Real Men Don’t Pay Other Men

It’s a pivotal day in human history. I used a big-boy gas outfit to heat a part and bend it.

As my stalkers know, I just finished making a cart to hold propane and oxygen for cutting and heating. I have bent things using a hand-held plumber’s torch in the past, and it was okay, but a real torch is like 10 plumber’s torches, and a plumber’s torch can’t cut. I had to have more power. There are just too many heating and cutting jobs in a home workshop.

Today I summoned my androgens and used propane to bend the mounting tabs on a middle buster.

A middle buster is a 3-point implement. It drags or lifts a hook-shaped blade. You can use it for things like digging trenches for wiring and pipes, and you can also rip out stumps with it. I got mine for stumps, and I have torn out a bunch of them. In the process, I bent the tabs holding the pins that attach it to my hitch.

I don’t care about the damage, because the middle buster probably cost $150, and try and guess how much money it has saved me. I don’t know what it would cost to pay a guy to tear stumps out, for the same reason I don’t know what it’s like to ask a big, strong man to parallel-park for me, but it must be a lot.

I clamped the middle buster to my welding table and heated it, destroying a lot of powder coating in the process. Doesn’t matter. Truck bed coating is better than powder coating, and I already have a can. I thought I would have to twist the tabs with a wrench, risking pulling the table over, but it turned out a blacksmith’s hammer was the tool for the job. I beat the tabs until they were very nearly straight. Excellent.

Now I have to cut and weld gussets to reinforce the tabs. I already have the steel. I also want to run a 36″ bar through the tabs instead of using one short pin in each tab. I think a bar will resist bending somewhat better. If it doesn’t, it will bend in such a way that I have to cut it in half to get it out, but that’s okay, because I’m a man, and men have tools.

I love the propane rig, even though I don’t have a proper propane rosebud yet. The acetylene rosebud I used worked fine, which makes me wonder if something is wrong.

Wonderful day in the shop. Think I’ll let my hair down and have a wheat beer.

Bullets and Barbecue

Do I need an intervention? Be honest. As long as you tell me what I already want to hear. Yesterday, I was fooling around in the workshop, and I found a thousand rounds of AK-47 ammo. It had been there for three years. I had no idea I had it.

When a thousand rounds of ammunition mean so little to you, you forget where they are, is it, maybe, time to ask yourself if you buy too much gun stuff?

NO! NO! IT ISN’T! I’M NOT THE ONE WITH THE PROBLEM! YOU’RE THE ONE WITH THE PROBLEM!

I guess I shouldn’t be afraid to take some target practice with the AK. I now have so much AK ammo, I need a handtruck to move it.

In related news, I visited the nearest long-range shooting range today. It’s down around Leesburg. Their website says they go out to 900 yards, but the lady who talked to me at the range said it was 850. Okay, whatever. It’s far enough to help me learn how to shoot.

To qualify to use the 850-yard range, I have to shoot at 400 and let them grade me. That means I have to get the Ruger Precision Rifle working. My plan is to shoot it this weekend and then go to the range when it reopens on Wednesday. Should be fun. I’m not sure why there is cow manure all over the parking lot, but you take what you can get.

The range reminds me of the pickle leftists are in if they seriously try to start an internal war. While I was there, I saw the other customers. They are not leftists, and they were happily plugging away at targets off in the distance. Ignorant urban terrorists who hold their guns sideways would do very poorly against them.

There is a hilarious Youtube channel called Tactical Rifleman, and the host is a guy named Karl Erickson. He’s a retired Green Beret. Wonderful channel. He says something really funny about pistols. He says that when you’re in a gunfight, you should bring “an adult gun.” He makes a very convincing case for semiauto rifles in home defense, which is good, because that’s my conclusion, too. Anyway, there are tens of millions of conservative men who already know how to use adult guns, and they’ll be fighting “men” who haven’t figured out how to pull their pants up.

When I got home, I went and got me a haircut at the Chamber of Excessive Testosterone, better known as the barber shop. I barely had time to get into my book on long-range marksmanship before it was my turn. When I entered, I had my Biden face diaper in place, not knowing what the current mask policy was. I saw that no one else was wearing one, so I took it off. There was a big discussion of everyone’s hatred of face diapers.

I don’t quite get the conservative hatred of masks. I hate them. Sure. But I hate them mostly because they’re uncomfortable and because people think they do things they don’t really do. I’m not that agitated about the political aspect.

Many conservatives get really mad when they have to wear them, and it seems to be because they think it’s part of a big conspiracy. There is definitely a conspiracy to exaggerate the danger of coronavirus and the effectiveness of face diapers, and it’s true that Satan is using masks to train people to serve the Antichrist, but I think my mask gives other people a small amount of protection (assuming I have the bug and don’t know it), so I am willing to wear it.

My understanding is that it does virtually nothing to protect me. If I go into a place where people aren’t wearing masks, I’m going to get their germs regardless of what I wear, but I can reduce the germs they get from me by wearing the diaper. That’s according to the last expert advice I read, which may be totally obsolete this week.

Anyway, I love the barber shop. It’s full of fishing tackle and dive paraphernalia, and the magazines are about guns and fishing. I haven’t seen a hipster beard or a fruity millennial hairstyle there yet.

I got something else done today. I have been thinking of building a steak cooker from a propane weed torch. The idea is to project an incredible amount of heat down onto the meat, giving it a somewhat blackened surface. I tried it today, holding the weed torch in my hand.

I prepared an inch-thick rib eye. It took very little time to go from raw to medium-rare. It was also nice and hot inside, in spite of not being overcooked. It had a good burnt flavor, as a steak should, and it was a little different from a fried steak’s flavor.

Still, fried steak is better. No doubt about it. I’m thinking I may continue to fry steaks while using a hand-held torch to add flavor.

I’m contemplating getting an electric smoker. I built one years ago, and it was great, but I threw it out when I left Miami. My friend Mike just got a Masterbuilt, and he sent pictures of the meat. It looked wonderful. It wasn’t black, so the smoke wasn’t full of creosote, but he said there was a deep smoke ring, so it wasn’t just roasted.

I don’t have much interest in pigging out or getting back into cooking in a serious way, but it would be nice to be able to get some decent barbecue. Yes, the barbecue around here is very good by restaurant standards, but I can beat it easily without leaving the house or putting on a face diaper. I can pretty well founder myself for 10 bucks.

I stopped typing and wandered off, but I’m back. I have a smoker on the way. I went for a nice stainless job. It’s electric. I read that electric smokers don’t give you a smoke ring, but people who judge contests claim the flavor is exactly the same, so good enough.

When it arrives, I’ll toss some ribs in it. Maybe I’ll low-carb for a blissful week. That would be nice.

One Less Thing to to Worry About

I’m having a Sierra Nevada Torpedo and reveling in my latest triumphs.

Today I had to go to the local Social Security office about some business, and I dreaded sitting in a dirty government chair, staring at Amazon Kindle for half an hour. When I arrived, the door was locked. Coronavirus! They had a number on the door. I called it, and wonder of wonders, they agreed to send me what I needed by mail. No hassle. No waiting. No demanding 52 forms of unavailable documentation. No videotaped colonoscopy like last time. Wonderful.

As blessing would have it, the office is not far from Harbor Freight. I shot over there and picked up two solid wheels for my new propane outfit cart. The air-filled tires it came with are garbage. For $9 each, I got wheels that will never go flat. I also bought a Bremen vise grip I didn’t need, just because I felt like it. People say they’re just as good as Irwin, and they’re a lot cheaper.

When I tried putting the wheels on my cart, I found they didn’t fit perfectly. The old wheels had a longer offset, so the new ones were too close to the center of the cart. If only I knew someone with a lathe, to make spacers.

Oh, wait.

I found a piece of steel on a shelf, bored it out, and cut two spacers from it. I slid them on the cart’s axle, and I was ready to go. Beautiful.

While I was at it, I washed my welding hoses with Or-Pine, a congealed pine oil cleaner made for yachts. It’s very strong, and it has a powerful odor. The welding hoses stank of gangrenous mouse sphincters because unwell mice had made a nest in the box they came in.

Before I washed the hoses, the stink came off on my hands every time I touched them. I don’t know what kind of bacteria those mice had, but they were the real deal. They must have had diseases that would turn heads even in San Francisco.

I don’t know what to do with the old pneumatic wheels. They’re worthless. I hate to throw out new wheels, but I see no point in keeping them. Maybe I’ll remove the tubes and save them for pool toys.

