Taking Ecclesiastes 10:18 to Heart

I learned something useful today. Putting a small amount of ginger in beef jerky really improves it.

I made another batch yesterday, and while I was mixing the marinade, I thought about teriyaki. My best guess is that teriyaki jerky requires replacing all of the Worcestershire sauce with soy sauce, but for some reason, I stuck with half and half, and I added about a quarter of a teaspoon of ground ginger. I didn’t have fresh ginger.

It made a big difference. I wouldn’t say it tastes gingery. It just has more zing to it. I think powdered ginger will actually work better than fresh, because it has a sharper flavor.

So that was nice.

I grabbed the wrong cut of meat by mistake. I wanted eye round, and I think I bought bottom round. Anyway, today, the surface of the jerky has oil on it. It’s not congealed fat. Just oil. They say you should use beef with as little fat as possible. This cut seems to have more fat than eye round. The danger of using fatty meat is that the fat will go rancid. Will that happen when the meat is still lean but slightly fattier than eye round? I don’t know, but it tastes better. I’ll keep an eye on it, and if it doesn’t go bad, maybe I’ll switch to this cut permanently.

I also got new gutters installed. This house had only one roof gutter when I moved here, and it was between the roof and the patio enclosure. There was no guttering over the garage, so big, fat raindrops fell directly on the driveway. They were starting to wear it away, and I couldn’t leave the doors open when it rained, because so much water splattered into the garage. I had them run guttering over both doors. Feeling smug about that.

There was also an issue over the front porch. The roof was designed in such a way that a huge amount of water was directed onto the porch roof when it rained. It caused some rot, and I had to spend a grand on repairs. Now there is some hope the new guttering will direct the rain elsewhere.

The strangest part of the roof design was the lack of guttering on the workshop roof. The rain fell straight onto the grass, in front of a concrete porch. The rain destroyed a strip of grass beside the concrete and washed out a lot of the dirt. I could not grow anything in front of the porch. Rain also threw dirt all over the concrete. Now I have a gutter that runs the length of the building, and I may go crazy and plant something in the ugly rut where the rain used to fall.

I don’t know what’s happening in the world, and that suits me very well. I have plenty of jobs to keep me busy. I don’t need to read fake news to kill time as well as my digestion. The election will have an outcome whether I read about it or not, and if the rapture comes, it won’t matter. It shouldn’t matter, regardless, because God looks after me very well.

It has occurred to me that readers may be confused because I say I feel like the rapture is upon us, but I also talk about planning for shortages, civil war, and so on. I’m writing about different possible futures. One involves me being here while leftists torch the country and force sane people to dig in and defend, and the other involves me being somewhere above, gleefully oblivious to everything that happens here. I keep feeling powerful indications that I won’t be here, but I have been wrong before.

Today I prayed God would see to it I never found myself in a situation in which I would truly need to use a firearm. I have asked for that before. I don’t want to be pulled down into the mire with the pigs. I don’t think Christians were put here to shoot people. I think when you find yourself in a situation like that, it means something has gone wrong in your relationship with God.

The ammunition situation has gotten even worse. I set up alerts so a search site would tell me when certain types of ammunition were available. This morning I got an alert, and when I checked before 8:30 a.m., the site was sold out. People are hovering by their computers, snapping ammunition up as soon as it appears. Either that, or George Soros has a bot doing it to keep patriots from getting cartridges. Of course, people have been storing up ammunition since the Obama years, so Soros and Bloomberg could bankrupt themselves and still fail to accomplish their goal.

I don’t really think billionaires are buying ammunition to cause problems, but it would make a great conspiracy theory.

I wonder what life in blue America is like. Hell, I suppose. Terrorism, lack, and irrational fear surrounding a mild disease. My cousin near Chicago still can’t buy disinfectant wipes, but they’re slashing them to $2.98 per can at my local Walmart, just to get rid of them. My cousin near Atlanta says they finally have meat in stores, although restaurants can’t get what they want because they’re last in line. My Illinois cousin is visiting my aunt in Kentucky, and she can’t get wipes there, either. Of course, Kentucky isn’t all that red. Not down deep, regardless of whom they voted for. They love government handouts too much.

There are two realities, and I’m very satisfied with mine. I have zero interest in experiencing or even witnessing the false, unnecessary reality of leftists.

If you think about it, the two-reality solution continues after death. It might as well start now.

My Welcome Wore Out Years Ago

I have a new batch of beef jerky in the dehydrator, and I just made macaroni and cheese using a new recipe. I also put a new laser/flashlight device on my AK-47. It’s an uneventful and peaceful day, which is odd, since it keeps looking more and more like the end of the age is here.

Yesterday I texted a few people I don’t hear from much. Two are former armorbearers from Trinity Church, the corrupt money-worshiping establishment I attended for about 4 years. One said he was looking for an AR-15; I don’t think he understands that he can’t wait around. The other just bought a C308, which is a knockoff of the Heckler & Koch G3, a 7.62x51mm semiauto sort of like an AR10. These guys live in Broward County, which is the county where Fort Lauderdale is located. We don’t communicate often, so it’s not like we’re conspiring to amass firearms and ammunition. It’s a grassroots thing, which means it’s probably supernatural.

I keep thinking of On the Beach, a 1959 film featuring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. The story goes like this: there has been a nuclear war. There is a deadly layer of fallout suspended in the atmosphere, and it has sterilized entire continents. Because most of the explosions took place above the equator, the radiation is confined there temporarily. People still live normally in the Southern Hemisphere, but they expect to die like everyone else. The only question is how long it will take the fallout to move south.

Gregory Peck plays a married submarine captain. Ava Gardner plays a single American woman who lives in Australia. Peck takes his boat to Australia, where he and his crew work together with the Australian government. There is some doubt as to whether the fallout has completely exterminated the human race above the equator.

The movie’s characters don’t stop living just because they believe there is no hope. They avoid thinking about their destiny. They continue raising families and doing their jobs. They have parties. A character played by Fred Astaire restores a used race car and competes in it. Old men at a private club discuss the best way to make sure they waste as little as possible of the club’s wine collection. People try to make the most of life, but at the same time, the government distributes suicide pills intended to help citizens avoid dying slowly from radiation sickness.

Isn’t this a lot like our situation? It’s as if the sentence has been pronounced and we’re just waiting for the walk to the gallows.

The big difference between our current predicament and the one depicted in On the Beach is that only one group of modern people is headed for disaster: those who aren’t close to God. A much smaller group expects deliverance and relief. We actually look forward to the end.

