Hold the Fries, Heathen

Man, am I wiped out. A family crisis developed, and my dad invited me to lunch to discuss it, and I ate a cheeseburger and a tiny container of mysterious “veggie slaw.” I feel like I ate a bowling bag full of greased marbles.

Two months ago, I would have barely noticed a meal this small. It’s amazing how I’ve changed. I had a generous breakfast today, because I was running behind on calories, but it wasn’t huge. Other than that, I’ve had two tiny bowls of All-Bran and part of a Lindt bar. I don’t think I could eat another thing all day.

My dad refuses to believe it’s an answer to prayer. He says fasting shrunk my stomach. I can’t agree. I’ve fasted before, and it never affected my appetite in the days that followed. I think if two cherubs flew in bearing a cake decorated with the message, “Way to go. Love, J.C.”, he would still insist there was an earthly explanation.

I feel almost sick. I could not be happier.

The 33-waist pants in the closet are calling to me. I still remember the days when I thought of them as my fat pants. Right now, I’d be thrilled if I could get into them with a crowbar. And I’m not that far off.

I’ve achieved absolutely nothing today. Started working on the book. Then I had to go with my sister so she could have her head shaved. Then family crisis. Then lunch.

If you want to start taking a woman’s cancer seriously, watch somebody shave her head. It’s very disturbing. It drives the truth home in a big way. I don’t think it would mean as much if it were a man. Men shave their heads for all sorts of reasons. They lose bets. They want to make it harder for the cops to identify them. They fall asleep drunk and fall prey to their so-called friends. When a woman shaves her head, you know something is up.

Hope this day’s supply of drama has run dry.

And None of You Deserve it, Anyway

I have been thinking about the prayer meeting I went to yesterday, in which we focused on the ill effects of complaining.

At the meeting, I felt like adding my input, but I kept quiet, because once my mouth is open, it tends to stay that way. The other guys have been building the church for years, and I don’t want to show up at this late date and act like I know something they don’t.

If I had spoken my piece, I would have said this: complaining can be truly magical. A person who really knows how to complain can take any situation and turn it into a stinking dungheap.

I’ll try to capture the pain of dealing with someone like that. I’ll provide a composite character, and I’ll call him Ned. The phone rings, and it’s Ned. He wants to talk about a situation which appears to be going quite well. Let’s say Ned’s sister’s son is having a birthday, and the party is tomorrow. The kid is happy. The sister is happy. The cake has been ordered. The guests have been invited. The weather looks good. The clown is fresh out of rehab and appears to be behaving himself. Here is what Ned says:

1. I know the best place to get a cake, but Myrtle (the sister) hates me because I was popular when we were in high school, so she insisted on going to the stupid bakery down the street, which is run by Haitians, and–God bless them, you know how I hurt for them and how much money I give to Haitian charities, unlike you–they are not clean people, and I am not going near that tuberculosis-infected cake. I hope everyone enjoys it in spite of the bad things I have a duty to say about it in front of the guests, because I am not a petty person like Myrtle. I guess somebody in the family has to be the spiritual one, and I don’t mind, because that’s how Jesus and I roll. And if Myrtle gets a loathsome disease, I wouldn’t be surprised, because God withdraws his blessings when you mistreat people. But I really hope she doesn’t, because I just don’t have it in me to wish anyone ill. I thank God I am not built like that.

2. Little Elroy (the son) is bucktoothed, and I was the one who made them take him to the orthodontist, so they owe me, but they still insisted on having the party at their house instead of Chuck E. Cheese, which would have been a way better idea. And they never thanked me, and when my gout acted up, it was over a day before they called, and they didn’t even offer to mow my yard so my toe could rest.

3. I had to go without Crown Royal for a week to buy Elroy’s present, and it’s much better than anything anyone else got him, but what can you expect, when his dad is a pothead and his mom spends all her money on tacky jewelry and Hummel figurines? I know they will never thank me for it, even though I will call attention to it by putting it in a huge gift-wrapped box next to the pathetic presents they got him, and I will make him pose for about fifty digital pictures while he opens it, because I’m the only one who cares enough to preserve the precious memories of his childhood.

4. I may be late to the party because my bursitis, which could actually be bone cancer, is bothering me, and no one cares enough about me to pick me up so I don’t have to drive. I know everyone is just waiting for me to die so they can put my model train collection on Ebay, so nothing surprises me any more. It’s a good thing I’m so spiritual. Otherwise I might resent them. It’s sad how they envy me, but luckily it doesn’t bother me at all.

