Salt Really Works

I have two pones of tasty bacon-grease cornbread in the oven. This will be a real test of my deliverance from gluttony. The smell of that stuff alone can put five pounds on you.

After this, I make pies. After that, I mix the dressing and put it in a 9 x 13 Pyrex pan and store it until tomorrow. I may also break the beans and put them in a pot with a ham hock. If I get all that done, I won’t have all that much to do tomorrow.

I think I’m going to nail that Ebay drill press. The price is just too good. It has a split head, so even if there’s slop, I should be able to adjust it out. And with the money I save, I can put a 3-phase motor and VFD on it and still come out way ahead. I already found a new Baldor cheap.

It turns out it only has 5″ of quill travel, but I can tolerate that.

I used my big Lodge skillet to make sausage and ham today. What a piece of junk. The surface inside it is pitted, even after I sanded it, and it gets hotter on one side than the other. Griswold skillets are completely superior. I have resumed my search for larger Griswolds to match the ones I already have. It’s not easy finding large-logo skillets without heat rings.

I know how to season cast iron. You ignore the stupid instructions that come with it. In particular, you ignore the 350-degree nonsense. You use pork fat, and you season at 450. I used to do 500, but it had a tendency to burn the seasoning in places.

What I have had trouble with is cleaning cast iron. I have three skillets I only use for cornbread, and they’re not a problem, since they never get dirty. The bread falls out without any problems. I have a #9 breakfast skillet which is also trouble-free. Eggs slide right out. My Lodge skillet is different. I fry meat in it.

I have always been told to use salt to clean cast iron. It sounded dumb, so I paid no attention, figuring a light application of water wouldn’t hurt the finish. Man, was I wrong. My skillet never looked good, and the water messed it up. I have been using salt lately, and it works great. I dump two or three tablespoons of salt in the skillet while it’s still warm and after the wet stuff has evaporated, and I scrape the bottom thoroughly with a spatula. Plastic spatulas work just as well as metal. Then I give the skillet a brief squirt with water to knock the salt off. I should probably just use paper towels, but because I use so little water, I’m not disturbing the seasoning.

If I can get a #10 and #11 skillet in good shape, I’ll use cast iron more often. If I were less picky about getting really nice skillets that match the others, I’d be able to get one fast, for a low price. Oh well.

Drill Press

Some dude is trying to sell a Delta 17-430 drill press near me. This thing has a 1 HP motor and 6″ of spindle travel. Speeds between 385 and 2240 RPM. He wants $219. He could get more if he was willing to ship, but he’s not.

It’s tempting. These machines retail for outrageous money. I thought I would never need a drill press after I got the milling machine, but now that I know what a pain it is to move the vise and rotary table off of the table, I can see how a separate machine would be good to have. And since I no longer have any hope of parking in the garage, space is no issue.

I think he got it for $50 at a school auction, because a similar press turns up in searches at publicauctions.whatever.

I will try to avoid buying it.

Workout + Food

I learned a few things about making sausage today.

1. Sausage has sugar in it. Or at least it can.

2. If you use a hand grinder, you have to get the ring that holds the grinder together on as tightly as possible. Otherwise, the blade will fail to cut long fibers of meat as they pass through, and the grinder will clog.

3. Do not use a hand grinder unless you are a masochist or in need of bust development.

4. Picnic hams appear incredibly fatty when you grind them, but they’re actually too lean for sausage.

I took my brined hams and ground them up (nightmare), and then I used this recipe:

INGREDIENTS

10 lbs. pork
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tsp. black pepper
2 tsp. cayenne
1 tbsp. paprika
1/4 cup salt
2 tbsp. sage
1/2 lb. El Cochinito brand lard

I added the lard because the test pieces I fried made almost no grease, and that’s unacceptable. I guess next time I’ll find a way to get more fat into the meat. Maybe I should buy pork loins at Costco and mix them with plain old fatback. Costco loins are cheap, and the quality is great. The picnic hams are okay, but they’re hard to cut up, and I suspect the meat is not as good for sausage as loins are. I’ve never had a gamy loin chop, but picnic hams are hit and miss.

The recipe I started with contained no paprika, and it only used two tbsp. of pepper. I thought the first test piece was a little bland, hence the pepper. I would cut the brown sugar to 3/8 cup next time. A little garlic wouldn’t hurt. I think powder would be better than fresh for this use.

I wonder if I could substitute frozen apple juice concentrate for the sugar. That would rock.