I straightened the workshop out a little before I called it a day. Things are going great. I’ve been working a lot. The yard looks better. My roof problem is scheduled to be fixed; the roof guys came today and put a temporary patch on the problem area. The weather is suddenly tolerable. On top of all this, I keep feeling God is telling me the rapture is coming this year.

I’m thinking of a new project. I bought a propane weed torch, and it shoots a mighty flame. I am tempted to make a bent tube for it so I can attach it to a propane fryer base, aimed downward. The idea is to put steaks and burgers under it and roast them from above. If it worked, it would be magnificent. The big steakhouses cook their steaks this way. They use powerful electric burners called salamanders, and they project heat downward onto the meat.

All I need is a way to bend a tube. I know I can figure it out. Maybe I can find some stainless braided hose.

Time to finish my beer and relax. I hope tomorrow will be at least half as good as today.

Home Improvement Follows Spiritual Improvement

I am back to blog. Not because I have something to say, but because I am tired and want to relax.

I got lot more done today.

My house had dubious landscaping when I arrived, and part of the problem was aging hedges around the house itself. Apparently, hedges don’t last forever. Mine were about 20 years old, and some of them were not looking good. Also, I suspect there were problems with bugs. I kind of think you have to poison everything in order to keep plants alive here, and I didn’t do that. I came here from Miami, and whatever that area’s faults are, you don’t have to bomb your plants with poison down there in order to get them through a season. This is also true farther north. It seems like I’m in a strange belt of territory which is abnormally hostile to landscaping.

I had some kind of crummy, spindly, partly rotten hedge on the south side of the house, and a few months back, I got tired of it and hit it with 2,4-D, which is a weed killer. I figured dead plants would be easier to remove than half-dead plants. Today I went in with my Root Slayer shovel, and in about half an hour, I had ripped out 18 feet of dead and dying hedge.

That was nice.

I drove to a nursery and told them I needed 18 feet of shrubs, and the lady who worked there gave me a tour and provided suggestions. I sprung for some Indian Hawthorne. I don’t know much about it, but she said it would probably not die immediately, so it sounded good to me.

I also had some annoying plants in the flower box by the pool For some inexplicable reason, the patio has a concrete flowerbed built into it, right beside the pool. So leaves, insects, and dirt, beside a temperamental tub of water that doesn’t deal with contaminants well. The previous inhabitants put at least two different kinds of trees–not shrubs or flowers–in the flowerbed, along with ferns and some kind of ornamental thing. The trees got way too big. I murdered one a few months back and hauled most of it off. I also killed what I think was a banana tree and dumped it in the woods. Today I cut most of the remaining tree–a big fishtail palm–out, and I carted off the debris and hosed the raw stumps with 2,4-D and glyphosate. I’ll leave them there in hopes they suck up the chemicals and die fast. Then I’ll go after the roots.

I’m going to make the pool area my own. I’ll go ask the nursery lady what to put in the flowerbed. I’ll obliterate every trace of living plant matter, and then I’ll plant one kind of ornamental, and I’ll make sure I pick something that doesn’t grow over 18 inches tall.

My well has a big pressure tank over it, and someone made a terrible effort to hide it with a cluster of unkempt flowering shrubs. I was thinking about it the other day, and I realized there was no reason to hide it. A clean, orderly well looks better than a bunch of annoying weeds. Maybe I could paint Trump’s face on it.

This afternoon, I took the plant-massacre solution and doused all the plants around the well. When they die, I’ll rip them out and dump them. Then I’ll think about ground cover. Maybe grass will grow there. The weeds were an aggravating obstacle when I mowed. If I put grass where they used to be, I’ll have a straight shot all the way to the workshop.

I think I should plant another peach tree. They do well here. I poisoned my tree today to keep webworms off of it, and it needs a friend. I still have to do something about squirrels. They hammered the tree last year.

Squirrel season doesn’t start for 18 days, but I emailed the wildlife nanny agency, and they said I was free to kill them out of season when they caused problems. I haven’t taken advantage of this loophole for a long time. I’ve been planning to wait for the season this year, simply because I am not totally certain I trust the wildlife nannies to keep their word if I get caught. Once I get started, I plan to kill every squirrel I see. I may give up on rifles, which are the most enjoyable squirrel-control weapons, and use the Sweet Sixteen. I can’t shoot squirrels out of trees with a rifle without risking sending bullets onto my neighbors’ land, so I have to wait for squirrels to show up on the ground. A shotgun is less challenging and therefore boring, but it gets the job done more efficiently, and the pellets don’t fly all that far. If pellets make it off my land, they’re so small, they won’t be able to hurt anyone or damage anything.

Squirrels must die. Coons must die. Coyotes must die. Nothing else here gives me problems.

I showed mercy to a coon the other day because it had a youngun with it. That was a good deed which is certain not to go unpunished. I didn’t like the idea of shooting a coon’s mother in front of it. They’re horrible pests, though, so I can’t give it a lifetime pass. They’re so bad, there is no coon season in Florida. You can kill them every day and even at night.

I talked to the nursery lady about squirrels, and she suggested putting a plastic snake in the peach tree. I mentioned my preferred method of dealing with them. Hope she wasn’t triggered. I am not against buying a plastic snake, but I will definitely shoot squirrels anyway. I have grave doubts about the snake theory.

I would have had a couple of dozen peaches this year had it not been for squirrels. I got three.

I need to fix the island in my driveway. When I moved here, it had ferns, some scrubby ornamental plants, a bizarre doughnut of aging hedge, a huge rotting oak, a spindly magnolia, and some other kind of tree which promptly died. I got rid of the oak and the dead tree. I think I should scorch the earth and start over with bare ground. Maybe I can find some ideas on the web. I could stick an ornamental tree in there maybe. Perhaps I could make a raised bed rimmed with pavers. That would give me a well-defined perimeter for weed-eating and mowing. As it is now, I’m never sure whether I’m mowing grass or ornamental plants. They blend into each other.

The irrigation system is screwed up. They set it up so it only irrigates places that don’t need water. It wets the ground up against the house, in the driveway island, by the gate, and in the patio flowerbed. I haven’t turned it on in maybe a year, and it hasn’t mattered. Maybe I could find a place that actually needs water and put irrigation only in that area.

I have a big green electrical transformer box in my side yard. It has a rickety rail fence on three sides of it, and the fence used to have a horrible Florida fire vine on it. I killed the vine, mulched the whole area, and put in blackberry briars and grapevines. The blackberries are not doing great, and the grapes grow very slowly. One vine died mysteriously, on a property where grapevines grow so fast they cover the floor of the woods. It has occurred to me that I could tear out the fence, take up most of the mulch, poison the ground by the vines and briars to give them a boost, and let grass move in.

My guess is that the lady who lived here thought the transformer box was an eyesore. I am a man, so I think it looks swell. It would be better to put a little solid wooden fence around it than a rail fence that looks like it was moved here from Haiti.

I’m planning to take the rails out this week with the tractor. Then I can haul the mulch off.

I don’t know if my house will look better after I get done with it, but it will certainly look like someone tried, and that’s worth something.

Guess I’ve relaxed enough. Time to hang out with the birds.

Dry Bones of Neglected Projects Receive Long-Awaited Rain

My propane cart is all done. I finished welding, and I taped around the bare parts and hosed it with truck bed coating. Looks pretty good.

I decided to try my gas outfit. It had been sitting in a box since last September. The hose was still coiled neatly in the box. When I started taking parts out, I saw a big ball of woolly stuff in the coil. I thought Victor/ESAB had put some kind of filler in there for shipping purposes. No, it was a mouse nest. Thankfully, no one was home. Unfortunately, it smelled like infected mouse butt, and that smell is still clinging to the hose.

I was under the impression that I had bought a propane outfit, but it turned out to be set up for acetylene. It had an acetylene regulator instead of a propane regulator. That was a speed bump. I thought I would have to order a new regulator. Then I Googled around and learned that an acetylene regulator will work fine. The hoses are rated for propane, so that was not a problem.

I didn’t have a propane heating tip. I Googled again, and I found you can use an acetylene tip if you clamp a little shield around the end. I fired the acetylene tip up, and it worked fine. I just need to put a shield together. A propane tip costs $158, so I might as well try the jury rig method first.

I heated a piece of 1/8″ by 1″ bar, and it turned red in a hurry. This outfit is going to be very useful. I ordered a couple of propane cutting tips. I already have a pair, but since I put them aside a year ago, I have lost track of them. Some day they’ll turn up.

