But You CAN Win

Baldilocks has been giving her take on what “lucky” and “unlucky” mean. I agree with her when she says she doesn’t like describing life in terms of luck. God exists. So does Satan. So does free will. And then there are the countless spirits that affect our lives for good or evil.

I see life in terms of blessings and curses. The curses are more controversial than the blessings. A lot of people–even Christians–get mad if you say misfortune is sometimes caused by sin, or that God sometimes punishes people severely. There is a bizarre movement these days to portray God as Santa Claus. All blessings, no punishment. And of course, that’s silly and utterly wrong. God and his angels killed thousands upon thousands of people in the stories of the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit–yes, the Holy Spirit–killed Ananias and Sapphira dead as hammers, and that was in the New Testament. God gave people tumors, leprosy, blindness…he drowned the entire population of the world, except for eight people, and if memory serves, seven of the eight were spared only because of God’s regard for Noah. He drowned the Egyptian army. He burned the people of Sodom and Gomorrah to death, and that includes women and kids. He caused terrible problems for his entire nation, because David took a census. Go ahead and tell me God wouldn’t give you VD or cancer or bankruptcy or whatever you want to name. That may be what Oprah believes. The Bible says otherwise. And like Ralph Richardson said in Time Bandits, God is “the nice one.” Bad behavior leaves you open to attack from less-friendly beings.

I believe your spiritual health consists of a certain number of blessings and a certain number of curses, and a lot of it can be traced to the things you or your ancestors have done in the past. Some people succeed at most things they do, even if they make a poor effort. Others can do everything right and fail time after time. Some highly disciplined people are fat. Lots of irresponsible, weak people are skinny. You can do a lot of things right and fail, and you can do almost everything wrong and succeed, depending on what you have in the spiritual bank. That’s what the Bible tells us, and it’s true. So you should always make investments in the bank. Pray, do alms, try to behave, tithe, find out what sins are closely associated with your family and repent of them, and so on. Sooner or later, the seeds will have to bear fruit. And presumably, the bad seeds you’ve planted in the past will eventually peter out and stop sprouting.

I sometimes find I’m doing bad things my parents or grandparents did, even though these are things of which I disapprove. They sneak up on me; they may take forms I don’t immediately recognize. I am doing my best to drop these practices as soon as I discover them. I don’t want this stuff bearing fruit five years from now.

I suspect that when the Bible says “charity shall cover the multitude of sins,” it means that charity can prevent many of your bad seeds from sprouting. Maybe you can spare yourself some punishment here on earth. Take a look at the 41st psalm and see what you think. The Greek word translated as “charity” is “agape,” which means a benevolent, selfless sort of love, so presumably, what we call charity qualifies. If the 41st psalm is correct, by helping the needy, you can literally make yourself lucky. This is what “he shall be blessed upon the earth means.”

Most Christians worry about going to hell, but they don’t think a lot about leading a blessed life. That’s unfortunate, because it means we end up accepting God and then going on with our lives almost as if he didn’t exist. Missing out on the blessings we were intended to have right here on earth.

Oddly, many of us think God owes us a good time. Most of us don’t tithe or pray regularly or try to avoid sin. Most of us do little for charity, which is remarkable, given the endless opportunity; I don’t understand why I did so little in the past. We do whatever we please, and then when bad things happen, we think God has cheated us, and we ask, “why me?” It would make more sense to look at the good times we haven’t earned and say, “why not me?” A lot of people refuse to believe in God, because they think life would be perfect if he existed. It’s amazing how many of us think we deserve perfect lives, just because God could spare us all unhappiness if he wanted. Apparently God is supposed to be a genie who does whatever we tell him, without requiring us to grow up. And if you love your kids, you’ll let them eat banana splits for breakfast, and you won’t make them go to school. Same thing.

I am trying to make myself more “lucky,” and it’s working. And I do not believe in Oprah Claus.

Brief

Couple of things.

1. My sister is on her way to a hospital in another state, to have her lung looked at. She may have some kind of fungus. It’s not cancer; don’t get excited. If you would like to pray that she makes the trip safely and gets her problem fixed, I would appreciate it.

2. Reader Ed pointed me to another blog. The proprietor has a friend named Donna, and Donna has a “serious health issue.” Prayer is requested. Not sure what’s happening, but I trust Ed’s judgment.

Mike and I are about to hit Gordon Food Supply. I hope we survive.

Help

George Moneo says his father-in-law Gil is having skin cancer surgery tomorrow. Please say a prayer.

Obama Roars; God Snickers

Jews in Israel are finally rallying against Obama. From Dani Dayan, leader of the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip:

David Ben-Gurion founded Israel in spite of American pressure… Menachem Begin destroyed Osirak in spite of American opposition, and Yitzhak Shamir rejected American demands to stop construction.

Amen! When America’s President is an anti-Christian, anti-Semitic Chicago machine veteran who spent 20 years warming a pew in a non-church where hostility to the Jews was preached openly, Israel owes it to herself to stand up to him.

Look at the reward Jews got for backing this cohort of Nation of Islam bigots. Will they learn? Some seem to be getting the picture. I can’t believe they got fooled in the first place.

When has currying favor paid off for the Jews? Liberalism is never going to make them popular. If you want to make good policy, forget the Democrats. Remember God and the M.S. St. Louis.

Let’s see. Who has Obama stabbed in the back, to date? The UAW. Doctors. Jews. The police unions. His own grandmother. Why would anyone trust this man? His record of promise-breaking is reminiscent of Hitler’s.

Build in the West Bank! If God is with you, who cares what Obama thinks? God is eternal. Obama is a Cabbage Patch Doll wrapped in a hula hoop. His term will be over before you know it.

Note: while I was writing this entry, I learned that the proper name for the ship I mentioned is “M.S. St. Louis,” not “S.S. St. Louis.” Something to do with the diesel engines.

Unusual Combination

I have to catch up on a few things.

Og’s friend Ken has cancer. It has invaded his femur. He stumbled the other day, and the femur broke. Send up some prayers.

A guy who refers to himself as “Gorak” just popped up on the Chaski forum. He says:

I live in a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia. Professionally, I work for a large consumer electronics company at an R&D facility managing all of the test laboratories. Outside of work, I am an avid sea kayaker, woodworker and wood turner and am in the planning stages of building an 18′ cedar strip sea kayak. My current hobby time however is severely limited as I also act as primary caregiver for my wife who is fighting an advanced terminal cancer.

