Prayer Needed

Mish Weiss had a terrible nosebleed and is still not doing well, even after the blood was replaced. Please pray.

Fiber is my Middle Name

There is a lizard in the kitchen.

Yesterday I harvested a bunch of Orinoco bananas from the yard. I cut the stem and left the bunch outside. Banana trees are full of sap similar to latex, and I knew it would drip out of the cut and turn into glue wherever it landed. This morning I brought the bunch in and cut the hands off on the kitchen counter.

While I was cutting, I thought I saw something shoot out of the bunch and into a cluster of canisters. Big roach? I dismissed it. Probably my imagination.

As I cut, I saw movement under the bunch. I lifted it, and there on the counter I saw a lizard tail, squirming and jumping. But no lizard. Gross. I figured I had cut the lizard up with the knife, and that the rest of it would eventually fall out of the bunch. I eventually realized the lizard was not in the bunch. He must have been the mysterious moving object. I probably trapped his tail under the bananas, pulling it loose.

So now he is in the kitchen somewhere, grousing about having to grow a new tail. His old one is in the garbage disposal.

I actually got a few mangoes this year, and boy are they good. The best mangoes imaginable. It’s almost like eating ice cream.

I will never understand why people raise the big round bland varieties, like Hadens and Tommy Atkins. My trees are Carries. Infinitely superior. The mangoes never turn red; maybe that makes them less appealing to growers. The best varieties are green and yellow, but they don’t catch they eye in a produce aisle.

Last year the squirrels cut all the mangoes off, without exception, and the possums ate them. Green. We still have squirrels and possums, but the mangoes have been spared. And it looks like I’m going to have a good first-year crop of ponkans, which are loose-skinned tangerines. What a relief. I was starting to wonder if I would ever get fruit other than Persian and key limes.

I also have a big pepper crop, including a lot of Trinidad Scorpions. How many of my neighbors have those? Very few, I’ll wager. They would combine well with mangoes. And my dragonfruit cactus has several tiny fruit on it. Those things are fantastic. What kiwis would be, if they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. When they mature, they should be about the size of a navel orange.

The tool news is good. I finally have everything I need to do basic machining. Or at least it’s on the way. I went with a Parlec vise instead of a Kurt D675. The price difference is small, but the design has some improvements, including a bigger screw, a wider opening, and more clamping pressure. Machinists speak highly of them, so I don’t think it’s much of a gamble. The manufacture is Taiwanese, and the design is American.

A new Kurt is a little over $400. People said I should buy a used one, but the prices are insane. You can get one for $200, if you don’t mind holes and worn jaws and missing paint. That’s just stupid. If a product sells new for $400, a good used example should be $150, and a risky piece of junk like the ones on Ebay should cost $75. Some used tools tend to be very reasonable; I got a beautiful Jacobs Super Chuck for $50, and you can get a nice Albrecht for twice that. But used Kurt vises are generally a ripoff.

I bought fly cutters, a small set of import end mills, the chuck, an arbor for the chuck, collets, parallels, 1-2-3 blocks, edge-finding stuff, a 1/8″ corner-rounding mill, a roughing mill, some blanks for the fly cutters, a clamping set, and a few other doodads. A lot of this stuff was dirt cheap. The vise is what killed me.

I emailed the mill dealer and asked if I should go for the optional work light, but he said they’re overpriced and not as good as a light with a magnetic base.

I drove myself crazy yesterday trying to find good deals. I keep feeling guilty for buying a mill. But I know that’s stupid. It will have no effect on my financial future, and it’s something I’ve dreamed about for decades.

I have to finish insulating the garage today. Then maybe I can try to grind some turning tools. It looks like I should get a few new tool holders for the Phase II tool post. Otherwise I’ll have to switch tools all the time, which will be a pain. The post came with five tool holders, and two (the 201 and 202 holders) look exactly the same. It would be nice to have a few extras, but right now, I am equipped to use the lathe. I even have Ridgid oil for the mill.

I forgot to buy V-blocks. Guess I will put them on the list with the tool holders.

I was an idiot to buy that old lathe. If I ever get a chance to replace it, I’m going Taiwanese. Unless it surprises me and turns out to be a jewel.

The mill should arrive next week, I guess. That means moving the compressor and running 30 feet of conduit over the garage rafters. Fun. A compressor is a hard thing to move because it rests on little feet a good distance apart. You can’t shove pipes under it and push. I have a Genie Lift, but it’s not really right for a compressor. I may have to give up and scoot the compressor on the concrete.

I have an idea for a writing project. I was thinking I might write a bunch of essays explaining why I’m a Christian. I am not a bona fide teacher or leader. The Bible describes qualifications for clergymen, and it’s not me. Established married men, with good habits and so on. But anyone can give a testimony. Something to think about.

Better get in the garage and get the insulating over with.

More on the Two-State Final Solution

Solomonia has a funny but sad post that sums up the problem with Obama and Israel. Take a look.

Let me know if you see any signs that American Jews are waking up. Somewhere out there, there has to be a self-hating Obama-voting Jew who is saying, “Wait, wasn’t mindless Jewish liberalism supposed to prevent this kind of thing?”

I can’t help thinking of Jewish World War I veterans who showed their medals to the Germans before being herded into the gas chambers. “Danke. Now move along.”

I was watching Perry Stone last night, and he was talking about his belief that the US is declining and Israel is going to rise to greater power. Speaking about our apostasy, he said the Bible says we have an obligation to speak up and warn people.

Whew. Got lucky on that one.

That Appears to be the Choice

The Bible is incomplete. Everyone knows that. We don’t know much about Jesus’s childhood or the years between Malachi and John the Baptist. We don’t have verified versions of lost books like the book of Enoch or the book of Jasher. We don’t know everything that happened in the years leading up to Noah.

Our understanding of Christianity is incomplete, too. Paul said we see through a glass, darkly. We are told that God’s thoughts are above our thoughts as the clouds are above the earth. It’s very obvious that there is information God is withholding, for his own reasons. Sometimes he releases information in code, through prophets, and later we come to understand what it means. For example, the second psalm is about the crucifixion. We can see that now; it’s undeniable. But before the time of Jesus, it made very little sense. If God had made its meaning obvious, the enemy would have understood the significance of the crucifixion and would not have worked to bring it about.

The almost-funny thing about the second psalm is that it nearly taunts Satan. If Satan were as smart as he thinks, he would have understood it and avoided motivating Romans and certain susceptible Jews to bring about the sacrifice. The Bible often refers to the wicked being caught in their own nets or falling by their own counsels, and the crucifixion is the single biggest example. Satan can’t win for losing. When he is most convinced he has accomplished something, he is most defeated.