I need to create some kind of hanger I can weld on the cart to hold the torch and hoses.

I got a lot of other things done yesterday. I put a new seat on the garden tractor. This is the one part John Deere doesn’t overcharge for. The Chinese knockoff costs $90, and the real thing is $109, so I went with OEM. My old one had cracks in it, and they let rain fill the padding. I cover the tractor, but you only have to have the cover blow off once to get a seat full of rain, and it never evaporates completely. Now I should be able to mow with a dry rear end.

For some reason, the people who built this house left two humps in the yard, roughly the size of pitchers’ mounds. I have often wondered what they were for. It occurred to me that dogs and cats might be buried under them. People do that. As bad as I feel for people whose pets are dead, I am not going to screw up my yard for a dead cat. This week, I used the tractor’s front end loader to start scraping the dirt away. A few days back, I annihilated a hump in the front yard.

Yesterday, I worked on the hump next to the workshop. I unearthed one corner of a 6′ by 8′ blue Home Depot tarp! What on earth was that there for? Maybe somebody didn’t want Fluffy or Snowball to get rained on in heaven. Whatever. I could not budge it with a shovel because roots had gone through it, so I ripped it off with the tractor, smoothed the ground out, and took the tarp to the dump. I didn’t dig up any collars, so if there is a dead dog down there, he’s still resting peacefully.

Here’s a tip: if you bury your pet in your yard, don’t expect the buyers to leave it there when they want to put in a pool or plant a tree, and that goes double when you don’t disclose it during the sale. If you really have to bury dead stuff in your yard, pick an area that’s out of the way, and bury everything at least three feet deep. Don’t let the kids scoop out a little hole with their hands and then pile a little dirt on top of the departed.

The prior residents did a lot of bad landscaping, and I have been reluctant to dismantle it because I trusted their judgment more than my own. That’s all over with. I’m going to rip out a lot of annoying shrubs, along with some bad decorations. Nice grass is better than sloppy shrubbery and floppy rail fences.

The stumps from my ill-fated citrus trees are gone, and I’ve been running the mower over the locations to smooth the dirt down. I don’t plan to put anything in to replace them, although I might relent and plant a single peach tree. Something useful that won’t die from a Chinese disease.

Peach trees do great here, as long as you poison them to kill bugs. That reminds me; I have to start killing squirrels to protect the peaches. I don’t think I’ll eat the squirrels. I plan to throw them in the woods. Crows and foxes enjoy them.

I have a roof issue. I’ve been working with contractors for two weeks. One crew wandered off after giving me an estimate, so I got another one. Glad that happened. The first guy gave a high estimate and didn’t tell me anything helpful. The second guy gave me a painfully long, boring lecture about roofs and what does and does not work. It was dull, but I kept quiet and let him talk. I learned a lot of great things, and I realized he was going to do a better job for less money. I’m hoping to have everything fixed in around 10 days.

I got nervous and invaded the attic to inspect the roof from underneath. This was a horrible experience. It was over a hundred degrees, and I had nothing to stand on except widely spaced trusses covered with fiberglass insulation. I had to twist and contort my body to move a few inches at a time. The good news: no serious problems. That roof should be good for 5 more years, once I get my patch done.

I understand the roof a lot better now.

I’m having my satellite dishes yanked. They cause leaks, and there is no way I would ever have Dish or DirecTV in this house.

I still have one major boulder issue in my yard. I went out the other day and started blasting it with a jackhammer, and of course, it started to rain about 10 seconds in. The weather is getting cooler fast, and the rain is drying up, so I hope to have that boulder leveled soon. Then I’ll have more grass and one less mower obstacle. There are some small boulder tips nearby, sticking out of the ground. The tractor can’t move them, but the jackhammer will take them down below mower level.

I bought a propane weed torch. Wonderful tool. I’m thinking of using it to char steaks. It will also be great for starting burn pile fires. The tank is heavy, however, so I may go to Home Depot, buy another handtruck, and modify it to hold the tank. A cart made for the tank runs over $60, and that’s ridiculous, because it’s a cheap, embarrassing cart. I can get a real cart and modify it for less.

I feel like God has given me relief from demons that discouraged me. I speak defeat, binding, and muzzling to them every day. I know people don’t believe in demons, and they think people who do are nuts. Jesus believed in demons, and he talked to them. This has always been a nominally Christian country, yet we still assume people who say they have experience with demons are mentally ill. I don’t care. I’m old, and the older I get, the less I care what unintelligent, low-information, insecure people think about me. I’ve had demons cast out of me, and they’re as real as you are.

You can physically feel it when a demon leaves, and afterward, you notice your mind is quiet. The thing that was inspiring counterproductive words to form in your mind is gone. I’m careful not to call it a voice. I don’t hear voices. I can just see what would happen if I said I heard voices. “Your honor, clearly this man can’t be allowed to possess firearms or live on his own, so let’s take his guns and his house and turn his property into a BLM safe space for LGBTQ-trans-mutant-googolsexuals.”

You are surrounded by demons. You are inhabited by demons. They corrupt your thoughts and emotions, they hurt your body, and they destroy your success. It’s the truth. They’re not just for crazy people.

Why am I getting so much help from God? Why am I doing so much work on my responsibilities? I wonder if I’m getting this property ready for the people who will move in after the rapture.

Here’s something interesting: I expect to be here on earth after the tribulation.

I used to wonder if we would return after the tribulation. This week, something occurred to me. We are not going to die; we will be assumed in to heaven as we are, in the flesh. There will be no reason for us to die or age in heaven. If you’re raptured alive, you should be alive 7 years later when the tribulation is over. Jesus will return, in the flesh, at that time. The word says people will return with him and rule with him. It makes sense to believe the raptured will come back.

If these things are true, then a lot of redemption is coming our way. People who were crippled when they left, or who were old and single, or who lost all their children, or who always lived in poverty will be able to lead happy, successful lives on earth. They will be physically perfected.

Will they have marriages and children? Things don’t look so good. Jesus said, “at the resurrection, people will never marry nor be given in marriage.” Does that mean we won’t reproduce, or does it mean we’ll reproduce, but we won’t be bound permanently in pairs? Will there be a universal state of open marriage during the Messianic Age?

Jesus said people who gave up children for the kingdom of heaven would have children multiplied to them on earth and in the world to come, and it seems harsh for people who were trapped in solitude during their lives to have that condition continue after the tribulation, but I’m sure whatever happens will be great.

Was he speaking of the post-rapture return when he said “resurrection,” or did he mean the final gathering at the end of the Messianic Age?

Don’t know.

In any case, it looks like I will be back after 7 years, assuming I manage to be raptured. It would be nice to get a chance to do a few things over, correctly and without opposition or curses.

How do you get raptured? Jesus said he wanted to find his servants giving food to his household. Food appears to mean instruction in the ways of God. The Bible calls basic instruction “milk” and advanced knowledge “meat.” I think that if you want to be raptured, you should be involved in relaying knowledge when Jesus calls.

I keep this in mind these days.

I truly think we will be taken before the tribulation. Leaving us here with the willfully obtuse boneheads and God-haters doesn’t make any sense. God got the Jews out of Egypt, and the plagues didn’t touch them. God took Lot out of Sodom before he burned it. God lifted Noah above the flood. There has to be some reward for obedience.

On the web, I see leftists, literally shrieking about 2020. There is a famous lady on TikTok, screeching profanities like a severely autistic kid having a fit. There are many like her. Most are female. They are losing their minds. Ginsburg’s death pushed them over the edge. My response: 2020 has been great for me. Your reality depends on your relationship with God.

In April, my friend Travis died unexpectedly. I had hoped he would be my compensation for not having a son. I had a very bad month after he died. Other than that, this year has been wonderful. It has been peaceful. Annoying people haven’t been bothering me. I no longer had to care for my demented father. I had two properties that drove me crazy. They were sold last year. I’ve been getting things done. I’ve been doing things I wanted to do in the past but couldn’t seem to get on top of.

I have lacked nothing of importance. My health has been good. I stopped worrying, with God’s help.

My 2020 and the 2020 of people who hate God and authority are two different years. It’s as though they live on the other side of a gulf, like the gulf in the story of Lazarus the beggar.

It surprises me to see how miserable the Antichrist’s people are. I’m not in touch with them day by day, so it’s a shock when their rage and horror pop up on my monitor and in my speakers.