Couldn’t hurt to pray.

Longtime reader Ruth has started a blog. You must begin reading it immediately.

Back to business. Sort of. Sondra has blogged my blogging of her excursion to church. So if you want, you can go over and leave a comment. I don’t know if she realized how many of her readers were Christians, but she definitely knows now.

I feel like I am partly responsible for helping Sondra decide to go to church. But who helped me? I have tended to think my own prayers made the difference in my life, but I now understand that that’s wrong. I was not the only one praying. Looking at Sondra’s blog comments, I have to wonder how many of my readers prayed for me all these years, trying to straighten me out. Keep it up. It obviously works. And thanks.

I think I’ve found the solution to my metric threading problem. I considered buying dies, but that would be a limited answer. I would have to buy a die for each thread I planned to cut, and I would have no choice about the diameters of the stock I threaded. I don’t know if there is any point in putting a thread on a rod of unusual diameter, but why give up the option? I also considered getting a 7 x 14 lathe and setting it up for metric threading. This would be great, but it’s one more machine. Someone on the Chaski forum suggested I look into a new idea: the electronic lead screw (ELS). I checked it out, and I think it’s the way to go.

Here’s how it works. You buy a stepper motor and a little digital controller, and you connect the motor to your lead screw. You also put a sensor on your spindle to tell the control box how fast the lathe is turning. Now you can move the carriage back and forth at any ratio you want. I assume there is some error, but it would be insignificant. This works so well, people who use ELS boxes commonly thread at 500 RPM. I have no idea why they would want to do this, but they do.

You can also wire it up to your cross slide to get a cheap version of CNC. This means you can cut tapers without a taper attachment. That’s a great thing. A used Clausing taper attachment would cost a grand. I can make one, but it would be a pain in the butt to store when not in use, and I’d have to put it on and take it off.

There are lots of other ways to get metric on my lathe. You can buy a 30-piece metric attachment, if you’re lucky enough to find one. They pop up about once a year. This lathe requires a metric quadrant and a bunch of other stuff, so you can’t just stick a gear in there and hope for the best. Getting a metric attachment is totally unrealistic. The ELS, on the other hand, goes on with a few bolts. And when you don’t need it, it disconnects. It won’t ruin the lathe, either. If I hate it, I can take it off and throw it in the trash.

It sounds very sweet, not to mention relatively cheap. I would have to find a way to couple the motor to the screw; that’s the only challenge. The screw on my lathe is completely covered at the right end, except for the end surface. I would have to machine into that surface to make a way to put a pulley on the screw. I guess it can be done. It’s supposed to be pretty hard to machine a square hole into a flat surface, so that probably won’t work. A tapped hole won’t work, because the screw needs to reverse, and that will make the threads come undone. Maybe I could bore a hole and put a set screw in from the side, with the screw sunk into the side of the screw, so it wouldn’t interfere with the thing the end of the screw spins in. Then I could make a shaft with a flat on one side and stick it in there. I have to make sure the screw hole would not have any ill effects on the lubrication. I suppose if it did, I could fill it with epoxy or something.

Funny, I had no idea how to do this, and then this idea came to me while I blogged it.

How do I bore a hole in the end of a lead screw with no lead screw in the lathe? Angle attachment on the mill? Arrghh.

Wait, I don’t need a lead screw. I use the ram on the tailstock.

I feel better now. That was a close one. I’ll bet the steel in that screw will eat drill bits like candy. But I have a carbide end mill I can use.

The milling machine should be at the rigger’s RIGHT NOW. Can you believe it? I feel faint. I am dying to crank that thing up.

Go visit Sondra. I mean it.

Over and Over and Over and Over

Seems like every time I go to Trinity Church, there is some sort of “coincidence” that freaks me out. This week, I have a doozy.

Perhaps you’re familiar with Sondra K. If you’re a male blog reader, I’m sure you know who she is. She has one of the best conservative blogs. Sondra and I are friends. She is, or was, a pagan. You can imagine how I felt about that. No Christian wants a friend of his to worship trees or rocks or whatever it is pagans worship. When you proactively try to contact and please “gods” and “goddesses,” you are essentially inviting malevolent spirits to infect your life.

Naturally, Sondra and her husband JR have been on my prayer list.

I was surprised a few months back when Sondra said she planned to attend a Catholic mass. I couldn’t believe it. People tend to be pretty loyal to their religions. I thought it was a great omen.

This week, in an email, she said she felt God had been calling her for about a year. I guess I don’t have to tell you I was excited. I suggested she check out some kind of pentecostal church to see what she thought. I said I would contact my church and ask them if they could recommend a place near her. Sondra is near Olympia, Washington, which is around an hour from Seattle.

I procrastinated. I thought I would look stupid, asking these people if they could recommend a church near Seattle. What were the odds that they knew anyone up there? Vanishingly small.

On Saturday night, I went to church. The sermon was about direction. A big part of Christianity is “walking by faith.” That means you try to do what God wants, even when you have no idea what the point is. Sometimes it will seem like you’re doing something silly or counterproductive, but over your life, God will keep stepping in at these times and making things work out. He’s like Mr. Miyagi. You’re doing “wax on, wax off” all day, wondering if the one who told you to do it is crazy, and when it’s over, it turns out you were learning karate. Something like that.

I was really happy to see that Pastor Rich was talking about the very thing that was on my mind. I practiced law, I got a few books published, and then I drew closer to God, and now I need direction. Should I become a mediator? Should I try to write Christian books and articles? I don’t know. I do not want to litigate. That much I am sure of. I do it well, but it’s like mud wrestling for a living.

He talked about the Israelites at the first Passover. They needed to get away from Pharaoh, and instead of a rational plan, God told them to cook and eat lambs, put the blood on their doorposts, and wait. And you know how it worked out. They left Egypt immediately, and the Egyptians loaded them down with money and weapons. Then God took them to the shore of a sea, where they were trapped with Pharaoh’s army in hot pursuit. And again, you know what happened. God opened the sea and led them across the floor, and then he drowned the Egyptians. And after that, God stayed before them, in a cloud or a pillar of flame, leading them around in the wilderness.

I hadn’t thought about it, but the notion of walking by faith applies to waiting for direction. You have to assume God will eventually show you which way to go. So I’ll wait.