I ended up with 11 pounds of sausage. I intended to can it, but I couldn’t make myself make sausage without sage in it. It seemed immoral somehow. And you can’t can it if it contains sage. I shaped the sausage into 11 one-pound loaves and put them in the freezer to firm up. When they’re hard, I’ll seal ten of them in bags and freeze them. The other one is for immediate use.

This stuff will be much better than store sausage, mainly because of the paprika. When I made the first test piece, I thought it was a little sweet, and I thought it needed more pepper, and I knew there was something else missing. I concentrated hard, and then I knew the answer. I made two more test pieces, with paprika in one piece. It turned out to be exactly what was needed. This amount of sage is fairly light, but I didn’t mind that.

If I were going to can this stuff, I’d jack the cayenne and black pepper up by at least one teaspoon each, because I’d have to remove the sage, and that would make the sausage too mild.

It’s sad that the sausage is better than store sausage, because now I’m spoiled. Oh well.

I Will Adorn it With Crosses in Honor of My President

I got my Saiga-12 fixed up. I haven’t machined the receiver for the new buttstock, but I got the new trigger guard and fire control group installed. The buttstock will be very easy compared to this other stuff.

I learned a lot from the people at Saiga-12.com. They are extremely helpful and patient.

Some tips for people who do their own conversions:

1. Go to the forum at Saiga-12.com for help. Those guys are fantastic.

2. Don’t forget to take out whatever is retaining the trigger and hammer pins before trying to tap them out of the receiver.

3. Use a center drill (Google it) to start the holes when you drill out the rivets on the Hillary-style trigger guard and the old trigger group. Use a drill press or milling machine to start the holes on the trigger guard rivets, if possible.

4. When you take out the bolt hold open lever and spring, make sure you sketch the location and orientation of the parts. They make no sense, and if you look for pictures online, you’ll find stuff that’s misleading.

5. When you put the gun back together, install the safety lever first. Trust me.

6. If you have a Tromix fire control group, the big V-shaped retaining spring for the hammer and fire control group pins should be oriented with the point of the V toward the back of the gun. If it won’t click into place, open the loop at the point of the V slightly and try again.

7. When you install a Tromix fire control group, the hammer goes in backwards.

8. To reinstall the BHO lever and spring, do this. Drop the trigger in. Put the pin in it. Make a 1/8″-long (or shorter) bend in the short end of the spring, so it catches the little projection on the lever. Drop the spring into the receiver. Run the pin through it, into the far side of the receiver. Drop the BHO lever in. Make yourself a tool from a paper clip (don’t use a dental pick). Straighten the clip and make a tiny hook at one end, just big enough to hold the spring wire. Make a bigger hook at the other end, big enough to go around a screwdriver shaft. Catch the spring end in the little hook, put a screwdriver in the big hook, and use the screwdriver shaft as a handle to pull the spring end toward the muzzle of the gun. You should be able to drop the spring end onto the projection on the lever. This tip is worth its weight in gold. You don’t need the BHO lever, so you can throw it out if you want.

I find it amusing that “BHO” stands for “bolt hold open” as well as B. Hussein Obama.

9. Don’t worry about scratching the finish on the gun, because it’s no good and will need to be replaced. Use aluminum oxide 120 grit to blast the old crap off, and then coat the gun with Norrell’s moly resin or Brownell’s aerosol equivalent. You can use Norrell’s on the inside of the receiver, because it’s too thin to interfere with moving parts. Not sure about Brownell’s. Glass bead blasting will result in a finish that falls off.

That’s about it. I learned some of this stuff from experience and some by begging and Googling.

Now it’s time to relax and have a healthy dinner of ham hocks, fried apples, and mustard greens.

Pre-conversion:

Post-half-conversion:

Mr. Kalashnikov’s Latest Must-Have

Last night I finally got to work on my Saiga 12 conversion.

For those of you who are behind the Bible-and-gun-clinging curve, the Saiga 12 is an AK-47 12-gauge shotgun. It’s magical. Low recoil, a clip instead of a tubular magazine [someone tell me the right name for “clip” and I’ll put it in, but “magazine” obviously doesn’t work], and AK reliability and simplicity, plus you can get one for 500 bucks. Hmm…way over a thousand for a Gucci semiauto that holds fewer rounds and has a lame tubular magazine, or $500 for an AK that shoots buckshot? Real hard choice there.