People really need to get to know God. If they’re this miserable now, in the world’s richest country, living in security, surrounded by opportunity, simply because democracy isn’t working out in their favor and the world refuses to mold itself to their pathetic, infantile fantasies, how crazy will they be when Trump wins the election and when his justice is seated?

It’s going to be an astonishing spectacle. They’re at the breaking point already. Full-blown psychosis is just a heartbeat away. They just need Trump to light the right match, and he will do it with the eagerness of a D-Day soldier tossing an explosive satchel into a pillbox full of Nazis.

The rapture will be a division. The Antichrist’s black-clad people will be stuck here, raging at each other and screaming in anguish, much as they are now, and we’ll be at a marriage feast in heaven, free at last from their incessant squawking and abuse. The division seems to be accomplished already, within us. Now it just has to be completed physically. When we’re gone, the Antichrist’s mob will get everything it has clamored for, and it will burn them like flamethrowers around the clock. They think we make life painful. In reality, our presence is the only reason it’s as pleasant as it is.

I can’t think of a time I have enjoyed as much as the last few months. I know that’s God’s work. I’m sure other people can get it, too, if they will just listen.

Thank you, God, for 2020. I hope you will see fit to continue things as they are.

Pre-Tribulation Diversions

Did some more work on my propane torch cart today.

As mentioned yesterday, I have been building a cart to hold an oxygen bottle and a propane tank, so I can finally start using my cutting outfit. I had no success when I looked for manufactured carts, so I bought a cheap Home Depot handtruck and started fabricating.

Yesterday I put a larger base plate on the cart so the propane tank wouldn’t hang off the front, and I added two brackets with chains to hold the oxygen cylinder in place. Today I made a bracket for the propane tank and welded it in place, and I also put some little tabs on the base to prevent the tanks from scooting around. These tabs were completely unnecessary, but they can’t hurt.

I would have done this work yesterday, but I was under the mistaken impression that I didn’t have enough flat bar. Today I saw some lying on the workshop floor, so that changed everything.

To make the bracket, I cut up 1/8″ by 1″ bar, bent one piece into an L, and welded another piece to it. A photo will show you what I mean. I ground some paint off the handtruck and welded the new bracket in place.

To make the tabs, I did what I usually do. I looked for something I had lying around. I found some heavy-duty angle iron cut short pieces out of it, softened the edges using the belt grinder, and welded them to the cart’s base plate.

Now all I need are paint and a rubber strap to hold the propane tank in place. I went to Tractor Supply and bought truck bed coating, but they didn’t have a suitable strap. I bought two new propane tanks and had them filled. Now I have dedicated tanks for the weed torch and cutting outfit. Tractor Supply was selling tanks for $10 off, so that was nice.

Tomorrow, I should be able to paint the cart and set the torch up. Maybe I’ll heat the bent ears on my middle buster and bend them so they’re straight again. Then I could weld in gussets to strengthen them, and I could also try out the long 7/8″ bar I bought to replace the pins that attach to the three-point hitch.

I tried to do another project. I put a big square of 1/4″ plate in my finger brake and tried to turn it into a pan. Didn’t work. I was trying to make a bend a little over 15″ long. The brake is rated for 15″ at a quarter-inch, so it should have worked better than it did. Not sure what’s happening. I hope the people who made the brake were not dishonest.

I figure I can still bend the pan if I do it in short steps, moving the pan sideways under the brake as I go. We’ll see.

The brake is still a great product. How often will I want to bend something that thick over 15″? Not very. Most bends are much shorter, and the brake can handle 3/8″ steel as long as you don’t go too wide.

When I look at the news, I feel like I’m rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I’m isolated here, amusing myself with pleasant hobbies while insanity spreads over the face of the planet like mold. Oh, well. I may not be doing the world much good, but least I’m not in Portland or Chicago.

A couple of days back I spoke to someone who is also watching the mess from outside. I spoke to well-known conservative blogger Baldilocks for the first time. I guess we have been acquainted since around 2003, and we have communicated via email and blog comments, but we never spoke until this week.

She seems to have the same basic opinion that I do. Leftists are eat up with demons. It’s good to know someone who isn’t uncomfortable discussing the supernatural.

Hope I get the torch working tomorrow. It will be a huge addition to my shop, and I foresee an uptick in metal fabrication after I learn to use it.

Ginsburg Cements Conservative Future of Court

A couple of things are on the menu today.

First, I made biscuits with White Lily flour, and they were no good. Second, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, taking us one step closer to civil war.

People sing the praises of White Lily flour. It’s THE biscuit flour, as far as many Southerners are concerned. I have tried it in the past, and I was not thrilled. The biscuits were rigid and had no flavor. Today I tried it with my proven recipe, and things didn’t go any better. The biscuits were almost crunchy, and they tasted more like crackers than biscuits.

I would stay away from it if I were you. I get beautiful results with King Arthur bread flour, so that’s all I’m going to use from now on. If not King Arthur, then another brand of bread flour. There is no point in tampering with perfection.

I’m wondering if White Lily will make a good thin pizza crust. It should be good for baguettes, and baguettes are a lot like pizza crust. I’ll try it and see.

Now…Ginsburg.

I’m not going to pretend I’m grieving. I did not know this woman. In order for me to get weepy over the death of a celebrity, there has to be some kind of connection. I don’t think you have to pretend to grieve in order to show proper respect.

I prayed for her and her family while she was alive. I prayed for her family last night. She is beyond help now.

I won’t say she was a great legal mind. I don’t know that to be true. There have been some Supreme Court justices who did such good work, they are remembered for making positive changes to the law. Benjamin Cardozo probably takes the top honor. I don’t know of any evidence that Ginsburg did work that was brilliant or illuminating. She generally toed the leftist line. I haven’t seen any evidence that she thought for herself.

She did very well in law school. Well, law isn’t that hard, and grades have a lot to do with a special set of skills that impress instructors. Grades aren’t that closely related to brains, unless you’re in a tough field like math or physics. I’m a lot smarter than people who graduated summa cum laude in my class. Spend your life in the library, hang out with your professors, kiss up, and always parrot their beliefs back to them. You’ll do well, even if you’re not a genius.

Michael Avenatti was first in his class, and he went to a very good school. That should tell you a lot.

People are honoring her for serving the public all her life. She did that, but so do street sweepers and game wardens. She was paid well, she got great benefits, she had incredible job security, she didn’t have to pay for malpractice insurance or deal with real responsibility while working as an academic or judge, and she was allowed to thrust her extremist beliefs on hundreds of millions of people.

She was a very able litigator and judge. She wasn’t Sir Isaac Newton.

People are saying her nomination was historic because she was female. It wasn’t. It’s amazing how barrier-busting Republican nominees and appointees are forgotten. No one remembers Reagan nominee Sandra Day O’Connor, the somewhat inept judge who joined the panel in 1981, and O’Connor is still alive.

Ginsburg even gets praise for having cancer. People say she’s incredibly tough, and they praise her for fighting. The thing is, everyone who gets cancer does what she does. They go to the doctor and get treatment. Very few people choose to let cancer take its course.

Leftists are losing their minds because she died under a Republican president, but very few are blaming the person who actually caused the problem. That person is Ginsburg herself. She knew she was dying. She knew Trump was likely to be reelected. She rolled the dice.

If you try to understand why she did this to her fellow leftists, two possible explanations come to mind. Either she genuinely saw the court as an apolitical institution, and she thought she should not consider politics when making decisions about retirement, or she was just selfish and unwilling to let go. It’s hard to think of a third explanation, and the first one doesn’t pass the laugh test. Ginsburg was a leftist firebrand who said she didn’t want to die under Trump, so it appears selfishness is the reason she held on.

It’s impossible to reconcile this with the selfless-public-servant narrative.

She was like a man who spends his life amassing wealth and then dies intestate, leaving his children to devour each other in court. She made it extremely likely that her own legacy would be dismantled, and in so doing, she may have largely nullified her own existence.

I can’t help being relieved that she’s gone, because all I can think of are babies being torn apart in clinics and hospitals. She was in favor of that. Yesterday, she had her first conversation with the God of her forefathers, and surely this subject came up. I am glad I didn’t have to watch. She supported the right of a frivolous, irresponsible woman to pay a man to take scissors and sever the spine of her live, healthy child while its struggling body protrudes from her vagina. That is ghastly. It’s as bad as anything the Nazis and the Japanese did to their victims. I can’t pretend I don’t think it’s good that a person who was working to protect systematic atrocities is out of the way.

They say she was a very nice person in her interpersonal relations. It’s strange that a nice person would have no feeling for the weakest and most innocent.

