More Peppers

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reaping

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

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

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

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

Please forget everything I have ever written.

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

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

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

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

So I am still leery of obese preachers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sleeper Cell?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More

Prayer answered.

Stick Around for the Punch Line

My new Nerf bars arrived.

I bought some used Westin Nerf bars off Craigslist, but I regretted it. They didn’t look that great, and they didn’t extend to the rear wheels of the truck, so they were useless for getting into the bed. I decided to order new ones.

I struggled with this, because I want to fully accept the reality that every dime I have is God’s, and I don’t want to run around wasting money. I figured I’d be a good steward and get used bars. But it was a lot of aggravation, and it didn’t work out well.

Robert Morris says you can have a “poverty spirit” that screws up your ability to spend and enjoy. I guess that makes sense. Christian life has to be balanced. Not ascetic, but not self-indulgent. I tried to save money by buying a used truck, and it worked out well. Maybe I should have been less stingy on the bars.

It took two hours to install them, and they still have the plastic wrap on them. I underestimated the installation time, and I had to zip off to church before I could unwrap them. I had a GAP (“God Answers Prayer”) group meeting to get to. I was fifteen or twenty minutes late. Really embarrassing. It’s extremely disrespectful to be late; I hate it. To make matters worse, the place was packed, and they pulled up a chair at the pastor’s right hand. So the irresponsible late guy ended up at the front of the room, displayed prominently.

The meeting was wonderful. When I used to go to physics lectures, I enjoyed it because it was like having fireworks go off in my head. A teacher would talk about a given concept, and it would relate to another concept, and I would get blasts of intuition, and I would see things in my mind. I can’t describe it any better than that. It was wonderful. I never had that in law school. Law is not exactly boring, but it’s not exciting or challenging. Whose land did the limb hang over before the apple fell? Where did it land? Do the math and decide who gets the fruit. Not the kind of thing that makes for thrilling stories or intense mental workouts. Some areas of law are fairly hard, but they are still hard to get passionate about.

Tonight, I felt the way I felt when I studied physics. The pastor was talking about legalism, and how it gets in the way of love. He talked about his hope of winning a hundred thousand souls in Dade County. It turns out these things are related in many ways, from a spiritual standpoint. As I sat and listened, the different ways became apparent to me, faster than I could have explained them had I been talking. The pieces of the Jesus puzzle spun and shifted in my mind, making sense in every configuration they assumed. This is the kind of thing creative people get off on. You wouldn’t expect to encounter it in religion.

I used to say Christianity wasn’t cerebral. In the way I meant it, I was right. You don’t have to be a 180-IQ Yeshiva-grade scripture scholar who can ace the LSAT, in order be a fantastic servant of God. The Holy Spirit’s guidance is more important than knowledge, and anyway, it’s usually pretty easy to see when you’re going wrong. But it turns out Christianity can be cerebral. Seeing the connections between the concepts is like sitting in a math class and understanding that vectors and matrices express the same ideas as multivariable calculus or differential equations or expanding functions in series. I don’t know if God has any interest in showing this aspect of Christianity to every Christian, but I can see how it would be useful and enjoyable for a teacher.

I have no interest in classical Christian scholarship. The examples I’ve seen were weak and misguided. Guesswork, based mostly on limited human intelligence making faulty deductions based on misunderstood scripture. The Holy Spirit, not the mind, is what makes scripture understandable. If the mind could unravel it, Satan (smarter than any human being) would be able to understand prophecy, and he isn’t. If he had understood the second psalm, the crucifixion would never have occurred. It’s about the crucifixion; it explains what happened, a thousand years in advance. Satan couldn’t figure it out, but a plumber or a grocery clerk, aided by the Holy Spirit, could see it immediately. I saw it. And I found that many other people had seen it before I did.

Brilliant people say a lot of dumb things about the Bible, because it hasn’t been illuminated for them. When I say Christianity is cerebral, I’m not talking about stale, ancient, error-filled tomes written by people who had no divine guidance and whose unaided logic was generally sub-par and warped by fear and bias. I’m talking about a deductive and intuitive process guided by God himself. He shows you a bit here and there and lets you connect the dots. The glory is all his, but he lets you do enough to make you feel useful.