I think God is a little like George Bush. He does things for reasons he can’t reveal. And he is criticized for it, by people who have no understanding of how a chain of command works. Sometimes human leaders do things that are unquestionably stupid, like mortgaging a nation’s future with socialist bailouts leading to massive debt and bungling, conceited, oppressive authoritarianism. Other times, they do things that only seem stupid until all the facts are known. When in doubt, you support your leader, assuming he knows more than you do. That is particularly true in matters involving classified information.

Prophecy is full of classified information, encoded in such a way that no one can understand it except a human being guided by the Holy Spirit.

And not all prophecy takes the form of human language. Sometimes an object reveals God’s thoughts. For example, I suspect that the human uterus is designed to resemble the Ark of the Covenant. Or maybe it’s the other way around. The tabernacle and the temple symbolized a female body, probably representing the church (the body of human believers) as the bride of Christ. And the veil of the temple was intended to resemble a body part normally found only in female virgins. Notably, it tore at the moment Jesus died.

I think the nation of Israel is designed to reflect the nature of human existence. Like the snow that falls on Mount Hermon, our spirits come to earth from heaven. The water from Mount Hermon flows into the Jordan, and from there it goes to the Sea of Galilee, which represents the earth. The disciples were fishermen; the fish they caught symbolized human beings coming to Christ. The water that leaves the Sea of Galilee goes through the desert to the Dead Sea, which symbolizes hell. It’s a nearly lifeless body of water from which there is no escape except for evaporation. It’s no coincidence that this is a site where hell was literally manifested on earth. This is where human beings were destroyed by a rain of fire, for the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah.

I suspect that the book of Enoch is corrupted to some extent, but I think it’s right about one thing. I think certain angels came down to Mount Hermon, and like misguided socialists, they tried to bring about a perfect age by their own efforts. They interbred with women and gave rise to a polluted race of rebellious freaks, and they gave human beings secrets of technology and magic and astrology. Many theologians think angels can’t reproduce, but the Bible tells us they take human form. Some of us have entertained them. It’s reasonable to believe that those temporary human bodies had all the usual parts, so why wouldn’t reproduction have been possible? The Bible does not say it can’t happen.

If you accept the notion that angels corrupted the human race, the Bible makes a lot more sense. For example, many non-believers think the Jewish God is evil, because he told the Hebrews to slaughter entire cities and peoples, including the old and small children. But that makes sense, if those peoples were overly polluted with the blood of angels. God was working to get rid of them for the sake of humanity, as he did in the flood (the book of Enoch makes this claim). It might also explain why there were so many people on the earth in Adam’s time. Maybe others were created first and became corrupted, or maybe some were fallen angels.

We see a repeated theme of spirit-guided eugenics in the Bible. Satan is constantly trying to exterminate the Jewish race (to keep prophecies from coming true), and God repeatedly reduces the numbers of peoples who oppose him. One of the great sins of the Bible was the refusal to obey God and destroy all traces of the Amalekites, who are believed to have given rise to the people currently afflicting Israel. The Holocaust was probably an attempt to prevent the existence of the Jews mentioned in prophecies about the end of the world. Pharaoh slaughtered Jewish babies to prevent the birth of Moses. Herod killed Jewish babies to prevent the birth of Jesus. And both were guided by astrologers, who were using forbidden knowledge provided by rebellious spirits.

The Bible makes a number of references to the destruction of the seed of the wicked. They will be destroyed, and the righteous will inherit the earth. Look at Psalm 37, as an example. Does the term “seed of the wicked” just refer to bad people, or does it also refer to people who are largely descended from angels, and who fail to accept salvation? In a parable, Jesus suggested some people were wheat sown by God, and others were weeds sown by Satan. Maybe he was speaking more literally than we realize.

The book of Enoch says part of God’s punishment for the rebellious angels was to destroy their descendants.

The waters of the Jordan don’t just come from directly from untainted snow. They also come from the Banias, “Pan’s Grotto,” at the base of the mountain. This is near Caesarea Philippi, an evil city which was a center of demon worship. Idolaters used to sacrifice animals and throw them into a foaming pool at the Banias, and the contaminated water joined the pure water from the other sources. Just as the blood of people descended from rebellious angels joined the blood of those descended from Adam. Is that really a coincidence? Hard to believe.

Pan’s image is the classical image of Satan. A goat with a man’s torso and head, plus horns and a tail. More coincidence. And Jesus began his earthly ministry at Caesarea Philippi, in what was ostensibly Satan’s earthly headquarters. A sort of Satanic Vatican City of its time. Coincidence upon coincidence. Where did Satan begin his earthly career? In the Garden of Eden. The center of God’s earthly efforts. It all makes sense.

Truthfully, I wonder if the Banias is the site where Adam and Eve were tempted. Descriptions of the Garden of Eden mention far-off rivers, but people who emigrate often name new lands and new geographic features after old ones. New York is named after York, England. Kentucky has cities named London and Paris. Who is to say that the rivers of Mesopotamia were not named after the streams near Mount Hermon, by people whose ancestors lived near the Banias?

It would make sense for Satan to turn Eden into his home base. It would be a fitting manifestation of his pride and the joy he takes in supplanting God. And Jesus’s remark about “the gates of hell” refers to part of the Banias. He said the gates of hell would not prevail against his kingdom. The Banias is a very creepy place. There is a giant hole in the rocks there; a dark cavity in the side of the mountain. Inside this hole is the pool where the animal sacrifices were dumped. This pool is still now, but the waters used to bubble as they made their way into an underground passage that led to the Jordan. This pool was called “the gates of hell.”

It’s all very interesting to me. I don’t think it’s just happenstance. Jesus himself created the metaphor of the Sea of Galilee as the earth, and the fishermen as evangelists. I didn’t make that up. He did.

In the end, it’s all going to make sense. The concept of a chain of command, entailing faith in the competence of those above you, is central to Christianity and Judaism, and if you can’t accept it, you will always have an uphill battle before you. I don’t make excuses for God, except to say that whatever he does has to be right. If you ask me why God would be upset with your fun gay hairdresser who is nice to everyone, or why he lets good people get cancer, or why he permitted the Holocaust, my answer is that I know that he exists, and I am satisfied that he is both good and competent, and I believe he has excellent reasons for everything he does. Some questions, unlike the non-issue of whether convenience abortion is moral, truly are above a human being’s pay grade.

I can’t change God, and I’m not supposed to try. I’m supposed to let him change me. That’s what I’m trying to do.

No More “Partiality”

A reader posted a comment linking to an important new story. Barack “83% of American Jews Voted for Me” Obama just froze helicopter sales to Israel, based on the fear that the machines might be used against terrorists civilians in Gaza.