As an illustration of how this works, Pastor Rich talked about coming to Miami, in 1998. He and his wife lived in another state, in a 5000-square-foot house that was built for them as a gift. They had a son who was a senior in high school, and they had four other sons. They had family in their area. It seemed like they were right where they needed to be, but then they became convinced that God wanted them to move to Miami, and he didn’t supply a big pile of money to help them make the move.

Keep this in mind: for some reason, I had been under the impression that they were from Minnesota.

He started talking about the length of the trip. He said they traveled 4,000 miles, from one end of the country to the other. And I sat up in my seat. Then he said they moved from one corner of the country to the opposite corner. And I thought, “No, it can’t be.” And toward the end of the sermon, he confirmed it. They came here from Seattle.

I had been waffling about accosting him and asking about a church for Sondra, but now I had no choice. At the end of the sermon, I told him I knew someone near Seattle, and I said this person needed a church. He recommended a place called City Church. Then I said she was actually near Olympia. And he said she needed to try Evergreen Church, in Olympia. And the pastor there was his brother-in-law.

Think about this. There are fifty states. There are many, many cities. Thousands and thousands. The population of Olympia is roughly 40,000; it’s not a big town. And my pastor’s brother-in-law runs a church there. Just happens to.

If this doesn’t make an impression on you, you are beyond reach.

I emailed Sondra and told her she had to go and take a look, because if she didn’t, I would not be able to sleep. I am hoping she’ll sneak in today.

It may be a good choice for her. Catholics have a big problem with liberalism in the clergy. It’s very disturbing, seeing men of the cloth side with Marxists and pacifists and people who favor convenience abortion. In an Assemblies of God church, a conservative is a drop-in part. In spirit-filled churches, leftists are a tiny minority, as they should be. It’s amazing that any Christian could vote for Barack Obama, who voted to withhold life support from abortion victims born alive, and who spent 20 years in an openly anti-Semitic church run by a former member (and current ally) of the Nation of Islam.

Today I became a member of Trinity Church. I went to a class, and then the new people had to sit up front and be presented to the rest of the church. I hate being a spectacle, but it’s something they wanted to do, so I stayed. Even though I heard the same sermon last night. I am hoping they’ll find a use for me, beyond holding down a chair. For now, I’m pooped. Three and a half hours of church is enough for anyone.

I told Sondra, “If you end up converting, this kind of thing will never stop happening to you.” She said “coincidences” had been happening to her all her life. Maybe God has had his hand on her. I hope something comes of this. Say a prayer. She gave me permission to blog this.

Now I have to flop on the couch.

More

From Sondra:

I met the pastor Dale and he is wonderful.
Yes, I went and survived….and will be going back next week
[snip]
Thank you, Steve 🙂 Life is so grand.

“Freaked out” doesn’t begin to describe how I feel. I can’t believe Sondra and JR listened to me!

When He’s Ten Feet Wide

What IS it they put in McDonald’s breakfasts?

I just ate a McMuffin, a greasy biscuit sandwich, and three hash browns, and I’m pretty sure I’m high. I can’t get enough of this stuff. The only breakfast I like better is a big Southern breakfast with country ham and biscuits and gravy. And jelly. And honey. And red eye gravy. And Dr. Pepper.

There has to be a drug in this stuff. It can’t just be grease and flour and eggs.

I look forward to this all week, because I diet every day except Saturday. All week long, it has been oatmeal, oatmeal, oatmeal, OATMEAL. I have breakfast with my dad on Tuesdays, and on those days, I have a tuna sandwich, because eggs are bad for my gall bladder. Once a week, I have to have something I can actually taste.

I stopped losing weight. I guess I manage to eat so much on Saturdays, it kills the rest of the week. I may have to adjust my calories downward. But I’m not giving up Saturdays. I don’t care if the other days go down to three hundred calories each. I have to have decent food on occasion.

Speaking of decent food, I had a magnificent Costco steak this week. I went down there hoping the local Costcos was one of the stores where they had started selling prime beef. Sadly, it was not. But I picked up some choice rib eyes, and beef grading is not an exact science, and what I ended up with was pretty much the same thing as prime. I pan-fried one for dinner, and it made my eyes roll back in my head. I think it pays to study the beef you buy, because you will occasionally find something better than the grade on the label indicates.

Dinner is pretty dull for me these days. Roasted chicken, grilled fish, pork chops, or pan-fried steak, plus a couple of boring vegetables that are low in carbs. The food is good, but there is no imagination in it. And it’s a little monotonous. Lunch is almost always a tuna salad or salmon salad sandwich and a little fruit. If I didn’t break loose on Saturday, I’d go insane.

Imagine eating a gorgeous rib eye with steamed snap peas and Brussels sprouts. This is what I am reduced to.

In my book, I advised people to cook steaks outdoors on a propane-powered griddle, and that gives incredible results, but lately I’ve been using a cast-iron skillet on the stove, right under the vent fan. The smoke has been tolerable. Seems like a piece of cast iron will start imparting a wonderful flavor to steak, if you cook steak in it regularly. Maybe I should dedicate that skillet to rib eyes and CFS.

I believe a Christian has to have self-control, and that means you can’t eat everything you want. Like Jim from SOTW says, it’s irritating to hear a big, fat, sloppy preacher with a 50-inch waist and giant wattles make the ridiculous claim that it’s a sin to drink moderately.

Why are Christians so fat? Is it my imagination? The people at my church look pretty normal, but if you turn on religious TV, you will see some real porkers punishing the pews. I guess we take the energy we can’t channel into other sins and put it into gluttony. If you’re letting your physical urges ruin your life, you’re sinning, aren’t you? How is weighing 300 pounds significantly different from taking drugs or being a drunk? I realize obesity has fewer ill effects on you and your family, but it will still kill you and make everyone around you miserable. Have you ever sat next to a fat person on an airplane? Do you have a fat relative who ruins your meals because of the way he or she eats? Do you have someone who makes it impossible for anyone else in the house to get anything good to eat, because he or she nails it as soon as it comes in the door? Do you have a fat relative who always gets the best seat in the car because he can’t get in the other ones? Fat people hog the bathroom, because they have to. They ruin furniture. Fat women destroy wooden floors with their tiny heels. If you’re huge, you’re probably making your family suffer. You should try to do something about it.

