacre when you were blocks away at a crap table. He announced his survivor status in a pretty lighthearted way, so he is clearly no more impressed with his lesion than I am.

I’ve frozen quite a few things off in my bathroom. For all I know, I’m a cancer survivor.

I am not allowed to do anything, so suddenly I want to do all the things I’ve put off. I want to install a new pool filter. I want to burn a few tons of yard waste. No can do. I’ll be allowed to start doing things three days from now, but then I won’t want to do them.

I want to go look at a new lawnmower. I am considering dropping what I think is an enormous sum on a commercial zero-turn, because my geriatric John Deere tractor is ready for assisted living. I’ve already written about it.

I keep turning it around in my head. Do I want the mower because I’m a covetous, pampered spendthrift who hates working on machines he should be grateful to have, which is a proposition that could be defended with a colorable argument, or is it because it is legitimately stupid and cheap to keep relying on a machine that makes me miserable?

I could get a new but not-too-expensive machine, but their engines last a third as long, and they are not as sturdy as the better models. They’re only less expensive if you die before they wear out. If they die first, they’re actually more expensive than better machines.

Having no 3D flesh and blood people to teach me anything, I have joined a lot of forums in order to learn things. Recently, I’ve been engaging on a forum related to outdoor work. People were taking about heat stroke and safety, and I offered my always-coveted and respected two cents’ worth, which I will paraphrase here, because I’m sure you want to read it.

When I’m working outside, and I start to feel like the heat is getting to me, I put my tools indoors, go inside, take a shower, and hit the recliner. If the yard is full of tree branches, I don’t care. I don’t have an HOA. I answer only to God and Ron DeSantis.

I also try not to lift anything heavy. Sometimes I’m too immature to follow my own advice, but I do try to find help or use machinery to pick up things I could pick up if I exerted myself. When it comes to trees, I cut branches and logs up to make them lighter. I never carry brush or limbs more than maybe 25 feet. I move the tractor or cart to the mess.

Young men always want to impress other people with their strength, which is usually nothing impressive and not something other people care about. I have lifted things in order to impress people, and I’m sure I failed. When I got older, I got somewhat less stupid, so I developed my current policy.

The amazing thing is that when you look out for your body, other men make fun of you.

My sister dated a deaf bodybuilder much younger than herself. One day, they were present when I needed to move a boat propeller which weighed maybe 75 pounds. I had moved it many times before, but I was getting wiser, so I suggested dividing the load between myself and my sister’s escort. He sort of smirked and picked it up by himself. Like I was some sort of disgrace even to men unlike himself who were not products of illegal drugs combined with suboptimal priorities.

I didn’t care. God bless him. I didn’t have to exert myself, and I didn’t risk injury. He thought he was putting me in my place by doing my work for me, and of course, while I didn’t think much of his attitude, I was very happy to stand by and do nothing.

I used to be an armorbearer at Miami’s corrupt Trinity Church up on 2nd Avenue. One day, we had to come in for some pretty amateurish “training.” As one of our tasks, we were supposed to pick up another armorbearer and carry him across the stage, running.

I flat-out refused. My knees were good, but not perfect. I didn’t see any reason to risk screwing them up. I didn’t care about the inappropriate, manipulative, and mindless appeals to teamwork, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. I hate manipulation more than, probably, anyone else on Earth. I don’t even like being manipulated to do things I already want to do.

If you paralyze yourself at Trinity Church, jumping in front of a bullet for Pastor Rich Wilkerson, all you will get from the church is a warm thank-you followed by stonewalling from its attorneys. They weren’t going to pay for knee surgery or back surgery, which often doesn’t work anyway.

My best friend at the church had a back problem that day. He was not supposed to lift things. I told him this in front of the other guys: “These guys won’t be around to help you if you hurt yourself.” That was a major no-no, but I said it anyway. He had kids to support, and he had to be able to move and carry things.

They kept hooting at him to do the exercise, so he picked a guy up and ran. Thanks to God alone, he was okay, but I thought he was nuts, and he probably agrees today.

You can do things faster and sometimes better and easier if you forget about safety. No doubt about it. I don’t care. You only get one body, and once you have a permanent disability, you won’t get relief until you die.

I’m writing about safety because I’m thinking about my mower. The deck under the mower weighs around 340 pounds, and it’s very difficult to remove and replace. You have to remove it in order to sharpen the blades, which should be done at least once a year. You also have to remove it to change the oil, although it is possible to suck oil out with a pump if you’re satisfied with an imperfect job, and you can install a long tube that moves the oil plug out from above the deck.

I have removed the deck several times, and I have lifted it up onto its side and removed and replaced the blades. If I keep the mower, I’ll have to keep doing this until one of us is too far gone.

This is a real problem, and the older I get, the scarier the possible consequences are. A back injury from lifting can put you on a walker and leave you peeing in a bag for the rest of your life. Or you can have both types of incontinence and end up wearing diapers.

Remember the Butterbean? He is a fierce stump of a man who overpowered opponents in mixed martial arts and the WWE. A very scary guy. Today, I could beat the daylights out of him, and so could you. He’s in a wheelchair, not because he had a disease or accident he could not avoid, but because he did not take basic measures to look after himself, like finding a better way to make a living. His problem? Back and hip injuries. Needlessly self-inflicted.

He did impress a lot of strangers who don’t care about him, though.

My best friend is a very big guy, and he has always been proud of it. He lifted things he shouldn’t have. He hurt his back throwing a jockey. He had to have two disks fused, and it didn’t work.

In no time, you can go from being a superior and intimidating physical specimen to being someone who can be bullied by average guys and who is down at the bottom of the list as a potential mate.

I feel impressed with myself when I manage to get the mower apart and lift the deck onto its side. I won’t lie. But just about any guy could do it, and it’s a stupid thing to do without a machine.

Pulling the deck out from under the tractor has to be done by hand. There is no machine that can do it. Shoving the reluctant deck driveshaft onto the PTO shaft is a recipe for back spasms and disk injuries.

The more I think about it, the more I think the best choices are to hire a lawn service or buy a new mower. But if I get a lawn service, I have no idea how high their rates will go as inflation continues. Buying a mower is a simple matter of swiping a card and paying once at the end of my cycle. The freedom and relief would be immense.

I am thinking about the mower I need. It has to be very tough, because this property is the Bermuda Triangle of mowing. New rocks seem to create themselves and pop out of the ground, and there are always sticks falling from the trees. It has to be reliable, because repairs are high on the list of reasons for ditching the old mower. It has to be very easy to work on, because when I work on the old mower, I have black thoughts about the engineers who designed it. It has to have good parts support from the manufacturer. Finally, the local dealer who services it can’t be a complete idiot. That’s a tough one.

It doesn’t have to be extremely fast. My time is roughly as valuable as that of a goldfish. I would love a diesel, but I will not live on Earth long enough to take advantage of the longevity, and if I treat a 4-stroke gas engine well, it should be willing to start when I need it.

A new diesel garden tractor is a possibility, and they cost about as much as good zero-turns. They are more versatile. On the other hand, a zero-turn will be more maneuverable, and while I don’t need light speed, I would like to move faster than I do now. I mow at a snail’s pace. I think zero-turns move faster.

The new fuel lines for the John Deere have arrived, and the other little parts should be here shortly. Maybe I’ll be able to get it put together on Sunday. After that, will my motivation to buy new stand fast, or will I, once more, cave in to a possibly misguided desire to be financially responsible?

Or I could go the Miami Cuban route, pave my yard, and coat it with pink house paint.

Ask me next week.