The gloves are finally off.

Frankly, I’m thrilled. Sometimes you need to slap someone in the face to wake them up. I hope liberal Jews all over the US are gagging right now, on the putrid, weevily political meal they wolfed down in November. This grinning larval dictator is your boy. You own this. That faux tolerance tastes pretty good right now, doesn’t it? Electing a black President is a fine idea, but maybe you should have waited for one who wouldn’t respond by cutting your throats.

Who called this one? Damn near everybody who voted for McCain. “Obvious” doesn’t begin to describe it.

It is no exaggeration to say that talking to liberal Jews about politics is like trying to engage a psychotic regarding the validity of his hallucinations. Their bizarre, blind insistence that the left is more hospitable to Jews and Israel can legitimately be described as a delusion. Jews want everyone to think they’re friendly and harmless and generous and lovable, and they are positive voting liberal will create the desired impression. Where they got the idea that liberals are nicer or more moral is an impenetrable mystery.

The Nazis are gone. The Holocaust wasn’t your fault. Stop kissing up. Stop appeasing. It’s not going to save you. Your self-hatred is legitimizing the things leftists say about you and your homeland. I have a T-shirt with a big slogan on the back. Maybe each of you should get one. It says, “Peace Through Superior Firepower.” It worked for Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and David. Old Testament appeasers didn’t fare so well.

The US is not going to save Israel. God and individual believers and the Jews will save Israel. America is not Israel’s true strength. So while it’s very sad that we’re slowly cutting off Israel’s blood supply, it’s only sad for America. God will deliver Israel one way or the other. We, on the other hand, are almost sure to end up like England. We’re going from empire to backwater. God is giving our manufacturing might to the Chinese, the Indians, the Brazilians, and anyone else who happens to be handy. Petty dictators and jabbering nutjobs in khaffiyehs–the kind of people we used to squash effortlessly–are slowly dismantling our global dominance. We are embracing Marxism and authoritarianism, at the very time we need capitalism and freedom most. We are being ushered back to the cheap seats, and if we end up there, we will remain there. What empire recovers, after thumbing its nose at its divine sponsor and dropping its pants for its enemies?

Maybe as Obama’s hostility toward Israel becomes more obvious, American Jews will become fully conscious and understand that they should be enraged. Given their history, however, I think it is more likely that the majority will appease and kowtow until somebody starts building ovens. Until then only a small minority will get the picture. Thank God for Israel. At least we won’t see another S.S. St. Louis, cruising hopefully from port to port with a cargo of Jews nobody will accept.

JEREMIAH WRIGHT. Hello? Obama was his CLOSE FRIEND. He attended Wright’s church for TWENTY YEARS. Wright HATES JEWS and he puts this information IN HIS SERMONS, WHICH BARACK OBAMA SAT THROUGH AND APPLAUDED. He is a friend of LOUIS FARRAKHAN. If you’re a Jew, answer these questions. Would you let your daughter go to the prom with a kid who praised Louis Farrakhan? Would you want to be golfing buddies with someone who praised Louis Farrakhan? If not, why would you be comfortable with a President who spent twenty years listening to, and presumably giving tithes to, a Farrakhan crony? Are you insane?

Keep it up, Barack. Cut off the helicopters, the planes, the ammunition, the money, the cooperation…everything. Cut it all off. Let your supporters see the horror they elected. Stick your finger in their eyes, nice and deep. Make them learn.

Jews and Christians who had misgivings about this fool were right, and we’re going to look more and more right as years pass. We all need to pray that God helps Americans turn back to him and behave themselves. We just went through a big economic labor pain, and though it’s easing now, labor pains always return and get sharper and closer together.

Words can’t express my disgust. I hope we survive this idiot.

Prayer Request

Reader Bradford Kleeman says he has a kidney stone about 4mm wide. That is a whopper by my standards. He put in a prayer request, so hop to it.

Do Not Thank Karl Marx

Happy Shavuot.

If you don’t know what Shavuot is, just call it Pentecost. Same thing.

This is an interesting holiday for charismatic Christians (I hope Aaron doesn’t read this), because, like Passover, it ties the Old and New Testaments together.

To the ancient Jews, Shavuot was the festival of the first fruits, as well as the day God gave the Torah to Moses. When I was living on a kibbutz, I experienced a secular Shavuot celebration with a “first fruits” theme. They brought out young lambs, calves, and items of produce, as well as young girls. These were considered the first fruits of the harvest. By and large, the kibbutzniks were socialists who did not believe in God, but they celebrated their bounty anyway, presumably thanking Karl Marx in their hearts.

In Hebrew, “shavuot” means “weeks.” I think this denotes the seven-week period of counting the Omer, between Passover and Shavuot. “Pentecost” means “fiftieth day,” and Shavuot takes place on the fiftieth day after Passover.

I’m checking some of this via Wikipedia, so blame them if I’m wrong.

To Christians, Pentecost is the day when the baptism of the Holy Spirit first fell on the church. The Apostles were gathered together, presumably to celebrate Shavuot, and the Holy Spirit hit them, and they began speaking in tongues.

The Holy Spirit changed their character and increased their faith. The most obvious example is Peter, who denied Jesus three times before the crucifixion. After he received the baptism, he became a powerful evangelist and miracle-worker, and he bravely met a martyr’s death. Completely different person. Charismatics (more or less the same thing as “Pentecostals”) believe the baptism of the Holy Spirit made the difference, and that we are supposed to experience it today, and that the usual manifestation is the ability to pray in tongues.

People who oppose this viewpoint note that the tongues used by current believers in prayer usually don’t conform to known languages. The original Pentecost story says the disciples spoke in human languages they themselves did not know, and that this was confirmed by converted Jews from other nations, who happened to be in Jerusalem. But charismatics believe the prayer language is a separate gift, and for what it’s worth, there are many accounts of charismatics breaking into known languages while praying in tongues.

Skeptics claim that tongues only manifest themselves so they can be interpreted publicly, but the Bible doesn’t make that exclusion, and there is considerable scriptural support for the concept of a private prayer language. There is no reason both gifts can’t exist. People who claim private prayer language has been ruled out by the mention of public interpretation are making an obvious logical error. If I give you a cookie and a cupcake, and someone asks what I gave you, and you say I gave you a cookie, you’re right, but you haven’t denied that I gave you the cupcake. And the passages the anti-charismatics cite as proof that prayer in tongues is bogus don’t really prove it. Most Bible scholarship isn’t very good, by secular standards. To a lawyer, these things are obvious. I think the charismatics are probably right.

