Forget Al Qaeda; Stop the Serial Worshipers!

Last night I had the strangest dream. For some reason, I was forced to move to South America. I had a little house there, and it was built in such a way that you could be inside it and still have a clear view of what was going on in the yard. As if some of the walls had been left out. The place was a mess; my junk was everywhere, because I hadn’t gotten the house together yet. And because I am a slob.

While I was in the living room, I saw some clown in the yard aiming a gun at me. I don’t mean he was dressed like a clown. I just mean he was a stupid person. I drew my Glock and shot him in the forehead. Then it turned out he had friends. They kept showing up, and I kept popping them. I thought, “Wow, this really works.” I was so glad I had put in time at the range.

I shot several of them, and I realized I still had enough ammunition in the Glock to take care of a few more, but I thought I ought to look around for other options. Due to my housekeeping style, which was fairly true to life in the dream, guns and bullets were not hard to find. The main problem was that I didn’t keep them together, so I found myself dumping .38 Super rounds into my pocket and then looking for the gun, and I located my .45 and then had to look for bullets.

I don’t know what these idiots wanted. Maybe they were mad at me for defacing an Obama poster. Turning the “H” in “HOPE” to a “D.”

It was very enjoyable. And it drove a comforting point home: this house is one of the most dangerous places in Miami! IF you’re a criminal. I feel great about that.

This dream clearly confirms the worst fears of Janet Napolitano and her left-leaning thoughtcrime squad. My terrorist inclinations are beyond question. I read the Bible, I go to church (like that other terrorist, Jean Assam), and I am willing to use force, in my home, to defend myself from violent criminals (terrorism of the worst kind!). I should be taken to Gitmo and gently interrogated by sensitive vegan operatives trained by the late Leo Buscaglia. We don’t waterboard now, supposedly. Maybe they could threaten to withhold Joni Mitchell music until I snapped. They could deprive me of bad leftist music, altogether. “IF YOU DON’T SPILL THE BEANS [SOY], IT WILL BE A LONG TIME BEFORE YOU HEAR MIDNIGHT OIL AGAIN!”

It has occurred to me that maybe the thoughtcrime squad has a point. Granted, almost all terrorists in the US are Muslims; they dropped the ball on that. But most of the rest are probably far-right nuts. And why is that? Because the left-wing nuts got what they wanted. They have nothing to terrorize for. Hey, maybe appeasement works. All you have to do is let the kooks choose your President. That means we can get rid of right-wing terror by electing Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter.

If we want to see left-wing terrorism rise again, all we have to do is pass laws making bathing mandatory and forcing the cops to take marijuana laws seriously. Cut off their dope and deprive them of their soothing layer of grime, and in no time, the hippies will be bombing Colgate-Palmolive factories.

In case the Ministress of Propaganda or whatever she is still has doubts, let me give her probable cause to haul me in. I’M GLAD I HAVE A SEPTIC TANK, BECAUSE IT SAYS EXACTLY HOW I FEEL ABOUT MOTHER GAIA! I SET MY THERMOSTAT TO 68 DEGREES…IN AUGUST! I BUY MEAT AND THEN THROW IT OUT, JUST TO INCREASE GLOBAL WARMING AND KEEP THE SLAUGHTERHOUSES IN BUSINESS! I FILLED MY BATHTUB WITH AMMUNITION, STRIPPED COMPLETELY NAKED EXCEPT FOR AN NRA CAP, AND TOOK A “BULLET BATH”!

Oh, I am bad. The Angel of Change passed over my house! I didn’t cook a lamb, but there are usually a lot of pig bones in the trash.

Incidentally, rural Southerners use the verb “change” as a euphemism for castrating livestock.

I can’t believe I postulated the existence of sensitive vegans. Have you ever known a vegetarian who wasn’t consumed with rage? They’re the angriest people on earth. They make the Taliban seem laid back. When are we right-wing terrorists going to start setting fire to SUV dealerships and throwing fake blood on people? I have not received my orders yet, and the vegans are getting way ahead of us.

Why are vegans so peeved all the time? Maybe it’s the gas and bloating. If we really want to protect the atmosphere, we should make hippies eat more meat and lay off the legumes.

I saw an interesting Perry Stone video last night. He seems to think God is going to deliver a beating to areas of the world that displease him. Isn’t that happening already? Miami is a fairly evil place, and we got mashed by a whole bunch of hurricanes. New Orleans has an economy based mostly on sin, and it’s the voodoo capital of the US, and look what happened. Remember the tsunami? Thailand is famous for child prostitution. Indonesia is the biggest Muslim nation, and they persecute the daylights out of everyone else. Burma has an official state policy of eradicating Christianity, and they ran off all of their Jews, and a typhoon wrecked the whole country.

And think of the most sinful places on earth, and consider their vulnerability to natural disasters. It’s interesting. San Francisco could disappear in about ten minutes, and Manhattan has two faults under it.

Stone thinks God is going to help Christians relocate, so we don’t end up like Lot’s wife. I find that fascinating, because this is something I pray about every day. I want out of this place. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a city where half of the population worships Santeria demons and another twenty percent practices other types of voodoo. They have “churches” where they sacrifice goats and chickens here! Seriously, look it up. Doctors and accountants and schoolteachers and all sorts of seemingly normal people are caught up in this filth. Oh, yeah. That will end well. For them and their kids.

I guess I’ll close. I have all sorts of potential-terrorist things to do. Grocery shopping. Straightening up the garage. No end of subversive activities. I may actually pray! They can’t stop me! I may get in the car so I can deliberately pray WITHIN A THOUSAND FEET OF A SCHOOL!

I’m not joking, here! I am totally capable of doing this. If my demands are not met.

That reminds me. I have no demands. I better write some up.

Pounds of Cheese, Discarded

Mike has taken off. Which is good, because I feel sure I gained 15 pounds during the time he was here. I just threw out what had to be six pounds of pizza cheese, because I could not face the danger of having it in the house. Tomorrow I’m going to buy a whole bunch of fresh vegetables to eat at lunchtime. I have to detox.

Here’s the great thing about Mike’s time here: we went to church together. At last. I can’t remember when I started praying for his family; it must have been a couple of years ago. Every time he came to Florida, we talked about religion, and I shared my experiences with him. Somehow I was still surprised when he said he was interested in going to church; as far as I know, he’s the only person I’ve ever convinced to attend a service. I can’t say it was a challenge. God has been on his mind for a long time, and he was already an occasional churchgoer.

Yesterday we decided to go to the 6:00 service at Trinity Church. During the afternoon, I checked their website, and although I was sure I had heard them mention 6:00 over and over, the site said 7:00 p.m. So we showed up a little bit after seven, and naturally, Pastor Wilkerson was nearly at the end of his sermon. The site was wrong. This has happened twice this month, but last time, I was able to get the right information in time to avoid missing the service.

When we arrived, he was teaching about signs of the Rapture. He was on the tenth of ten signs. That sign was the blossoming of the fig tree (somewhere in Matthew 24). He explained how the fig tree symbolized Israel, and he said the blossoming was the restoration of the Jewish homeland, which occurred in 1948.