5. The present you got Elroy is stupid and embarrassing, but you never listen to me, so go ahead and give it to him. I hope you kept the receipt. If not, maybe they can take it to Goodwill.

6. Let’s just try to have a good time, if you can find it in your heart to stifle your negative personality for three hours. God knows I don’t ask for much. I know you don’t think about personal sacrifice the way I do, so I will understand if you embarrass everybody and ruin the party.

And Ned wonders why his calls go to voicemail all the time.

Anyone else would say, “Oh, boy! A birthday party! Sounds like fun!”

When something is wrong, and there might be a solution, you have to speak up. That’s not the bad kind of complaining. The bad kind is a sort of reverse alchemy, which turns gold into lead. A skilled complainer can take the greatest day of your life and turn it into something out of a Kafka story.

There is also a bad kind of optimism. “This space shuttle was designed by geniuses! Freezing weather won’t hurt it!” “Icebergs? This ship is unsinkable!” “Housing prices are going to go up 20% a year for the rest of our lives! Go ahead and take that loan!” “Experience? A President doesn’t need experience! If old, experienced people knew anything, the world would be perfect by now!”

You know what I’m talking about. There is nothing wrong with pointing out that the emperor is naked. Jesus did it all the time. A smart person knows when criticism is helpful and when it is not.

If you want to know what hell is like, travel with a master complainer. “You never take my secret shortcut. This will add hours to the trip.” “Wake up. This room is no better than the last one. We have to move again.” “Take off my SHOES? I demand to speak to the president of the airline!” “Go ahead and eat at McDonald’s if you want. I’ll sit in the car, and then we can go someplace clean.” “Waitress! This muffin is asymmetrical!”

Life is full of real problems. You don’t improve it by conjuring new ones.

Back when I was in college, I had a buddy who joined the Peace Corps. I don’t know if that was a great idea. He wrote me letters in which diarrhea figured heavily, and he said the Senegalese felt that he should build their bridge (or whatever) singlehandedly, while they observed from comfy lawn chairs in the shade. But he was very game.

While his trip was in the planning stages, we went to an Ethiopian restaurant in Manhattan. They screwed his order up pretty badly, and we ended up waiting while things were put back the way they should be. And he told me this was the kind of thing that made travel interesting. When something goes wrong, you can whine and stamp your feet and make silly threats, or you can find the good that comes of it. Who knows? When they bring you the wrong dish, it might be something you like better than the right dish. We agreed that when you travel with another person, the smart thing was to avoid people who couldn’t tolerate surprises, because they made travel a painful experience.

Life is a journey. I suppose the principle applies to every day that we live. Don’t pair yourself up with a happiness-seeking mood torpedo.

The worst thing about pointless, self-indulgent complaining is that it makes people hate to be around you. And that makes you more bitter, so you complain more. Eventually, you decide you are the only correct person on earth, and that the reason no one invites you anywhere is that they are embarrassed by your perfection.

People don’t owe you their company. And if it brings them down and gives them ulcers, they have an affirmative obligation to avoid it.

It’s funny how Christianity improves my attitude. I expected it to drive me away from things like sexual sin and unforgiveness and so on, but it has wider effects than that. For a long time, I’ve thought that soldiers were a lot like Christians, and the more I progress, the more I think that is true. After all, the Bible calls God “the Lord of hosts,” and the word translated “hosts” means “armies.” Positive thinking. Responsibility. Unselfishness. Esprit de corps. These are all ideas that apply equally to the military and the church. No wonder soldiers make such fantastic Christians. It’s plug and play.

Probably a Right-Wing Terrorist

I just got back from my GAP (“God Answers Prayer”) group meeting, up at the church. My second visit today. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be included, and to meet the devoted men who help make the church work.

The pastor’s theme for tonight was the harmfulness of complaining. I told him earlier today that if I could not complain, I wouldn’t be able to say much at all. Anyway, it was great to listen to the ex-military guys talk about the zero-tolerance policy the service has toward complaining. When you hear things like that, it helps you realize how our military gets so much done, in spite of bureaucracy and confusion.

They talked about weather they had endured. One guy said he had seen temperatures of 166 degrees in Iraq. I assume that’s inside a vehicle or something. They both said that when the temperature drops at night, even though it’s still warm, you feel like you’re freezing. One said he had a picture of himself shivering in a sleeping bag, in front of a thermometer reading 110 degrees.