Anyway, many Christians believe the baptism was a big deal, because it put the seed of God’s character within us, where it grows and supplants our own nature, sort of like a bone marrow transplant. Moses received instruction from without, in the form of law. Christians believe the baptism of the spirit gives us instruction from within. The first Shavuot marked the handing down of God’s law, the Torah. If charismatics are right, Pentecost marked the embedding of God’s law in our hearts. It’s the same basic idea, manifested in a different way. And if you look at the psalms, you’ll see tons of prophetic references to people who have God’s law written in their hearts. “The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom, and his tongue talketh of judgment. The law of his God is in his heart. None of his steps shall slide.” Etcetera.

So really, what happened to the disciples can be considered the first fruits of the crucifixion, as well as the day God put the Torah inside men’s hearts. Too bad the church later gave up on the Holy Spirit; we might have been spared anti-Semitic embarrassments like replacement theology and the Crusades. For centuries, most Christians have tried to please God using their old natures and their own strength, and it hasn’t worked very well.

In any case, Shavuot and Pentecost dovetail very nicely, and it’s hard to explain, if God didn’t cause it. “All coincidence,” the naysayers will reply. Oh, well. You can lead a horse to living water.

The Jewish holidays have no end of significance to Christians. For example, some believe the Feast of Tabernacles presages the Messianic Age.

We would all know that, if we hadn’t thrown the Old Testament on the fire, along with the Holy Spirit.

Have a good holiday.

Possible Lathe Project

First item: prayer request. Reader Ruth says Sarah M., the daughter of a friend, has breast cancer. She is not doing well. Her tests keep turning up bad results. The cancer has metastasized to her brain. She is in early middle age, and she has kids. They do not know the cancer has reached her brain. Her mother is a Christian, but Sarah is not. Her mother wants people to pray for healing and for her salvation.

Ruth has had cataract surgery, and she would appreciate prayer for a good outcome.

Mish now has a white blood cell count of 200 per ml. If it hits 500 for three consecutive days, it means the transplant was a success.

Back to obsessing on my all-important hobbies.

Last time I tried to find someone to move a machine in the Miami area, I got nowhere. I don’t know why. Ordinarily, I am the champion boolean Googler of the whole universe.

I have been trying to find someone to move a machine here from a freight terminal, so I could use a dealer who was helpful to me. The local dealer doesn’t need help to get the machine here. Yesterday, I decided to try Google again, and I found a bunch of movers right off the bat.

Weird thing: one of them is someone I already know. My dad has a client whose employees are Teamsters. I helped my dad when he negotiated a contract with them. The name of the client’s business popped up on Google.

The crazy thing about this is that I didn’t know what the business actually did. I knew they had big trucks. That was about it. I didn’t really have to know. But their entire business is moving heavy machinery. So I asked my old man to see what they could do for me.

I may go with the local dealer anyway. The other guy has sort of drifted off. I asked him to give me some quotes, and I don’t have them yet. Maybe I was more concerned about giving him my business than I should have been, but I don’t like letting a salesperson help me and then buying somewhere else.

In any case, funny coincidence. And it shows how little a lawyer may know about his client. That’s a good thing, I guess. You don’t want to pay a lawyer to find out things he doesn’t need to know.

I’m wondering if I should start looking for a follow rest or steady rest. Yesterday I chucked a piece of half-inch dowel in the lathe and screwed around with it. When I applied pressure with the cutting tool, I got some deflection. The metal bounced back and produced a serviceable cut (which might not impress, if the dial indicator were applied), but it seems like a stupid way to machine.

I guess the dowel was about 8″ long, and I had maybe 6″ sticking out of the chuck.

That was stupid, now that I think about it. I could have chucked the entire 30″ piece, with 2″ sticking out of the chuck. The spindle is hollow. I guess I don’t need a rest unless I have to machine most of the length of a thin or long workpiece, or I’m forced to work a long way from the chuck. I suppose I also have to figure out when turning between centers is the best idea.

Jim Dunmyer linked to something about the correct way to use a 4-jaw chuck (thanks, Jim). I better go copy it and put it in a Word document and put it in my notebook.

The Grizzly I stupidly chose not to buy has four brass screws in the left end of the spindle, facing inward. They’re there to steady the free ends of long items. That seems like a neat idea. Last night I was thinking a good project would be to make something like that. My lathe has an aluminum wheel at the left side of the spindle, held on with set screws. I could make a new version of that, with a collar sort of thing added, through which I could run four brass screws. I don’t know if I’ll ever need it, but it would be a good training exercise. Boring the holes would be tough without a drill press or mill, but there may be a way to do it.

I wonder how hard it is to make a steady rest, once you have milling capacity. Seems like it shouldn’t require much precision, since the bars or screws that support the work would be adjustable.

Or I could wait forty years for a used one to become available.

Barns of Aggression

In case everyone has forgotten, let me remind you of something.

North Korea just exploded an atom bomb, their leader is crazier than a tree full of coons, and they are working on ballistic missiles that can hit Los Angeles. Iran just sent six warships out into the ocean for no apparent reason, their leader keeps telling audiences he plans to destroy Israel, he has missiles that can hit Jerusalem, and he is running a big nuclear program in order to amass material for bombs. Plus he looks like he got away from a guy who grinds an organ.

Those things are true, but keep this in mind.

This man is the real threat to peace, because he wants to let a few eccentric Jews build barns and chicken houses in the desert. A desert Israel only possesses as the result of a war of unprovoked Muslim aggression. It’s a good thing the Arabs quit attacking the Jews, because if they hadn’t, the Jews would own Amman, Mecca, Beirut, Kuwait City, Damascus, and parts of Detroit. Plus a good percentage of New York City’s taxis.

That miserable bastard. Who does he think he is? Putting highly provocative BARNS up, in the middle of that gorgeous expanse of valuable rocks and sand! I can’t believe we haven’t nuked him already! Why, this is just like what Hitler did!

I know how to solve the problem. We need to send him the guy who wrote the building code here in Coral Gables. Of course I am referring to Building and Zoning Department Obergruppenführer Emeritus, Karl Goebbels. I believe he retired to Argentina. And they are trying to send him back.

Karl Goebbels: I hear you plan to change a light bulb in an outhouse in the West Bank.

Netanhayu: It is “reasonable growth.”

Karl Goebbels: I assume you pulled all the proper permits?

Netanyahu: “Permits”?

Karl Goebbels: We’ll need the Board of Architects to look this over. Have an architect do an elevation of the outhouse, and hire a team of electrical engineers to do a report on the light bulb.

Netanyahu: Board? What is this “board”? We want to screw in a light bulb.

Karl Goebbels: We only allow fluorescents now, and they’re full of mercury, so you’ll have to hire a Gables-approved company to dispose of the bulb when it burns out.

Netanyahu: Can I have a list of the companies?