By the way–this is a non sequitur–I realized something this week. Spirits apparently alter archaeological sites. How do I know this? Because Satan tried to claim the body of Moses. One explanation of his dispute with the archangel Michael is that Michael had been sent to conceal the location of the remains, while Satan wanted them to be found by the Jews. Another is that Satan wanted to physically take the body for his own purposes, possibly to revive it as a sort of golem and make it denounce God. Either way, think of the implications. At the end of the line of reasoning that follows, the conclusion is that faith will always be essential. It seems paradoxical, but faith is more trustworthy than proof, or at least what we think is proof. Maybe that’s because proof is about the past, but faith shapes the future. The past doesn’t exist any more. Memory creates the illusion that it exists, but there is no past. If it existed, it would still be here, right? The future is what’s actually happening. We tend to think of the past as stable and the future as something that shifts, but maybe we have it backward. Maybe the past seems to change, as miracles distort the evidence. Maybe it does change, when God decrees it. In any case, maybe it’s not reliable. I have witnessed at least one example of a thing that had been moved from its prior location, with no natural agent involved, and so have many other people.

Angels also opened the tomb of Christ. And the Jews say the gate of the Temple opened on its own, not long before the fall of Jerusalem. Some Christians interpret this to mean God had abandoned it.

God has a funny way of doing miracles, sometimes. Think of the loaves and fishes. Do you think people saw fishes and loaves growing and dividing in front of them? I doubt it. The gospels would have described that. Sometimes God shapes the present so it seems consistent with the past, yet it is clear that a miracle has occurred. Think of the widow who fed Elijah, or the famous miracle of Corrie ten Boom’s bottle of vitamin oil, which sustained a barracks full of women before running dry on the day more vitamins arrived. Do you think the widow looked in the barrel of flour every day and saw that it had more in it than it had the day before? I’ll bet if you could interview her, you’d find that every time she took flour out, the flour level seemed to sink by an appropriate amount, and that the next day, it seemed just as low, and that somehow she was still able to continue taking flour out of it. It was probably the same way with the vitamin oil. God does that kind of thing to people all the time, with money and other things. He did it for the Hebrews in the desert with Moses, making their shoes and clothes last forty years. They probably seemed to wear normally during each day, yet weeks later, they had not grown more worn, and the Jews were probably unable to reconcile these observations. God is able to make reality like a dream. In a dream, it can be Tuesday and Thursday. You can be at home and on an airplane. Miracles can be very subtle.

Maybe God really can make a rock so big that he can’t lift it, and maybe he can also lift it. It’s a sophomoric question, because it turns God into a cartoon and posits a childish definition of omnipotence. It’s a very stupid puzzle on which to base your decision whether to believe in God. But maybe he can do it. I don’t really care. If lifting rocks is what gets you excited when you shop for a supreme being, you are an idiot. I’m more interested in things like healing and freedom from self-destructive behavior and attitudes.

I don’t want to get into the mental meandering that led me to it, but the stuff we talked about at the meeting tonight caused me to think about prison ministry. The short version is that the discussion of legalism made me realize it is possible to turn God’s own law into an idol, and that got me thinking about bondage and iniquity, and that made me think of prisoners. We have a guy who is trying to put together a prison ministry, and unbelievably, I went up to him and talked to him about it. I know I sound crazy, but my logic goes like this: if God can deliver me from bondage to food, he can deliver prisoners from bondage to drugs, alcohol, violence, and so on, and maybe I can help them find that out. I couldn’t resist. This is completely unlike me. I’m not an outgoing person. But he has my phone number now, so maybe I’m on the roller coaster and the little restraint bar is locked in place.

We are both very confident in Robert Morris’s teachings. We mentioned that independently at the meeting, and he agrees that it ought to be applicable to criminals.

How did I get here?