Now that she’s gone, we have yet another factor which augments the perfect storm that drives us toward civil war. The left is unhinged over the bad treatment a few people–nearly all criminals resisting arrest–have received from the police. Riots are now considered acceptable mainstream methods of influencing voters. Democrats are pushing mail-in voting, which is certain to generate a great deal of voter fraud and prolong the election process. Now we face the prospect of seeing Trump install a hardline conservative on the court toward the end of an election season. On social media, leftists are already saying they will “burn it all down” if he does that, and at least one is calling for the burning of Mitch McConnell’s house.

Imagine what could happen. Trump could win on election night, and then the ridiculous, unnecessary mail-in votes could be counted, putting demented Biden on top. Then Republicans would contest the votes, and we would be plunged into turmoil that would make the Bush/Gore mess seem quick and painless. The matter would likely end up before the Supreme Court. Right now, the court is 5/3 conservative, so things look bad for the left regardless of whether Trump gets a new judge, but 6/3 would enrage the left even more.

If you think the tantrum-throwing brats are mad now, imagine how they’ll act when they think Biden won and a packed Supreme Court didn’t give him a fair hearing.

I don’t really understand the rationales for delaying or not delaying justice confirmations during election years. It all seems like puffery and rationalization to me. McConnell says a delay is crucial when the president and the senate are on opposite sides of the aisle. I don’t see why this is true. He also says there should be no delay when they’re on the same side. I don’t get that, either. In any case, it appears that there is no firm law controlling the matter, and I don’t expect the GOP to put things on hold out of pure principle. I think Trump will put Amy Cony Barrett on the court, and the Senate will confirm her, perhaps with one or two Republicans abstaining.

To the left, having Ginsburg replaced by Barrett will be like the Soviets having Stalin deposed and replaced with George Patton. To snowflakes who can’t tolerate the pain of seeing a red hat in a mall, the pain will be unbearable.

Dana Coverstone, the preacher whose end-time dream went viral, may truly have foreseen our future. He said he saw UN soldiers with blue helmets in the US. That kind of thing happens when nations go berserk over questioned elections.

Leftists have to stop questioning everything’s legitimacy. Trump really is the president; the popular vote means nothing at all. Clinton and Trump both ran campaigns calculated to win the electoral vote, not the popular vote, so they have to live and die by the results. If Trump installs a new justice, she will be legitimate, too. Kavanaugh is legitimate. People have to stop dragging out the asinine, fabricated rape stories. If you can ignore a very credible rape story about Joe Biden, you should be able to ignore implausible stories about Justice Kavanaugh.

Of course, leftists will not stop. They don’t care about reason and truth. These are the people who rioted in Pennsylvania when a cop shot a man who was chasing him with a huge knife.

I wonder what else will go wrong before January. Are there other surprises that will pop up and work to funnel us into a state of endless internal violence? It’s fascinating to watch the process. It’s as though a scriptwriter planned it all. The synergy can’t be coincidental.

I don’t know what I’ll do if the rapture doesn’t come this year.

I published my ideas about the rapture recently, and someone who thinks he’s a prophet showed up to instruct me. He said weird things like, “ASK the prophet,” and, “I am not a prophet by my choosing, Numbers 12:6. ASK are the initials to my name.” I don’t even know what this stuff means. He said Satan was deceiving me in order to destroy me. He apparently thinks being wrong about the rapture’s date leads to destruction. He says that if you expect to be taken before the tribulation, you won’t “prepare” for it.

The obvious question is this: how do you prepare for the tribulation? It can’t be done.

The tribulation will be very, very bad. Right now, we walk around in masks, and a miniscule percentage of the population is sick. We have minimal shortages. We have a few areas where terrorist riots are a problem. During the tribulation, we will have worldwide plagues that will resemble the Black Death in their magnitude. We will have plagues of disease, lack, murder, and natural disasters. A huge percentage of human beings will die, along with trees and sea life. Americans will run around murdering each other for food. People will long for death.

You can’t prepare for that! Do you seriously think a pallet of canned tuna and 10,000 AR-15 rounds will help you? The whole point of the tribulation is to show you you can’t prepare or protect yourself. People are interconnected. To have an acceptable quality of life, you need fuel, electricity, and all sorts of goods and services. When everything collapses, you won’t have those things any more. Whatever you’ve stored up in your shed or under your bed will not get the job done.

I don’t want to be here during the tribulation, eating dried beans and shooting my neighbors. That is not “life.” It’s just existence. Death would be much, much better.

You can say God will provide special cocoons of safety for believers. Where does the Revelation mention that? And if God plans to set us aside and keep us safe and prosperous, wouldn’t heaven be the best place to put us?

A pre-tribulation rapture makes the most sense to me. I could be wrong. What does NOT make sense to me, even if the post-tribulation theory is right, is preparing by carnal means. I would expect God’s children to have to stay very close to him and to be so strong in faith they would get supernatural provision, as Elijah and the Hebrews under Moses did, day by day.

Trump should go ahead and nominate Barrett. He is going to be hated regardless of what he does, and he will be lied about and condemned. He might as well do the best thing for Christians, Israel, and the unborn.

Once you reach the point where you can’t do anything to appease your persecutors, it’s okay to do as you please and let them scream. At least one party will be pleased.

I want out of here before the real insanity starts. This place is just too crazy.

Testosterone Fumes Approach Lethal Concentration

I’m getting more stuff done today.

First, I went to the farm’s east gate, weed-ate the junk growing on the driveway, and blasted it with a combination of glyphosate and 2,4-D. I also went down the fence facing the highway. So much for those weeds.

When I got back, I started working on my propane cutting cart.

I bought a propane outfit a long time ago. It has been a year. Then I decided to cheap out on cylinders. I figured I could save a lot of money buying used. I didn’t understand how bad the used-bottle market was in this area. Most of the bottles were small, and a lot of the rest were stolen.

When you go to a welding supply store to exchange a tank you own, you don’t want a tank with another company’s name stamped on it, because they may refuse to swap it, and they might confiscate it. You need a tank with what is known as a slick neck. The neck is where bottles are stamped.

A lot of people run off with rented bottles, and then they try to sell them on Craigslist. You get what seems like a great price, and then you find out you can’t get it filled.

A few days back, I decided to to ahead and blow $300 on a tank from Airgas.

When I got the outfit, I looked around for a cart to hold the tanks, but I thought they were bulky and overpriced. I bought a Chinese handtruck from Home Depot for around $50, and it sat in my workshop with the cardboard labels still attached until this week. Yesterday, I started converting it. I already had parts I had bought for the purpose, and of course, I had scrap metal to make it easier.

I started by using my SWAG Offroad finger brake to bend two strips of steel into U-shaped brackets. I welded them to one of the upright members of the handtruck. Then I cut some links from a chain and welded them to the brackets. Then I welded the chains to the brackets. You can see the result. I bought some double-ended snap hooks to attach the free ends of the chains to the brackets. This gave me a very stable platform for my oxygen tank.

Today I decided to make the base of the handtruck bigger. I had a large piece of steel plate. I cut the plate off the bottom of the handtruck uprights and welded the new plate on.

As you can see, the plate is now big enough for the entire base of a propane tank to fit on it.

Now I have to put another bracket on the handtruck for the propane tank. I think I’ll put two chain eyes on it and use a rubber strap to hold the tank. It should be easier on the paint than chain. I wouldn’t trust a rubber strap to hold up a dangerous oxygen bottle, but propane is not as hard to handle, and the tanks are squat and not inclined to fall over.

When I’m done, I’ll paint the bare parts with truck bed coating, which is like spray-on steel. It lasts forever.

It’s neat to have the tools to do this job quickly. The cheap welding table I got at Northern Tool is very, very good for the price. I see no reason to buy anything in the price gap between this table and the four-figure Fabblocks from Weldtable.com. This one used to cost over $300, and Northern Tool started offering it for something like half price. Right now, you can get it for $180, and it comes with a bunch of clamps that are actually useful. I slapped some cheap casters on the table, and it’s fantastic.

If there is one thing I don’t like about this handtruck, it’s the rolling gear. The tires are inflatable. Of course, that means they leak, so they have to be pumped up occasionally. Maybe I can find some cheap replacements. I’m wondering if it’s possible to fill them with something and turn them into solid tires.

I don’t understand why pneumatic handtruck tires even exist. They cause no end of problems, and there are no benefits.

Harbor Freight sells solid tires for handtrucks, so maybe I’ll go that route.