He gave an altar call and blessed the crowd, and that was it. We started walking out. Mike said he wanted to talk, so we met up at a Dunkin’ Donuts a few blocks away (we were driving separate cars). I was frustrated. I was hoping he had gotten something of the feel of the church, but what can you get in fifteen minutes?

We got a couple of totally unneeded doughnuts and some coffee and sat down, and he told me he was glad he had heard about the fig tree, because it was something he had been wondering about! On Thursday, mother of one of his employees died suddenly, and Mike had to go to the funeral the next day. The deceased was Jewish, so the funeral had to be fast, as dictated by Jewish law. At the funeral, the rabbi said something about fig trees. I can’t recall. Maybe a Jewish reader can guess for me. Mike had wondered about that for two days.

Many established denominations think the Old Testament is nearly worthless. “Obsolete” would be a better term. It’s hard for me to relate to that, because when I first became serious about Christianity, it was in an Assemblies of God church, and they realized that the Old Testament was just as important as the rest of the Bible. I don’t think Mike came from that kind of background. I’m used to thinking of my religion as something that grew from Judaism, so I was able to talk to him a little bit about the validity and importance of the Torah and the prophets and the psalms.

He said he had always had an interest in prophecy. As it happened, I was very well prepared to talk about that with him. I’m much more concerned about things that are directly applicable to my daily life, but prophecy is very entertaining, and it contains all sorts of evidence proving the existence of God and the validity of Jesus, so I’ve learned a good deal about it. I was able to direct him to Perry Stone; I can’t imagine a more engrossing teacher.

So the small amount of preaching Mike heard (which didn’t seem exciting to me) turned out to be relevant to a recent experience of his, as well as an interest I didn’t know about. And the prophecy videos I had been watching (in spite of not being an eschatology buff) turned out to be the ideal thing to recommend to him.

Funny how those coincidences keep happening.

He said he wanted to go again, so we met for the 10:30 service today, and we heard the whole sermon. On the way out, we stopped near the entrance to try to decide where we should go to sit down and talk about the service, and while we were there, we caught Rich Wilkerson’s eye, and he yelled to us and shook our hands and started talking to us. I thought, “Hey, this would be a good time to ask him to recommend a church near Mike.” And before I could get it out, he had found out Mike lived near D.C., and he had recommended Mark Batterson’s church.

Okay, I guess you could say that worked out well.

Now Mike is up in Delray with some other friends, and tomorrow he’ll go back to D.C. I have to wonder what his situation will be a year or two from now. Mike is an extremely sincere and open person; my guess is that he’ll make progress in a hurry.

The strangest thing happened last night, as I was driving home. I felt the presence of God sweep over me. Not as powerfully as it did on the two occasions when I could actually pinpoint its location, but still, it was very strong. I felt almost as though the car were flying above the road; it almost seemed to drive itself. I don’t mean it literally steered itself, but I felt as though guiding it took almost no effort.

I thought of a story someone told me about ten years ago. This person claimed she was driving to her mother’s home, and she said a light filled her windshield so she couldn’t see the road, and she sat back while the car literally drove itself. I think that story was probably a ridiculous lie told in order to manipulate me, but last night I could not help thinking about it.

Are we really in the times the prophet Joel described? A lot of people think so. The things I’ve seen lately make it hard to dispute.

Church was nearly unbearable when I was a kid. The churches I was dragged to were lifeless and faithless. Churches are so different now. Some are, anyway. I wonder how many Christians realize that. I’m thrilled with the things I see happening, but sometimes I think the vast majority of Christians have no idea what God is up to.

Lie Down With Dogs…

Washington sources added that the Obama Administration would not be continuing the tradition that had developed during the Bush years of hosting Israeli prime ministers whenever they showed up in town, sometimes with just a phone call’s notice.

That’s a fun little quotation, isn’t it? It comes from a Drudgebart-linked story about Israeli anxiety over the Obama administration’s attitude toward Israel.

It seems like Jews are starting to realize they made a big mistake. I don’t know how the average Israeli viewed Obama before the election, but I know that American Jews in Israel do not like him; they were overwhelmingly against him. Jews in the US supported him by a wide margin, but a few are starting to think MAYBE a far-left nut who spent twenty years warming a pew in an anti-Semitic church MIGHT not be a great ally to Israel.

WHO’D HAVE THUNK IT?

Honestly, sometimes I think the best thing that could happen to the world’s Jews would be if Jews were not allowed to vote. They constitute the single biggest anti-Israel, anti-Jewish faction in the US. Black anti-Semitism is at an all-time high, and no one has the guts to say anything about it. Hispanic anti-Semitism has always been very bad. Plain old vanilla American anti-Semitism is nothing to sneeze at. But Jews themselves do more damage than their enemies. They were instrumental in putting this idiot over the top in the general election. How could they be so blind? It’s astounding!

THE LEFT OWNS ANTI-SEMITISM. How many times do we have to point it out? Sure, there are right-wing anti-Semites. But the best friends Jews have are conservative, and the left is almost uniformly anti-Semitic, and it’s getting to the point where they think it’s something to be proud of! Can you believe a dirtbag like Jeremiah Wright can show his face on the street, let alone on national television, without being driven out of the pulpit? Man, how this country has changed! So much for Jewish control of the media.

Obama thinks we have shown partiality to Israel. Of course we have! They’re our only real allies in the Middle East, and Israel is the only civilized nation in the region! Why wouldn’t we show them partiality? The Saudis finance Al Qaeda, and they just sentenced an old woman to be flogged because two young men brought her groceries! They’re utter savages! What possible reason could we have for according them the same respect we give Israel? And as partiality goes, ours has been pretty weak. Basically, it amounts to insisting that Israel be permitted to exist. Cutting parts out of it…that, we have no problem with. And we arm Israel’s enemies. Some friends, we are.

America’s support for Israel is finished. At least until 2012. I think it’s finished, period. Liberals are getting bolder and bolder in their attacks on Israel, and I think it’s likely to get worse, until people think it’s open season. Oddly, the large number of Jews on the left seems to exacerbate the problem. People feel free to attack their own kind, and Jewish liberals can be very hard on Israel, and that gives other liberals the idea that permission has been given to air out their own dark, twisted notions. I don’t think self-hating Jews realize this: criticizing Jews and Israel does not cause people to think favorably of them. It merely makes them feel justified in spewing hate. Now that I think about it, Obama’s sick, treacherous habit of apologizing for America is going to work the same way, fanning the flames of blind, moronic rage. If our President says America is evil, who can contradict Hamas and Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad?