I wrote all this stuff and didn’t even scratch the surface of what went on tonight. Sometimes life is too rich to share effectively.

Good night.

Feet Up, Parts on the Way

Looks like I won’t be going to Lakeland this week. I just got the word. The pastor is going to be so busy, I wouldn’t even see him.

This works fine for me. Saturday was a bear, I suffered all day yesterday working on the Harley, and I’ve been busy with something all day today, so when I got the news, I was ready for a break. Now I can spend some more time on the book.

I have some Harley parts on the way. I still wonder what killed my carb float. I think I dumped some water remover and fuel injector cleaner in the tank. Not sure. In the future, I plan to be less creative with additives. I just assumed they were all safe.

Needle Valve Crud

I’m not sure I’m cut out for riding motorcycles.

I used to let the bikes sit for long periods. I finally learned to use Sta-Bil and make sure I got on the road once in a while. That saved me from replacing the Harley’s slow jet every time I wanted to ride.

Then last year I found gas pouring out of the Harley when I tried to start it. That required a Golan petcock. The Harley unit is complete garbage, almost intended to fail.

Today I tried to start the Harley, and black gas ran out through the air cleaner. This was new. I won’t mention the fact that I had to charge the battery in order to get this far. One month of down time killed it.

I took the carb out, stuck a new slow jet in, checked the float, checked the needle valve, and put it all back together. Miserable job. Then I realized I had left the ignition on, which means the headlight was burning. I had to attach the charger again. Now I’m waiting.

For future Googlers, here is the answer I found. Crud can get into your needle valve, holding it open and flooding the carb. Then the excess pours out onto your pipes. Call me crazy, but I think this is unsafe.

I don’t know if I fixed it or not.

I was hoping to ride to church to pick up my Pyrex. I left it up there last night.

Hope she fires up this time.

More

Now it looks like I ruined the carb float by using a fuel additive. Oh, well. At least I got to enjoy taking the carb apart several times, for no good reason.

Harley-Davidson won’t put a part finder online. If you want to buy parts, you need the part numbers. Guess what they do to help you find the numbers? They charge $48 for a manual. I’m serious. They omit the numbers from the service manual, so you have to spend more money.

I can’t find a new float online anywhere, so I posted a message on a forum. Hopefully someone will save me.

More

Harley-Davidson part number 27576-92 (40mm Keihin CV carb float for 2001 FLSTC). Hope someone else finds this useful.

More

The fuel gauge is dead. And the sender has a float on it.

I think I see a pattern here.

One More Machine to Nag and Belittle Me

Unbelievably, I got my truck’s stereo installed.

Having the correct instructions makes a world of difference. Once the Crutchfield guy explained everything, the receiver slid right in. After that, the challenge was to get various cables installed.

1. Rear-view camera. The cable was already tied to the frame, but I only got to the underside of the cab, because I couldn’t figure out how to get it through the floor. After I took the floor console up, I was able to remove the 4WD shifter, run the cable up through the hole, and reinstall the shifter. The cable is pretty well mashed against the body, but it works. I guess I could fabricate a rubber gasket kind of a thing with a channel for the cable.

2. USB. I found an old cable and ran it behind the dash into the glove compartment. My technique consisted of shoving the cable through a hole over and over, until it emerged where I could grab it and pull it into the glovebox. You can’t teach this kind of skill. It’s just a gift. Some people would use fish tape or grabby things on telescoping rods. Real men prefer trial and error.

3. GPS. I popped the trim off the forward side of the dash, rested the antenna on it, ran the cable under it, stored the vast majority of it in an empty speaker hole, and ran the end to the receiver. The antenna looks almost like it was born there.

I don’t quite get the rear-view camera. It points downward, to such a degree that if a person stood behind the truck, it would only show him from the knees down. But maybe this is good enough to keep me from ramming parked cars and posts.

The GPS is fun. I didn’t want it, but of course, I will use it constantly. The voice is named Rebecca. That’s actually the name on the screen. As I have often said, female voices are appropriate for GPS, because men are so used to women telling them what to do.