It’s yet another illustration of the fact that we live in different realities. The children of darkness dislike God and morality, they think 2020 is a disaster, and they’re worried and afraid. The children of light cling to God and feel grateful for the way he has prepared them. They see 2020 as a time to prepare for something beautiful. They look forward to dropping their earthly problems and being transported to heaven in perfect, youthful bodies.

I’m having a pleasant day, thinking about things like macaroni and cheese and beef jerky, but all over America, people are stewing in resentment and fear, plotting violence and theft. I’m not worried about getting sick. I’m not wondering if I can pay the rent. My head isn’t full of demonic fantasies about horrific oppression under a second Trump administration. I’m making reasonable efforts to prepare to defend myself if someone brings violence to me, but I don’t feel like hurting anyone. I don’t blame other people for my problems. I don’t think people of another race have stolen all the land and money. I don’t believe Jews run the world and need to be dealt with. I don’t think taking up arms and cleansing the world of people who disagree with me is a smart idea.

My religion tells me God will do any cleansing that has to be done.

With the passing of every week, it looks more like the things people like me have been expecting are really happening. America is becoming like a violent banana republic. Even leftists are talking about civil war. Signs of the rapture keep accumulating.

I suppose it’s always hard to believe it when you find yourself witnessing historical events of extreme impact. Noah’s friends must have been stunned when water started falling from the sky for the first time, just as Noah had predicted. The disciples must have been amazed to learn that Jesus really had risen. But extraordinary things do happen, and when they happen, people do witness them. Someone has to be be there. There is no reason why it can’t be us. Just because life has been very different all our lives doesn’t mean we can’t witness a world transformed by a blizzard of obvious supernatural events.

People are behaving as though what we’re seeing were a momentary aberration to be followed by a return to life as it was in 2019. They get engaged, build houses, and start businesses. They buy stocks and other investments in hopes of long-term gains. Businesses send out email ads trying to sell us things we may not be able to use for very long. We plant trees we know take several years to start bearing. Vintners are putting up bottles of wine they know won’t be ready for at least 10 years. High school seniors started 4-year colleges this fall. But how much of it will pay off? What good is it to give someone a 5-year car loan today if the tribulation will be howling around both of you in November of 2021?

I have a tenant who wants a 3-year lease. I refused to do it because some people who think they hear from God are predicting extreme inflation for next year. I don’t want to be locked into x dollars per month if the market rate will be 5x in two years. I think I should have been more flexible. If the tribulation is about to start, I won’t be here to worry about inflation.

More and more, I feel that it doesn’t matter what I do to safeguard my future. I see things I want, and I think, “I shouldn’t spend the money.” Then I think, “It makes no difference at all. Go ahead.” I’m not thinking about investing. I have no interest in cancer screenings. I just can’t believe I’m going to be here very long.

I thought about writing a will, but then I thought this: most people I would want to leave wealth to are going to go in the rapture. Do I really care which child of the devil gets my property? It will be a curse to that person, regardless of who it is. Does a butterfly worry about what happens to its chrysalis?

If the end of the age is really here, terrorist rioting will increase and become as bad as it can possibly be. Conservatives may finally start taking part as aggressors, not victims. It will be part of normal life. Major wars will start. Diseases that make coronavirus look like chickenpox will cover the globe. People won’t just lack toilet paper and Lysol wipes. They’ll lack bread, canned goods, grain, and produce. They’ll eat rats, squirrels, crows, pigeons, and songbirds. They’ll eat their own pets. They’ll butcher zoo animals, like they did in Venezuela. They’ll go to parks to kill ducks and swans. They’ll trap ants for food.

I walk across parking lots now to get into stores, and I see scenes from disaster movies. I see people wearing masks. I see markers on the pavement and sidewalks, telling people where to stand. I hear creepy, insincerely cheerful recorded female voices reminding us to be nice because we’re all in this together. It’s like HAL 9000 had daughters.

The voices are always female, because psychologists who advise businesses say female voices will comfort us and not make us feel bullied or challenged. How do I know that? I know it because I’m old and smart. I don’t have to check.

Coronavirus is not a big deal, but we’re already living as though the plagues were here. God is showing us two things: diseases we can’t beat can happen, and when they do, we will respond irrationally, making things much worse than they have to be.

Coronavirus is a mild disease which appears to be vulnerable to vaccines, but what if it were like AIDS? There is no reason we can’t have a fatal airborne disease that can’t be cured and won’t let us create vaccines. It looks like coronavirus doesn’t produce symptoms in most people. There have been infectious diseases that killed the majority of their victims even with treatment, and some of those diseases are still active. They haven’t done the damage they could have because they were contained or because they’re not easy to transmit, but there is no law that says an infectious disease can’t be untreatable, unpreventable, and easily transmitted.

Imagine what America would be like if we had a real plague. What if we had an incurable disease with a 50% mortality rate, with no hope of finding a vaccine? If 200,000 deaths confined almost exclusively to people who were likely to die anyway have driven us to hoard and tyrannize, think what a real plague would do to us.

How quick we have been to give up our humanity. I’ve been taking ludicrous continuing legal education courses, and I’m required to get several hours of training in the area of technology. It’s amazing to hear the speakers talk about Zoom and cloud computing. They say many firms have discovered they make more money by staying home and avoiding nearly all in-person encounters. Our noses have been rubbed in the fact that remote communication isn’t more expensive; it’s cheaper and more efficient.

If it’s true in law, it’s true for many other businesses. It means we’re not going back to normal interaction even if coronavirus disappears. Unless there is a compelling reason for you to be among other people, it’s not going to happen. We’re making ourselves a nation of shut-ins, deliberately. It’s like we’re all turning into gamers, living on Cheetos and satisfying our need for socialization by spewing hate on 4chan.

It doesn’t take much of a threat to turn us into willing matrix residents. Our homes are turning into wombs, with ethernet-cable umbilical cords and Amazon Prime bloodstreams.

Maybe the only mentally healthy people in the future will be those whose jobs have physical components, like using shovels and handing people bags of hamburgers. If you don’t have to shower and go to work to make a living, you may have to start forcing yourself to get together with people in order to get your RDA of human contact.

The human race has a natural tendency to use technology to minimize contact. I don’t think we understood that 30 years ago, but it’s obvious now, and our overblown pandemic has exacerbated this pathological inclination.

I guess I’m off on a tangent. To get back to the subject, I know we are in a unique era unlike all previous human crises, and very few of us realize it. It makes sense that the end of the age should come now, because there doesn’t seem to be any way for us to continue as we are. I hate to use one of the left’s favorite manipulative words, but our situation is unsustainable.

I don’t know whether my impressions are right or not, but it doesn’t matter, because we’ll know by the end of the year. If coronavirus is under control, terrorist riots have stopped, and people have forgotten all about civil war, then my impressions will have been proven wrong. If I’m right, things will be much worse than they are now, and the trend will be downward.