I wrote that silly cookbook, but it wasn’t intended to be a set of rules to guide you through every day of your life. I am fat, and I will never claim it’s okay, and while I will continue cooking good food as often as I can get away with it, I will never stop working on my weight.

Speaking of drinking, I haven’t made beer in ages, and I really need to get back to it. I rarely drink, but it would be a shame to get so good at homebrewing and then throw it all away. When you drink very little, you ought to make it count. Have something really good. I can’t remember my last drink of hard liquor, but I can promise you it was something excellent. I can afford it because one bottle lasts two years.

I wish it were next Saturday already, so I could hit the drive-through again.

Crowley Bringing the Kryptonite?

This thing with Obama and Cambridge cop James Crowley is amazing. Crowley may possibly be the worst person on earth Obama could have picked on. Crowley’s initial interview on TV was nothing short of astounding; no attorney or handler could have improved on it. And he looks like a movie star; if they made a movie about Russell Crowe, Crowley could play him. And he was picked by his black police chief to teach about racial profiling. On top of that, he tried to save a black NBA star by giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. And he didn’t play that card! His mother did!

The class and shrewdness Crowley displayed in his interview are exactly the types of traits Obama lacks. The contrast between the Crowley video and the video of Obama’s idiotic slander is instructive.

I think many events in life have a supernatural origin. This guy may have been fated to breach Obama’s hull. He is almost too perfect for the purpose.

The cops are demanding an apology, and there is absolutely no doubt that one is necessary. Obama doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

Obama is a very small, insecure, and arrogant person, so I see three possible outcomes, ranked in order of descending likelihood:

1. No apology; the Messiah can do no wrong. The unbelievers are the problem! Attacks on Crowley and those demanding an apology will be mounted, if at all possible. Robert Gibbs sends out for a fresh crate of Maalox and ends up looking even more slimy and condescending than usual.

2. Mealy-mouthing tarted up as an apology. “I regret the misunderstanding.” “I am sorry the Cambridge police [stupidly] took it this way.”

3. An apology which looks sincere when displayed on a teleprompter, but which Obama will be unable to deliver without making his contempt and anger obvious. Followed by a quick exit and a weekend of pouting.

Maybe 2 should be on top. Depends on whether the handlers have any luck when they beseech the Anointed One.

Babies are Solid Waste

As you know if you read Drudgebart.com.tv, the wildlife people down here are trying to arrest some goofballs who tried to sell a nurse shark to a store. One of the charges is “improper killing and disposal of an animal.”

Is PETA running the world now? Do we seriously have to worry about being charged with crimes when we off primitive creatures that barely know they’re alive?

When I was a kid, my friends and I killed fish right and left. We were real idiots. Maybe it was because our fathers didn’t spend much time with us and didn’t teach us things, but we had no grasp of the notion that you should only kill things you can use. We gigged every fish we could hit. We would have gigged whales if they had come close enough. And we almost always threw out the meat, because virtually none of it was worth eating.

I remember the time we gigged a cownose ray. I think Mike was there. It was about three feet wide, and it was stupid enough to swim near the seawall where we used to hang out. That amounted to suicide. We lugged it to a friend’s house and performed an autopsy. Our medical conclusions were that if you poked one of the things inside a cownose ray, green stuff would come out, and if you poked another thing, you would get something that looked like thousand-island dressing.

I don’t know where that ray ended up. On another occasion, we tossed a stingray into a neighbor’s pool.

I told you, we were idiots. Sometimes I wish I could travel back in time and take a belt to myself.

Let me say that I have reformed. I don’t fish for worthless creatures. But sometimes I catch them anyway, and the sad fact is, a lot of them get killed in the process. Do I have to worry that a couple of years down the road, PETA nuts will be riding along with the Marine Patrol, yammering at me for not being nice to moray eels and other trash fish?

I very much doubt that nurse sharks are protected. They’re supposed to be very tasty, but very few people know that, so they get thrown back. I would imagine that their numbers are copious. If they are protected, I suppose the doofuses who killed this one should be fined. But the bit about improper killing…that is disturbing. It sounds like it’s unrelated to the species killed. If we give random animals the right to life, we’re going to have to get permits to kill rats and ants.

Not babies, of course. Don’t worry about that. It will always be open season on unborn human beings, and, if Barack Obama gets his way, on human beings which have been born in spite of efforts to kill them.

Did you know Barak (no “C”) was the name of Mohammed’s horse? Interesting. It was the white horse Mohammed allegedly rode to heaven. Muslims like white horses a lot. Christians, on the other hand, see the white horse as a symbol of the beginning of the Tribulation. I think. See the sixth chapter of the Revelation.

The inconsistency of the animal worshipers is puzzling. Right now, we have a problem with a group of Cubans (I am assuming, with good reason) killing and butchering other people’s horses. People are outraged. Because of the theft? No, that would make too much sense. They’re upset because HORSIES are dying. No one cares about pigs and cows and chickens, thank God, but when you kill a horse (which is about as intelligent as a chicken), people act like you shot the Pope.

I have been told that we have a law in the US, banning the slaughter of horses. If you want to make a jacket or a pair of shoes or a baseball out of horsehide, which is a wonderful leather, you have to wait until a horse drops dead. Can someone explain the logic? If I felt like it, I could buy 50 pigs tomorrow, kill all of them, and have a huge barbecue. No one would care. And pigs are smarter than dogs. But a horse…that would be a sin. It’s crazy.

The reason I think Cubans are killing the horses is that no one else will eat them. Cubans eat salted horsemeat, which is called tasajo. More power to them, I say. The stealing part, I’m against. But the life of a horse is no more important than the life of a turkey. I don’t care if they open a restaurant called The All-Tasajo Cafe and hang dead horses in the main dining room. They hang hams from the ceilings in Cuban sandwich joints. It’s the same thing.

I have two horsehide jackets, one pair of horsehide pants, one horsehide belt, and four pairs of horsehide shoes. It’s all leather to me.

I think it’s wrong to kill a pet, because it does great harm to the people and other pets who are attached to it, and because there is something sick and sociopathic about killing an animal that trusts you and loves you. But apart from that, as long as the harvest is humane, I see nothing wrong with killing an animal you can use. The life itself has little or no value. And I don’t know why some animals are sacred and others are not. I don’t get the hysteria about whales. I’d buy a whale steak in a heartbeat, if I could find one. Just to see what it’s like.