I still have to get front-door speakers, and I have to put the speaker and tweeter in the right rear door. And I have to put in a new dash panel. But that stuff is really easy.

I am all done with Crutchfield. They do a fairly good job, but for under a hundred bucks, Best Buy would have done this in two hours.

I learned a few things. First of all, if you can do a procedure in the house instead of your car, do it. It took me maybe forty minutes to connect the Clarion wiring adapter to the one from Crutchfield. If I had done that in the truck, I’d still be there, ready for a padded room. Second, get a bag of cable ties before you start. Third, pay someone else to install the stereo. Did I mention that already?

I have two extra screws now. I know where one of them goes. The other, I’ll have to think about. I hope it’s not the main screw that holds the truck together.

Learn from my mistakes. I never do, but somebody should.

No Screws

Looks like I owe the people at Crutchfield an apology. I said their instructions for taking apart my dashboard were wrong, but–heh–it turns out I missed a page. How about that? It was only a seventy-dollar mistake. A commenter said the part I busted was a tiny doodad available in auto parts stores, but it’s not, so I had to get a new panel. I could have crammed the old one back in there, broken, but the idea made me mad.

My other complaints, I stand beside.

Against my better judgment, I decided to give the stereo installation another shot. This time, the dash came apart correctly, and I didn’t destroy anything. But the instructions for fitting the receiver to the dash were wrong. The receiver came with something called a DIN sleeve, which is a sleeve of thin perforated metal. The receiver slides into it. The instructions said to beat on this thing until it gripped the adapter that mates the receiver to the truck, but for reasons even more boring than this blog entry has already become, that did not work. The receiver projected out too far.

I called them up to whine, and they pointed out that there were some other parts I could use. I might have realized this, had the receiver adaptor thing come with instructions instead of a tiny diagram with almost no text. It turns out this will work, IF I can find screws to attach the new parts to the receiver. So I have to go to the hardware store.

I was afraid I’d have to drill holes in the truck to mount the GPS antenna, but the Crutchfield tech said I could put it on my dashboard. That would be a whole lot better.

I guess the only thing that will cause a real problem is running the rear-view camera cable. I still haven’t found a place where I can get it into the cab from outside the truck. Maybe I can find a crack in the transmission-hump opening. If I can do that, forget the custom installation guy. I’m home-free.

This was an unbelievably stupid idea. I will never do this again.

After I move my old Alpine to my dad’s Explorer.

Car Stereo Fail

I thought Crutchfield was great because they gave me lots of free stuff with my new car stereo, and they helped me choose products, and they supplied all sorts of literature to help me do the installation.

I have changed my mind. I am feeling a wee bit crabby.

The adapters they sent for the speakers don’t fit. The speakers I got for the front doors are not the ones they should have recommended. The installation information is just plain wrong.

I had a horrible time putting speakers in the rear doors. One is still awaiting installation. I had to cut a hole in the door panel for a tweeter (not mentioned when I bought the speakers), and the bit jumped and gouged the panel. Nice.

They said I needed something called a trim panel tool to pull the center panel off my dashboard. They said this in the installation information they sent me. Not over the phone, when I ordered the stereo. When I could have told them to include the tool, you understand.

I decided to yank on the panel with my fingers. It popped out! Fantastic. But it was stuck at the bottom. I pulled a little more. One side came free. Then I realized I was breaking the little plastic tabs that were screwed into the dash. The tabs the installation instructions failed to mention.

Now I have to get a new panel. I’ll bet that’s fifty bucks.

Yes, I can make a forty-minute drive to the junkyard region of Miami, walk around in the broiling sun for three hours, and hope to find a used one for forty-five dollars. Somehow, it does not appeal to me.

I got a rear-view camera from Amazon. I installed it on the license plate frame, in about two minutes. Then I got under the truck and started running the cable to the cab, tying it to the frame with cable ties as I went. I got to the cab…and there was no place to insert the cable. I poked around under there for quite some time before I concluded that Dodge was against me installing my own camera.