Karl Goebbels: We haven’t approved any yet. They don’t actually exist. But when they do, you can have a licensed contractor screw in that light bulb. Give it three years. Call us every day during our three business hours to check. Leave a voicemail, which we’ll delete immediately.

Netanyahu: Forget it. I’ll tell them to use a candle.

Karl Goebbels: You’ll have to come down and look at an approved chart of candle colors. You know, you could also build a nice shower room. Warm showers. Clean, fresh water. Nothing to be afraid of.

Netanyahu: I think I’ll go join a mosque.

Karl Goebbels: If you want a minaret, you’ll need a variance.

If Auschwitz had had a building and zoning department like the one here in Coral Gables, Hitler would never have gotten his concentration camp built, and there is a good chance he would have blown his brains out ten years earlier.

Hitler: I want to build a breakfast nook and add onto my liebensraum.

Karl Goebbels: It would be easier to annex the Sudetenland.

Always remember the true reason Israel gets the blame for everything in the Middle East: the Muslims are degenerates who cannot be reasoned with and who will set off bombs inside any country that stands up for Israel. Like I have always said, the UN is like a couple of parents who always beat their better child, because they don’t have the spine to deal with the one that actually causes the problems. You’ve seen these parents. One kid has horns and a tail, and the other is fairly normal, and when the rotten one tortures the good one, the parents say something stupid like, “I don’t care who started it,” i.e. “I am too selfish and lazy to teach my kids the concept of justice.” We know we can push Israel around, so that’s what we do. They won’t blow us up.

I guess it’s not acceptable to call people like the Saudis degenerates, but I think it’s better than flogging old ladies and beating women in the street for displaying their calves. Which is what mainstream Muslims in places like Saudi Arabia do.

Last night I was thinking about the way people claim God doesn’t exist and that the Bible is a load of nonsense. Then I thought about what’s going on in the world. Troops from the United States, way over in the Western Hemisphere, are fighting a war in BABYLON, and we succeeded in deposing the king of Babylon and getting him hanged, and we killed his sons. He’s a lot like Haman (another figure who went after the Jews).

Alll that is literally true. Iraq is the ancient kingdom of Babylon, and Saddam Hussein was the king, just like Nebuchadnezzar. He called himself a president, but that doesn’t change what he was.

We’re fighting in Babylon, and the main thing that causes unrest in the world is a dispute over parts of the tiny, resource-poor, cash-poor, militarily insignificant, geographically unimportant nation of Israel. But God is imaginary, right? It’s all coincidence. Keep aborting your babies and doing drugs. Have all the loose sex you want, don’t tithe, and forget charity. Everything is swell.

Man, those barns are still making me mad.

I Laid me Down and Slept

Is this a wonderful morning, or what?

I used to think there were NO wonderful mornings. I had problems sleeping, and it drove me crazy. I had a hard mattress and mysterious on-and-off nasal congestion, and–this is disgusting–hard stuff accumulated in my nose, at the narrowest points in the air passages. The only way to cope with that was to get up and remove it. I woke over and over during the night. Sometimes when I woke up, I felt as if a giant magnet were sucking me down into the mattress. That’s how tired I was. I would get up and literally stumble because my nervous system wasn’t working yet.

I started taking steps. I gave away a $2000 mattress that felt like cement and replaced it with the much nicer, cheaper one I use to use when I lived in Texas. I lifted the head of the bed six inches. I got synthetic pillows, because when I was a kid, a useless allergist told my mother to get them for me.

I got improvements, but not real success. I wondered if the problem was mold or dirty air conduits or pollen. I decided to treat the one thing I could be sure of beating: dust mites. I got a microfiber mattress cover. It doesn’t kill mites, but it prevents them from getting at their food: me. It cut back on congestion to the point where I didn’t need anything to help me sleep. I quit using nasal spray, including that worthless saline stuff.

I still had one improvement to make. When I got new pillows, I saw mite-proof covers on display at the store. I picked one up. What the hell. The pillows improved my sleep, but one of them worked better than the other. One was a memory foam pillow that came with its own cover, and the other was a fake down pillow, which I put inside the cover I bought. The fake down pillow remained problem-free, but after a while, I noticed that I could feel congestion starting whenever I rolled over onto the foam pillow. I realized what was happening. Mites can’t grow in a foam pillow (I am told), but they can grow in the materials covering it. Any new pillow will kill your allergies, but if mites can get through the cover, they’ll grow on the fabric, and the protection will fade. Yesterday, I invested in two more pillow covers. I put one on the foam pillow, and I cleaned one of my old down pillows and stuck the other cover on it.

Last night was perfect. I have no idea when I fell asleep. I remember absolutely nothing that happened during the night. When I awoke, I felt great. And I had a down pillow to help me cope with the fake ones, which really are not as good.

I can’t express the feeling of freedom. It’s like I’ve been cured of leprosy. Poor sleep affects your blood pressure, your weight, your memory, your concentration, your energy, your mood, and your body’s ability to heal and renew itself. It’s a very big deal. It looks like it’s behind me.

If you want to try one of these products, go to Bed, Bath and Beyond and get a Microguard mattress cover and pillow covers. Pay no attention to the way they feel in the store. You can’t feel the fabric’s creepy texture when you use it, and it breathes, so you will not sweat. The only thing I’ve noticed is that the fake down pillow tends to expand like a balloon, because air passes out of the cover slowly. The pillow blows up from its natural loft, and then when you put your head on it, it deflates like a tire with a pinhole. That isn’t a problem with the other pillows.

I can go back to down now, although I want to keep the foam pillow for variety. I want varied pillow materials on hand so I will have choices every night when I engineer my pillow structure.

Next health challenge: I have to resume counting calories. I think the pizza crisis is over, so I won’t be making it every day and ruining my diet. Last night I checked my blood pressure, and it scared me to death. I assume something I had done or eaten was affecting it, because it was behaving strangely. The diastolic number varied between 89 and 113. I got up today, and my pressure was 114 over 76. I don’t trust blood pressure measurements. As a scientist, I can’t believe a gauge as silly as the sphygmomanometer could ever be reliable. How can things like subcutaneous fat, muscularity, and arm position fail to affect it? But I want to be thinner, just in case. I ate unsweetened oatmeal for breakfast today. I guess I could have just boiled a newspaper.