I think our support for Israel is going to dry up, and I think anti-Semitism is going to get worse here, and I am positive that American Jews will handle it the wrong way, because that is their curse and their habit. They’ll apologize and curry favor, and to show how sorry they are, they’ll vote for leftists who hate the Jewish homeland. And that will be great news for leftists everywhere, because without America behind her, Israel–the world’s tumor–will wither and die, right? Wrong. That’s what her enemies are hoping, but that’s because they don’t believe in God. If our government abandons Israel, God will support her some other way. Probably through the financial help of Christians. Perhaps more directly. I don’t know how he’ll do it, but I know that America is not what keeps Israel going. It has been our privilege and blessing to be used for this purpose, but our participation has not been necessary. And once we stop helping as a nation, we will stop being blessed as a nation. We thought we were so smart and so powerful and so special. It was all a pathetic, bigoted, nationalist illusion. We are exactly like other human beings. When we give up on Israel, we’ll be like Samson without his hair. Ordinary and vulnerable.

Like a lot of Gentiles, I believe that many Jews blame themselves for the Holocaust. Somewhere deep inside, they think, “We were too proud and too successful in Europe, and look what happened. We’ll be safe in America if we vote for handouts and high taxes and we never miss a chance to criticize ourselves.” They’re wrong on both counts. The Holocaust was wholly irrational; Jewish behavior had nothing to do with it. The problem wasn’t how Jews lived their lives as Jews; it is that they were Jewish at all. And if the same spirit seizes America, no one will care what Jews have done for us or how much they’ve castigated themselves. No Jew or perceived Jew will be spared. The Germans and Austrians didn’t spare decorated Jewish veterans. They didn’t spare Jews who had become Catholics. Americans would behave the same way.

The more time passes, the surer I am that Obama is a punishment. We brought him on ourselves. How else can you explain the election of an obvious fool with no qualifications, no experience, and no political clout? We’re finding out how stupid we are. This is how we vote when God doesn’t save us from our own ignorance. The incredible photos of Obama bowing to the Saudi king and sharing a warm handshake with Hugo Chavez are like something you rub a puppy’s nose in. Our ineptitude is constantly shoved in our faces. I can’t wait to see him on TV, hugging Fidel Castro. Obama is just that dumb.

God is not looking out for America the way he used to. It used to be possible to gain protection by living within this protected nation. Now you have to get it on your own. Directly from the source. I am glad I’m going to church these days.

Notice his Hostility Toward Government Employees!

Today Mike and I got to help my dad run his boat up the Miami River to the yard. It was a pleasant ride, tarnished–as usual–by the people who open and close the bridges. The fine person who has the incredibly demanding job of raising and lowering the South Miami Avenue bridge–working a total of perhaps forty minutes per shift–refused to even answer our hail. While I wait for these characters to get it in gear, I often think of the old story about Ted Turner, climbing his own mast just to punch a bridgetender in the face. I don’t know if it’s true. But I would certainly understand.

When we got to the Brickell Avenue bridge, which had a prominent sign saying morning openings were only restricted before 9 a.m., we were told we had to wait until 11. And we had arrived at 10:45. The bridgetender seemed very nice on the radio; maybe the insane unannounced restrictions weren’t her idea.

Anyway, we made it to the yard without incident.

Tonight Mike and I made pizza. I mean we BOTH made pizza. I picked up cheese and sauce during our Gordon Food Service mission yesterday, and tonight we put on a tour de force. I made a pie, and Mike made a second pie plus garlic rolls swimming in Costco olive oil. The cheese was GFS mozzarella/provolone blend. It was excellent. The pizzas were slightly different, but each was sublime in its own way. I felt pretty good about it, because Mike had had to attend a funeral during the afternoon, so I had to make all the dough on my own.

I bought an interesting product this week. Sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour. I created a bigger batch of starter from it, and today I put it in the dough. I only had about three hours for the pizza dough and one hour for the roll dough. It made the pizza dough noticeably better. From now on, it will be standard. I have read that it makes dough’s texture better, and that seems to be true.

I was relieved, because the last two pizzas I made were a little off. I still got it. You can’t touch this stuff at any Miami pizzeria I’ve been to. They’re nowhere near as good. Now that I think about it, even though I lived in New York, the best pizzerias I’ve known were in the northern half of this city. Weird. But I lived near Columbia University, and there were only two pizzerias in my area. I’m sure there were better offerings all over town. And on average, New York wins, hands down.

Mike and I will be going to church either tomorrow or Sunday. I’m all excited. As much as I’ve gotten from my renewed relationship with God, I have been utterly unable to pass that success on to anyone else. Maybe to some extent through my blog, and maybe through prayer, but not directly. Now I have someone who is completely open to it and eager to take a closer look.

I have the funniest idea about my machine tools. Remember how I developed an interesting in machining because I wanted to make a device to crack stone crab claws? I’m thinking I may manufacture a bunch of different cracking devices. All sorts of different designs. They run through my head at night. Electric ones. Ones with gears. Some with cams. I may do it. Although putting them on the web might make it impossible to patent them. I might come up with something that was so much fun to use, it would have commercial value. Let’s face it. Virtually all nutcrackers are garbage. I’m sure it’s fun building weird one-cylinder engines, which seems to be what every home machinist does, but that doesn’t appeal to me.

What am I going to do with that gallon can of hot fudge sauce?

Great Day

Mike and I spent the day running around. The mother of one of his employees died, and she’s Jewish, so you know what that means. A very prompt funeral. We had to run up to Delray to get Mike’s suit. We visited the Fort Lauderdale Gordon Food Supply, which beats the daylights out of the one here on Flagler Street. I took photos of some interesting goodies, and I’ll upload them eventually. After that we hit Sonny’s barbecue.

We talked a lot about our dysfunctional families, and I told him something that occurred to me this morning in the shower. As far as I can tell, families do not work without God, period. You may have some pieces of the puzzle: wealth, fame, looks, or maybe brains. Your kids may be healthy, and they may be achievers. Your marriage may last. But it won’t really work as a whole. There will be significant failure somewhere in the picture. There will be important problems you absolutely have no chance of fixing. I think the reason for this is the same reason we have physical pain. When you have physical pain, it tells you something is wrong. It tells you that you need to fix something. It can prevent you from making a problem worse. Maybe you need to have a tumor removed or a bone set. Without pain, you might not do what you need to do. The failures we experience here on earth tell us we need to turn to God. They tell us our lives do not work properly without him. And as you turn to him, the pain abates or disappears entirely or, very often, turns to joy and peace.

What kind of God would let you and your spouse and your kids and your siblings have peaceful, prosperous lives without him? It would be a disservice. It would prove he didn’t care.

Mike had a lot of insights into my family’s troubles, and I was glad to have his input. He seemed to benefit from what I had to say, too. We’re going to try to attend the Saturday evening service at my church. I told him God has been fixing my family, and I’m hoping he can see the same kind of healing in his own life.

In other news, the guy who sold me my lathe emailed. He’s been looking it over and running and cleaning it and getting it ready for shipping. He says it appears it has “seen very little use.” That’s exciting. I was puzzled at first, because it had sat in a prison for over forty years. I had assumed it had been used a lot in vocational training. Then I realized it might be difficult to get backward, hardheaded criminals to take advantage of a great opportunity to learn a lucrative trade. So maybe their stubbornness will cause me to receive a substantial benefit intended for them. The Bible says “the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.” The lathe sale would be a pretty blatant example of unteachable people ignoring a blessing, leaving it to pass into the hands of someone more open to God’s instruction. Not that I am calling myself just. I do think I’m trying harder than most convicts.