They’re not so tough. Sometimes, when I practiced law, the girls in the office forgot to buy half and half for my coffee. I had to use that awful powdered stuff. I don’t like to talk about it. It was horrible. But I keep that to myself because I’m a stoic.

I used to drive home from the courthouse or a club or a restaurant, get out of a two-seat convertible, and walk in past an empty garage. Tonight I drove home from a prayer meeting at church, got out of a four-wheel-drive diesel pickup with an eight-foot bed, and walked into the house carrying a Bible and a pistol, past a garage loaded with tools.

What a change. I feel like I’m arriving.

Church on Wednesday Morning

I had an interesting morning at church. I went up to have a meeting about the book I’m helping the pastor write. He hired a publicist for the church, and he put us together so we could talk about the project.

This lady is the daughter of a guy who had a huge church, and she knows all sorts of people in Christian publishing. She and the pastor are making plans for a whole series of books. Oddly, I’m working on the second one, before the others come out. In any case, it will be great to have someone else involved, who can put in the time the book needs. The pastor is just too busy, and it’s not really his thing, anyway. He already created the DVD series this book will be based on, so it makes sense to hand the writing, editing, and PR off to someone else.

I’m starting to feel like people there know who I am, and that I will be able to be a part of the operation, instead of wandering in, warming a chair, and going home. I hope my involvement continues to increase. It can be tough to do well in the secular world once you’ve sold out to God, so I need all the support I can get.

I went to lunch with the pastor and the PR lady, and one of the church leaders joined us, and I met a few other folks. I can never remember names, but I’m going to make an effort.

The church has a cafe. If you’ve been reading my blogs for a while, you can see the potential for hilarity here. I was telling them about my book and the horrors I have created. This weekend, I’ll be helping out in the cafe. They’ll probably have me emptying trash bags and cleaning up, but if I end up helping with the cooking, I’ll try not to give in to my natural instincts.

The food at the cafe looks really good. The pastor says people from the area drop in and eat. Heathens, I mean. Okay, not heathens. Necessarily. But not church members. I think he said it’s five bucks for a meal. Not bad.

The pastor says he wants a copy of my book. I guess I’ll give him one. After reading it, he may wonder if he picked the right guy to write Christian material. On the up side, I might make a good subject for a sermon.

I talked to him about gluttony. He agrees that it’s a sin, just like drunkenness, but you don’t hear much about it from preachers. Strange. Think about it. If you gluttonize consistently, you ruin your knees, your arteries, your heart, your pancreas, and maybe your brain. You can become diabetic and end up having your feet amputated. If you become obese, you annoy and inconvenience other people all the time. Have you ever lived with a food addict? You can’t have decent food or drink. They inhale it before you can get to it. You buy six tangerines on Monday, and on Tuesday, they’re all gone. You have to eat peanut butter sandwiches because the jelly disappears in two days. Gluttony causes a lot of problems. It’s not a trivial thing. How can a thing that makes you ugly, sick, uncomfortable, and annoying be trivial?

That being said, I do miss it. But I still enjoy food. I just enjoy it in human amounts.

There are demons around us. Christians get embarrassed when you mention them, but they surround us. Jesus and Paul talked about them all the time. I think every person has a certain number of resident demons who work to control his life and lead him to ruin. What else do they have to do? I don’t think you have to be foaming at the mouth and bending bars in your teeth to have one or more demons. I think addiction, which is less spectacular than foaming at the mouth, is generally demonic. It controls your life, against your will, like the Biblical demon that made the boy fall in the fire. And gluttony is addiction. If it were not, people would be able to control it. They can’t. Almost every person who diets down to normal size blows back up again. How is that different from cigarette or heroin addiction? You have a self-destructive habit you can’t control…isn’t that addiction?

Surely one demon will attract others. Isn’t that the way life works? If you have a serious problem you can’t control, you tend to get other problems later. If you can’t control what you eat, it will weaken your will in other areas, and sooner or later, you’re likely to have other moral problems. At least I think so.