I quit. I gave this the old college try. I called a stereo place, and they’re going to do this for me. It will cost a fortune, but I’ll have my stereo.

I’m not a total idiot with tools. If this was as easy as Crutchfield said it was, I’d be done already. But it’s not easy at all. If I gathered all the parts and did the job myself, it would take two days, eight hours a day, minimum. And I’d ruin the truck in the process.

The speakers, I can do. Thank God for that.

Why didn’t I learn from my last Crutchfield experience? I got a stereo for the T-bird, and the website said, “It Fits!” What it did not say was that the T-bird’s computer was integrated with the factory stereo. It’s nearly impossible to remove the old audio system. People who put new stereos in Thunderbirds routinely leave the old stereos connnected to the computers and put them in the trunk. The T-bird’s new stereo is still here, waiting to be installed. I’m donating it to my dad’s ancient Explorer.

What was I thinking when I decided to try Crutchfield again?

I can’t be too hard on myself. Circuit City is gone. Best Buy’s service is not good. Sound Advice went out of business. That means I have to go to a boutique to get a stereo and have it installed, unless I want it done really badly. I was hoping to avoid boutique prices.

Until I started looking for a new stereo, I didn’t realize Miami only had one major car-stereo retailer. That’s pathetic.

After You Put Them in a Hydraulic Press

Okay, I just found out what “it fits” means to the folks at Crutchfield. It means the product you bought can be installed in your vehicle without using a plasma cutter, in a professional manner worthy of Jethro Bodine.

I got the speakers today, and I figured I’d put them in, since they would be easy. WRONG. For reasons too boring and complicated to mention, they were not right for my existing screw patterns. The adapters Crutchfield supplied worked for the front doors, but not the back. The Crutchfield guy I talked to said they didn’t actually look at the speakers when they decided whether they fit. They just go by outer dimensions. Swell.

It turned out Alpine supplied some adapters in the bottom of the box. They worked fine with the front speakers, and after modifying one with the milling machine–no joke–they can be used in the back. I now have two speakers installed, but no tweeters. They didn’t bother explaining that the tweeters were separate. I have to buy a 2″ hole saw and cut holes in the inner panels of my doors.

There are things in the box that must be crossovers. I assume it goes receiver-speaker-crossover-tweeter. If not, there will be explosions and fun.

What does installation cost? Sixty bucks? What a bargain. Seems that way now, anyhow.

Dr. Visit Confirms Hysteria
o
I only have two regular physicians. Fortunately for me, one is a dermatologist. The wound on my ankle seems to be resisting Neosporin’s efforts, so I’m going in to see what the doctor can do for me.

This is somewhat different from my customary doctor visits. Generally, it works like this: I respond to some horrible thing that happens on a Friday night by 1) going to the ER, 2) waiting four hours, and 3) paying $5000 for $100 worth f treatment.

More

I guess my doctor thinks I’m the biggest wuss on earth. First I went in to see if a freckle was melanoma. Now I’ve paid for an office visit for a scrape that wasn’t infected.

A few years back, I read that infected wounds turned yellow, with red borders. That’s what I have going on right now. And the wound has been giving me pain since it got inflamed on Tuesday, so I figured something was not right. Now the doctor tells me he doesn’t think it’s infected. He still gave me a better antibiotic. It’s called Mupirocin. How can an inflamed wound that leaks yellow fluid not be infected? I need to pay more attention when I watch House.

I guess I seem hysterical, but Miami is full of horror microbes because of immigrants from places like Haiti. I know a guy who got MRSA from a little injury on his ankle. Can you believe that? How many people in Indiana or Nebraska know someone who had flesh-eating bacteria? People here get drug-resistant TB. This is not a normal city. I got scraped in a church full of Haitians, so I was nervous.

I never know how to react to medical problems. I had a kidney stone, and I stayed home and did nothing, and it worked out fine. Then I had this ankle thing, and I decided to go in, and it appears to have been a waste of time.