I may have a hundred bucks in this thing by the time I’m done. I think that’s acceptable. Decent carts start at maybe $90, and for some reason, the industry ignores propane. Propane cutting torches are the standard now, and carts are made for skinny cylinders. I’m having fun making this project, and it will be great when I’m done.

Maybe I’ll get started on another project since I can’t get steel for this one today. I bought an 18″ square sheet of 1/4″ steel plate, and I’m going to make a steak griddle from it. I think I already wrote about it. I’ll bend the sides up and turn it into a pan. This will give me a square griddle about 16″ square, and it won’t leak grease. Steak fried on iron is wonderful.

No Longer Stumped

Something has come over me (or left me), and I am getting on top of a lot of jobs I’ve put off.

I had a big rock in my yard. It was the size of a couch, minus the backrest. My tractor’s bucket will lift 1500 pounds, and I was not able to get it up using the forks. I would guess the rock is around half a ton. I dislodged it from the yard last year, if memory serves. A tiny stone protrusion was in the way when I mowed the yard, and when I decided to remove it, I found the giant rock attached to it.

Since then, I’ve had a big hole in my yard, next to another big hole from which I extracted a similar rock which was just small enough to lift with a rope. I had to mow around a big rock and two holes. It was worse than the original situation.

Yesterday I lifted one end of the rock, tied a tow strap around it, and dragged it out of the yard. Now the cattle can deal with it. Maybe they’ll use it to scratch themselves.

I had a sweet gum stump by my gate. Again, a mower obstacle. It had been there since Hurricane Irma. I put stuff on it to make it rot, and it paid no attention. Yesterday I decided to test it. I shoved the tractor’s forks under it, and up it came, along with half of the yard. I dumped it in my pasture on my shooting berm, and I used some of the berm to fill the hole. Very nice.

I had another stump which was nearly level with the ground but still in the way. I had to take the forks off the tractor in order to move dirt, so the bucket was ready for use. I scraped the stump away with ease. Excellent.

There is a huge stump just outside the yard, from Irma. It’s from a very big water oak I cut up. Chemicals didn’t bother it, and there was too much dirt in it for the chainsaw to be an option. Yesterday I ripped up the sides of it where it was rotten, and I tore up a bunch of the dead roots around it. I used the tractor to smooth out the ground around it and fill in the low areas. It’s still there, but it’s not nearly as annoying.

Today, I got rid of my citrus trees. I cut them a while back, but the stumps were still there. I had to cut them because it’s no longer possible to have citrus. Citrus greening is everywhere except the west, so if you have trees that still look good, you don’t have much time to enjoy them before they go bad. My trees were sick and produced disgusting fruit, and the people who built this house planted them way too close together anyway. Today I used my middle buster to rip the stumps out, and I dumped them in the woods.

My middle buster’s ears are bent because I’ve used it so much for clearing stumps. By “ears” I mean the thick metal tabs that hold the pins that attach it to the 3-point hitch. The steel is nearly half an inch thick. To fix the ears, I have to heat the steel, so I need to get my propane outfit running. I haven’t used it because I’ve been waiting for a unicorn to call me with a great deal on an oxygen bottle. I gave up today and got a price from Airgas, so tomorrow I’ll buy a bottle of my very own, and I’ll heat the ears and bend them back into line. Then I’ll weld some gussets in the corners to make them stiffer.

My pins are also bent. I guess that’s because they’re Chinese. I’m thinking I’ll replace two short pins with one long 7/8″ bar of solid steel. Not sure yet. It would be a pain to remove if it got bent. I could put some kind of coupler in the middle of it. It doesn’t have to be that strong in the middle. It just has to resist flexing, and there would be very little torque in the middle.

When I get the gas, I’ll pick up gusset material and a steel bar. I also plan to get an 18″ square piece of 1/4″ steel to turn into a steak griddle. I’m going to use my Offroad SWAG finger brake to turn it into a pan, and I’ll weld the corners shut to keep grease from pouring out.

That finger brake is a godsend. It opens up a whole new world of projects most people can’t hope to do even with a $1500 standalone brake.

I’ve also cut a bunch of annoying trees that looked like they had STD’s. Good riddance.

It’s nice to be going into fall in an industrious mood. Generally, my pattern is to work hard during the summer, which is miserably hot, and then sit around doing very little when the weather is good. It’s not a great way to get things done, and it can lead to additional problems such as death from heat stroke.

If I can get these things done, it almost seems like I should be able to blacktop the driveway. Is that hubris? I already have a bucket of goo and a squeegee.

I wish I could go to Airgas right now for my oxygen, but they won’t have any until tonight. Guess it’s time for a propane burger.

Elizabeth Warren Would Love it

I love my Savage 93R for two reasons. First, it shoots sub-MOA for very little money, with nearly no recoil. Second, it has a little Indian chief head on it. Savage got rid of this classic logo a while ago, for obvious reasons. By “obvious reasons,” I mean they chickened out. Maybe they should put a chicken on their rifles.

The other day I cut a piece out of the trigger spring, and then I tested the gun. I posted a picture of the target here. It shows the gun is probably a consistent sub-MOA shooter when you do things right. I don’t always do things right, so I can’t swear to it.

It’s too rainy to shoot, so I have been working on the gun.

Today I cut half a coil out of the trigger spring. I plan to keep going until I like the pull or the gun quits working. I also milled some plastic out of the stock.

Rifle people say a gun’s barrel should be “free-floated” in order to make it accurate. That means nothing touches the barrel forward of the receiver. A free-floated receiver has a very rigid connection to the stock down by the receiver, and past that point, you can slide a piece of paper between the barrel and stock and run it up and down the barrel without hindrance.

My gun probably cost $275, and it has a plastic stock not much fancier than a molded toilet seat, but the barrel was free-floated from the factory, and the stock is rigid, so it doesn’t touch the barrel when you rest the gun on the forward part of the stock. It works, it’s not like some floppy horror stocks Savage has made. I think they make a few disposable stocks because they expect people to replace them.

I was fooling with the gun, and I noticed it was not free-floating all the way to the receiver. The barrel has a fat section adjoining the receiver, and it was touching the stock. The fat part is around 4 inches long. Toward the back, a knob sort of thing projects downward and butts up against a recess in the plastic, so you can’t free-float it where the knob is located, but I had maybe three inches of barrel-to-stock contact I could get rid of.

I tried using a Dremel tool, but it was sloppy work, so I stuck the stock in my mill vise.

I would say I took about 40 thousandths off the inside of the stock on each side. Now I can run a piece of paper all the way up to the knob or lug or whatever that hangs off the barrel.

Does it matter? Will it make the gun more accurate? I don’t know. It can’t make it LESS accurate, so I figured I should try it.

I could just drop $150 on an aftermarket stock, but why? It looks like there is no reason to do it. The current stock is light, comfortable, and functional, and it’s impervious to water. I feel like I should take it as far as it will go.

Maybe the sun will come out tomorrow. I look forward to seeing what the trigger work, stock reduction, and recent practice will do for me.

Trump Admits He’s not God

I suppose I should blog about God a little bit.

First of all, I wonder how many people have seen Trump’s recent remarks about God. He was in Minnesota, giving an unscheduled talk beside Air Force One. He was talking about the economy, and he said this:

“You know what that is? That’s right. That’s God testing me,” Trump explained. “He said, You know, you did it once. And I said, ‘Did I do a great job, God? I’m the only one who could do it.’ He said, ‘That you shouldn’t say. Now we’re going to have you do it again.’ I said, ‘OK. I agree. You got me.’ But I did it once. And now I’m doing it again. And you see the kind of numbers that we’re putting up. They’re unbelievable. Best job numbers ever. Three months, more jobs in the last three months than ever before.”

I think this is great. I believe he talks to God. I don’t think he’s lying. There is too much evidence out there to deny that he has turned to God in recent years, whether or not you think he’s a good example to other Christians. I am pleasantly surprised to see him show some humility. I didn’t think he knew pride was bad. If he believes God told him he shouldn’t take credit for his success, it’s an indication that he’s growing.

We all know his faults. There is no point in denying them. But Christianity is a process, not a state. We accept Christians who do yoga and have illegitimate babies in strings, but we get upset because Trump owns casinos and has a history of adultery. Who knows what he’ll be like 5 years from now? If your direction is right, your location can’t stop you.

Here’s another thing: I got a nice revelation yesterday, and it looks like it’s surprisingly powerful. It’s very simple. When I interact with another person, or I think of another person, or I see another person, I think, “What can I do for him?” Generally, there is nothing I can do by earthly means, but I can still pray, so that’s what I do.