It’s natural for Christians to think they have to have one area in their lives where they can let loose. But we’re not supposed to be natural. Shakespeare used the word “natural” to describe men who were controlled by their primitive urges. The idea that we have limited strength, and that we can only expect to win in certain areas of our lives, is probably wrong. I think we were probably intended to be hooked up to the Holy Spirit, in a way that gradually rids us of destructive urges and habits. Maybe we’re not supposed to be perfect, but I don’t think we’re supposed to dedicate portions of our lives to failure. Isn’t that what you do, when you decide it’s okay to smoke because you’ve quit taking drugs and drinking too much? How is it different if you decide you have to give up all your vices except for stuffing yourself? My diet used to work like this: 1500 calories per day, except for Saturday, which I called “fat day.” On that day, I ate everything I could carry home. If addiction is caused by hostile spirits, isn’t fat day appeasement? Isn’t appeasement just a way of delaying further aggression without preventing it? Look how well it worked in Israel.

I’m completely thrilled that I am not overeating these days, but I continue to hate fasting. It’s not as painful as it used to be, but it’s no joy, either. On the days when I fast, I look forward to that next meal. I don’t celebrate with a hoglike feast, but the first bite of whatever I eat comes as a great relief.

Life continues to improve. I assume an occasional fast is necessary to the process. I’ll live.

I think this is what Jesus meant by “free, indeed.” You can have your stomach stapled and send money to Dr. Phil, but only one power in the universe truly destroys addiction.

I could really go for a pie right now.

Will Our Grandchildren Know What a Hurricane Is?

Dan from Madison is upset that I haven’t mocked the Global Warmers this year. Usually I put up a hurricane frequency chart and then gloat about the utter wimpiness of the season.

Here is the chart:

As you can see, it peaks and centers at September 10. This is October 3, and a rough guess, by eyeballing, says 3/4 of this year’s hurricane probability is gone.

I will try to be a nice person and not gloat, but I think I should remind everyone how certain the Gore groupies were that we were going to die in a wave of killer storms. There was no room for doubt. It was a sure thing. Then we had four weak seasons in a row. This year has been the weakest yet. It’s as if hurricanes are becoming extinct.

If they were wrong about the consequences of global warming, why would they be right about global warming itself? By the convoluted logic of the left, global warming (and chiggers and leprosy and the McKinley assassination) was somehow caused by the election of George Bush, whom they all hated. Anything that tended to discredit Bush got them excited, so global warming had them doing cartwheels. This means their opinions on global warming were so colored by bias that they were essentially worthless. If George Bush had been tied to waffles, naked liberals would have been out in the streets demanding laws banning them, and liberal scientists would have linked waffles to everything from trout infertility to Down Syndrome.

Now that I think about it, back in 2004, one candidate was tied to waffles. But it wasn’t Bush.

Man does all sorts of bad things, but he is not capable of changing the weather. Not yet. God is not ready to hand that power over to us. And judging by the hurricane situation, he seems bent on proving it.

Even if we could increase the temperature by a couple of degrees, we would simply be going back to a state that has existed within the last thousand years, and if my meager knowledge of history serves, it did not destroy all life on the planet. In fact, it extended growing seasons and made winter less miserable.

Often, what a person says depends on what his reward is. This is a good thing to keep in mind when you come across nutty arguments purporting to explain things that otherwise might be considered acts of God. Rational beings have an unlimited capacity to rationalize and deceive, and they often use these tools toward evil ends. The Bible tells us that toward the end of time, we will see earthquakes, famines, perversion, wars, and signs in the heavens. Weather anomalies fall in the last category. Someone is at work, trying to explain them away. And I don’t mean Al Gore.

Last night I found I had a new Robert Morris on the DVR. His show has been featuring a series on the Holy Spirit. Wonderful stuff. This guy seems to be right on the money. Last night he explained that the Pentecost phenomenon the disciples experienced after Christ’s ascension is for every Christian, even now. He dismantled the “it only happened once” argument.

I was a little sad while I watched it. He said something that occurred to me years ago: the first mass baptism of the Holy Spirit was presaged by the confusion of tongues in the story of the Tower of Babel. Jesus has a pattern of undoing bad things that happened in the past, such as the fall of man. In the tower story, man tried to make himself all-powerful by his own efforts, and the rewards were failure and disunity, and the disunity was imposed via linguistic barriers. In the Pentecost story, men submitted to God’s will in their quest for the power to serve, and they were united and empowered successfully, and the evidence was a new common language. The connection is obvious. I knew that a long time ago, but the information was of no use to anyone but me, because I didn’t do anything with it.