I could have been spending my time learning how to park the truck. I believe I’ve managed to hit the center of one parking space out of twenty or thirty tries. This thing doesn’t have a turning circle. It has a turning arc that never becomes a circle, because there isn’t enough room.

A bunch of stereo junk arrived from Crutchfield. I could go put the speakers in the truck. The stereo in the box is going back, and the new one won’t be here until tomorrow. I look forward to installing the rear-view camera. I want to have some inkling of what goes on behind me, and right now, I don’t have one.

Parking is the only drawback to this truck. Other than that, it’s a dream vehicle. Comfortable. Relatively quiet (inside). Capable of absolutely anything that doesn’t require turning. Efficient. Powerful. And it scares Miami drivers even more than an INS van. It would be nice if it were three feet shorter and a foot lower, but you can’t have everything.

“The Little Speck in the Window is Waving at Us”

I am hopeless. I wanted to get a cheap stereo for the truck, but I ended up going for a DVD rig with navigation.

I know I’m an idiot. I have no defense this time.

It’s not as bad as it sounds, though. I realized the CD receiver I had ordered was not going to cut it with a rear-view camera, and I really REALLY want a rear-view camera. These cameras are stupid when fastened to ordinary cars, but my truck practically needs tugboats. I can’t see a thing when I look out the back window.

I had a couple of choices. I could get a CD receiver and a separate camera and monitor, or I could get a DVD receiver and a camera. The price would not have been much different. With the separate systems, I’d have two installations to do. I’d have more hardware. And I wouldn’t get the added bonus of easier MP3-folder navigation, which comes with the bigger screen. When I found out I could get a GPS, too, toy-lust kicked in. And Crutchfield had an open-box deal which saved me another 60 bucks.

A GPS is one of the dumbest things you can put in your car, unless you’re going senile. But the fun factor is impossible to ignore. It will be useful. No doubt about that. But I seem to survive without one every day.

I will also be able to hook my cell phone up to the stereo, so I can have more accidents. There is no way I’ll do that. My big goal, as a chronically absent-minded person, is to learn to turn the cell off whenever I get in the car and then turn it on when I get out. Hooking it up to the stereo is like paying people to rear-end and sideswipe me.

I should make up my mind. Do I want a thumb drive, or do I want to put my old 40-gig MP3 player in the glove compartment? I think the drive is a better option. I’ll never fill a 16-GB drive, and a drive doesn’t require power, and a drive will never crash. At least I don’t think it will. It would take a burst of electricity, wouldn’t it? No moving parts.

The only thing I’m sure of is that I’ll never use this receiver to watch DVDs.

I still need nerf bars and maybe an engine tuner. I think that will cover me. Dang. Forgot the bed liner. I better get that before she rusts out.

Keeps Passing Tests

Today I got up and did my usual prayer and communion thing. I have been trying to learn to hear from God. One thing I’m trying is asking for guidance as to which scriptures I should read in the morning.

Weird things happened last week. Let me see if I can remember the facts. One morning, I asked what I should read, and I heard “Josiah.” But there is no book of Josiah. So I read Jeremiah. And it turned out the part I was reading was about Josiah, the last good king of Israel. Score one for God.

The next day, I tried again, and I heard “Rehoboam.” There is no book of Rehoboam. But I looked Rehoboam up, and once again, the scriptures I was looking at referred to Josiah. Three hundred years before he was born, a prophecy named him and said he would be a reformer.

That makes two.

A day or two after that, I wanted to read about the temptation of Christ. My mind said, “That’s in Matthew 4.” I don’t know the gospels that well. I know John 3:16, but I don’t know which book or chapter goes with which story. But I opened the Bible anyway, and there I found Jesus, refusing to jump off the temple. And he cited the psalm I was in the process of memorizing, which is number 91.

Almost creepy.

Today, I heard “Malachi 3:11.” My first thought was that I hoped Malachi had a third chapter. I didn’t know. But I looked. Here is what I saw:

And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts.

Dang.