For reasons too boring to go into, the government makes the Russians put a bunch of pansy parts on the Saiga, in order to make it resemble a sporting gun. Picture yourself hunting ducks with this thing. Insane. As soon as you buy one, you’re supposed to buy other parts to make it work properly. You move the trigger forward, add a pistol grip, and get rid of the silly Elmer-Fudd-style buttstock. You can also get magazines holding up to 12 rounds, but for some reason, the 8-round jobs are favored.

You have to drill out rivets and mill off unneeded tabs and so on. I got my parts a long time ago, but I didn’t have machine tools, so I put off doing the conversion. Last night I decided to attack.

The milling machine made the work a lot less nerve-wracking. I got the rivets out without damaging the gun. Putting the new fire control group (“trigger and stuff”) in the gun was a horror. The Tapco parts I ordered did not come with instructions, so there was a lot of painful trial and error. My fingers are sore today, but I got the parts in there. I still have to add everything up and make sure the result is legal.

Now the trigger spring needs to be bent. Kalashnikovs come with strange springs made of twisted wires, and they’re sloppily made. The one I have isn’t bent correctly. It didn’t matter with the old parts, but the new parts don’t like it. Only one arm of the spring is doing anything, so there isn’t much pressure on the trigger, which means it can release the hammer with very little provocation. As a result, when you cock the gun, it doesn’t stay cocked. The hammer falls when the bolt goes forward. I would guess that if I tried to shoot it, the result would be rapid fire, followed by hilarity with the range officers and the power-mad goons fine public servants at the BATF.

I wanted to ship the gun to a smith who does conversions, but thanks to Obama, they are backed up until the year 3000.

The finish on this gun is horrible. It’s a crinkly black coating which flakes off when you look at it hard. And the area that used to be covered by the old trigger guard is bare. I’m going to have to put something on it. I’ll take a look and see if the professionals are still backed up. If not, I’ll send it off. If I can’t do that, I’ll have to use one of the coatings they sell for home use. That will require blasting the parts. What a pain. On the up side, the sight of me doing this in the front yard will have a positive effect on the attitudes of my neighbors.

In the meantime, I guess I can cover the bare areas with Super Blue.

I still have to mill some stuff off. It makes me nervous, putting the gun in my machining vise. I put wooden shims beside it and paper towels under it. Seems to work.

It looks like the Jacobs chuck I got on Ebay, trying to save money, is a piece of junk. With a small drill bit, the runout nearly exceeds the bit’s diameter. With a large bit, the chuck keeps falling off the arbor. I don’t think the arbor is the problem. I can indicate it and see. My used Albrecht chuck is perfect; I just assumed a Jacobs chuck that looked good in photos would be okay. Wrong.

My father is all interested in Martin County, which is up the coast a ways. He wants a waterfront place. I would much prefer inland. I want land around me when cling to my reactionary paraphernalia and grow food and can beans. A waterfront house on half an acre costs more than a mansion–that term is no exaggeration–on five or ten acres farther inland.

The older I get, the less boating does for me. It’s a lot of work. The boat always has mechanical problems which I have to fix (or fail to fix after hours in the sweaty, greasy bilge). I invariably get sunburned. I can’t get my friends to learn to do things for themselves, like tying knots and rigging baits, and they often show up hung over. Also, Miami boaters are even ruder than Miami landlubbers, which is saying a great deal. They make fishing unpleasant. My dad enjoys it tremendously, though, so that makes it worthwhile for me. It appears that it will negatively affect our choice of properties, however.

Given the giant differential between waterfront and inland real estate prices, coupled with the collapse of the Florida real estate market, I suppose there is no reason why I couldn’t get some land of my own, not too far from our compound. That would mean paying for additional razor wire and land mines. And of course, a second pair of Rottweilers trained to eat Jehovah’s Witnesses, Omaha Steaks representatives, and mimes. And burglars and murderers, I guess, although they don’t disturb me nearly as much.

Have you seen the Omaha Steaks people? Them and the other food truck guys? It’s very sad. The companies that sell this dubious food convince them to blow their savings on refrigerated pickups full of things no one wants, and here is their sales secret: knock on the door, start backing up toward your truck, and say you want to show the mark something. If you want to freak one out, don’t budge. The natural human instinct is to follow someone who says he wants to show you something. If you don’t move, it ruins the pitch.

You never see those guys twice. I guess they all go out of business. It’s awful to con someone into investing in a business you know is almost certain to fail. Especially when it involves sales, which is full of psychic trauma to begin with.