Some people claim the gift of tongues is exclusively for corporate worship, and that it is always accompanied by interpretation, but that’s an assumption. The Bible does not say that. Some say the fact that the foreigners who heard the disciples heard their own languages means that the gift of tongues always manifests itself in languages already known, but that, too, is an assumption, and it contradicts the references to “unknown tongues.” Jesus himself referred to the gift of tongues when he told the Samaritan woman at the well about “living water.” The first psalm mentions it, when it prophesies that believers will be like trees planted by rivers of water. The twenty-third psalm refers to the baptism of the Spirit, using oil as a symbol: “Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.” I think Zechariah referred to tongues prophetically when he wrote about Zerubabbel (“seed of Babel”) having a big role in reforming Judaism. The seven-bowl menorah in the Holy of Holies, fueled by oil (symbolizing the Spirit) is a reference to the baptism of the Spirit.

The scriptures refer to tongues over and over, both explicitly and prophetically. The reason Christians fight it is that the enemy is terrified of the Holy Spirit. After all, the Holy Spirit is what enabled Samson to slaughter a thousand idolaters in one day. It teaches you what the scriptures mean. It frees you from habitual sin. It improves your character. It tells you the enemy’s secrets. The enemy would rather face weak Christians who are not connected to the power supply. Better yet, teach that weakness is righteousness and defeat is success. Teach that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is heresy. So when you are weak and you fail at what you were intended to do, you have the crazy idea that everything is going according to plan. Our successes are supposed to outnumber our defeats, by a huge margin. You may be martyred some day, but you’re not supposed to lose consistently, over the course of your life.

Anyway, a long time ago, a few things were revealed to me, and I was probably intended to go out and spread the news, like Robert Morris, but I left the church and wasted two decades walking in circles. When you don’t do what you’re asked to do, someone else gets to do it. I wonder how much better my life would have been. This guy has a magnificent church. The music team is beyond belief. He has a wonderful mission. I think he’s doing it right.

Age is Ruthless

Val’s dad is having health problems. A few years back, he was a strong septuagenarian. He was active. He worked at his welding. Now he’s having serious problems with arthritis and diabetes. He just can’t do what he used to do. I know how tough it is to see a father age.

You prayed for my sister, and things are going as well as they possibly could. Can you pray for Val’s dad, too? You might mention Val and his wife Maggie, too. This has not been an easy year for them.

I’m trying to drag them to church, because I know it works. Maybe this will be the weekend.

This is Not What a Leader Does

The four-year-long amateur hour at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue continues. We thought we had elected suave, surefooted Stefan, but in fact, it was plain old Steve Urkel. The guy whose life is a never-ending wedgie. Even prominent leftists have started complaining about the incompetence and inexperience of Obama and his staff, and the same liberal members of Congress who claimed his experience didn’t matter are now snubbing him right and left because his juvenile mistakes have wrecked his political capital.

He is living up to the sobriquet “Carter II” by involving himself in minutiae. Carter used to insist on deciding who got to use the White House tennis court; he made up the schedule while he should have been thinking about the country’s problems. Obama has flown to Denmark, at huge expense, to try to bring the Olympics to Chicago. Can you imagine George Bush insisting on handling something this unimportant? Oh, well. Once a bagman, always a bagman. When you build a career by flunkying for machine bosses, it’s probably not easy to stop running errands.

Where is the outrage over Obama’s third vacation? Every time George Bush left the White House grounds, the liberals at CNN, CBS, and the other mainstream outlets screeched about his penchant for vacations. He never took a vacation; he just moved his office from time to time. Hopefully, that is generally true of Obama as well. In any case, it didn’t matter to the Bush-era press.

Obama blew a king’s ransom on a trip to New York. He holed up in Martha’s Vineyard. Now he’s flying to Denmark for a trip which is clearly primarily recreational. And it’s only the beginning of October, in his first year as President! And the press doesn’t care, any more than they still care about mounting military deaths in Iraq, which they portrayed as a major crisis before the election.

It’s almost as if there were a TOTALLY HYPOCRITICAL DOUBLE STANDAND.

Almost.

It would be a tragedy if Obama seemed to succeed. Appearing to succeed while doing the wrong thing is worse than failure. It assures that you will continue doing the wrong thing in the future. So when I see Obama do something dumb and sure to fail, it encourages me. I want to see the US prosper because we behave responsibly and please God, not because we robbed our children’s piggy banks to pay for a heavily leveraged plateau in our slide toward weakness and defeat.

It’s remarkable that Obama and his blunderkind advisors thought the Olympics trip was a good idea. Several cities are vying for the games, so the odds that Obama will lose are high. If he had stayed home, no one would have imputed the loss to him, but now it will be an Obama failure. On top of that, the trip confirms his image as a lightweight. You would not send Ronald Reagan or Abraham Lincoln to beg for an Olympiad, any more than you would send them to pick up the Secretary of State’s dry cleaning. But Obama? It fits.