I bought a gallon can of hot fudge today, just because I could. Sometimes I think I have a very big screw loose.

Look Out

Mike is in town, so the overeating started last night. Someone please intervene.

Today we have a number of options. Costco. Gordon Food Supply. And he was so impressed with my trash pile mahogany boards, he wants to make one. Go figure. He also wants to bust out the motorcycles.

I’m trying to get him to hang out long enough to visit church.

With a reader’s help, I think I figured out what I need to do about my router fence. All I need is something that extends out from the back side of the Biesemeyer. The parallelism is outstanding, and the precision is hard to beat. I could add a DRO to the Biesemeyer system, too, or I could must mount a dial indicator and some sort of screw adjustment on the router part. Anyway, this should be very easy compared to the harder solutions I found, and it should be much cheaper than the expensive ones.

I also have 3,000 pistol primers on the way! Do you care? Probably not. But I’m ecstatic. These things have been hard to find. And these are Federals, which may solve the problems I’ve had with .357 ammunition failing to fire properly. Federals are soft, and the new spring in my 27-2 is weak, so this should be a good combination. I also broke down and got a chronograph. There is just no way to avoid it. I can’t keep putzing around, taking a face shield to the range and praying the first shot doesn’t blow my 1911 apart. That is not the right way to work up a load. And I would very much like to create loads for Wolf primers, because they’re dirt, DIRT cheap.

Mike wants to make a video teaching people how to make 10-minute pizza. We ought to do it. I’d pay ten bucks for something like that, wouldn’t you?

Life is sweet

Plus Uncle Ted, the Water Dog Whisperer

The mahogany I cut to size yesterday continues its mysterious dance. Sometimes it bows this way. Sometimes it bows that way. This morning when I got up, one piece was flat.

Here’s another interesting thing it does. This wood appears dry, but it still has some water in it, and it migrates to the lower side over time. Today I found discoloration on the bottom side of the wood. I turned it over, and in forty-five minutes or so, the discoloration was gone.

I don’t think any of this matters. The box I plan to make will be seven inches long, so the warping over the length of the box will amount to about a third of a millimeter. Close enough for government work.

Speaking of government work, are you as amused as I am by Obama’s stated intention to go easy on tax delinquents? Apparently, his plan is to find them and appoint them all to his cabinet. That’s what he’s done so far. Give this man credit; he may be presiding over the disintegration of the greatest nation on earth, but he is immensely entertaining.

Readers have pointed out that Obama’s dog–a Portuguese water dog–was a gift from Edward Kennedy. This is the kind of thing The Half Hour News Hour team would have made up, but for the fact that they had absolutely no talent. You can almost picture Ted, sitting on a dock with a Scotch in his hand (or both hands), trying to teach his special dog to retrieve a dummy from a submerged Oldsmobile.

Speaking of conservative disasters, I see that the GOP has shriveled to the point where Bob Shrum now feels entitled to make fun of it. Can you imagine anything worse? This man’s name has literally become a verb, synonymous with both “fail” and “cause to fail.” “My souffle looked good in the oven, but then it Shrummed.” “Ned Rice and Sandy Frank Shrummed the hopes of conservative humor.”

You know what this reminds me of? The Star Wars scene where Han Solo is about to be fed to the giant underground worm, and Jabba’s rat-like pet is talking smack to him. The rat is an incredibly pathetic creature in its own right, but it has Jabba backing it up, and Han Solo is such a mess, the rat can probably take him. So the rat feels entitled to ridicule. If Shrum is the rat, maybe Robert Gibbs is Jabba. I’m not sure.

Geez, what happened to us? Well, I know what happened. Big-tent, amoral secularism. We used to rout the enemy, and now they rout us. Man, I wish I could find a new country to move to. A place where religious conservatives are in charge. This is the difference between me and a liberal; they always want to stay where they are and ruin the countries they live in, instead of moving to leftist cesspools like France. Me, I’d rather just get out. I wish Texas would secede so I could apply for a homestead.

Yeah, that secular conservatism…that stuff is working out real good. Let’s keep it up! We’re on a roll! The last thing we want is to turn back to God and go back to the misery and failure of THE REAGAN YEARS.

The Bible says not to worry, because evil comes of it. Too bad the GOP never learned that. We got a little worried, and we decided the item we needed to get rid of was God. Now look at us.

Hey, you know that business about letting illegal aliens vote? It’s going to continue and expand. How do I know? One of the signs that a nation is cursed is that aliens within its borders will increase and gain power over it. Look it up.

Today at our weekly breakfast, I told my dad we should just send the welfare money directly to Mexico. Why make them move? It’s cheaper for everyone to just pay them where they are.

I need to join a new party. I cannot be part of an organization so degraded it can legitimately be ridiculed by the likes of Shrum.

More

When I wrote this, I didn’t know Rick Perry was flipping out and trying to declare Texas a sovereign nation. Where do I apply to join the militia? I can smoke pigs like nobody’s business, and I will bring a fine assortment of deadly firearms.

Buffett Orders Chinese

Stocks are diving today because GM is going to declare bankruptcy. But I think they should be diving for another reason. A Drudge-linked article just exposed the tip of the iceberg that will probably sink America’s auto industry. Warren Buffett just bought 10% (as much as he was allowed) of Chinese automaker BYD.

I have been harping on this for quite some time. Liberals are worried that union workers in the US might be reduced to a mere 200% or so of the daily wage they’re actually worth, as a result of our domestic woes. That’s silly. Our real problem is the huge, highly motivated, highly capable Asian labor market, which is going to make cushy American union jobs a fond memory. If Obama were competent, and if our Congress were not dominated by effete liberal kooks, we might have some chance of fixing our internal problems. But how are we supposed to stop the Chinese and the Indians? We can’t. They’re smart, they work harder than us, they work cheaper than us, and there are over two billion of them. And protectionism, our only remaining weapon against them, has proven ineffective and destructive.

Take a look at this quotation about BYD’s founder, largest stockholder, and CEO:

Wang entered the automobile business in 2003 by buying a Chinese state-owned car company that was all but defunct. He knew very little about making cars but proved to be a quick study. In October a BYD sedan called the F3 became the bestselling sedan in China, topping well-known brands like the Volkswagen Jetta and Toyota (TM) Corolla.

Not exciting? Look again. He didn’t beat the incompetents at the Big Three. He beat TOYOTA, and our homegrown companies are to Toyota as Chuck Wepner was to Muhammad Ali. And he did it in half a decade. He also stomped Sony and Sanyo; he produces batteries cheaper than they can. Not cheaper than they do. Cheaper than they can. And the secret is cheap Chinese labor. China is the Wal-Mart of human beings. The supply is high, and the cost is low.

BYD has an electric car. Here, let me save myself the effort of paraphrasing:

BYD has also begun selling a plug-in electric car with a backup gasoline engine, a move putting it ahead of GM, Nissan, and Toyota. BYD’s plug-in, called the F3DM (for “dual mode”), goes farther on a single charge – 62 miles – than other electric vehicles and sells for about $22,000, less than the plug-in Prius and much-hyped Chevy Volt are expected to cost when they hit the market in late 2010. Put simply, this little-known upstart has accelerated ahead of its much bigger rivals in the race to build an affordable electric car.