Actually, I do understand why some animals get more protection. Generally, it’s because they’re cute. Horses are cuter than pigs. Baby seals…don’t get me started. Never mind the horrible standard of living in the areas where they have seal hunts. Let the humans starve! Just don’t kill those cute seals! If I were making the rules, I’d weigh in on the human side. I think I would require them to quit using clubs, but life is hard in the Arctic Circle, and I can’t imagine outlawing the hunt. Who am I to sit in an upscale suburb and tell the Indians they can’t supplement their income by selling fur? Maybe the Indians should dress up like Hello Kitty when they club seals. Fight fire with fire.

If unborn babies looked like baby seals, the abortion picture would be a lot different. And it’s a lot easier to kill something you never see. I always say that abortion is legal because it’s like peeing in a swimming pool. When it happens, you can’t see it. Every time you go to a public pool, you know half the people there are peeing in it, but you swim anyway, because you can’t see them doing it. Imagine how different it would be if they all peed in the pool while standing or squatting on the edge. The quantity of pee would be the same, but there is no way you’d swim.

Similarly, abortion would be less popular if they had to remove the baby from the womb and cut its throat on the table, in front of the mother. Partial-birth abortion approaches this standard, but they keep the head concealed while the killing is done.

It’s kind of odd that you can arrest someone for dumping a dead shark in the street, while we have no problem putting several thousand babies into incinerators every day. They used to go into dumpsters, but then that got exposed, so now they burn with the rest of the medical waste. An excised appendix, a quart of liposuction fat, a diabetic’s gangrenous toe, your unborn son or daughter…same thing, in the eyes of the law.

Maybe the answer to the seal problem is to teach the Indians to get baby seals by aborting them in the last trimester. The hippies could never object to that.

I plan to keep the next nurse shark I catch, just to find out if it’s as good as I’ve heard. I hope they don’t put me in a gulag.

Pina Coladas Can be Considered Painkillers

It looks like Obamacare is dead. Thank God. In order for the plan to live, lots of Americans would have had to die. So the way I see it, it was aborted to save lives. That’s pro-choice, isn’t it? And if you believe, as I do, that Obama got elected by accepting money from China and Muslim nations, then the pregnancy was also the result of rape.

It’s odd, but I can’t remember anyone suggesting that caregivers just charge the poor and uninsured less. As it stands now, the poor get all the treatment they need, but then they get charged huge bills they can’t or won’t pay, and the rest of us (the ones who take bills seriously) end up subsidizing them. Why not just admit that we overtreat and overcharge people? Let’s give the poor and uninsured good but not excessive treatment, and let’s charge what the treatment is actually worth. Maybe some of them would actually pay, and that would bring prices down for the rest of us. And the poor would be more likely to go to doctors.

Whenever I think about health care prices, I think about my first kidney stone. Like all medical emergencies, it happened on a weekend night, so I had to go to the ER. They gave me a totally unnecessary scan that cost several thousand dollars. They doped me up and kept me on a Gurney all night, and then they sent me home on Saturday morning–still containing a stone–with enough Percocet to get me through one day. Because clearly, I was a drug-seeking patient, and I had magically generated a kidney stone in order to get enough pills to last until Monday.

In the end, they charged me around six grand. That includes a few hundred bucks for my urologist, who actually provided useful treatment.

What did I really need? I’m not a doctor, but I know what doctors have done with millions of other people with tiny kidney stones. They x-rayed their abdomens (or not), gave them painkillers, and waited for them to pee the stones out. You can do this, including drugs and a follow-up x-ray, for maybe six hundred bucks. Apart from the pointless scan, this is the treatment I received.

The second time I got a stone, I called my urologist’s office, and I got his unbelievably nasty receptionist, and I was so offended, I decided not to get treatment. And a couple of days later, I was fine. Total cost: $0.

Now I lay off the calcium antacids, and I go easy on tea. And I definitely don’t take calcium antacids WITH tea. No more stones.

Apologists can say, “You could have had cancer! You could have been on the verge of death! You should thank God you got that scan!” And my response is that you could say the same thing about someone who went in to get a pimple squeezed. You can mistake cancer for a pimple. Or for hemorrhoids, or for any of a huge number of other trivial ailments. The fact is, the odds that I had a serious problem were incredibly low, and if I had turned out to be seriously ill, it would have become obvious with or without a scan.

The purpose of the scan was to make money. And it worked.

Have you ever gotten sick overseas? It’s a very different experience. The care you get is likely to be nearly as good as the care you get here, but it costs much, much less, and it comes with fewer bells and whistles. For example, I knew a kibbutz volunteer whose appendix went crazy while he was visiting Jerusalem. The same day, he went to a charity hospital in the Old City, and they yanked his appendix out, and they sent him back to the kibbutz when he was ready to travel. Didn’t cost him a thing, because the Catholics paid for it. But if he had been charged, it would still have cost much less than American care, because they didn’t generate 3,000 pages of documentation and give him fifty things he didn’t need, and he didn’t get a private room with cable.

I sliced my finger open in the Bahamas. Did a real number on it. There was no doctor on the island, unless you count the vacationing Americans who were lying drunk on their yachts. I went to the local nurse, and she ran a giant needle up through my fingertip and out of the nail, and she tied it up and bandaged it and sent me home. I was fine. In an American ER, they would have given me a bone scan, an EKG, three caviar enemas, and a grief counselor. I didn’t pay her a dime, but even if she had charged, it would have been dirt cheap.

I’ll bet this would have been a $500 injury in the US. If you’ve paid to have a minor cut stitched, leave a comment and tell me what they charged.

The other big excuse is that lawyers force doctors to overtreat. Yes, I’m sure the added profit is no incentive at all. Because nobody ever went into medicine to make money. Everyone knows lawyers screw life up, but they’re not the whole explanation for our medical costs. Doctors proactively look for ways to charge more. My dentist now has a racket where he tries to charge you for an oral cancer exam, and if you don’t buy it, you have to sign a release. That’s so blatant, it’s nearly a scam. And the obvious inference is that if you don’t pay, and he sees a lesion anyway, he’s not going to tell you. I hope that isn’t the case.