I’m guessing that none of Obama’s confidants, nerdy though they are, were members of their high school chess clubs. They are incapable of strategic thinking. That’s just swell, given that America is fighting two wars right now. I suppose it explains his decision to abandon missile protection for our loyal allies in Eastern Europe, at a time when Russia is resurging as an enemy and Iran is developing long-range nuclear weapons.

What Obama gaffe DOESN’T it explain? He alienates a new sector of his base every week. Doctors. Cop unions. Car unions. Jews. When health care craps out, he’ll alienate blacks. Prior to the election, the big media outlets actively suppressed negative coverage (even more than they do now), so Obama never learned to think ahead. When you live in a bubble, you need no immune system. Now that criticism is increasing, he has no one to protect him from his own fecklessness.

I don’t recall the press and the entertainment industry (same thing, really) doing much to help Carter, once he started circling the drain. SNL made his embarrassing health problems weekly fodder. Stories about the sad state of the country filled the airwaves.

While he was running, the press treated him like–wait for it–a messiah. I recall that clearly. They adored him. Then he became an embarrassment. Did the networks stand up for him? If so, I have no memory of it. Once Obama’s incompetence is established beyond dispute, he’ll fare no better. Sooner or later, we’ll see video of him smoking cigarettes. The liberal press will discover Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko. They’ll finally take notice of the other kooks he has hired. They’ll realize he’s unfair to Israel. These are my predictions.

Is he smoking cigarettes in our White House? He must be. He’s still addicted, and you don’t make the President stand outside when he has a nicotine fit. There must be ashtrays in the White House again! Either that, or he flicks the ashes on the floor. When did we last have ashtrays and cigarette butts in the White House? Was it under Ford? Nixon?

I always pray for him and his wife and the Bidens to humble themselves, acknowledge God (the real one, not the Jew-baiting Jeremiah Wright straw god), and start leading us in something resembling righteousness. I also wish he’d quit carrying that Hindu idol around and get rid of the big gold-plated one the Indians sent him. But an ego like Obama’s is tough to penetrate. And he does not admit fault. A leader takes responsibility for the things his underlings do. Obama throws them under the bus immediately. He does the same thing with his associates, like Wright and Blagojevich and Ayers and…well, I don’t want to make a long list. When Obama’s regime crumbles, one of the worst things about it will be listening to the whining and excuses.

He’s the Michael Jackson President. He surrounded himself with people who tell him he can do no wrong, and he believes them. Therefore his life is decadent, and he has no judgment. He does things no shrewd or mature person would do, and unless he changes, he will fail.

He’s in for a fall. And then we’re stuck with him for three more years. As anyone who lived under Carter during his humiliating tenure can tell you, a permanently hamstrung President is hard to live with. Pelosi and Reid will rule the free world, and our enemies will walk all over us.

God Hears

My sister’s cranial MRI was clean! I know people have been wondering. When I prayed, I felt by faith that it would be so, but it’s still a great relief. Thanks for all the prayers. I would have told you sooner, but I just found out. I told her my readers were praying, and she thanks you all.

“Mr. Sluggo Needs Your Help With the Scenery!”

Can I tell you what a delight my leg injury has been?

On Sunday, I went to my church to help dismantle a set. I was in the way the whole time, and I achieved nothing. But someone managed to drop a set on me from behind, removing a whole lot of skin from my ankle and leaving a marvelous 3″-square raspberry on my lower back.

I began treating the ankle by hosing it with Bactine once a day and then applying gauze and soft tape. Let me say right now that I’d like to punch the ad guy who made up the lie about Bactine not stinging. It’s like pouring hot sauce and lemon juice on the wound. Before doing these things, I washed it in the shower with a washcloth. That was pretty awful, but not as bad as the Bactine.

I started smearing it with Neosporin before taping it up. I developed some soreness, so I thought it might be getting infected. Now I’m changing the dressing twice a day, and I’m starting each change by rubbing the wound with alcohol, to clean the crap off. WOW does that open your eyes. First that, then the horrible Bactine, then Neosporin.

I have to keep up with this thing, or it will take forever to heal. Guess I better hit the drugstore and get supplies.

Don’t let anybody drop anything on you. Spare yourself this misery. I can’t even imagine what a big area of road rash would be like. This is the same sort of thing, but it’s only a few square inches.