If I were going north by myself, I’d be looking at northern Georgia and southern Tennessee. I love Eastern Kentucky, but it’s a depressing place. People just don’t do well there; it’s as if the land rejects them. And the corruption, racism, and unnecessary ignorance wear me down. It’s bad enough that I have to hear the word “nigger” in rap music pouring out of car windows. I don’t need to hear it from people I know, in my own living room. One of the great things about charismatic churches in the South is that they’re destroying racism. It would be nice to live in an area where charismatics are big.

Some areas of Appalachia are more blessed than others; that’s the simple truth. Maybe I could find one. I keep thinking about the area around Chattanooga. Check this property out: CLICK. How about that? Room for a garden! It also has a basement for MACHINE TOOLS. The price is $265,000, so call it 250. Down here, that gets you a 2-bedroom shed in Little Havana with a Cuban-style paved yard. And this house is in an area full of holy rollers, so I’ll fit right in. “The Lord told me I needed a surface grinder and a Barrett .50-caliber rifle.” “You TOO?” “I got a couple I’m trying to sell.” “My mom is believing for a new AR-15.”

Somebody I believe to be honest and in touch with God claims the US is headed for a famine. He says this has been revealed to him. I wonder if it’s true. So many Christians are bugging out.

I can’t relate to the desire to be in a big flashy town. I have always been disgusted and bored by social climbing, and I cook so well, I have little enthusiasm for restaurants. Cultural offerings tend to be pretty sordid these days. I don’t go to movies or concerts. I have never had any inclination to support a sports team associated with a city; I find the concept perverse and tiresome. There is a kind of shallowness associated with a desire to be in big, well-known cities. I would rather live among nice people, with a little ground around me. Hopefully God will see fit to find the right place for me.

Gasket Troubles

Last night a dreadful thing happened. I had seven pints of chili in the pressure canner, and suddenly, I heard a loud hiss. The gasket wasn’t sealing right.

The pressure began to drop. Not knowing what else to do, I cranked up the heat to raise the pressure, and I kept the chili going for the required time. At the end I could tell some juice had leaked past the jar seals, but they sealed up anyway.

I can’t figure out what’s wrong. The gasket looks fine. When I bought the canner, the manual said to scrub all the oil off everything. The gasket had a lot of grease on it, so I scrubbed it, too. Maybe that was stupid. Maybe the grease helped it seal.

Now I’m experimenting with it. I oiled it with olive oil, and I’m heating the canner. I can’t get a new gasket until Monday.

This morning I heard several “poink” sounds from the kitchen. I figured my canned stuff was opening up. But when I checked all the jars, they looked fine. I really hope I don’t get botulism. I want to have a nice smile at my funeral.

Still have to make pork sausage. Even if I can’t can it, I can get it ready for frying.

Pints of Pain

In case you’re interested, my chili recipe yields a little over seven pints. I filled seven Ball jars, and I had enough left over for a tiny snack.

I hope this works. Imagine the convenience of having truly phenomenal chili in a jar.

Mike called while I was cooking. He’s all upset now, because he has no canning technology. He wants to make his grandmother’s spicy pickles. I told him about Goodmans.net.

My Ball Blue Book arrived today. It’s the Bible of canning. Well, it would be. If we canners didn’t already have real Bibles to cling to bitterly.

I made these pints mild (by my standards), so I could donate them to my dad. The next seven are MINE, and they will probably melt their own lids.

Accuse Them of Lying to Get Warranty Stuff

I ran down to Northern Tool and got a meat grinder and ordered a new pulley for my band saw. I am not sure they understand how customer relations works. The first guy I dealt with wanted me to pay for the pulley. I told him it was a warranty thing because it was defective. He said, “How do we know that?” I asked him how I could ever prove anything I bought was defective. Maybe I broke everything I ever got fixed on warranty.

Surely Northern Tool doesn’t train people to say crazy things like that. “I realize you’ve bought thousands of dollars’ worth of unneeded male toys here, but I feel entitled to question your honesty because you want a free eight-dollar part.”

“Thousands” is a bit of an exaggeration for me, but not for everyone who shops there.

They’re lucky I shop there at all. Here’s why. They charge more than the website, and if I buy over the web and I have a warranty issue, I can handle it from home. If I buy at the store, they may not have what I want, they’ll charge 20% more, I’ll definitely have to pay sales tax (I do that anyway these days), and if there’s a problem, I have to drive to the store all over again.

I’d shut up with that “how do we know that” business, if I worked there.