Church was good but not fantastic last night. They had a guest preacher, and he was too much like a standup comedian for my tastes. He started joking about PMS and other things not relevant to Christianity. That’s not what I go to church for, and I don’t want to be encouraged in my own habit of ridiculing people and their weaknesses. He didn’t follow his notes, and his sermon was disjointed and way too long. One of the reasons I left my last church was that the services lasted three hours. Like I’ve said before, there is a thin line between a long church service and a hostage situation. At the end, he asked everybody to give the church a special gift, which annoyed me. They want a special gift next week, for Pentecost. This is too much. I think he knew it. You could see the certainty leave his face when he brought it up. I think he knew he was making a mistake. I guess he just got carried away and then decided to bull his way through. I gave a little something out of respect for his authority, but I felt used. Not a big deal. Good people make mistakes, and I won’t miss the token amount I gave.

I figured there had to be some good things in his message. I don’t think God lets people go to an effective church and leave with nothing, just because it’s an off week. And I picked up some things. I think my prayer life needs a shot in the arm. I have not restored my routine; it comes and goes. So in the morning, I am not always spending time in prayer. He also talked about temptation, and how we are sifted and pulled away from the church. That was a useful reminder.

It certainly beats what I would have gotten had I stayed home, i.e. nothing.

He said Christians screw up by pursuing marriage too doggedly. He claimed that when the Bible refers to “he who finds a wife,” the word “find” means to come across inadvertently. Try to serve God, and wait for someone to show up. That was the message. Maybe he’s right. That’s the way it works with other needs, to some extent. God provided mates for people in the Old Testament. I think of the stories of Isaac, Jacob, and Ruth. Human effort was involved, but it was guided from above.

You Can’t Lead Without Serving

I just realized this is the weekend when rappers descend on Miami Beach. If there ever was a good time to visit South Beach, this is not it. Unless you want to see fights and a lot of confused young black women in front of video cameras, shaking their bare rear ends to bad music. I wonder if we’ll ever give up the stupid notion that all music is inherently good. You can’t separate a musical genre from the sentiments expressed in its song lyrics or the culture of depravity embraced by its adherents. Let me know when classical music punks flock to a city and make fools of themselves for three days, and I’ll say I was wrong.

I wonder if I’ll hear about this weekend’s festivities when I go to church tonight. “Christian rap” is the only thing about that place about which I can complain. That, and the giant bread factory next door that makes the whole neighborhood smell and always makes me want to get food.

Has rap produced even one “artist” who can play a musical instrument? Jazz gave us Art Tatum and Charlie Christian. Who has rap produced? Far as I can tell, when rappers want music in their tracks, they find it and steal it.

My family is going through a rough spot, and I would appreciate prayer. It’s something I saw coming. I consider it a growth pain. I can’t be specific because I am so important, a malevolent individual who is too scared of me to confront me scrutinizes my blog daily for items that can be used to drive me and my sister apart.

Every family has problems, and one problem that is extremely common is a kinked-up chain of authority. Two symptoms are feminism and the arrogance of youth. God designed authority to run in this direction: God, pastor, man, wife, oldest son, other kids, dog, Satan. The family is like the human body, which has a dominant hand. The left hand is just as important as the right, but the body works better when the right hand leads. This should be obvious from human nature. For example, women expect men to tell them what to do from time to time. They like it and need it. I’ve had women thank me for it. If you refuse to lead, a woman will feel contempt for you, and she will resent you. Publicly, women claim this isn’t true, but privately, they admit it. On the other hand, a woman who dominates her husband will make him miserable and destroy the confidence he needs to satisfy her physical needs. She’ll drive him to women with whom he feels stronger. And kids are happier when their parents give them clear, strict rules. And few things can make your life more miserable than a untrained dog that believes it’s as good as a person.

A man who won’t submit to God and his pastor will rot inside, and he’ll leave his family starved for guidance. The error that made feminism possible was the insane notion that a position at the head of the family was purely a reward and a privilege. That’s idiotic. It’s a tremendous duty. It’s a burden. You’re supposed to put your wife and kids first, but a lot of men think being born male entitles them to give orders and lie on the couch watching TV for six hours a night. No wonder feminists found an opening.

A couple that isn’t led by the husband is like a man with a right hand that has lost its cunning. That is a metaphor with more than one level to it.

My mother is gone, but my dad is still around. In my daily prayers, I ask that he be restored to his proper position as our spiritual leader. I ask that my sister and I be helped to honor and even obey him, and that he be guided to give us good counsel. I ask that God restore the correct order in this family. Judging from the Bible, that order is supposed to persist even after a child becomes an adult. Think about it. Isaac was supposedly in his late thirties when he was bound up for sacrifice, and Jacob was in his sixties when he left his father to marry.

Authority issues have been a problem for us. My dad is not a Christian, so I used to think the proper thing was to behave as though he were out of commission as head of the family. I thought I should do as I saw fit, because I was enlightened and so on. But now I believe that’s a dangerous, fatuous oversimplification. I think a father is always a father, unless he is hopelessly corrupt, and the correct thing is for a child to work with his father and try to help him become a strong, unselfish, God-fearing family leader. I believe God will honor that kind of effort by changing the father and the rest of the family. Sooner or later, God’s wisdom will start to flow to the family through the father, as God intended from the start. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how I see it.

My sister and I have both been too willful. It has been easier for me to change. She is having more trouble than I am, and that’s why we’re having problems right now.

We’re both single, even though we both believe in marriage. I think we may have sabotaged ourselves through our attitudes toward authority. My sister has never been willing to let a man lead, and I have not understood the importance of being a leader. I was corrupted by feminism. I bought into the poisonous total equality myth. If you really believe that nonsense, it can drive women away. They sense that you won’t give them what they truly want. A lot of men only pretend to believe it, so it isn’t a major problem for them. Women will usually give you what you want, if you’re willing to tell them comforting lies. It’s no way to live, but it works.

Again, I can’t go into what is actually happening, but a tangled chain of authority is at the root of it. A family is like a pipe through which God’s power and blessings flow. The members of the family are like the axe heads through which Odysseus fired his famous arrow. Everything has to line up reasonably well, or nothing can pass through. We are not aligned correctly at this moment. It will eventually pass, but I don’t know how long it will take.

By the way, according to Mish Weiss’s blog, cancer isn’t her biggest threat right now. On Mother’s Day, she got a bone marrow transplant from a far-off daughter she gave up over a decade ago, and it appears to be taking. But she is weak and has to be concerned about infection. That sounds like real progress, even if she is still extremely ill. I hope you’ll remember her in your prayers today.

Also: Milling Epiphany

I had an interesting thought last night.

The general rule in my life has been that the worse things get, the closer I draw to God. But lately, I have been drawing closer to God because things are getting better.

People often ask why God doesn’t treat them better. Why he doesn’t fix their problems, when they have faith and go to church and pray and so on. Maybe I know the answer. If you forget God when things go well, you give him incentive to let you suffer. If you get more excited about God when life is pleasant, you give him incentive to keep blessing you. Doesn’t that make sense? After all, what’s important to God? Your income? Your health? Your peace of mind? Of course not. The most important thing is that you have a close relationship with him and walk in faith. So shouldn’t you expect him to do whatever causes that to happen?