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?

MRI Blessings

My sister had her cranial MRI tonight. This is to determine whether the cancer has spread to her brain. They’ll interpret it tomorrow. Do me a favor and pray.

Miami: Funhouse Without Walls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not really.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me: Hello?

Caller: Allo?

Me: Yes, I said hello.

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

Me: Hello.

Caller: Allo? Who ee dees?

Me: No hablo espanol.

Caller: [click]

Phone: RING! RING!

Me: Hello?

Caller: Allo? Who ee dees?

Me: La migra.

Caller: Ay! [click]

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

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

I better go have a banana while I still can.

OSHA is for Heathens

I went to the church today to help tear down a set. I was hoping to get to know more people and help out, but it did not work out that way.

I thought they were hard up for helpers, but when I arrived, there were maybe thirty guys hacking up the old set and moving it out. There was no meeting. No plan. There were no groups with specific tasks. There was no safety gear. There were no rules. There was absolutely no leadership. There was one guy who occasionally gave very vague instructions to no one in particular, and whoever got there first got whatever task he needed done. Everyone worked very fast. There was no communication.

I should have backed out slowly and gone home, but I’m not a blue-collar guy, so I suppose I’m not as sharp as I should be about workplace safety. And I wanted to be of some use.

The set consists of a number of plywood pieces propped up with two-by-four supports. It’s all held together with drywall screws. I suppose each section is around ten feet long, so they’re pretty heavy. There are also big aluminum structures that hold TVs. There are cables all over, and weird props like stage rocks.

I was not able to be very helpful, so I tried to stay out of the way until an opportunity arose. People kept wandering near me, carrying heavy things they didn’t seem to know what to do with, and I kept moving, trying to find a safe place to stand.

Right after I found a place that seemed relatively secure, I felt something bite me in the lower back and the back of my left leg. Somebody had dropped a section of the set, and the edge had hit me twice on the way to the floor. I yelled “JESUS!”, which probably was not a great idea, but I didn’t have a lot of time to plan it. The next time I get maimed at church, I’ll try to remember to watch my language.

I turned around and saw the set section lying there, with parts of it shattered. I looked at my leg and saw a lovely injury that started high with abraded skin and ended low, with a strip of skin peeled off. And the blood was starting to flow.

I never saw the person who dropped the set on me. I am told his name is Mike.

Some guy whose name escapes me sent me to the men’s room to clean up the wound. He said he’d find a first aid kit. When I located him again, we sat down and started patching up the leg. My back wasn’t scraped badly enough to need a bandage.

The kit had antibiotic packets, but when I opened one, it was completely dry. OSHA would tear this place up.

I assured everyone I was okay (in the sense that I did not need an ambulance), but I pointed out that the total lack of leadership and organization is what caused my injury. If that thing had hit my head, I’d be in surgery right now. Had I been one inch farther back, it would have opened my leg up to the point where I’d need expensive treatment. As it is, it will be a good two weeks before my leg is right, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s very painful to walk on over the next few days.

It’s a wonder nobody has been killed down there.

On the way home, I realized what they need when they do projects like this. They need one leader with supreme power. They need that leader to draw up a plan that calls for tasks to be done in a certain order. That would take fifteen minutes. He needs to decide how many men he needs. He needs to stand in front of the church on Sunday and ask for that many men. He needs to have a duty roster. When enough men sign up, he needs to tell the church he has everyone he needs. He needs to divide them into groups, with a leader over each group. On the day of the project, they need to have a ten-minute meeting where he explains what they’re going to do. He needs to hand out hard hats and gloves. He needs to give them basic safety rules. Finally, how about a prayer that everyone goes home in one functional piece?

He should also insist that everyone wear boots and jeans. I’d be a lot better off if I had done that. I didn’t have any idea how dangerous it would be. Most of the skinned area would have been covered by boots.

Christians forgive. So I forgive. I forgave all the way home. Several times. Eventually, it will stick. I will not let myself be crabby about this for the rest of the day. At least I hope not. Nobody intended to drop a set on me. Everyone there was trying to do something unselfish. These are good people. But it’s hard not to be annoyed when you get a painful, bloody injury that was completely unnecessary and caused by obvious mistakes.