I’ve heard that verse a lot. It’s very popular among prosperity preachers, both good and bad. It expresses a concept which has been on my mind lately, because I think my family has been under a curse. But I didn’t know the chapter and number!

I felt like documenting it.

I’m wondering if I should have gotten a DVD receiver for the truck. Why? Because a DVD receiver will accept a rearview camera. My truck is so big, I have no idea what’s going on behind it. Also, a DVD receiver will have a bigger screen for navigating folders and finding music.

I can send the new CD receiver back to Crutchfield. Thoughts?

New Bomb Method Plumbs Depths of Depravity

I guess I should call Line-X today. Day before yesterday I looked at the truck bed after a rain, and you could have used it to raise goldfish. I hope there is no rust under the drop-in liner.

Black appears to be the way to go. I thought red would be neat, and it would be more comfortable to deal with in the burning sun, but I’m positive it will be pink after a year.

I am going to upgrade the stereo a little. I am not a boom-car guy, but the factory radio is not inspiring. One problem: I can’t get below 70 Hz without a sub, and if I put it in the back seat, it will take up precious floor space. How am I going to hear Ray Brown? I may have to cave on this issue. I don’t expect great sound in a vehicle, but when notes are completely absent, it’s bad.

It turns out CD changers are obsolete. The Crutchfield guy I talked to confirmed it. He said you can hook a thumb drive up to your stereo and get the same effect. Granted, you may lose some sonic perfection due to compression, but car sound is car sound. I doubt I could tell the difference with the motor running.

I was thinking I might burn music DVDs and put them in a changer. But it looks like CD changers don’t play DVDs. That’s stupid. A single DVD can hold an insane amount of music.

Let’s see. A DVD holds roughly 5 gigs. A thumb drive–I better check before I make a fool of myself–16 gigs. So a changer holds less than two thumb drives, and it costs more than they would. Talk about “duh.” A changer would be a bad idea even if it read DVDs.

I have a 40-gig MP3 player I rarely use. I could stick it in the truck. It’s a hard-drive player, so it’s going to poop out eventually. Might as well get some use from it.

Crutchfield was great. They gave me good advice, caught me when I ordered too much stuff, and gave me free junk to move an old stereo to my dad’s Explorer. Thumbs up on that deal.

I’m thinking about going to an empty parking lot and spending some time practicing my parking. I keep missing spaces by 50%. I need to get it together. I won’t always have the Thunderbird to fall back on. I need to polish the remarkable head-out parking skills I learned in law school. Not sure if this will make things easier on the way in, but getting out will be less traumatic.

Miami has horrible parking lots with tiny spaces. I’m getting used to parking far from stores, where there is more room.

I love these polite Miami drivers. Where were they hiding back when I was driving a small car? They’re so eager to get out of my way, even when it’s their turn to go. I feel terrible about all the bad things I’ve said about them in the past.

Most interesting item in the news? The Al Qaeda butt bomber. I’m sure you’ve read about it. He stuck a cell phone and a pound of explosives in his rear end, approached Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and blew himself up.

The obvious ramification…unpleasant changes in airport security. Backscatter scanning reveals your private parts to bored TSA screeners, and you have to take off your shoes, and you may have to be checked with a metal-detecting wand. But as far as civilians know, there are no precautions that will weed out bombers with explosives in their rectums. A butt bomb could easily depressurize a jet. It could bring it down, so we can’t ignore the threat. Something is going to be done to counter it. And it will not be fun.

Maybe they’ll start ultrasounding random passengers. Won’t that be fantastic? I’m assuming ultrasound can detect machinery that has been concealed anally. Not something I know a lot about. If not, guess what? STRIP SEARCHES.

You have to wonder. Will this be the final straw that forces the government to acknowledge that terrorism is perpetrated almost entirely by Muslims? Can we finally admit that profiling the group of people that produces terrorists is a good idea?

How many blue-eyed, freckled, Christian grandmothers have we humiliated, trying to bolster our ridiculous contention that terrorism isn’t an Islamic phenomenon? We smiled and put up with it when they were merely feeling us up and making us take off our shoes. Will we be as patient when they’re stripping us naked and ramming instruments up our behinds in rooms full of strangers?