I avoid doctors for the same reason I avoid mechanics. You can’t trust them. You go in for a trivial problem, and while you’re there, they look for other things that can make them money. And unless you’re Superman, they can always find something. Actually, that might not be enough to make you safe. “Hmm…I can’t get this needle into your Kryptonian vein. I better give you an expensive yet inconclusive test for scleroderma. And some type of scan, as soon as Steve gets out of the machine. He has a very ominous pimple.”

If I trusted doctors–if I had not been cheated so many times already–I would be more likely to visit them regularly. It’s that simple.

Here’s another idea. Why not fly the poor overseas for treatment? I know it sounds insane, but it isn’t. You can go to Central America, pay a pittance for top-quality surgery, stay in a resort hospital on a beach, pay for your airfare, and still come out way ahead. If you don’t like arepas, you can go to India and have curry. Or Singapore.

Let’s see. Here’s how it would work. Poor person shows up at hospital. They determine he can’t pay. They diagnose him with a condition requiring expensive surgery. They send him to Belize. He recovers and doesn’t pay. The benefit? Now the hospital can cover his small foreign bill out of money received from paying patients, instead of covering his huge American bill. Sounds nutty, I know, but if it saves money, why not?

I wonder if my medical insurance would cover treatment at a ritzy beach hospital. I would greatly prefer it, wouldn’t you? You’d think they would jump at it, if it saved them money. A 2008 Time article says insurance companies are starting to take the bait.

Speaking of great foreign deals, I still have no Chaiwanese milling machine. The rigger I’m working with just emailed, and he said the shipper called yesterday to ask if he could unload the machine from a box trailer. They were looking for a flatbed and couldn’t find one. This means that as of yesterday, the machine was in…CALIFORNIA. This is amazing. I just checked, and it appears that I ordered this thing seven weeks ago. I hadn’t realized so much time had passed. Twice, I’ve been told they shipped it, and twice it has turned out to be untrue.

The seller says he has a different brand of machine he can sell me; he’ll be getting them in a week and a half. I told him to go ahead and make the switch, if the other machine was still sitting 3000 miles away.

I’ve been waiting for lathe videos from Smartflix, and they arrived yesterday. These are from ATI. I highly recommend their stuff. It’s very methodical and thorough. I guess now that I know the milling machine isn’t going to be here in the near future, I should watch the lathe videos and try to get some things done. It’s tempting to stall when you think a new machine will arrive at any minute. A milling machine would make projects much easier, so I find myself wanting to wait until it gets here. I really don’t understand the guys who claim you can do all sorts of great things with just a lathe. It’s not true. You need to be able to make straight cuts, and you can’t do that with a lathe unless you spring for an expensive milling attachment. Here’s what you can do with just a lathe: you can make a machinist’s jack and a head for a hammer. And you can thread things and cut rods in two. That about sums it up. I’m exaggerating because I’m annoyed, but what I say is true in principle.

Let me close with something useful. Heather’s mom (an actual person) just had more surgery. Stents in her urinary tract. Please offer a prayer.

She probably should have gone to Costa Rica.

Body Armor Would not Help

I get up in the morning, I make my wonderful, satisfying, minuscule bowl of oatmeal, I sit down at the PC to see what’s happening, and I get this from Marv:

Marv: Marv! Marv! WHOOoooo! Cluck. Cluck. Are you okay? WHOOooo. Mornin’, bird!

How am I supposed to concentrate on email and the Drudge Report? At least Maynard is considerate enough to sulk quietly.

Oh, great. Now he’s starting up. “What are you doing? What are you doing? Maynard bird!”

Birds always make things difficult. I have to take them out of the cage one at a time, or else Marv will be eaten. Night before last I took them out while I watched a DVD. Marv insisted on standing on my pillow, behind my ear. Last night I noticed a spot on the pillow. I wondered if I had some kind of medical thing going on. No, do not be alarmed. It was bird poop. Of course. And I had slept on it the night before. Rubbing my face in it. And my hair.

He was out for half an hour, I made him go at least four times on a newspaper during that time, and he still managed to plant an Improvised Poop Device. I don’t know where it comes from. It’s like he generates it from nothingness. At will.

And I watched him the whole time he was out! I checked the pillow! I knew he was going to do his best to nail that pillow! How did I miss it? It’s like he has a poop cloaking device.

The CIA should train Marvin and turn him loose to poop on bin Laden. He’d find him for sure and get the job done. If he thought there was a peanut in it for him. Then we could follow up with a daisy cutter.

Now Marvin is screaming in Maynard’s voice.

Speaking of bed-related issues, I have learned more stuff about preventing nighttime congestion. It helps if you take out your kitchen trash every night before bed. Unbelievably, stuff that grows in a can far from your bedroom can interfere with your breathing while you sleep. So I guess my once-a-month trash schedule is going to have to be stepped up.

Last thing this morning: please do me a favor and say a prayer for my sister. She’s going in for a medical procedure. Something with her lung. Looks like it’s not all that serious.

Thanks for the help.

Cheap Meat!

I paid a visit to the grocery store to get some wings for dinner. By the way, this is one of the great low-carb feasts of all time. Add salt, pepper, and garlic. Bake at 425 for one hour on a broiling pan. Serve with a mixture of Frank’s Red Hot sauce and butter. Simple.

Anyway, while I was there, I noticed they had beautiful prime rib for $12 a pound. Not choice. Prime! I trembled with desire. This is only 20% more expensive than choice.

It’s funny, but meat seems cheap right now. A couple of years back, I paid $12.50 for prime rib, to age and cut into steaks. Then the price went up. Now it’s down. And the store was packed with cheap chicken. Costco’s meat prices are down, too. Thanks, Fannie Mae and Barney Frank! I wish everyone could benefit from the low prices.

I had to call Mike. A meat-bargain sighting is no fun without someone to share it with.

I thought he was coming down this weekend, but he’s really busy. Might make it a week later.

I would appreciate it if people would include him and his family in their prayers. I’m hoping all four of them end up attending church regularly, and that they start to see the blessings flow.

I can tell I’m going to have to have prime rib soon. Or age a roast for steaks. I only have two aged rib eyes in the freezer, and they’re choice. That is unacceptable.

Still no milling machine.

Give Them What They Asked For!

I skimmed today’s Drudgebart-linked article about Obama’s health debacle jacking NYC taxes up to about 60% on successful citizens. I think it’s FANTASTIC.