I will not stop praying for the rapture. The quality of life for American Christians is no longer acceptable, so I would like to go home with my brothers and sisters. Even though I have peace, prosperity, good health, and fun things to do, I don’t want to hang around in a world where there is no major Christian nation left.

This must be how Jews felt before 1948.

It must seem strange to pray for the end when my life is so pleasant, but the one who makes it pleasant showed me there is a much better place.

One longs for a world in which his kind is mainstream. I think that’s understandable. If there were a movie-style matrix, then Neo would want to unplug at the end of the day and enjoy the company of other people who lived in the real world. He wouldn’t want to live forever in a place where no one understood reality or him. For me, it’s like living in Miami, where half the population can’t speak English because they have no gratitude. I used to have to use hand signals and do pantomime in order to make people understand me. Getting a haircut or ordering a meal could be a tiresome process. It’s nice to be in a place where people understand me without a lot of striving.

I don’t know what’s happening with the pandemic. If a real second wave comes, or just seems to come, I may need to get out and buy more paper towels and toilet paper. I suppose more frozen meat couldn’t hurt. Apart from these possible concerns, I don’t foresee any other practical issues.

That’s all I have. I should sign off and spend time in prayer. If things pan out the way I expect, I hope neither you nor I are here to witness it.

Newly-Minted Beef Tycoon Solves Your Problems

To answer the question I know you want to ask, yes, I have mastered the art of making beef jerky.

It’s like saying you’ve mastered the art of stirring coffee, but still.

Making jerky is extremely easy, but as is the case with many foods, you can have problems because people provide bad information.

Yes, Alton Brown is on my mind. How did you guess?

Alton Brown says to marinate jerky for 3-6 hours. I tried that. Like many tips from Alton Brown (Shun knives cough cough), it does not work. You would be surprised how long it takes marinade to get into a thin piece of beef. I made my first batch of jerky his way, and it was okay, but it was not as flavorful as store jerky. Yesterday I made a batch using beef that had been soaking for about a day, and it was very flavorful. Hand it to someone who didn’t know any better, and he would think it came from a factory.

It might actually be good to dilute the marinade or to go 12 hours. My jerky is so full of marinade flavor, it almost covers the meat taste. This morning I put a piece in my mouth while I was closing the bag, and in the few seconds I was holding it, I started to drool on myself. More than usual.

Brown also says to slice beef as thin as possible. Bad idea. When jerky is too thin, it gets too dry, it’s no fun to eat because it’s tiny and crumbly, and it takes up way too much room in the dehydrator. If slicing jerky 1/4″ thick makes a pound of beef cover three shelves, slicing it half as thick makes it take up 6. How big is your dehydrator? Do you really want to take over twice as long per ounce of jerky, and to clean everything twice?

I like 1/4″ slices. They work. When you eat a piece of jerky made from 1/4″-thick beef, you know you’re eating something. It’s not like chewing air.

I also learned that smoking the meat is a waste of time. To give Brown a little credit, he recommends liquid smoke. Real jerky manufacturers have smokers, but I did it both ways, and if there is a difference, it’s not worth the effort.

You don’t need to cook your jerky in the oven, either. Do your own safety research instead of listening to me, but my dehydrator heats to 155°, and my jerky was not raw when I took it out.

Final thing: don’t overdry your jerky. A lot of people recommend going up to 13 hours. That’s lunacy. Yesterday I went from noon until around 5 p.m. at 155°, using jerky up to 1/4″ thick, and it was dryer than it needed to be.

Here is what I recommend:

Use eye round roast. Maybe other cuts will work. This one is guaranteed.

Soak your meat for at least 12 hours.

Use liquid smoke instead of smoking.

Cut the meat at least 1/4″ thick.

Don’t bother cooking the meat before drying it.

Be very careful not to overdry the meat.

Use 1-1/3 cups of marinade per pound of beef, and marinate in a bag to make the marinade go further.

Use the same “secret” recipe everyone else uses. Here is what I used, and you can substitute ingredients.

INGREDIENTS

2/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
2/3 cup soy sauce
2 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. Liquid Smoke
2 tsp. Thai chili sauce (not sriracha, although sriracha would work)

I think teriyaki jerky will result if you use pure soy sauce and add a bunch of fresh ginger. Just a guess, but how could it not work? If you like spicy jerky, use more chili sauce. I’ll bet you would have figured that out on your own.

There must be a thousand recipes that work just fine. Everyone pretends their recipe is astonishing and special, but they’re not. It’s extremely simple.

I don’t get Alton Brown. Is he ever right? He’s wrong about knives, jerky, and steaks. Is there ever a good reason to listen to him? I can make bad food just fine without his help. If I look to someone else for tips, obviously, I want tips that actually work. Otherwise, I waste food and my time.

I guess the answer is to use his advice, but only when it has been tested by people you can trust. Good luck finding any! People who fawn on TV chefs will defend them even when their food tastes like sawdust mixed with dog chow.

Some guy on Youtube recommends the Presto Dehydro dehydrator. He says you can buy a small one and add shelves later. I have not tried it. The small one is $40.

I have a 9-tray Excalibur I bought a long time ago, when prepping first entered the mainstream of American conservative thought. You can’t buy one now. If you go to their website, you’ll see that they’re sold out. Maybe that should concern you. Maybe God has been warning a lot of people.

If you simply buy your own jerky, you won’t spend a whole lot more, and of course, jerky is not the unique solution to food supply chain interruptions. You can buy beans, macaroni, canned fish, canned soup, protein bars, protein powder, canned milk, rice, white flour, and all sorts of other stuff. You can buy butter on sale and make ghee, which doesn’t need refrigeration. You can even buy fancy bagged bugout rations, which seem ridiculous to me. You need water and heat to make them work, and if I have water and heat, then why not make something resembling real food, for a tenth of the price?

I’m pleased with my jerky. It will last at least a year, even without oxygen-sucking packets to extend its viability. My dried apples will last years, plural. If a food crisis lasts more than a year, it means the tribulation is here, big time, so a few crisis supplies, or a garden, won’t really help.

Here’s something preppers don’t seem to talk about: human beings are resilient. We find new ways to cooperate and survive. If blue-staters manage to deprive us of stuff to keep nuclear plants going, we’ll adapt and use our endless supply of coal and oil. If they kill our cell service, we’ll build networks. If they confiscate our bank and security accounts, we’ll create our own banks and securities firms. We have the vast majority of the farmland, we have the oil and the coal, we have lots of industry (not like the 1860’s), we are much better at fighting, and we have God on our side. We even control a lot of California farmland. Unless the tribulation itself comes down on us, we should be able to keep civilization going in “Jesusland,” as Der Spiegel calls conservative America, regardless of whether there is a civil war. We may get damaging interruptions, but they would last weeks, not years. That’s my opinion at this moment.