It sounds like a big nothing, but it isn’t. When you ask yourself what you can do for someone else, it changes your inclinations. Maybe the person is someone who makes you angry. Maybe it’s someone you like. Maybe it’s someone you feel a counterproduction sexual attraction to. When you ask yourself what you can do for that person, your attention shifts away from selfish ideation, and you get a chance to pour God’s benevolence into the world through prayer or other means.

I believe in charity. It’s extremely important. It’s important to do things for people. I have felt this way for many years. Having these beliefs isn’t as powerful as asking yourself what you can do for people. I can’t explain it, but I suggest you try it. I’m making it a habit.

Praying for people isn’t a negligible service. Prayer is more powerful than anything else you can do. You shouldn’t feel you’ve done nothing because all you did was pray. That’s crazy.

The Bible says faith works through love. My sense is that love behaves like a supernatural lubricant that allows faith to flow. I suppose this is because we should be exercising our faith to get things we pray for out of love, not selfishness or duty.

We always wonder why our prayers aren’t answered. Maybe a lot of answers are stuck in the pipe because there is no lubricant. I’ve seen healers tell people they can’t be healed because they don’t forgive. It’s consistent with the notion of love as a supernatural grease.

This morning, I thought about a Bible passage:

There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.

The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.

The second verse says the generous “soul” shall be made fat. To me, that suggests it’s important to be generous in your mind and heart, not just in your actions. If you make a practice of asking yourself what you can do for other people, you make your soul serve God.

The word translated “made fat” can mean “oiled.”

It all makes sense. The Bible says we are servants. What do servants say when they meet people? What does every clerk in every store say when you walk up? “How can I help you?” They know they’re servants, and Christians generally don’t have the same mindset. We’re always running around squawking, “God heal me! God protect me! God give me stuff so I won’t be poor!” We’re too busy on defense to think about offense. Conquest is all about offense. You can’t conquer by sitting behind a wall, hoping your enemies go away.

Anyway, try it. See what you think. It costs you nothing, and it’s as easy as a thing can be.

Final thing: something wild is going on with my shoulder. My gallbladder is not exemplary, although it’s not bad enough to cause attacks or require surgery. The main problem it causes me is shoulder pain. For some reason, gallbladder issues can generate referred pain in your shoulder, neck, or back.

For quite a while, I’ve had a problem putting my right arm behind my back. I didn’t go to a doctor. I try to get God’s healing and correction when I have a problem, and doctors are useless when it comes to gallbladder disorders. Generally, their kneejerk response is to remove your gallbladder, leaving you unable to digest fat, with a high probability of continued pain from stones. They don’t even try to fix gallbladders.

I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the shoulder itself.

The other day, I moved my arm around to loosen it up, and I heard crackling sounds. I wondered what was up. Maybe my gallbladder wasn’t the problem. Maybe the cartilage in my shoulder had disintegrated. I wondered whether I would have to give up and go to a witch doctor (my term for MD’s). I moved my shoulder vigorously, trying to reproduce the sound. The more I moved it, the less noise I heard. When I stopped, my shoulder felt better and had more mobility.

For the last few days, I’ve been doing this from time to time. It’s better than going to a witch doctor and letting him cut up and damage something God might be planning to heal.

This morning, I reached behind myself for some reason. I can’t remember what it was. Maybe I was scratching. Anyway, I realized my arm was way back there, and I wasn’t feeling pain. I did it without thinking. So now I can reach maybe a foot farther back before I feel discomfort. The change coincides with the revelation about doing things for people.

Thought I should put it out there. I don’t know what will happen next, but I’m thrilled to be feeling better. I went to a Last Reformation event in 2019 and asked for prayer for my shoulder, and I didn’t get results. Maybe God was telling me I needed to think about other people differently.

Yesterday I bucked and moved a tree by myself. I think I took 5 tractor loads to the burn pile, and a lot of the wood had to be lifted onto the tractor by yours truly. I’m out of shape. I don’t exercise. I’m old. I feel great today. I’m not sore or stiff. That’s a blessing. I’m thinking of cutting the rest of the tree down today.

I cut the tree in the middle of the day in August, in Florida. It was not raining. The temperature should have been 98 degrees, and I should have gotten a sunburn. My clothes should have been drenched with sweat. The sun was very gentle. I don’t think we ever broke 90. I didn’t sweat much at all. No problems.

I think I’m doing well for my age. I may look like Wilford Brimley’s dad, but I have a lot of energy, and everything works pretty well. I’ve seen other people my age, or younger, whose condition scared me. I keep hoping I can improve my body’s state by finding out what God is trying to get me to confess and repent of.

People get mad when you say their physical problems come from sin and ignorance. Where else would they come from? Are diseases rewards for righteousness? If the suggestion that your sins or your ignorance are making you sick makes you angry, you have exactly the kind of problem that perpetuates curses. You need to grow up and stop playing the victim.

It may be time to fire up the pole saw. Can’t wait to get the rest of that tree out of my life.

Tree? What Tree?

It’s amazing how many things you can do when the alternative is shoveling out a big wad of cash.

The people who built my house left a large mangy oak in the driveway circle out front. It was originally a double-trunked tree, but by the time I got here, one trunk was gone, and the other leaned away from the house at a 20-degree angle. This remaining trunk had a fork about 30 feet up. A few weeks back, I felt the house shake, and I went out and saw that one fork was lying in the driveway.

I was glad to see it, because I had been wanting to cut the tree, and cutting a leaning tree with a big fork is not easy to do safely.

Yesterday, I went outside and saw that the other fork had snapped off. Great news, right? Not really. It had fallen into another tree. The broken tree was bent at a 90-degree angle, and the upper fork was resting in the top of the second tree. The trees were on different sides of the driveway, so the upper fork was set to land in the driveway as soon as the joint gave out.

Trees and tree parts that hang over areas where people are likely to be found are called “widowmakers” for obvious reasons. Tree surgeous hate them. A widowmaker can fall with tremendous energy, very quickly, without making much of a sound.

I stared and stared at the tree, trying to figure out what to do. I could not cut the base of the broken tree, because that would release the widowmaker, and there was no way to tell what would happen. Also, the part of the tree that was still standing was rotten and might split, creating what’s known as a “barber chair.” A barber-chaired trunk can spring up in one direction and come down in another very quickly, and what happens to you if you’re under it is like what happens when you step on a roach.

I called a local service with great reviews. I didn’t call my usual service because they had given me a $1000 estimate to put the entire tree on the ground. I thought that was insane for 20 minutes’ work. The new outfit came out, left, and sent me an estimate: $1300. For that, they would drop the widowmaker, get rid of a nasty smaller tree nearby, and haul the debris, which I had told them I would do myself.

They also said they might not be able to do the work for two weeks. During that time, I would have to worry about UPS and Fedex drivers who might drive around my pickup, which I had parked in the driveway to keep traffic out.

Suddenly, I had a lot more enthusiasm for cutting the tree myself.

I went to Tractor Supply and bought a 30-foot tow strap, 100 feet of thin nylon cord, and one of those nylon straps you use to buckle cargo down.

I came back to the house, tied a weight to the end of a fishing line, and made a cast. On the first try, the weight went over the widowmaker and landed on the driveway. I tied the thin nylon rope to the fishing line and pulled on it, and that gave me a widowmaker with nylon rope draped over it. I joined the new strap to my old one, end-to-end, giving me a 60-foot strap. I used the nylon line to hoist the straps over the log. Then I ran a 3/8″ chain through the free ends of the straps. I tied a rope to my tractor and connected the chain to the rope.

After a few pulls, the widowmaker came down. Wonderful. I was 40 feet away, in no danger at all. An hour or so later, the widowmaker was out in the pasture, and the cows were eating its leaves. They’re so weird. They think my tractor is the ice cream truck.

I saved myself $1230, and I came out of it with some rope, a tow strap, and a cargo strap. Instead of nothing.

I still have to cut the rest of the broken tree down. I’ll put the cargo strap around it to prevent it from barber-chairing, and I’ll drop it in the driveway. Two to three hours of easy work. The difficult job will be removing the stump.

I would have been happy to give the tree people $500 or even $600, but $1300 seemed like robbery to me. They would have been here about an hour, and they wouldn’t have saved me much work. Maybe I’m cheap. I thought the estimate was way out of line. Even if they had left the tree on the ground, they would have expected $1100, and I would have provided 90% of the labor.