On a DVD I watched, the pastor talked about his deformed left index finger. The last joint goes off at an angle. He hit it with a sledge hammer while he was putting up a tent in the rain. He was driving a heavy steel stake. Another church-related accident. It should never have happened. Back when I was on the kibbutz, they stuck me in the almond fields with a bunch of blunt stakes and a sledge, and they told me to drive them into the hard dirt and tie them to the saplings. I did it, but my right hand shook in the evenings. It was a very dumb idea. The Israelis marveled at my capacity to take abuse, because I was too stupid to complain. Later, one of them came out with a proper implement for driving stakes. It was a heavy pipe with two handles and one end welded shut. You drop it over the stake, and one person takes each handle, and you drive the stake into the ground in about ten seconds, without injury or strain. That’s what the pastor should have been using. Or he should have found someone with the proper power tool. I suppose a Bobcat would be ideal, if you rigged it up right. But hey, people perish for lack of knowledge. He mashed his finger (nearly losing the end of it), and I got my leg peeled. The next person may die.

I think it would be best if I excluded myself from this kind of thing in the future, unless they’re willing to start planning and quit using the Holy Spirit as a parachute. I really wanted to help, and I have faith that God will watch over me, but I’m not crazy.

I am Nice to the Little People

Yesterday I went to a men’s breakfast at church. I really enjoyed it. There were about 160 men there. We had a good breakfast, and then we heard from an interesting speaker.

This guy was a shortish black man with a thick island accent. He was introduced as a local pastor. I thought maybe I should donate a few bucks to whatever he was doing. Given the nature of the area and his humble appearance, I figured he was running a low-budget operation out of his apartment.

He started talking about his background. He said he ran a church and three businesses. “That’s nice,” I thought, “he has some subchapter S deals going on, which he also runs from his apartment.” Then he said he testified frequently as an expert in bankruptcy court, and that one of his businesses had offices in London, and that he had eleven appliance stores. And he writes all sorts of expert commentary on asset-based lending, and he pals around with big-time CEOs, and in December, he is flying out to California, to baptize a corporate bigwig and his wife in the Pacific Ocean.

Guess he didn’t need my five bucks after all.

He said people ask him how he has time for ministry, when he does all these things. He said his ministry is in the marketplace. He goes after people he comes across while doing business.

He provided five rules he follows.

1. Don’t cart a Bible around. It turns people off, and you don’t need it to bring people to God.

I think that’s true. It’s pretty tough to pick through a Bible and use it to prove God exists. A testimony is easier and more convincing.

2. Be the best you can be at work, even if you hate your job.

3. Smile and have a pleasant demeanor. I guess you can’t win people over if you’re sullen and obnoxious.

4. Control the conversation. Consider the authority you have behind you.

5. Know how to lead people to Christ, and close the deal.

He cited Nehemiah, who was a cup-bearer for Artaxerxes, the king of Persia. Though he was a slave, Nehemiah did his job well and cheerfully, and on the one day he appeared unhappy, the king noticed and asked what was wrong. Nehemiah explained that Jerusalem was in ruins, and that he wanted to rebuild it. Artaxerxes commissioned the rebuilding of the city walls, and he sent Nehemiah to be governor of the region.

I don’t know if Artaxerxes came to believe in God, but he certainly did a lot for God’s people.

At the end of the breakfast, someone came and prayed the 91st psalm over the pastor (mine, not the guy who spoke), and I was freaked out for the thousandth time this year. That’s the psalm I’m memorizing this week.

I met a guy who was jailed three times for drug addiction. That’s how he put it, although I don’t know if it’s accurate. I assume he must have been dealing, in order to get himself imprisoned three times. He was jailed in Texas. Evidently, it wasn’t very pleasant. He talked about the spartan life he led. They timed the showers and gave everyone lye soap, and he said he had soaped himself up and failed to rinse in the allotted time, so he had to spend the next two days in a 115° cell with lye soap on his skin.

He said he had been delivered instantly from his cocaine addiction. Now he has his own ministry, and he sends newsletters back to the men he was in jail with.

I got the pastor to bless my truck. It still has a little olive-oil cross on the grille.

Today I’m going to drive up and help with the dismantling of a set or something. Not sure. Whatever it is, I’m sure I can be of some use.

The pastor proclaimed a fast for today. It’s not a terribly hard fast. Liquids only, from 6 p.m Saturday until 6 p.m. tonight. I’ll bet he inadvertently sold a lot of milkshakes when he came up with that. It’s our way of acknowledging Yom Kippur. We’re a day early, but work with us, okay?

I hope we don’t have to work outside today. I’m almost positive September has been hotter than August.

Up the Indian River

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is it too much to hope for?