I’ve probably said it before, but I always think of this when I think of prepper scenarios: Jews in Auschwitz had submachine guns and hand grenades. Look it up. People have ways of getting what they need when God is with them.

I have been too pessimistic about the dystopian future. Barring the complete manifestation of the tribulation, things shouldn’t be all that bad in red America. Even in the tribulation, billions of non-prepping human beings will survive 7 years. They will wish they had died, but still.

I think blue America has more to fear, and that makes sense, because they reject God more completely. They don’t produce a lot of food or oil, the police and military will break against them, they don’t know how to fight, they don’t have the kind of armament we have, and they are burdened with huge numbers of ignorant, hostile, ungovernable welfare addicts who will do nothing but complain, riot, and steal. People who live on the government nipple will be useless for fighting and government works, and they will attack the people who are actually able to get things done. Blue society may decapitate itself, as it did in Cambodia. Without competent people to organize and command, how will a new nation of mindless terrorists pose a threat to red-staters? If they were any good at anything, they wouldn’t be what they are today.

I suppose this situation would breed a new crop of blue-state conservatives, too late to do them any good. There will be a price for being a virtue-signaling poser.

Let’s say Orlando residents rise up against people in my red county and try to kill us and take what we have. First, you would have to organize that kind of rabble and get them to act in concert. Can’t be done to any significant degree. Maybe you would get occasional caravans of unintelligent, selfish, unskilled people who would be more likely to shoot each other than to harm me or my neighbors. Second, you would have to get them to drive a long way to attack. That’s not something they’re inclined to do. They’re inclined to loot stores and homes that are within walking distance, and they are inclined to prey on each other because it’s convenient and they are lazy. History proves this. Third, they would have to be able to overcome us when they arrive. So people who don’t know how to shoot would have to overcome entrenched, orderly, easily commanded, highly motivated 2A proponents, many of whom enjoy shooting scoped rifles, and many of whom are sitting on large stockpiles of ammunition.

Anyone who can kill a deer at 200 yards can kill a person at the same distance. What percentage of our modern terrorists can hit anything at 7 yards?

Think about Kyle Rittenhouse. He was up against at least two assailants with firearms, and he maimed one of them. He also killed a “man” armed with a skateboard and a third person who was attacking him. He did it quickly and easily, he didn’t harm the innocent, and he got away. That’s a picture of future encounters if America has a civil war. People who aren’t ready shouldn’t start trouble with people who are. A gun doesn’t make you a factor unless you know how to use it.

To shoot invaders on my land, I would just have to get a big screen TV box and put it in the pasture. I would wait for them to fight over it, and then they’d be easy pickings. They might even kill each other and save me the trouble.

I guarantee you, we would have a real militia in place before the Antichrist’s ad hoc troops arrived. I wouldn’t have to go it alone. I wouldn’t have to stay awake every night, peering across my land with a thermal scope in order to kill invaders before they arrived at the house. There would be patrols and watches. The sheriff and the police departments would be everywhere, helping coordinate the effort. It would be the exact opposite of the situation in blue cities, where people would be too busy looting, burning, killing, and raping to think about coordinated sorties into other areas.

There would also be large prayer meetings here, all the time. That’s the most important thing.

Life would be different for stubborn conservatives who live in places like New York and LA. They would be killed in their yards or in front of their apartment buildings, by people who see them (or pretend to see them) as thieves and traitors. Law enforcement could not save them. The neighborhoods of professional victims are too big; the supply of murderers is too abundant. Conservatives, Jews, and Christians (not fake Marxist Christians) would drown in seas of demon-controlled handout addicts. So would their children.

It would be nice to offer my property as a shelter for unprepared blue-area friends, but how would I feed them, and how would they get here? Sometimes you can’t help people even if you want to. I know a number of people who would like to hole up here. Can’t take all of them. Maybe a few, if they bring their own food. If trying to help your family just means I have to starve along with you, it’s not helpful at all.

Once the closest ones arrived, the rest would probably be up the creek.

It’s interesting to speculate about the future. I just hope God removes me before things get bad. If I’m storing up arms, ammunition, and food for people who will be left behind, fine with me. They are welcome to it as long as I’m with God. It’s a fantastic trade.

In the meantime, I enjoy my little efforts at preparing food. Hope it goes bad because I never need it, but it’s comforting to make an effort.

Cuomo Dusts Off Centuries-Dead Libel

This just in from New York City: Jews spread disease!

Wait…that sounds familiar. Let me Google.

Okay, Wikipedia has the goods. When the black plague hit Europe for the first time, Jews were blamed. They were accused of poisoning wells. And they admitted their guilt! Well…after a little torture.

That’s something for people who support torturing terrorists to think about. I would confess to being a chicken before I would let myself be tortured. It’s not a great way to get sound information.

Wikipedia says anti-Semitic violence swept Europe during the plague years, and in one place, 2000 Jews were burned alive. One wonders if scientists in that area checked plague statistics to see if things got better after the well-poisoners were dead. Maybe I should not belittle medieval scientists. We can’t even get modern scientists to admit putting sick old people in long-term care facilities caused covid to blow up in New York, or that mask edicts and lockdowns are not correlated with reduced infection rates. Those things are clearly true, but we’re still told to remember our place and do as we’re told.

It shouldn’t shock us if old prejudices flare up among ignorant people (such as politicians) in spite of common sense, but it’s remarkable that scientists remain as biased and irrational as ever.

Governor Cuomo, the mastermind behind the old-folks-home catastrophe, is now going after Jews in New York City. To his shock and dismay, religious Jews insist on practicing their religion. This involves gathering in large groups. You can’t really do what Jews do with everyone standing inside his own 6-foot circle; it was pathetic enough when Biden tried it with press conferences. Cuomo is said to be sending various types of government hassle-merchants into a Jewish area, to fine and cite people into submission. One man who owns a restaurant that only does takeout business was fined for leaving his front door open to let fresh air in. The crime? Opening for dining.

Cuomo is stepping in because he didn’t find Mayor DiBlasio’s targeted efforts harsh enough, and guess what Cuomo called his delousing…I mean anti-coronavirus campaign? The “Cluster Action Initiative.” Does that sound familiar? The Nazis called their effort to exterminate Polish Jews “Aktion Reinhard.” They called their euthanasia operation “Aktion T4.” When they decided to kill concentration camp prisoners who were not useful to them, they called it “Aktion 14f13.” It was better known as “special treatment.”