Isn’t that special? The Big Three take eons to get anything to market, and when they do, it’s often disappointing. But this Chinese nobody appears to be able to put competent innovative products on showroom floors, and he has only been making cars–not just electric cars, but cars, period–since 2003.

What’s the quality like? It doesn’t matter. Two reasons. First, the price is so low, the quality would have to be abysmal to affect sales, and it’s probably not abysmal. Second, the quality is getting better. I don’t know that because I checked. I know it because I’ve seen the trend in Chinese products AND I’m not a moron.

It looks like we may be headed in the sad direction of electric cars and other depressing little poverty jalopies. We are told that these machines are “progressive” and “green,” but that’s leftist lipstick on a very big and smelly pig. In reality, they reflect our decline as a nation. They are symptoms of failure.

The Chinese ride bicycles to work. It’s green as hell, but that’s not why they do it. They can’t afford cars. We’re headed in that direction, and they’re headed in ours. The Chinese will upgrade from bicycles, and we’ll downgrade from real cars that provide safety, comfort, and jobs. So there is probably a bright future in BYD’s silly little half-cars. And if there isn’t, they can make ordinary cars and still beat us like rag dolls. There is no law that says they can only make nutty little Urkel vehicles. The Japanese started with econoboxes, and now they sell big belching land yachts.

The sense that I get when I look at the world is that God doesn’t bless the US the way he used to, but he continues to bless individual believers very powerfully. I continue to believe that our rebellion–our disgusting behavior and attitudes–have cost us our role as the world’s leader, and that we’re never going to get it back. China and India aren’t going away. Neither is Russia, which sabotages us and assists our enemies whenever possible. When I read stories like the BYD article, it confirms what I have suspected. It’s time for individuals to put God first and work to get his blessings, because the rising tide that used to lift all boats has disappeared. In the past, anyone could make it in the US. In the future, you’ll have to make it on your own merit.

I read another article recently which bolstered this notion. Some guy who used to be a stockbroker was delivering pizzas for a living. He had a huge house, and his income had been as high as $750,000 per year, and he was working for a pizzeria to feed his family. That’s a great example of what I’m talking about. I know utterly ordinary people who have gotten rich simply because the US was a prosperous country where even the most unimpressive human being could get lucky. Some of these people credited themselves; that’s human nature. But the fertile, friendly environment in which they worked is what made them. God provided that.

I’ll tell you what qualifications you need to be a stockbroker. None. You do not have to be a financial expert. You do not need an IQ above 90. You do not need any talents. You don’t need to be able to predict what the market will do. All you have to do is persuade other people to buy and sell securities. Period. Bottom line. End of story. That’s it. If you can sell a TV at Best Buy, you can be a stockbroker. It’s a fantastic job for someone who isn’t bright and doesn’t have a postgraduate degree. A chicken can do it. And jobs like that used to be a lot easier to come by, because of America’s wealth. Now they’re drying up, and people who thought they were successful because of their innate superiority are finding out how lucky they really were.

If you don’t believe any of this, get in your car and go talk to three brokers. While you’re there, ask how they did on the SAT. Give them a crossword puzzle, and tell them if they can do it in an hour, you’ll give them your retirement money. Good luck.

The pizza job is not the anomaly, here. The anomaly is an ordinary person with pizza-delivery-grade skills, making $750,000 a year in commissions. It’s so easy to be greatly blessed and not realize it.

I say the Chinese will dominate the US auto market within ten years. And the Big Three will be gone or bought out. I’ve been told I’m wrong, because the Japanese used to be in this same situation, and their labor costs went up. Are labor costs going to go up in China, where they have almost a billion and a half people who need work? Compared to the US, Taiwan has low labor costs, and they pay about eight times what the Chinese do. EIGHT. I think there’s still a lot of headroom in the Chinese cost structure. I’m no expert, but I don’t think Chinese manufacturing expenses are going to increase fast enough to help the Big Three. It didn’t happen in Taiwan, and China is in a much better situation.

Get ready for your first Chinese car. It’s coming.

Short One

Someone I know appears to be having some sort of psychological crisis. I hope some of you will take the time to pray for her and her marriage. Thanks.

Hindsight Can’t Save God’s Enemies

I will never understand why my family didn’t make a bigger fuss on Easter when I was a kid. For some reason, my sister and I always received chocolate rabbits and baskets of candy, and that was nice, but I don’t recall Easter having the kind of religious significance Christmas had. Even now, it sort of slips by me.

That’s a shame, because Easter, or more accurately, Passover, is what made Christianity possible. The crucifixion and resurrection are the events that made it unnecessary for human beings to pay for their sins.

I think the second psalm is a great thing to read on Easter, because it reveals the true nature of the events that took place over that fateful Passover, two thousand years ago. I do not mean this in an irreverent way: the crucifixion was a trick. Were it not for the terrible suffering and ugliness, you might almost compare it to a practical joke. Religious people tend to think of spirits as brilliant beings who know all sorts of things about the future, but the truth is, God has a long, long history of making fools of them. He encodes his plans in prophecy, and his enemies can’t figure out what it means, and then he brings things to pass, and his enemies are caught flatfooted. That’s what the second psalm is all about. It was written about a thousand years before Jesus, but it clearly describes not only the crucifixion and resurrection, but the fact that the spirits who rule this world will not understand it and will be unable to prevent it from ruining them. Take a look.

1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying,

3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.

6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

7 I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

10 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.

11 Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

The Bible often has multiple meanings woven into its text. For exampe, “kings of the earth” might refer to some of David’s enemies, and “his anointed” might refer to David. But to a Christian, it’s pretty clear that they also refer to the spirits that rule this world, and Jesus, respectively.

This isn’t just about nations that are hostile to David. It’s about spirits that oppose God. They fought Jesus, and they believed that by putting him to death, they were destroying his power. Instead, they magnified it and spread it to humanity, even beyond the Jews. To “the heathen” and “the uttermost parts of the earth.” “Holy hill of Zion” refers to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Jesus referred to his own body as God’s temple. He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” His body is where the kingdom of God, on earth, inside men, began.

This psalm ridicules the non-human powers that have the foolish pride to fight with God. It shows God can take their most promising plans and use them to skewer them. He can delude them into destroying themselves with their own weapons. And he can reveal it all in advance, to human beings to whom he has given ears to hear. The second psalm is a perfect picture of what God intended to do, if you’re able to perceive it.

I wish we would give up our ridiculous traditions of moving Easter away from Passover and referring to it by a disgusting pagan name. The parallels between the first Passover and the one that included the crucifixion are overwhelming, but we have obscured the connections by turning Easter into a bizarre day that celebrates rabbits that lay eggs. And if you can’t see Passover in Easter, you probably can’t see Shavuot in Pentecost, either.

Anyway, happy misplaced Passover. Whatever you choose to call it.