And for once, let’s be as creative as the terrorists. Let’s not be limited by tunnel vision. Let’s admit that airplanes aren’t the only targets. Imagine a flash mob of twenty butt bombers at the New York Stock Exchange or at a Presidential speaking engagement. Think your stocks are in the toilet now? You haven’t seen anything yet.

I can’t say it enough. Anyone willing to eat a piece of pork at a boarding gate should be allowed to bypass security screening. And we should make airline seats from pigskin, and airline passengers should carry lard with them. No bomb? No pig-molecule contamination for Mohammed’s servants. How can they object?

I think we need to start popularizing pork-based skin creams and cosmetics. Lard is a marvelous moisturizer, provided you refine it and remove the scent. We’re not even allowed to say “swine flu” because the intolerant among us can’t stand the word “swine.” We need to let them know they don’t make the rules. Lard-based lipstick. Lard-based hair conditioner. These things would make a glorious statement.

It’s not intolerance. It’s a response to intolerance.

Swine, swine, swine, pig, ham, bacon, Hush Puppies. Get over it. Somebody make me a T-shirt that says “Bacon is the Bomb” in Arabic.

Think how useful a little tube of lard could be in a hostage situation. You sneak it around to the other hostages, everyone smears it on, and then you tell the Muslim criminals. “Touch me, and you touch lard.”

Actually, I could say that as a general rule. But I’m losing weight every week.

Prince Abdullah’s butt bomber is going to father a generation of imitators, unless Islamic extremists have matured a lot over the last year or two. When they discovered the IED, it became an enduring craze. This should be no different.

And here we are, with a PC wimp in the White House. “Carter II” was an understatement.

It’s going to be an interesting fall.

Run the Radio All Night!

I know I am inviting abuse by admitting this, but I didn’t look under the hood of my truck until today. After all, I did pay a mechanic for a six-page report. I checked the oil while filling up. It looks new in there. The oil looks very clean for a diesel. I had a Toyota that never turned its oil dark. Couldn’t figure that out.

One surprise: the truck has two batteries.

Can someone explain this to me? Is it because diesels are hard to crank, or is it just a gimmick to appeal to macho truck nerds? It definitely would have worked on me.

I’m looking at bedliners. The factory drop-in looks okay, but there is dirt under it, and the rails are unprotected. I’m thinking Line-X. I considered getting it matched to the truck, but I don’t trust it not to fade. They say red liners turn pink. Line-X now has a super-duper version that’s guaranteed not to fade, but what if it doesn’t work? Hard to fix. They could spray over it, but if you got a scratch, the red would pop out. Black, on the other hand, attracts heat worse than red.

I’m also wondering about paintless dent repair. The truck has a few dings. Not sure how safe paintless repair is. I don’t want to pull the paint off the truck while trying to fix it.

I think I’m getting about 15 miles per gallon, but I’m not sure. I can’t be certain what the odometer read the last time I filled it up. And I screwed up this time by pumping diesel after the pump went off. I thought it went off early, so I started it again, and I filled the tank higher than normal. This will throw mileage calculations off.

Seems to get better mileage than a typical Thunderbird. I can’t say whether that extends to my own Thunderbird, because I never bothered checking the gas mileage. I didn’t drive it enough for it to matter.

I ordered a wider rear-view mirror. Hope it works.

More

I feel like I’m dreaming.

I just found out the engine on my truck (the whole powertrain) has a 100,000-mile warranty. I was looking into modifications to boost the mileage when I found this out. You can put bigger injectors on it, and you’ll get 50 extra HP at the rear wheels, but you also get better mileage. Problem: it may void the warranty.

I can’t figure this out. Better mileage than my two-seat Thunderbird. Great acceleration. A 5000-pound payload. Four-wheel drive. And a ridiculous powertrain warranty. Where is the catch?

Maybe it’s the hundred-yard turning circle.