Who is giving Cuomo dictation? Satan himself?

Are there no Jewish people in his administration? I’m a gentile, and I saw the problem with the name immediately. Hasn’t anyone pointed this out to Cuomo? Since when has the party of warm and fuzzy bunnies started using the language of military aggressors to describe health initiatives?

Leftists also blame Christians for coronavirus. They closed our churches. They have tried repeatedly to link Trump rallies to outbreaks, although no one is making any effort to caution BLM and Antifa terrorists, who wander the streets in huge throngs. In the minds (“mind”?) of leftists, “Trump supporter” is just another way of saying “Christian.”

Leftists can do whatever they like, no matter how likely it is to spread disease, and the MSM stays silent, but let two Jews or Christians get together to pray or root for Donald Trump, and journalists scream “SUPERSPREADERS!” as though all the viruses wore crucifixes and little red hats.

The spirit of antichrist hates both Christians and Jews. It is the spirit behind anti-Semitism, and it has also driven persecution of Christians. You may think this can’t be true, because Jews persecuted and murdered early Christians, and Christians have murdered many Jews. You don’t understand how it works. Like any evil spirit, the spirit of Antichrist likes to take the people it hates and turn them into programmed assassins. It loves pitting us against each other. What’s better than having loyal servants who torment and kill your enemies? Turning your enemies into loyal servants who do the killing for you, with gladness.

It’s bad when your persecutors kill you in spite of dogged resistance, but you haven’t really been humiliated, violated, and defeated until you’ve been fooled into doing the dirty work for them. You can’t get any lower than that.

Sooner or later, in order for the tribulation to get going, Christians and Jews have to be slandered and demonized so effectively a substantial portion of the world’s population wants to get rid of them forever. That’s where we’re headed. Coronavirus is being used to herd us in that direction.

Religious people believe that the effective practice of their religions is more important than receiving optimal protection from a contagious disease that kills a tiny percentage of its victims. They want to please God, help others, and avoid punishment in the next life. The Antichrist’s people believe this life (“your best life”) is all there is, and they listen to the spirits that control the MSM. They listen to the nonsense about covid being a major plague that kills huge numbers of people. They see religious people as dangerous, superstitious savages who should no longer be humored. They feel entitled to control us with rules premised on the notions that God does not exist and that holding onto this miserable life is so important, human rights should be nullified in exchange for marginal increases in safety.

The Antichrist’s people may not believe in Satan, but they listen to him all day, and he tells them the same things he told the Romans, the Nazis, and the Marxists: Christians and Jews are a problem that needs to be addressed.

Cuomo may be able to point to infection maps and say he’s only going after Jewish areas because they have a high covid rate. The real problem, though, isn’t just that he’s infringing First Amendment rights or generally being overzealous. It’s also the inflammatory language, which is heavy on references to Jews. Cuomo and his underlings keep characterizing the local infection rate as a Jewish problem, and he complains about Jewish “clusters.” Then there is his use of the phrase “Cluster Action Initiative,” which sounds like the forced cleansing of a Jewish ghetto.

Cuomo runs the risk of mainstreaming anti-Semitism and making it acceptable. Once that happens, ignorant people in the streets will take over. People who are too stupid to draw logical distinctions will not know the difference between “social distancing good” and “Jews bad.” There are a lot of rank anti-Semites in New York already, especially among blacks and Hispanics, and they don’t need a power-mad governor giving them license to commence pogroms.

It’s very sad. Jews helped elect this man. Jews in America invariably vote for their enemies and demonize their friends. In Israel, they name streets after Donald Trump. Here, they empower the people who hate them most, and they fear the people who send more charity money to Israel than all Jews combined.

It will get worse, and America Jews will continue to appease. They support appeasing terrorists in Israel, and now they’re supporting domestic terrorism which will eventually focus more intently on them. We have already seen leftist provocateurs going after “Wall Street bankers.” Which ethnic group is primarily identified with Wall Street and banking?

If it’s rewarding to chop your enemy’s head off, how much more rewarding is it to persuade him pay for and sharpen the hatchet, to make him believe his friends detest him, and to convince him you’re the best friend he has? It’s a beautiful thing, if revenge can have beauty.

In one of the Hannibal Lecter novels, Lecter gives a pedophile drugs. He convinces him he wants to have a good time with him. Then while the man is giggling and enjoying himself, Lecter persuades him to cut his own face off, eat part of it, and feed the rest to dogs. He also cons him into putting one of his own eyes out and breaking his own neck. That’s how Satan does things. It’s not enough to hurt you. He has to make you take pleasure in hurting yourself.

Jews and Christians will become more and more unpopular. Violence against them will increase. Eventually, the state will endorse all of it. The tribulation is on the way, and America is not going to wise up and prepare.

Give me Dried Meat, Water, and Bullets, and I can Survive Anything

My first batch of beef jerky is done. I just took it out of the dehydrator. The verdict: pass. It’s real jerky. It will work.

I used about 2 pounds of eye round. I cut off maybe an ounce of fat, and I ended up with 14.8 ounces of jerky. I thought the yield would be a lot smaller. It looks like the ratio of jerky to fresh meat is nearly 50%. The meat is slightly drier than I would like, so I think the ratio, once I get it together, will be at or above 50%. Based on a perusal of per-ounce prices of store jerky, I believe I made between 20 and 40 dollars’ worth for $15 or so, including marinade.

I’m leaving the bag open so condensation will not settle in it and make the meat wet. I think that will cause mold. I plan to close the bag up when the meat is cool.

Is it worth the effort? It doesn’t look like a giant bargain compared to the jerky I could have gotten for $20 per pound, but it looks great compared to the stuff that costs over $40 per pound.

I can get Uncle Buck’s jerky from Bass Pro for $20 per pound, and I like it a lot. On the other hand, it’s not as dry as my jerky, so I would be paying for a considerable amount of water. Wild guess: with water taken into consideration, I’ll say an Uncle Buck’s price of $25 per pound would more accurately reflect the food value I’m getting. Maybe I’m getting a 40% savings?

I may keep making it. I think I can make top-notch jerky, and a 40% savings is pretty good.

As has often been the case, I am disappointed in Alton Brown. He recommends marinating for 3-6 hours. Based on my results, let’s make that 24 hours. I went over three hours, and the flavor could be stronger. Smoking for one hour (smoke time, not including warm-up) worked fine, though. I don’t know if his Liquid Smoke idea is any good. It would allow me to skip the smoker, so that’s a big plus.

Do I really want to make jerky as well as I can? If it tastes fantastic, it will be hard to go easy on it in lean times. Maybe okay jerky is best.