If an old man like me can do a job in an hour without breaking much of a sweat, you probably shouldn’t try to charge $1300. I think they’re overcharging right now because it’s hurricane season. They said people were bugging them to cut trees because of that.

I’m so glad that tree is going away. It was a thorn in my side. I told the tree people they could give me an estimate for grinding the stump, but I have a feeling they’ll be too high. I can get rid of it myself with a chainsaw and a shovel, so I am not open to high three-figure estimates. Time to look for a second peach tree.

It was beautiful, watching that weight sail over the widowmaker in just the right place.

Of course, I prayed about everything in advance.

Now all I have to worry about is a minor roof issue. Wonder what they’ll try to charge me for that.

Shooting Platform Finished

I feel like I got my life back just now. I put my new shooting platform down in the pasture. Photos below.

Here, I’m seeing if the tractor forks tear the platform up before lifting it.

Here, I’ve decided to go for it.

Here, you can see the cattle resenting me for disturbing their rest.

Here, I’ve selected the platform’s location.

Here, the platform is situated in its final resting place.

The pasture has an old wooden fort sort of thing designed for kids. It’s not in great shape, and I’m not all that interested in swingsets and so on, so I don’t maintain it. I considered putting a new roof on it and using it as a place to sit while I wait for varmints. Decided not to do it. Anyway, the best and safest location for the platform lines me up so I shoot under the fort.

The tractor didn’t damage the platform at all. If you tried, you could find some little marks where the forks pressed against the wood. That’s about it.

I can move it whenever I want, so if I get brave and decide I want to shoot at 400 yard, I can do it. I have to balance my desire to shoot well against my desire to not shoot the neighbors and go to prison.

The dangers of outdoor shooting, for responsible people who shoot well, are not as great as one might think. The odds of my firing a shot so wild it would leave my property are infinitesimal. The odds of a guest firing such a shot are considerably greater, so it may well be that no one except me will ever be allowed to use the platform.

Hitting another house would be pretty difficult. In addition to missing the berm and the ground past it, you would probably have to shoot several hundred times just to have one shot make it through the woods.

I’ve let noobs shoot pistols at short range on my property, and I let two people I knew were not idiots shoot rifles, but that’s about as far as I’ll go. I have never let anyone shoot without me present.

What to do now?

It’s blistering hot. Do I really want to go out there and shoot? I guess I should. Laziness always finds an excuse. I put a roof on my platform to make excuses harder to swallow.

I hope things work out well. For all the expense and work, I think I should receive a substantial return.

“Log Entry; July 19: Today we Observed the Hate Blogger Completing Some Sort of Alt-Right Assassination Platform”

The air at my house is heavy with smugness. I finished building my prone shooting platform today. Here she is.

The paint on the plywood is tough but not well-executed. I am not a good painter. I did what I could, but it still has weird irregularities in it. I don’t think it will matter out in the pasture.

I put two quasi-diagonal braces on it to make sure it stays square from side to side. I may put one on one of the long sides. I can’t put one on the left side, because that’s the side where I’ll enter the platform.

I bought some hardware cloth. It’s not cloth. It’s wire. It’s like square chicken wire. I plan to fasten it to the right side of the platform to send spent casings back inside. It will be better than chasing them around the pasture.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to carry the platform a quarter-mile with the tractor.

My plan is to put long pieces of lumber under the platform from end to end. There are three crossmembers under the plywood, and the long pieces of lumber will push up on them as well as the two-by-sixes on the ends. This ought to allow me to lift the platform without damaging it.

Taking the platform apart and reassembling it in the pasture would be a bigger and more damaging job than moving it with the tractor, so it’s the tractor or nothing.

Once I get it situated, I have to make sure it’s oriented so a rifle on a bipod will not be hard to aim at the berm. If it points up or down too much, the platform will have to be adjusted. I don’t see it happening, because I’ve shot from the ground where the platform will sit, and it wasn’t a problem.

I truly hope the cows will not be energetic enough to try to wedge their fat rear ends inside this thing. I tried to make it inconvenient for them. They have no respect. When you have cattle, you can’t have nice things.

This was a pretty tough job, mainly because of the weather. When it wasn’t raining, I was usually in direct sun with no help from clouds. Water goes in one end of me, and nothing comes out the other.

This year, it’s not hot by local standards, so I should be grateful.

I used my 12″ sliding miter saw to make this. I had been thinking of putting it on Craigslist, because I have a beautiful Powermatic 66 table saw which is easier to use for almost everything, and I also have a 19″ vertical band saw and a small 10″ miter saw.

It turns out it’s much easier to cut long, thin pieces of lumber on the 12″ sliding saw, especially if you make angled cuts. I had dreamed of opening up some space in the workshop. Not any more. The saw has earned its keep. I paid $300 for it when Home Depot had it on sale. That was a score. I had to add the Ridgid mobile base in order to make the saw useful.

This little saw (little compared to a Powermatic 66) can be rolled outdoors, so sawdust isn’t a problem. The dust goes where it goes, and you leave it there. It’s good for the yard. That’s my story.

The platform is ready to use. Maybe now I’ll actually be able to shoot my fancy new gun. That would be wonderful.

80%

It’s remarkable how complicated it is, building a decent shooting platform.

You would think you could grab some two-by-fours and a sheet of plywood and a few nails and get it over with, and I guess that’s true, but when your platform was done, you would have the following issues:

1. Splinters
2. Rot
3. Rain
4. Sun exposure
5. General disgrace

It would also be pretty hard to take your platform apart and move it.

I decided to use 1/2″ plywood for my shooting surface, and of course, I could not get anything that was treated to resist bugs or water. That means the wood has to be sealed. Like just about all Home Depot plywood, it was also flawed and likely to put splinters in me. It also had a flap of wood that was trying to come loose on one edge.

Day before yesterday, I took an orbital sander and spent 20 minutes sanding my plywood. Then I had to decide what to do about sealing it.

They sell sealers for decks. I thought this was a bad idea. Sealers don’t improve the surface of wood. I wanted a smooth barrier. I finally decided on Rust-Oleum farm implement paint. That meant I had to spend $35 on primer and paint.

“Primer? Who uses primer?” I can hear people thinking it. People named Bubba don’t use primer, and their 3-can camo paint flakes off later. I’m spending around $200 on materials, and I don’t want to have to do anything over a year from now. I want my paint to stay put.

Yesterday I went to get the primer and paint, but I realized I couldn’t paint without fixing the loose flap. That decision cost me a day. I shot Titebond III glue under the flap, put a piece of steel plate over it, and put a clamp on the plate to force it against the wood and flatten the flap. The clamp has been in place since yesterday.

This morning, I realized I had to do something about the edges of the plywood, because rain would go in through them and make the plies come apart. I didn’t think paint would do much good.

I decided to use Flex-Seal or truck bed coating on the edges. Either one should be fine. I just need something that will resist water long enough for it to dry up or run out of the platform.

Today I have to tape up the plywood to keep the waterproofing stuff off the sides, and I have to blast the edges to seal them up. With any luck, I’ll be able to apply primer today. That may take a day to dry. To get the wood primed and painted, I may need three days.

After that, it should be easy to put the roof on. One nice thing is that I’ll have a platform to stand on while I do it.

I’m thinking of putting some screen on the right side of the platform to keep semiauto casings from flying out, but that would bounce them back at me. I guess I’ll be okay as long as I wear a shirt. Guys named Bubba shoot without a shirt. A true Bubba never shoots or drives without removing his T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off.

I’ll put up a photo of what I have now. Picture it with a roof. You won’t be impressed, but I don’t think you’ll fear for my safety.

The roof should be very helpful. The platform will be in a shady area, but shade is not reliable in my pasture. The sun sneaks around the trees.

What next? Maybe I’ll build a bench to sit on. Or I could just toss a couple of $17 plastic chairs out there. That probably makes more sense.

When you’re shooting from a rest that isn’t concrete or part of a mountain, you can’t let anyone touch it, because it will wiggle. I can’t let people sit on the platform. If you think about it, a 1/100″ movement at the tip of your barrel will move your bullet’s impact about an inch at 100 yards. That’s more than enough to be annoying. We’re talking about the thickness of two and a half sheets of paper.

The Bubbacious failings of my platform will be due to lack of skill more than a Bubba attitude. I’m trying to do it well. Unfortunately, doing a B+ job takes about a week, as compared to a 90-minute Bubbathon. You know what they say. Ten percent of the work takes 90 percent of the time.