Rasmussen Proves It

My Chinese (of course) carbide indexed cutting tools arrived yesterday. The price was great. But the lid on the little plastic case was smashed. The seller took the whole mess and shoved it in a Priority Mail envelope instead of a box, and naturally, something got crushed. He didn’t even sandwich it in bubble wrap.

I complained. Carbide tools are brittle, and you’re supposed to store them in a way that keeps them from touching other tools. One way to do that might be…a plastic case! It’s important. Granted, I can throw out the case lid and rig something up. But I shouldn’t have to.

What do you think? Am I being too picky? This guy could just as easily have used a box. Priority Mail boxes exist.

No response to my complaint yet. I can’t see giving someone a negative over this, but a neutral might be in order. If you’re going to ship people things, you should make some effort to pack them correctly.

Yesterday, unfortunately, I found something interesting on Craigslist. Another lathe. Wait! It’s not as bad as you think. It’s a little bitty lathe. Like Otisburg. The company that makes it goes as small as 4″ by 8″, and I think their biggest model has a 10″ swing. I’m not sure which model it is, but the description makes it sound really small. It’s a good lathe, too; not Chinese. And it has tooling. And the price is too good to pass up. Dang it.

It would be pretty cool to have a tiny lathe I could store in the closet, for very small parts. I could teach Marv to run it.

He’d make a lot of bells, I suppose. Bells are his bag.

Two disturbing items in the news today. First, only 53% of Americans told the Rasmussen pollsters that capitalism is better than socialism. And 30% of Democrats think socialism is better. Big surprise there.

It looks like the liberals have won the education battle. Socialism has caused the deaths of tens of millions of people, and it has never produced a good standard of living anywhere, and it is the greatest evil mankind has ever encountered. But a fair number of Americans, especially those who were “educated” after our school system was destroyed by liberals, think socialism is…pretty rad. No work! Free beers! Che T-shirts! If you want to be a lazy, flabby slouch all your life, socialism is the bomb. A lot of people are content to live that way. Clip your own wings and belly up to the trough.

This is how the killing fields in Cambodia happened. People didn’t know, or ignored, the clear and obvious lessons of history. They thought they could take something that had never worked anywhere and somehow make it succeed. And they ended up rounding up educated people, lining them up beside big holes, and machine-gunning them to death.

Here is the lesson conservatives should have learned from the last three elections, especially after seeing the impact of swing voters. The stupid are incredibly dangerous. The stupid make totalitarianism possible. Our kids are stupid, and they’re getting more stupid every decade. Look out.

The poisonous harvest of our most toxic decade, the Sixties, is a bizarre notion that the young are smart. In truth, the young are generally fools. I certainly was. But back in the Sixties, the left managed to seize on one or two things the old had been wrong about–things like racism and reckless pollution–and convince the young that the old were wrong about EVERYTHING. Since then we have been producing insolent, unprincipled, overconfident, weak children who think their tiny brains hold the keys to a bright and happy future where everyone eats tofu and and smokes free dope and has sex with no consequences.

It’s amazing; a human being will generally get smarter with age. But our nation, composed entirely of human beings, has gotten dumber. And we’re going to pay. Stupidity is an extremely expensive luxury.

I wasn’t raised very well. To some extent, I am part of the problem. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to my parents, and I don’t blame them for my failings, but they made mistakes. When you have kids, you should give them the same kind of effort you put into your job, at the very least. There should be a plan. There should be discipline and oversight. I didn’t get everything I needed. Thank God, I am able to perceive the existence of the problem, so I can work to improve myself. But many people are not as lucky as I am. They think the neglect they experienced as kids was freedom. They’re grateful for it. They think it allowed them to grow up without the “backward” ideas that made their grandparents so silly. They don’t understand that restrictions can be great blessings. Rules aren’t like shackles, intended purely to deprive you of liberty. They’re like frames that guide tomato plants and help them produce more fruit.

Presumably, every book of the Bible has a purpose. I believe that one purpose of the book of Proverbs is to help people like me. There are lessons my parents failed to teach me. And I’ve absorbed a lot of counterproductive ideas throughout my life. Where do people like me go for guidance? Pastors don’t have the time to provide it. You can’t expect your friends to fill the need. You can’t just think it up on your own. The book of Proverbs can be very helpful. It’s like a frozen bone marrow transplant, waiting to be infused into lost generations, to heal them of the cancer of savagery. Wisdom is supposed to reside in human beings, but sometimes it misses generations, and it has to be stored somewhere so people raised without exposure to it can be reinoculated.

I went through this book systematically. I found that I already believed and applied a lot of it, so I deleted those portions. I put the rest in a Word file. Now I have it to use as a reference. The deletions left me with a targeted version that focuses on my specific gaps. I don’t look at it often enough, but I keep a printout handy. You might give this a try. Wisdom really is power, and it will take care of you.

Sometimes I look at that printout and alight on passages I wish I had read twenty years ago. I think of specific mistakes I have made, and the pain they have caused me, and I wince. That’s the kind of experience parents are trying to spare you when they tell you to pull up your pants, get a real haircut, stop watching MTV, and get your butt to church.

In case any kids are reading this, let me say this. Socialism is a horror, and it will bring only misery and death. And there is no such thing as safe sex. And piercings are generally disgusting.

The other thing that disturbed me today was a ridiculous essay by Juan Williams. Someone sent me a link to it. He comes out and admits he thinks gun ownership should be banned. Like it was in Washington D.C., that peaceful haven where crime is unknown. Unbelievable.

Here’s an incredible quotation:

In fact, in Nebraska there is a big argument in the legislature about guns. It is not about banning them. The debate is whether to allow security guards to bring guns into churches. To my mind the debate should be about how to keep all guns out of churches.

If Mr. Williams had had his way, Jean Assam would not have been able to shoot the man who murdered two people in the parking lot of New Life Church. If, on the other hand, Ted Nugent had had his way, that murderer would probably have been killed much earlier in the day, when he opened fire at another church. A churchgoer packing heat would have laid him out on the pavement. Whose way do you prefer? I prefer Ted’s. When I go to church, I keep a switchblade in my pocket and a pistol in my glove compartment. I’d carry inside, if I had the clothes for it.

Why is there any doubt about a church’s right to have armed guards? We don’t prevent stores and banks from using guns to assure security. Explain why churches should be different. Provide the basis for the state’s right to discriminate against any institution in this matter, based purely on that institution’s status as a religious entity. The disciples would not have been allowed inside a church run by Mr. Williams. They carried swords, on orders from Jesus himself. If Juan Williams ran the Vatican, the Swiss Guard would be ejected from the premises. They carry MACHINE GUNS. Not semi-automatic. Automatic. Most people in the Williams faction don’t know the difference. Their writings prove it every day.

Quite frankly, I find it odd that the Pope isn’t armed. If you require other people to bear arms for you, you are fully responsible for what they do, and you should be willing to do the same thing. If you’re not willing to do that, how are you different from Rosie O’Donnell, who preaches against guns yet pays armed bodyguards? If John Paul II had been armed when Mehmet Ali Agca attacked, he might have spared himself some surgery and prolonged his life.