I saw a How It’s Made video about making jerky. Maybe I’ll watch it again and look for tips.

I plan to keep drying apples until I can no longer stand it. They’re wonderful.

Walmart sells nuts really cheap, so I bought pecans. I guess if I bought raisins and almonds, I could make my own trail mix. Lots of calories, good shelf life, and not much weight or bulk.

I got two big jars of Hoosier Farms powdered cheddar. This is the stuff they use in things like Cheetos. I pop corn with bacon grease and put powdered cheddar on it. It’s decadent. I figure I can also use it to make mac and cheese, along with my ghee and evaporated milk.

None of this is going to be very helpful if our dystopia doesn’t include electricity. I’ll have no water. I supposed it will be made available somehow, but people would probably have to wait in long lines at distribution points, which could be impossible to reach without gasoline or diesel.

I’m putting my chips on an electrified apocalypse. A generator and diesel would run me over $50,000 for one year, and if diesel were hard to find, I would be able to do it no matter what I was willing to spend. You can’t just put a 20,000-gallon diesel tank in your yard. Not unless you’re a hard core nut. If your tank isn’t enormous, you’ll have to refuel it often, and if there is no fuel, you’ll look pretty stupid after the first tank runs out.

I have relatives (long deceased) who had natural gas on their land. They sold the rights, and in the package, they demanded to have gas piped to their house, free of charge. People like that are sitting pretty. If you live in Appalachia where there are hills, and you have gas, a clean creek, and enough land to grow food, you will be an aristocrat when Democrats destroy civilization.

Conservatives have nearly all of the oil and coal, and we have lots of refineries. We have lots of ports. Presumably, some things will still be available to us even after demon-ridden leftists extend their Tiktok-video mouth-frothing and shrieking from 30-second periods to entire days.

Tomorrow I’ll try to knock off more dried apples, and I’ll probably hit Walmart one more time. Then it’s time to sit back, pray, and hope the people who expect an imminent rapture are right. Leaving for heaven would be a lot better than sitting in my house eating disaster food and scanning the woods for “protesters” with a rifle scope.

Shortage Preparation Goes Well

Today I did something really great, and I’m here to share it. I modified my apple-peeling machine and improved it tremendously. It only takes about 15 minutes, but you have to have a tap.

The world’s most popular peeler/corer is a Chinese contraption made of cast iron. They run around $25. They look like they could not possibly work, but they’re excellent. You can peel, slice, and core an apple in around 10 seconds, including putting it on the machine and taking it off.

The machine has a screw, and on the end of the screw, there is a fork. You jam your apple onto the fork and turn the screw. The screw shoves the apple toward a stainless blade with a hole in it. The core goes through the hole, the blade spiral-slices the apple, and a second attachment removes the skin.

It’s not perfect. You will usually get a core that’s cut off-center, so you will often need to cut little hard bits out of the slices. If you think that’s a big deal, spend an hour coring, slicing and peeling apples without a machine. You will sing a different tune when you’re done.

The big problem with these machines is that the stainless blades move around. They’re held in place by a single screw, so the blades can rotate when the apples hit them, shoving the core hole off to the side. The solution? Drill a second small hole in the blade beside the hole for the original screw. Drill a corresponding hole in the cast iron of the machine. Tap the hole in the cast iron and run a small screw through the blade and into the machine.

Now you have a blade held in place by one big screw and one little one. It will never move again.

I modified the machine because I’m drying apples.

People who think they hear from God are predicting food shortages. I’ve written about it before. I don’t plan to try to become self-sufficient, eating bugs and worms and whatever for the long term, but as I have said in other posts, I think it can’t hurt to have enough food for a month or two. Dried apples are high in calories, they taste great, they can be used in things like fried apple pies, and they will keep you regular. In a big way, if you overindulge.

It would be hard to get the yellow transparent apples my grandmother used to dry in Kentucky, but Granny Smiths are somewhat similar, and they make fantastic dried apples. Forgive me if I repeat myself. I am too lazy to go back over what I’ve already written. I made a batch of dried apples yesterday, and I have a bigger batch in the dehydrator. The ones I made yesterday are so good it will be hard to leave them alone.

I should learn how to make fried pies. I have an excellent, authentic Eastern Kentucky cookbook, and the recipe is probably good. If not, I can use it as a starting point and improve it.

Fried pies seem to last forever. I know they will go at least a week in a covered container.

I now have protein bars, a jug of whey protein, corned beef, beef for jerky, lots of oatmeal, a good deal of flour, extra sugar, all the caffeine-free Coke in the county (they quit making it “just until the pandemic is over”), and two big jars of grated cheese to go with my many pounds of dried pasta. I now think getting through a month will be a breeze, as long as I have electricity. I won’t stop gathering, though. I want more nuts.

Here’s hoping this all turns out to be a huge waste of time.

No Let-Up in the Forecast

Tropical Storm Eta is oppressing the Southeast. How long has it been out there? It sat on Nicaragua for days, and now it’s finally stumbling around the gulf. The NHC thinks it will be around until at least Friday!

I wouldn’t care, but I think it’s killing the cool weather that should be here now. We’re under pre-hurricane-style clouds, and the air is warm and a little stuffy.

I’m used to seeing storms get it together or vanish in a few days. This storm is defective.

I can’t help wondering if it has supernatural significance. Storms vary in duration, but this seems crazy, and God has taught me that unlikely events can have supernatural origins.

Many people thought Katrina was a message. The name means “catharsis,” and the storm did great damage to an area full of sinful, unrepentant people. It killed people by flooding, and the strange thing about that is that the dead let themselves die. They could have escaped easily, but they chose to stay home, in areas that were likely to flood. A commonly held theory says they stayed home because they thought they had to be there in order to receive their government checks. I don’t know if it’s true, but it would make sense. Leftists who are addicted to welfare suffer from something called “learned helplessness.” Things that don’t faze conservatives devastate them.

I’ve noticed this in my dealings with friends who come from government-dependent cultures. They can’t do anything. They can’t fix their cars. They don’t know how to fix their credit. They can’t do home repairs. They always need advice with regard to simple matters other people don’t consider challenges. Maybe the War on Poverty is the reason. When you’re used to sitting at home waiting for handout checks, the police, and social workers, you don’t have much motivation to become capable. If anything, you are rewarded for weakness and passivity.

“Eta” doesn’t seem to mean anything. It’s the name of a letter.

An imaginative person might say it seems like Eta is hovering over us as a sign that there is a lingering battle among supernatural beings over the election.

The other day, I said the only earthly entities that could end the election and resolve the matter for good were Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and the courts. I forgot the electors.