I feel stupid for not seeing this earlier in my life. It should be obvious from reading the Bible. When the ancient Israelites did well, they started worshiping idols and ascribing their success to their own merit. And God withdrew his blessings, and they suffered. Then they returned to him. But God was content to keep blessing them, as long as they were faithful.

Seems to me that the wise thing is to credit God with your successes, keep up with your tithes and offerings and alms, pray and study regularly, live by faith, and get your butt to church every week. Maybe being a foxhole Christian just guarantees that you’ll spend your whole life in a foxhole.

I guess you can try to make an end-run around this kind of thinking. You can say, “If God is all-powerful, he can create a world where everybody is blessed no matter how they act,” or some such thing. All I can say is, we don’t make the rules. The Bible makes it pretty clear that God is not going to magically erase all suffering just because we don’t feel like doing things his way, so I think it’s stupid to fight the house rules. If you want that kind of God, you were born in the wrong universe. Maybe you should be worshiping Barack Obama instead. He doesn’t believe in suffering or consequences. Yet.

Now, what about my fevered search for a milling machine? I finally figured it out.

I don’t want a Bridgeport. The used ones I’ve seen are generally crap, and they have no warranties. It’s a sucker game, and the prices are way out of line with what you get. The reconditioned one I found might be perfect, but it’s too risky; someone who bought one from the rebuilder gave me information that put me off the buy. I might go for the high school machine, if I can get a good inspection.

Best choice: used Taiwanese. These machines are actually superior to Bridgeports, and gorgeous used ones are affordable.

Second best choice: new Birmingham with Chicom body and Taiwan head. I can get this locally and save on shipping.

Third: Shop Fox or Grizzly. People who own recent Shop Fox/Grizzly products say great things about them, and the customer service is top notch.

Turns out the Chaiwanese machines are heavier and more rigid than Bridgeports. How about that?

The puzzling is over, which is good, because my puzzler is sore. Now I have to find a mill I like.

Still Kicking

If you follow Mish Weiss’s blog, you have seen this wonderful news already:

There is a slight rise in the white cell count! Doctor cautions that Mish is still critically ill.
What this means is engraftment has begun. Abby’s cells are beginning to grow new cells for Mish.

A day or two ago, Leah put up a post indicating the doctors believed Mish was “slipping away.” I was afraid people would be discouraged from praying for her recovery. Here is what I posted in her comments.

From Numbers 14:

2 And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness!

3 And wherefore hath the LORD brought us unto this land, to fall by the sword, that our wives and our children should be a prey? were it not better for us to return into Egypt?

4 And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.

5 Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel.

6 And Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes:

7 And they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land.

8 If the LORD delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey.

9 Only rebel not ye against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the LORD is with us: fear them not.

Don’t be too quick to accept a bad report.

There is a peculiar phenomenon we see in the modern church, which is not evident in the Bible. People who pray for things give up while there is still hope. I don’t do that. I pray until there is no point in praying any more. There is nothing to be gained from saying, “Well, it looks like you’re not going to give me what I need, so I’ll pray for something that seems more likely.”

Garrison Keillor once said that if a sheep ever does what you tell it to, it only means you guessed right. God is not a sheep. I don’t try to guess what he’s going to do, so I can pray for it. I pray for what I need, and I try to have faith that he’ll do it. I’m no authority, but I think I’m right about this.

People have a way of trying to guess what’s going to happen, and then shaping their prayers accordingly. It’s a way of making excuses for God. They don’t want to have their faith shaken by failure, so they pray for things that seem easier for God to provide, or which he is more likely to do. So a person might pray for someone like Mish to be healed, and then when things got tough, he might back down and merely pray that she not suffer.

I can’t think of a Biblical example of a person doing that. I can’t picture Moses saying, “Look, if you can’t part the Red Sea, at least give us better working conditions back in Egypt.” There are examples of Biblical figures failing to get what they asked God for, but the general rule is that God provided explanations or at least warnings. Paul wasn’t healed of his thorn in the flesh, but it was needed to keep him humble. John the Baptist wasn’t delivered from prison, but Jesus took the time to inform him that he wasn’t getting out. That’s really not the same as giving up on a prayer and having to guess why it wasn’t answered.

I know people don’t like seeing their hopes dashed, but so what? It’s not fatal. Why is it wrong to continue having faith, through a sick person’s death? What is the advantage of quitting?

Jews say what you do matters more than what you believe, but Christians are different. We think faith itself has power. We think it is the conduit through which God exercises his strength. If you’re a Christian, you have to believe that when you stop having faith, God’s power stops working. So why would you stop believing? Faith doesn’t cost anything. All you risk is disappointment.

We always say we walk by faith, not by sight. But do we, really?

One of the things that makes it impossible for me to deny God is a miracle I received. I decided to join a church, and immediately, I got a flu-like sickness. A severe cold which would not go away. It lasted weeks. I prayed, and I refused to accept the illness, and I always, ALWAYS said I was healed, regardless of how it looked. And one day I saw a dark shape leave my body and exit the house through a door, and I was instantly healed. If I had just gone by my symptoms, that would never have happened. So how can I let myself pray that a sick person has a nice time until she dies? My own experience tells me that guarantees failure.

We’re like the Jews in the time of Jesus. They hadn’t had a prophet in hundreds of years, and they didn’t expect to see God work with great power, the way he did for Moses and Joshua. The Christian church abandoned the Holy Spirit centuries ago, we started substituting man-made rules for true, personal relationships with God, and we started making excuses for the almighty. He won’t heal for this reason. He won’t heal for that reason. Have faith, but don’t actually expect anything to happen. Because apparently, the word “faith” means something other than “faith.” Somewhere along the line, we decided that as long as we were sure of going to heaven, we didn’t need to get to know God or obey him or see his power in our lives. In fact, we tended to persecute people who expected God to behave the way he did in the Bible. As if they were the problem. Yet somehow we still consider ourselves more enlightened than first-century Jews who rejected Jesus.

What’s the difference?

I will not pray for Mish to die happily. She doesn’t need prayer to do that. She can get that from morphine. I don’t pray for God to pass me the salt, when I can reach for it myself. I pray for things only God can do.

I’m sticking to my guns. I don’t know what else to do.

By the way, here is the base I machined to fit my lathe. I’ve been fondling it all morning.

Bad Report

From Mish Weiss’s blog, posted by Leah:

I spoke with the doctors a few minutes ago and they informed me that Mish is slipping away. I am having a hard time accepting this. Even though, I’m sorry I can’t post right now.
Please pray for her.