Says Mr. Williams:

The roll call of death and suffering from guns continued earlier this month with the tragic mass shooting in Binghamton, N.Y. That followed one man killing ten people in Alabama before taking his own life. And that preceded the murders of eight people in a North Carolina nursing home, as well as one parolee shooting four policemen to death in Oakland, Calif.

Excuse me, but how is that “suffering from guns”? Isn’t it actually “suffering from criminals”? And which of these murderers would have obeyed a law banning gun ownership? The laws against murder, which have steeper penalties, didn’t bother them at all. And what do you think would have happened had the first three killers encountered armed civilians? Same thing that happened in New Life Church.

Reading this column, I learn two things. First, Juan Williams is never going to make it as a professional logician. Second, he’s a great target for violent crime. He chooses to be defenseless, and he makes good money. I think that if I were opposed to allowing civilians the means to defend themselves, I’d be smart enough to avoid bragging about it on national television, while working in a city known for street crime. It’s like begging to be mugged.

Williams says no change is in sight. I sure hope that’s true. Barack Obama and his awful Attorney General have done more to arm Americans in the last six months than the NRA could have done in ten years. I’d hate to see that wonderful progress reversed.

Proven Idiot Supposedly Deserves Chance Bush Never Got

I am sad to report a setback in the quest for the ultimate pillow. Night before last I tried a memory foam pillow and slept extremely well, and all day yesterday I felt almost as though I were on speed. It made a big difference. Yesterday I got a second pillow–a fake down product called Indulgence–and I thought my joy would be complete. But I had a little congestion anyway, and on top of that, I couldn’t get to sleep on time. It’s as if the extra energy from sleeping well made me more sensitive to caffeine. So today, no coffee, and I’m drinking my daily ration of revolting green tea as early as possible, to give the caffeine time to wear off.

I still feel much better than I used to.

I just skimmed Camille Paglia’s latest. I never read anything she has written in its entirety. She has not mastered the humane tool known as the paragraph, and she seems to write defensively, the way a lot of self-proclaimed intellectuals do. They’re used to hanging around with people who correct each other and whose big thrill in life is pretending to be much smarter than they really are. They always end up using bigger words than they need and giving unhelpful references to show you how much they’ve read. They do this to discourage other pretentious effetes from finding opportunities to show them up. Yes, Camille, we know you own four tons of books and actually made it through Ulysses. Just write like a human being, okay? Be like Billy Joel, who said he never wanted to work that hard. There’s a reference for you. I’m sorry it couldn’t be Krishnamurti or Ezra Pound.

Sooner or later, she’s going to snap and admit she’s conservative. She’s like Dennis Miller and Ron Silver. She keeps saying the same things about liberals that conservatives say. This is why a lot of liberals hate her. Eventually she’s going to break down and say, “Okay, I’m a lesbian, but I can’t take these hippies any more, and I am just not stupid enough to think socialism works.”

She’s secure enough to get herself in trouble by criticizing the left, but she’s not secure enough to abandon it. Which is all right, I guess, since we already seem to have enough conservatives who want nothing to do with God or morality. I refer to the actual God, not the one Joseph Smith made up.

Today she admits that Barack Obama is an embarassment. Hello? Where was she when he was using a childish gesture to give Hillary Clinton the finger on camera? Where was she when we learned that he belonged to an anti-Semitic church, and that the pastor was one of his closest associates? Where was she when we found out one of his buddies was a terrorist who belongs on death row?

Wake up, lady. Barack Obama has been an embarassment for a long time. And his wife is downright disgusting. You don’t grab the Queen of England with your big Amazon paws and wool her around like a puppy. You don’t go on TV and tell America you’ve been ashamed of it for virtually all of the four decades of your pampered life, which was made possible by America’s misguided generosity and bizarre notions of collective guilt.

Michelle Obama is like the relative you pray won’t show up at your wedding. And now she is the face our womanhood presents to the world.

Paglia says the “major” media has been remiss in not howling over Obama’s horrific bow the to the despotic ruler of Saudi Arabia. No duh. Thanks for pointing out the obvious and expecting people to applaud your remarkable insight. And where have you been, woman? How could you not expect this kind of thing, from a guy who spent most of his life as a glorified bagman for the chicago machine? He’s been kissing the rings of corrupt tyrants for decades; he probably bowed out of habit.

It’s revealing that Paglia admits that the mainstream press is unfair in Obama’s favor, but notice she won’t go the whole distance. She won’t call them “the liberal media.” She’s thinking it, people. This woman has only made it out of one closet. The other one is yet to burst open.

Too funny. Free thinking is good when it gets you attention and lands you book deals, but when it threatens your social life, suddenly it’s SCARY. Ann Coulter appears to be mentally ill, but give her credit. She isn’t afraid to say what she feels like saying, and as a result, she has probably lost more friends and eaten more gay-waiter boogers than anyone in history.

I will never be able to make the kind of clever references Camille Paglia makes, because I pretty much abandoned literature over twenty years ago. I realized that literature was unrealistic; it was written from the point of view of people who had great faith in despair and none in God. The world of literature is distorted, because God doesn’t exist there. Henry Miller said the first thing you scratch down when you start to write is “the cry of the wounded angel: pain.” How right he was. But here’s an equally accurate way to put it. To a large degree, literature is an elaborate form of whining. I don’t think that would have pleased Miller’s readers as much as the angel thing.

Ahab ends up tied to the whale, sort of like a big dead suction-cup Garfield on a white minivan. The savage hangs himself because he can’t find his place in man’s squeaky clean, genetically engineered world. The smelly old Italian guy who hangs out at the whorehouse says, “It’s better to live on your feet than die on your knees,” because there is no divine mathematician up there, balancing the moral equations. My world isn’t like that. Is yours? Why should I read books in which my views will be shaped by unfortunate fictional people who DON’T GET IT? If I want to be pelted with wrongness, I don’t need a book. I can turn on Air America. Assuming it still exists.

Did I get the references wrong? If so, good for me. It shows I haven’t been wasting my time.

Speaking of ways to spend time, I’ve been thinking about the amazing tools I saw over at Practical Machinist. I linked to a thread started by a guy who says he’s a starting machinist. He made his own quick-change tool post set, plus other helpful machining items you would ordinarily have to buy. It makes me wonder if I should try to make a few tools for myself. Example: a Criterion boring head costs hundreds of dollars. The metal used it in can probably be had for two figures. Some people make their own boring heads with little mills and lathes. Maybe I could do that.

I wish I could make a milling attachment for the lathe, but that appears to be a milling job, so like I said in an earlier post, I think you need a milling attachment in order to make a milling attachment.

Someone posted a question here about small lathes, like Sherlines and Taigs. I’d recommend looking at W.R. Smith’s video about tooling up for clockmaking. He says Sherline now provides so much milling paraphernalia for lathes, you can do a ton of stuff without springing for a second machine.

I bought some lathe DVDs. Smartflix is useful, but they’re very slow. I can’t wait two months. Besides, I like to support the people who create educational materials when I can. Some video sets, like the ones from ATI, are obscenely expensive. Others cost a little over twice as much as Smartflix charges to rent them. I can swing that.