Electors have traditionally had the liberty to vote as they pleased. It may disturb people to read it, but when you vote in a presidential election, you’re not really voting for a candidate. You’re voting for a representative, and your vote is a strong recommendation, not an order. It’s like Congress. Because of past electoral defections, many states have passed laws making it illegal for electors to go against their mandate. Not all states have done this, and at least some of the laws have no enforcement provisions. At least one law’s enforcement provision is so weak, it would not provide much discouragement.

When leftists say they want to abolish the Electoral College, it’s not a small thing. In fact, it’s revolutionary, in the sense that they want to accomplish a leftist revolution by destroying a Constitutionally created representative body. Leftists are the Antichrist’s children, and they want revolution, not mere change. Sadly, Americans don’t hate the notion of revolution. Our country was born in a revolution, and somehow that has persuaded many of us that revolutions are good things. There are a lot of Chinese, Cuban, and Russian people who feel differently.

The more I think about it, the more I think the American Revolution was a stupid, counterproductive act that has brought curses on us. People think we wouldn’t have been free had we not rebelled. Oh, really? So we would have been put in gulags and death camps, like Canadians and Australians? I admit, Canadians and Australians have lost a lot of freedom in recent years, but they have done pretty well for most of their history.

I now believe kings are better than mindless electorates. Putting ignorant, dishonest, selfish people in voting booths is a practice that has to lead to destruction eventually. Hitler came to power in a fair election, as did Daniel Ortega. I think deposing or killing or rebelling against a monarch is something Christians should only do in the gravest of circumstances. Eighteenth-century Americans were not miserable or desperate.

America was established as a leftist enterprise. We shouldn’t be surprised if leftism increases and destroys us.

Trying to abolish the college or nullify its purpose is not much different from trying to abolish Congress. It’s a gigantic power grab intended to turn people who don’t live in blue states into slaves who lack representation in the Executive Branch.

People who hate the Electoral College should also hate the Senate. It works the same way. The House of Representatives provides representatives for each area depending on its population, and that’s how leftists think the government should work. The Senate gives Alaska and Wyoming the same number of senators as California and Texas, in order to prevent low-population states from being enslaved. If the Electoral College is evil because it gives rural citizens more power per capita than urban citizens, then the Senate is much, much worse.

Will the Senate be slated for destruction when the left is in charge? I don’t see why it should not be. It should be a pressing goal for the revolutionaries. I’m sure they would be willing to give up Hawaii’s disproportionate power in order to conquer red America.

I don’t know if it matters, because I expect Skynet–the Internet and the wireless web–to overcome and replace the world’s government. Future human beings will be like the Borg, if God doesn’t show up and prevent it. Elon Musk is even trying to hardwire IT devices into our brains. The likelihood that such devices would not be made Internet-capable is zero.

People think the election is over, but it hasn’t been held yet. It won’t be held until the electors meet. A lot of things can happen during that time. Biden could be exposed as a criminal because of his China ties, he could die, or the press could “suddenly” discover his dementia and make such a big deal out of it electors would feel justified in abandoning him. Or the left’s astounding, proven campaign of voter fraud could be exposed so thoroughly, electors would be unable to make themselves vote for Biden. Maybe electors will switch their votes simply because they dislike the man.

This is a crazy year, so expect more crazy things to happen.

Like Tropical Storm Eta, the election fight hovers over us, spoiling the atmosphere and refusing to let us rest.

Biden didn’t lose his mind during the campaign. He has not been right in the head for a while. I can’t help wondering if it’s because of his two brain surgeries and his plastic surgeries. Many experts believe there is a strong link between receiving general anaesthesia and developing dementia. Is this why Biden is a shadow of his 2018 self? Is there any possibility that the condition that gave him two aneurysms has produced other abnormalities that would explain his reckless behavior and uncontrolled outbursts? These are things I think about.

Biden has hair plugs, and he has had work done on his eyes. I don’t know what else he has had done. Plastic surgeons say he has had a facelift, and there are scars in front of his ears to prove it. He also appears to be on botox, and he is famous for his bleached smile.

Trump’s first wife claims he had a scalp reduction, but as anyone who has seen a Trump rally can tell you, he is as sharp as a tack. He may be eccentric, but he knows where he is and what’s going on, and he can talk at great length without a teleprompter.

A shocking Trump resurgence would fit in beautifully with the rest of the 2020 perfect storm. This year seems to have been designed to infuriate the Antichrist’s children. We have a mild pandemic the press has convinced us is a major crisis, and the left is using it to control and imprison people. They have also convinced them it’s Trump’s fault. We have a president leftists hate with insane fervor, for no good reason. We have a 6-3 Supreme Court, thanks to a confirmation leftists wrongly believe was illegal, and that court has ultimate jurisidiction over the election results. If Trump had won handily on election day, it would have angered leftists, and riots would have ensued, but it wouldn’t be as provocative as a false Biden victory followed by events that put Trump on top before the electors met. Such a scenario would likely plunge us into immediate, widespread chaos and violence. If we are supposed to have a future of chaos and murder, a Trump rebound makes much more sense than a relatively clean election day blowout.

Pastor Dana Coverstone had some famous dreams about this season, beginning months ago, and he said he saw foreign troops on the ground here. He said he expected food shortages, too. As far as I know, none of the things he expected have been proven impossible. They keep coming true. Can it be that he really is a prophet? He doesn’t make that claim, but he’s doing as well as a true prophet could hope to.

I’m still working on emergency food. I dug out my food dehydrator, and I dried Granny Smith apples. The problem with them is that they taste too good. It will be hard to leave them in bags until I need them. I’m not positive my first batch is as dry as it should be, so after I removed it from the dehydrator, I put the apples in a bowl in the refrigerator. If that doesn’t dry them out, nothing will. I sometimes wonder why people don’t use refrigerators as dehydrators. They seem to do a great job of dehydrating things we don’t want dehydrated.

I should make a bigger batch today. It takes 4/3 of an apple to fill a dehydrator shelf, so I’ll do the math and work it out so I don’t end up with partial loads.

My apple peeler is a great help, but the sheet metal part that slices and cores moves around. It’s held steady by one screw. I may drill and tap and add a second screw so it can’t go anywhere. Or maybe I should look for a better machine.

I don’t know if homemade jerky is cheaper or better than the store kind. I’ll find out.

I keep praying for the rapture to come fast. I believe the WAP world is so rotten, it’s time for the tribulation. I want a better atmosphere, and I want to be with people who are like me. I want to be somewhere where I know I’m at home. That will never happen on Earth.