Here’s another reason to avoid their stores. They only keep computerized purchase records for three months. After that, you have to produce a receipt. If you don’t have a receipt, you have a problem. I don’t know how long the website keeps records, but I guarantee you, it’s at least three months, and you don’t have to wait twenty minutes while a manager pores over charge records.

Man, I would keep that “how do we know that” to myself. I really would.

I could have ordered this saw and had it shipped free of charge. No driving. Right on my porch.

Oh, boy. Seriously. Big mistake, telling the customer you think he’s a liar.

I may never shop there again, now that I’ve seen my own arguments against it. It seems like a dumb thing to do.

After Northern Tool, I hit the grocery. I got chili ingredients. I looked at chili-canning recipes online, and while I have no intention of using them, I got the information I needed. Seventy-five minutes at 11 psi. This is going to be fantastic. I hope.

Speaking of hope, I hope the grinder is okay. Some people say they’ve had great experiences with it. Others, not so much. Surely it can handle ten pounds of pork without too much trouble.

“We Could Raid the Fat Guy’s House if he Didn’t Have all Those Guns”

Is this the greatest day in the history of the world, or what? It’s 64° outside, I have nine new jars of home-canned sweet pickles, I have new tires on my diesel 4×4, and I’m sitting on what amounts to a small ammunition dump. Plus I’m enjoying big mug of decaffeinated coffee with half and half. All of the pleasure with none of the tics and irritability.

I’m trying to decide what else to can. I was really excited about pork sausage and pickles, but the pickles are done, the sausage isn’t going to be that much of a challenge, and I need to come up with other stuff.

I’m thinking beans. I bought a bunch of dried beans for SHTF purposes, but they become useless after about a year and a half, unless you know how to turn them into flour. They would be much more useful if they could be kept longer. And I just happen to make amazing bean soup. I make soup beans, black bean soup, and navy bean soup. It’s incredibly good.

If I can this stuff, I’ll have SHTF beans that will last much longer than dried beans. I think. I have to find out how long canned beans keep.

Man, this would be great. Pint jars full of tasty soup, waiting for cornbread and greens.

I guess the wet blankets will point out that beans are available in remarkable new inventions called cans. But they’re not as good, nor are they as much fun. I like Bush’s beans just fine, but it’s just plain stupid to compare them to real beans.

I wonder if I could can barbecue beans. I don’t see why not. Oh, man. Yes. What a convenience. BBQ beans plus browned smoked sausage! And I could can chili! My astounding Unauthentic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Chili, with tons of homemade chili powder and exotic peppers. Picture it, sitting in little jars, just waiting to rip the intestines out of unsuspecting wimps. Wow, would that be great. I could can the wuss version plus the manly version, and when I wanted to serve chili to people, I’d be able to keep the versions separate.

I’m so tired of lame chili. When I make it for myself, I can ratchet the heat up, but if even one other person eats with me, I’m forced to make it weak and silly.

CANNED DORO WAT! OH, BABY! I just thought of that! Canned Ethiopian-style chicken stew! Brutal and satisfying.

Oooh…canned collard greens with salt pork.

I have to hold onto something. This is too much.

If Obama continues working his economic magic, and I’m forced to eat stored food, I’ll eat better than I do right now. I wonder if chili will keep getting better in a jar, the way it does in the fridge.

I’m Googling around, and I see cautious people recommending a 1-year storage maximum, while others say that if the food passes inspection, you can keep it much, much longer. I just read about canned goods found on a ship that sunk in 1865. They were tested in 1974 and found to be okay.

I can tell you this. My grandmother never threw anything out in her life, unless it said “whiskey” on the label.

Stand in Awe of my Cukes

I ran some vital errands.

First, I got me some new canning jars and lids. Now I have enough to make the effort worthwhile. Then I found diesel at the incredible price of $2.68 per gallon. Around here, that’s cheap. If you drive around Miami, you’ll see $2.90 fairly often. Then I got me a bunch of pickling cucumbers. After that, I loaded up with two picnic hams. These are uncured pork shoulder parts. Should be good for sausage.

My plan is to brine the pork with baking soda to kill the taint. Then tomorrow I’ll do my best to make sausage and can it. It should work out to about $1.50 per pound. I guess it would have been smart to find out what ordinary sausage costs. For all I know, it’s less than that. But I don’t care. I want my canned sausage.

I learned something important. Costco is the pork source. Winn-Dixie is supposed to have whole shoulders for 79¢ per pound, but they were out. I can get gorgeous loins for like $1.79 at Costco, so presumably their shoulders are a lot cheaper.