I hope more junk arrives today. I can sit in the garage and fondle it until the lathe gets here.

“Medical” = Markup

Man, did I get burned yesterday. I went to Vitamin Shoppe to get curcumin and green tea pills. I don’t take tea in pill form, but I like to mix it with soap and water and moosh it onto suspicious areas on my skin; it does a real number on actinic keratoses, and it sure beats paying a dermatologist to freeze them or slice them out, leaving big divots in my face.

I got to the register, and the girl told me my total was a little over forty bucks. FORTY. For a hundred tea bags’ worth of tea plus a third of a pound of turmeric. Does that sound right to you? The only reason I take curcumin capsules is that turmeric is too disgusting to swallow in powder form. But at thirty-two bucks a bottle, it may motivate me to start using a spoon.

I usually use Vitacost.com, but I figured I could stand to pay brick-and-mortar prices for two measly items. Forget THAT. Today I’m going to Costco, and I’m going to make very sure I get a big jug of fish oil. That’s the only thing I’m missing right now.

I’ve also decided to get a memory-foam pillow. I can’t put up with congestion any more; I’m wondering if being around Marvin and Maynard has sensitized me to feathers. For thirty bucks, I can find out.

The other day I wrote about someone I know from Nowlive. He started having strokes. I don’t have all the details. I was told he was going in for an operation involving his heart and brain, and I was asked to put up a prayer request, so I did. I’m happy to report that he seems okay. Thanks, everyone who helped.

It seems like my blog is becoming a prayer clearinghouse these days. That’s fine with me. I can always use something positive on my record, to offset the bad things I do. I think it’s important to look for opportunities to do good deeds, because they won’t always come knocking on your door.

I got another request last week, but I didn’t post it, because a blog entry that goes up on a Friday is worthless. No one will read it. Here’s the draft I typed to keep me from forgetting:

Someone who frequents this blog sent me a prayer request. Had it arrived yesterday, I would have figured it for an April Fool’s joke, but since it arrived today, it must be serious. It sounds bad. I won’t say who sent it; if he wants, he can ID himself in the comments.

This individual has been suffering from Dupuytren’s contractures in his hands. This is a disease that causes the hands to contract and the palms to become tough. That has been treated surgically, and he is not happy with the results. Now he says he has been diagnosed with Peyronie’s disease. Look it up if you want. It’s a urological issue which can cause considerable suffering.

His wife has had cardiac problems and migraines. She has been treated successfully for a brain aneurysm. Now she’s having dizzy spells and falling for no reason.

On top of all this, they’ve both had cataract surgery.

These folks are having a bad time. I hope you’ll take a minute and put a word in for them.

I have to get on the road to Costco. I hope they have kosher Coke!

Decent Milling Machine in Miami?

I had assumed that my only machine tool buy for the first half of this year would be a lathe. Now I think I may have been wrong. Sometimes you see a deal that is so good you have no choice but to take it.

Last night I noticed a Bridgeport mill for sale locally. Nine hundred bucks. It doesn’t look great; it’s painted in one of the shades known to Internet forum users as “Ebay blue.” But it has a DRO, what may be a Kurt vise, a power feed, and a bunch of collets.

A used DRO is worth maybe 500 bucks. The vise is worth 250. The collets would run maybe a hundred. I could take the good stuff off of this, sell the rest for scrap, and break even. Or I could use it until something better showed up, take the good stuff off, put the good stuff on the better machine, and then sell this one for scrap.

Whoops! The same machine is on Ebay for $4500! What’s up with that? The bigger Ebay photos don’t look so hot. And it’s not local! It’s in Tampa!

Never mind. When you add $700 to get it here, it’s not so exciting.

Church was good today. They’ve been putting on an Easter show. It’s impressive. The acting is not Oscar-quality, and it would not be the end of the world if someone polished up the script, but most of the music was incredible. I don’t know where they find these people.

The best part came at the end. People who were at the scene of the crucifixion took the mike, and they gave their testimonies. One credited God with finding her a job. Another said God restored his business and his family after his wife died from cancer. And another said her daughter was healed of terminal cancer and has since gone on to have a recording career in Christian music.

I suspect that we focus too much on what God does for us, and not enough on what we’re supposed to do for him. But it’s extremely important for people to talk about the miracles in their lives. People who don’t believe point to “miracles” that have turned out to be false, and they make the bizarre claim that no one has ever been proven to have experienced a miracle. But answered prayers are all around us. People really do get healed of cancer from time to time. Folks have visions. Families are put back together. And you can find the witnesses. They’re real people, with names. Lots and lots of people pray for things they don’t receive, but they’re not the whole story.

I had a strange experience on Friday. Twice in my life I have literally felt the presence of God in the room with me, so powerfully that I could tell you its exact location. On other occasions, I’ve felt it in a more diffuse and general way, but that almost always happens in church, not when I’m alone. On Friday, I was sitting here in this chair, and I felt it descend on me. For no clear reason. Not in one location, but throughout the atmosphere of the room. If you know the sensation I’m talking about, you know it’s very, very pleasant. It’s something that doesn’t happen every day or on command, so when it happens, you stop what you’re doing and try to enjoy it and make it last. I sat here and concentrated on it and made the most of it.

I can’t figure out why it happened or what the point of it was. I wish it would happen more often.

Sometimes I’m suspicious of people who claim to have supernatural experiences and who say they know exactly what they meant or why they happened. In my experience, God is not obvious. He does things that seem to have no purpose, and he does them when you least expect them, and you are left grateful but also somewhat confused.

The thing that impressed me about it was that it appeared to have no connection whatsoever to anything I had done. I wasn’t fasting or writing a big check to help orphans or doing anything else that could be considered particularly righteous. In fact, I was feeling guilty about some bad things I had done. I always think slipping up will wreck my relationship with God and set me back, but it doesn’t always work that way. Maybe it never works that way and I just don’t realize it. In any case, I felt like I had received something of tremendous value. I’ll bet this doesn’t happen very often to people we all think of as lucky, like Bill Gates or Barack Obama. I think it’s better than the things they’ve received, and that I’m luckier than people like that. When those people die, the good things they’ve received disappear. Things that advance you spiritually can’t be taken away. I think this is why the Bible uses words like “vanity” and “leasing” to describe earthly blessings. They’re not permanent, and you don’t own them. I own the good things that have been given to me. Forever.

Here’s something I’ve thought about a lot. If civilization somehow disappeared, and a group of people survived on an island somewhere, and some of those people had been rich and powerful beforehand, those people would no longer be anything special. They’d have no advantage over anyone else. Donald Trump would be no better off than a guy who collected garbage for a living. They’d be equals. But people who knew God would still know him, and they would still have all the advantages they had before the disaster.

I think about that, and it makes me wonder what’s real and what isn’t.

I guess I’m rambling. Marv is squawking for attention, so I’ll stop here.

Nosebleeds

Mish Weiss is having nosebleeds. This can kill a leukemia patient. Please pray.