Seriously; these people voted for Obama. They need to suffer so they can learn. It’s only right that they get hit harder than the rest of us. I knew this guy was a socialist and a mediocrity from the word “go,” and so did millions of other Americans. If New Yorkers and other blue-state suckers had listened to us, we’d have the slightly less liberal John McCain in the White House. That would be bad, but what we have now is catastrophic.

It’s 2009, and there are still people who think socialism works. Forget the gulags. Forget the collapse of the USSR. Forget the prosperity lower taxes brought us. Turn a blind eye to the fact that capitalism saved China from ruin. No, none of that matters to the adherents of the religion of socialism. They are convinced that if we do something incredibly stupid correctly, we will have success. All the people who tried it before us did it wrong. That’s the problem.

Please, please, let this happen. I want to see what happens to limousine liberals when they lose their limousines. I want to see productive people flee New York and rail at the messiah who disappointed them.

Obama has already managed to alienate part of his base. Some American Jews are finally realizing he’s hostile to Israel. If he wrecks our richest city, maybe he’ll offend more devotees, and the scales will fall from their eyes.

I don’t expect it to happen. I’ll be honest. I think Obama’s supporters are utterly blind. When his simpleminded policies bring pain, the sheep will find a way to defend the shepherd. The rats will protect the piper. “He inherited this problem.” “It didn’t work because he didn’t get everything he wanted.” “George Bush snuck into his bedroom and put a chip in his brain.” Or maybe the explanation will simply be “Dick Cheney!”, combined with a knowing nod. If anything, the suffering Obama causes will make his worshipers cling to him more tightly.

I’ve realized something, and it will offend most people when I point it out. Most Americans do not care about freedom. Remember those Star Trek episodes where Kirk tried to make the aliens understand that human beings were unique, because they couldn’t be happy in cages? That was all a fantasy. It was absolute nonsense. Nothing could be further from the truth. The majority of us will gladly submit to totalitarianism in exchange for a steady supply of food pellets and fresh shavings. Most of us are either liberal or swing voters, and these are the people who vote for increased government control of our lives. Taxes equal control. Entitlements equal control. Gun-grabbing. “Hate crime” legislation. TARP. Coercive green legislation which affects our most private actions. This is us, begging the government to dominate every detail of our lives. Most of us think it’s swell.

Our soldiers fight and die to protect rights which are only important to about a third of us. It’s amazing when you think about it. How has the Constitution lasted so long?

I think Nanny Obama’s warm fuzzy government is like a sweater and mittens that are going to get tighter and tighter until we can’t breathe. I expect it to get worse and worse. We had freedom, and we used it as license to become arrogant, ungrateful degenerates, and now we’re going to lose a lot of it. We’re like the British before they faded. I see almost no hope for America the nation. I believe that from here on out, the nation as a whole will wane, and instead of blessing us corporately, God will look after individuals within the nation. And those individuals will become targets.

It must have been a little like this in Cambodia, Vietnam, Nazi Germany, Cuba, and other nations devastated by mindless personality cults. We’re not as extreme yet, but the same paradigm is in play. An inept leader much of the population finds charismatic, as though he were anointed to deliver us. A captive, fawning, obsequious press. Destructive legislation presented in such a way that anyone who opposes it is considered not merely wrong, but evil. They’re not lining us up beside ditches and shooting us in the head yet, the way leftists have done in so many nations, but the same mindset is at work. Those Eastern-bloc-style posters of Obama staring toward the horizon…they are positively creepy. We never had anything like that for the Bushes, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, or Nixon. Ordinarily, this type of icon only appears in dictatorships or in a religious context. They show that we are crossing the border between support and idolatry. And for what? A former bagman who has toed the line and opposed change his whole career. A lackey who made good. The opposite of a leader.

The Jews are paying the price. Maybe New Yorkers are next. The canaries are coughing. Eventually, the rest of us will smell the fumes.

My advice is to remember the true source of all prosperity and protection. You want a messiah? Fine. Look to the genuine article.

Poisonous Charity

It’s strange, how Ruth Ginsburg’s remark about abortion hasn’t been a bigger story.

Most Americans believe abortion is wrong. Polls prove that over and over. But we keep casting votes that keep it legal. Why? Because we believe in choice? No. If we believed in choice, there would be no such thing as the DEA. Liberals would not have tried to ban breast implants. The FDA’s budget would be slashed by 90%; prescription-only drugs would not exist. Overwhelmingly, Americans believe the government has the right to tell us what to do with our own bodies. It has been a very long time since we could make a credible claim that we believed in choice.

The reason abortion is legal is that the majority hopes that “undesirable” segments of the population will use abortion so enthusiastically that they will significantly reduce their own numbers. Were it not for this hope, abortion support would be very limited. Americans want to prevent the births of “unwanted” babies, and generally, “unwanted” means “black.” And our policy is working beautifully. Black women are much, much more likely to have abortions than white women, and over 16 million black babies have been destroyed. You can read all about it at Blackgenocide.com. This is the chief reason the percentage of black Americans has remained stable. Margaret Sanger’s racist hopes have been fulfilled.

Here is what Justice Ginsburg said:

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them.

It’s much like what Don Zaluchi said in The Godfather, about selling drugs: “In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people, the coloreds. They’re animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.”

Notice she doesn’t say “populations of people who don’t want to increase their numbers.” She said “we” didn’t want “too many” of them. In other words, she acknowledges that the desire to limit growth is not in the hearts of the people whose babies are being aborted. It’s not about THEIR choice. It’s about the majority’s choice to take advantage of their willingness to commit suicide as demographic groups.

It’s like setting out roach motels. For people. Black babies go in, but they don’t come out. At least not through the front door.

Black Americans have an unfortunate tendency to fall for conspiracy theories. One such theory says that Church’s Fried Chicken contains chemicals that make black men sterile, and that Church’s puts its stores in black neighborhoods in order to control the numbers of blacks. In this fantasy, the chain is owned by the Klan.

How crazy is that? Planned Parenthood is actually doing what these innocent purveyors of fast food are falsely accused of. They are reducing the black population. They put about 90% of their mills in minority neighborhoods. Planned Parenthood was founded by a racist and classist who openly admitted she wanted to reduced the numbers of blacks and the poor. Why is it that blacks patronize Planned Parenthood with no qualms, while muttering slanders against a company that sells chicken? If I were black, and I were likely to impregnate women to whom I wasn’t married, and I believed this nonsense, I’d just eat the chicken. It’s cheaper.