I’m going to put calcium chloride in my pickles to see if it makes them crunchy.

Tomorrow I have to go to Northern Tool and get a meat grinder. I got my jars at Goodmans.net (their warehouse is nearby), and they sell grinders, but they were out of stock.

That place is hilarious. Every canning item in the universe–and most other items–is available there. They have a bank of pretty young latinas who help you with your order. I think they think it’s funny that a grown man comes in and fills his diesel pickup with Ball jars.

I’ll look less silly in the post-Obama wasteland, when everyone is starving and I’m stuffing myself with delicious canned sausage and dried apple pies. I’ll be sitting on top of the world.

More

Let’s see. I bought seven packages with four cucumbers in each. I ate maybe two and a half cucumbers. Now I have about 27 cups of slices. So each cucumber makes about one cup of slices.

Good thing to know, next time I shop for pickling cucumbers. Which should be in 2013, given that I just bought 50% more than I intended. I’m going to have a dozen pint jars full of these babies.

I checked into beans for pickling. The big pole beans were incredibly expensive. Like $2.50 per pound. The smaller green beans just didn’t look suitable.

I don’t know why the cucumbers I bought were labeled “salad cucumbers,” and I don’t understand why people call them “pickling cucumbers.” They taste a lot better than the nasty, greasy, waxed jumbo cucumbers I used to buy. I am all done with those. These are superior.

I can’t stand wax on my food. Think about it. You have some dirty guy in the back of the store, picking his nose and spitting, waxing the cucumbers with a filthy rag. And the wax permanently traps the filth on the food. It’s very hard to remove. And what is wax made from? Is it petroleum? I don’t want to eat that stuff. It’s a fat, for sure. What will it do to my arteries? I can’t even guess.

This is going to be beautiful, but once it’s done, I won’t get to practice again for months. I guess that’s the point, however.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, no pie.

Tires!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Can Wear Long Pants

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

$$$$$$$

I was hoping to get 5-10,000 miles out of the existing tires on the Death Star, but it looks like that fantasy has imploded. I found a nail in one of my tires this weekend, and when I removed it, I found it was impossible to insert a plug. Truck tires are pretty tough. I went to the local tire store, and they refused to patch the tire, citing tread wear, bad juju, El Niño, and global warming. This tire has around 30,000 miles on it. They claimed it could explode if they patched it. Not sure I see the logic, since an internal patch would be nowhere near the tread.

I told them to put my spare on so I could drive out. Oh, no. It was too worn. I asked how they expected me to get home.

Shocking news: they had some tires they wanted to sell me. Bridgestones. I don’t know how good Bridgestones are now, but they used to be awful. The one thing the Japanese made badly, other than food. I told the tire people I was not having their Bridgestones.

I already had tires picked out; I knew this day was coming. I had chosen the General HST Grabber. Everyone seems to love it. And some tires get terrible reviews, so I wasn’t about to gamble on some random Bridgestone. I managed to get them to put my spare on the truck.

Since yesterday I’ve been trying to line up a deal. The tire store I dealt with first is a Firestone. They told me yesterday that they could get the Generals in less than a day. I told them to give me a quote as soon as they could, i.e. today. Then I got a quote from a General dealer, and it was actually higher! Now the Firestone people are telling me they can’t get the tires until Wednesday. Oddly, the spare tire that terrified them on Sunday is now okay to use until Wednesday.

I looked into road hazard warranties. Apparently, tire companies have entire corporate divisions dedicated to helping dealers avoid honoring warranties. So far I have not found any Internet reports of a tire road hazard warranty paying off. What I have found are experts saying warranties are stupid. I guess it’s a waste of money.

I could go with an online dealer and save maybe a hundred bucks on the tires, but I am not interested in making my life miserable for a week so I can chisel a few pennies off this monstrous cost. I want this behind me so I can get on with life. It’s amazing how much time it’s taking out of my week.

I should have just used Fix-a-Flat!

Check the Code

Forgot to mention this. Tires should not be kept longer than six years, and that period begins when they’re made, even if they haven’t been mounted. Every tire has a DOT code stamped on the sidewall. It’s four numbers. The first two are the week of manufacture, and the second two are the year. So “4305” means the 43rd week of 2005.

I just told Firestone to get me some tires, and I insisted they check the code. I’m getting 2009 tires.

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s all I feel like admitting.

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

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

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

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

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

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