“Slipping away” means “still alive” to me. I don’t presume to know when another person is going to leave this world. When David’s son passed away, David got up and put himself together and went on with life. But until that moment, he prayed. So I will continue, and I hope you will, too.

I Cede my Place in the Heavenly Chorus Line

Church was interesting last night. No matter what happens there, I always seem to get what I need.

I have a policy of showing up ten minutes late, because I hate rap, and the rappiest parts of the music tend to occur early. I think. After all, my policy makes it hard for me to know exactly what happens early in the service. Last night I showed up at about 6:10, and there was a loud rock band playing. And I had never seen them before, so instantly, I was afraid they were going to be up there longer than the usual musicians. You don’t invited musical guests and then make them sit down after three songs.

Sure enough, they kept going. And going. And going. And they pulled one of my favorite church stunts. They demanded that we all dance, including jumping up and down like kangaroos (they were from Australia).

I think I could build a useful ministry, going around preaching that we have to quit ordering Christians to make fools of themselves in church. I am middle-aged, and I no longer have to dance. Like most men, I have only danced because it was forced on me by society, and I ain’t doing it any more. I am willing to risk going to hell over this. Frankly, I don’t think I’m in much peril.

There are some experiences an adult should never have to have. Being punched by a bully. Being verbally abused by a teacher. Being told you can’t go where you want to go. Being forced to eat things you don’t like. And being forced to dance. I’m all growed up, and I don’t feel like dancing, and I never did, except when it was actual dancing and not the monkey-like, aimless, forced, insincere, self-conscious spasming we have all been doing since about 1960. I have hung up my dancing shoes. Please do not come to my church and tell me to put them back on. If you want to attract gays to church so you can fix them, dancing is a great idea, but I am a fat old heterosexual male, firmly rooted to the earth, and I when I dance, I feel about as natural as Michael Jackson on a visit to Hooters.

I know David danced. He also played the harp. Do I have to play the harp, too? I wouldn’t even know where to buy one. Let’s lay off the transparently self-serving David references. They prove absolutely nothing, except that people who like to dance will torture scripture in order to force other people to do things they don’t want to do. Here’s a little news for ministers and musicians all over the US: there is no rule that says every Christian has to do everything every Bible figure did. If I have to dance, you have to build an ark, eat locusts, and part the Red Sea. And by the way, David’s dancing annoyed people. Nice God-fearing Jews, I mean. Not dirty old ignorant Philistines. And I notice it didn’t catch on. I guess everyone but David went to hell.

Show me where Jesus danced, or SHUT UP. Some dancing Christians think that deep down inside, everyone feels exactly the way they do about everything, and that if people aren’t dancing, they must be uptight or bound by demons or something. But people are different, and they don’t all have the same drives. Listen, I know someone who doesn’t like chocolate. If you can lack the desire for chocolate, which is nearly universal, you can definitely hate dancing. The love of which is only universal among women and homosexuals.

So anyway, I was not all that happy about the way things were turning out. It was like drinking castor oil for thirty straight minutes. But I resolved to be a good sport and try to get what I could out of it. Without dancing. You can’t expect a church to put on the kind of program you yourself would design, every week. If they did that for me, we would all be lying in recliners during the sermons, eating pizza with both hands. Regrettably, other people and their needs and desires matter. I felt like I was crouching in a hole, waiting for a tornado to blow over, but I’m sure many, many people there were having a great time. And the band served its purpose; maybe God is more in tune with their music than I am. When the pastor got going, the presence of God was heavy in the place, and the drive was well worth the result.

The sermon was about the presence of God, oddly enough. The very thing that has kept me going to this church.

The pastor said a funny thing while he was up there. He said the style of the music might not suit some of us, but that it wasn’t about style. Tell me God doesn’t cause preachers to say things individuals in churches need to hear.

It worked out great. But I am starting to realize I will never like “hip” Christian music. I hate rap regardless of what you do to pretty it up and take the violence and tawdry sex out of it, and I don’t like harsh Christian rock. Those types of music are about pride and rebellion; that’s what made them popular. It’s hard to remove that odor, no matter how many times you remind the audience that you’re “rep-uh-sentin’ the King, yo” or “high on the Lord.” And I worry about my ears; I’m thinking of taking plugs next time I go to church. They need a sound meter in there. Churches don’t need loud music. God isn’t deaf. But the rest of us could end up that way.

It’s funny that we still think of rock and rap as music for young people. Rock has been with us since at least the 1940s, and Rap is over thirty years old. It’s old-people music. Our popular music stopped developing in about 1975. It hasn’t changed at all since then. We have silly genres called “alternative,” “house,” and “techno” and so on, but it’s all rock. We give it new names so we can pretend we’re hearing something we haven’t heard before. Isn’t it strange that young people still look up to rockers who are approaching seventy? The present is the past. No wonder Tupac Shakur still releases albums.

Our culture doesn’t change any more. Not fundamentally. We get trashier, but that’s about it. We are frozen, like Austin Powers. I’ll bet we never change again, in any meaningful way. Society resists many types of change now. I’ll bet I’ll be able to wear my suits and ties until I die, because they’ll never go out of fashion. A few years back, the electronics industry tried to force us to buy new equipment by changing the favored color to silver, and we wouldn’t have it, and now new stereos are black again. New cars look just like cars made ten years ago. We aborted the fashion industry’s Satanic crusade to bring back bell bottoms.

Get on Google and look at photos of cars made in 1960, and then look at cars made in 1965, and then look at cars made in 1970. They’re completely different. That doesn’t happen any more. In fact, we now make new muscle cars intended to look like models we made during the Vietnam War. Weird.

I think feedback is probably the explanation. Our existing cultural ideas are constantly reinforced by TV and the Internet. Most of the TV shows we see now are reruns, thanks to cable and syndication. Watch Cheers some time. The clothes look just like the things people wear today. And a baby born when Cheers started running would be pushing 30. Sam and Diane could have grandchildren by now.

Maybe rap and rock are associated with youth because maturity and wisdom lead you to prefer other types of music. You have to be a little stunted to be 50 years old and have the musical taste of a teenager. It’s kind of sad, if you think about it. Imagine being Mick Jagger. He’s past retirement age, but if he wants to stay viable as a performer, he has to sing stuff high school kids like. I wonder how that sits with him. There is such a thing as being held captive by your audience. How would you like to be a member of the Sunshine Band, singing “That’s the Way I Like It” for the 9 millionth time, in order to make your car payment?

I mentioned disco. Now my day is ruined. But I will survive.

“I will survive”? OH NO. EARWORM! GET GLORIA GAYNOR OUT OF MY HEAD!

I’m going back to bed.