I have often complained that black people persist in believing that white people are out to get them. But I was only half right. It’s true that the impact of overt racism is exaggerated. If anything, being black will help you get a job instead of hindering you. White people are pretty good about avoiding overt discrimination. But when it comes to abortion, we really are out to get them. Not by denying them access to opportunity, but by providing them with a bad choice. We build the clinics. We subsidize the abortions. We help pay for the ads. By so doing, we kill two birds with one stone. We pander to our own racist fears of being “outbred,” and we manage to make ourselves look generous. We are killing minorities and the poor with charity, or rather, we’re helping them kill themselves. What better way to commit genocide than by preventing your enemies from being born? This is why the Nazis experimented with sterilization in the concentration camps.

The babies that have been aborted were unwanted; that’s for sure. They were unwanted by the majority. They were unwanted in country clubs and in upscale neighborhoods. Prospective adoptive parents…they wanted them. They still do. But what they want doesn’t matter.

The nutty thing about the term “unwanted children” is that no one points out that the people who want these children least are not the people who conceived them.

Minorities need to wake up. They need to ask themselves why white people drive in from the suburbs to cheer and smile as they open new abortion mills in poor neighborhoods. Let me ask you this: do you think white people would support fertility clinics in black neighborhoods? Seriously.

Planned Parenthood offers treatment for infertility, purely to preserve the fiction that “family planning” is their purpose. But for every infertility patient, it performs over 300 abortions. Do you think Planned Parenthood would continue to receive donations if that ratio were suddenly reversed? They’d have to shut their doors.

I’m glad Justice Ginsburg slipped up. No one listens when conservatives tell the truth about abortion. It’s different when it comes from the left.

In the Bible, there is a recurring theme of infertile women pleading for God to give them children. When those children arrived, they were considered gifts. And we are told that God knows us before we are born; we are not just clumps of meat. Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, felt her baby move in her womb in response to the proximity of the unborn Jesus. It’s so strange, living in a time when mothers–even married ones with good jobs–consider conception a curse. They view it almost as a disease; an affliction to be cured with medical treatment. And it’s almost always something they risked deliberately; they bring it about by choosing to be sexually active. Only a tiny percentage of abortions are the result of coerced sex.

Life has gotten so shabby and mechanical. Where is the satisfaction in a life in which you see yourself purely as an animated object with no connection to anything beyond this grubby physical realm? Where is the hope? What is the point in getting up every day? This is not how we were intended to live. Human life has special significance. It has purpose. It isn’t something we should destroy simply because we find contraception inconvenient, yet that is the primary reason abortions occur.

A human being shouldn’t live like a rat or a goat. We ought to be more than that. Even–forgive me for saying it–the poor. It matters whether they live or die. It matters whether their children are allowed to be born. Intelligence and income do not determine the value of a human being. Ruth Ginsburg may not want “too many” of these people, but who is she to make the call?

The ancient Canaanites used to kill their firstborn sons, pickle them in jars, and put the jars in the walls of their homes. The idea was that this would insure their prosperity. God preserved the memory of this barbaric custom with irony, in the curse Joshua pronounced on Jericho (Joshua 6:26):

And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the LORD, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.

It’s hard for me to see how aborting a child for financial reasons is any different. Either way, you are trying to build your prosperity on the dead body of your offspring. If there is no God, fine. You were smart. You saved money. But what if he exists and he has the power to determine how your life turns out? How will he see your prayers for help, when your child’s remains are always before him, in a sewer or a landfill? If you won’t help the poor, that’s bad. Isn’t it worse if you refuse to provide nine months of life support to a helpless, innocent child you created? The Bible says God treats us the way we treat others. It says a husband’s prayers will be hindered if he mistreats his wife. What could be lower than refusing to bear your own child?

Life is so simple for atheists. At least until it’s over.

I know this kerfuffle will die away, but I thought I should say something about it while it was still fresh.

Evangelist’s Confusing Itinerary

Here is something new and weird.

I like watching Perry Stone and reading his books. Sometimes, maybe, he looks at scriptures and events a little too hard, in his determination to find meaning. But overall, I like what he does.

He sells recordings of appearances he does while traveling. Sometimes these things are really good. Yesterday I looked at his website, and he was selling a new CD set…from the incredibly obscure town where I was born.

It’s hard to explain how unimportant this place is. As far as I know, nothing whatsoever happens there. I wouldn’t describe it as a farming town. On the other hand, with a population of under 17,000 people, it’s not large enough to be a big city where rural people go to shop or get medical treatment. Lexington, which is almost a real city, is just 18 miles away. My grandmother used to drive by without stopping, every week, to shop in Lexington.

It has no personality. It has zero importance to history. Daniel Boone lived there, but not while he was doing things historians care about. In all the time I’ve spent in Kentucky, I can’t recall having any reason to go to this town, except for a brief period during which I worked at a local roadhouse. If you ever visit, you’ll have the same thought I’ve had: “Why did they put a town here?” Yet somehow, Perry Stone (who lives in another state) thought it was a good place to have a series of meetings.

I can’t figure it out. Why didn’t he just go to Lexington?

Curiosity got to me. I ordered the CDs. I have to find out what he said there.

This is even weirder than having a President who was a member of my class at Columbia.

Stephanopoulos, I remember. He lived across the hall. Obama? A cipher.

I keep trying to figure out what God wants with me. There must be something. He is going to so much trouble to keep my attention. What a great thing that is. Talk about feeling special. And as far as I know, he is willing to treat every believer this way. Can we all be special? I guess so. Maybe this is the feeling we are trying to replace when we stupidly strive to get attention from other people. The life of an unbeliever is an endless, frustrating process of filling holes with the wrong things.

Church was a little boring last week, but I learned something good anyway. I already knew it, but I hadn’t been thinking about it enough. The guy who spoke talked about making offerings in response to blessings. For example, say your kid has a medical test, and it turns out negative. To acknowledge it, you do something for God. It’s impractical to sacrifice animals these days, so money is a good vehicle. Pick a cause you’re sure God likes and give a little something to show you know where the good news really came from.

I’m going to keep that in mind from now on. I think gratitude without works is like faith without works. Wasted and incomplete. Even God should get thank-you cards.