Fox News Can’t Really Call an Election

A great thing happened to me a few years back. God told me to get off social media. I was tired of dealing with proud boneheads who would not listen, and God told me to let them go. He also said I should quit reading the news. I listened. It brought peace to my life. People I know who remained engaged suffered with uneducated, biased individuals who let rumors and gossip rule their thinking. I was off on my own, enjoying life. I’ve written about it before. I call it “the little rapture.”

As the 2020 election drew near, I started looking at the news again. I felt God was telling me to. I felt he was saying that I used to be too weak to deal with the constant provocation, but that because I had grown, I could read the news without doing myself harm.

I started looking at political Youtube channels. It got to the point where I felt like a prisoner. I would go to Youtube hoping to find something interesting about guns or tools or science, and I would find myself watching the same angry people over and over.

This morning, God told me to let things go again. I unsubscribed to the Youtube channels, and I also gave up Parler. It’s a hopeless Twitter competitor. I joined a few weeks back. You know how it works. Conservatives and Christians get shut out of social media, so they start their own alternatives. It’s never as good. Even if you’re a Christian, no one you know will be there, and strangers won’t show any interest in what you say.

I feel wonderful. I don’t have to look at the fighting and scrapping–the carnality–any more.

What’s happening with the election? I could not help seeing that a few news outlets are calling Biden the president-elect. Trump says it’s not over. You know what? It’s not over.

Only three sources can shut down the election permamently: Trump, Biden, and the courts. If Trump concedes, it’s over. If Biden concedes, it’s over. If the courts say it’s over, it’s over. Both Trump and Biden have the authority to end the election by conceding. No one but the courts can end the election by declaring a winner. It’s meaningless if Trump, Biden, or any conglomeration of journalists or states call one person the winner. The courts have the final say.

I’m going to wait for the court challenges to end.

It’s strange that every news outlet in America waited for Al Gore to have his day in court after he made his ridiculous, unfounded challenge to the 2000 results, yet they don’t give Trump the same consideration when there are proven allegations of fraud in several swing states.

Anyway, I walk by faith, not the declarations of journalists and crooked politicians, so I will wait for a conclusive end to the election.

A bunch of Christians have predicted that Trump will win, claiming to have knowledge, not just impressions. Of course, most people who say they’re prophets are wrong.

Swamp dwellers, including journalists, don’t know how to deal with Trump. He isn’t Mitt Romney or John McCain. He has zero regard for what other people think, and he’s extremely tough. If he feels like battling for justice, he’ll do it, even if half of the country hates him for it.

Trump has a special anointing from God, and many people think it’s a two-term anointing. If that’s true, then it may be that we will witness the kind of spectacle found in the Bible. God saved Moses and the Hebrews when they were between the sea and the Egyptian army. He kept the lions’ mouths closed while Daniel was in the den, but he saw to it that Daniel’s enemies and their wives and children were eaten. He killed 185,000 Assyrians in one night to shame Sennacherib, his armies, and the rabshakeh. Maybe we’ll see the courts and law enforcement drag Biden off the stage. Or maybe Trump really will have to go. Whatever the case is, I’m a man of faith, so I’m not going to pay any attention to the wishful declarations of people who have no real power. We will have a firm conclusion soon, and pretending we know the truth now only does harm and sets us up for civil war. People who think journalists have the power to call elections would be irate beyond description if the courts ruled for Trump, especially if Amy Barrett were involved. Maybe that’s the plan.

Today I used my freedom to zero my first red dot scope. I put it on the AR-15 and adjusted it so it works at 50 yards. At 30 yards, it shoots through one hole. At 50 yards, I get about a 1.5″ spread. I think it’s because I can’t see well enough to shoot accurately at 50 yards. There is no magnification, so you end up with a big fuzzy dot that makes it hard to know exactly where the gun is pointed. It may be that I have the illumination turned up too high.

The red dot is pleasant to use, but it’s not magic. I’ll have to use it a few more times before I can come up with an informed opinion. My understanding is that parallax is never a problem with these sights. Is that the main appeal?

I also tried using jags and a bore guide to clean the gun. It was a 90-minute nightmare. The patches that are supposed to work with jags will not go through the barrel, even when you do what they tell you to do in videos. I got patches stuck in the gun several times. I finally cut tiny patches from patch cloth and made them work.

The bore guide seems like an asinine toy to me. It’s supposed to protect the barrel and chamber from damage. How can brass hardware and carbon-fiber rods damage steel? Hard to swallow.

I had to wrestle so hard with the patches and jags, the bore guide went all over the place. I’m sure brass and steel came together many times.

My suspicion is that hipsters have made cleaning AR’s way more difficult than it has to be. I’ll bet brushes and Boresnakes work just fine.

UPDATE

It turns out the people on gun forums don’t know anything about using jags. It’s a wonder they manage to clean their guns. They were useless as sources of information, but of course, they had plenty to say anyway.

They told me some really WRONG things, including this: if your jag is too tight, put it in a drill and use sandpaper to reduce it. So the engineers who make jags aren’t smart enough to figure out how big they should be?

I found the right information on a couple of manufacturer’s sites.

1. The main purpose of a bore guide is to protect the gun cleaning rod from sharp edges in the breech area.

2. The correct size patches for .223 and 6.5mm are 1-1/8″ and 1-1/2″. Multi-caliber patches don’t actually work. Maybe they’re okay for loops, but they’re not for jags.

3. To use a jag with a patch, you pierce the corner and wrap the patch around the jag. You can make the fit tighter or looser by fiddling with it.

I got out my Tikka T3x, which was already cleanish, and I tried the wrapping method. Worked perfectly. It was snug enough to get junk out of the barrel, but it did not get stuck, and I was able to control it so it didn’t jump out of the barrel and drop the patch. Because the patch was wrapped around the jag, it stayed on when I pulled it backward, so I was able to go back and forth.

I ordered 1000 patches in each size. That should keep me going for a while. I ordered a Dewey rod made especially for AR chambers. I tried wrapping a patch around a jag, and it worked great.

Montana X-Treme is the company that made my 6.5mm jag. Their site said to wrap the jag. Their jags have several sets of rings on them, so the rings cover over an inch. People were recommending tiny patches. There is no way on earth to get a tiny patch to reach all the rings, so when you use a tiny patch, you’re using about 2/3 of the jag you paid good money for. Bigger patches wrapped around the jag are the correct choice.

I ordered a 6.5mm Hoppe’s Bore Snake. I’ll use it to clean up the bore after using jags and so on. It’s faster than 52 patches in a row.

Man, life is better when you consult people who actually know something.

I Work for the Board of Labor

A few weeks ago, I ordered myself a chalkboard for my kitchen. I needed something in front of me to remind me of things I needed to get done. Amazon screwed up and sent me a whiteboard. I hate those things. I sent it back. Michelangelo and Da Vinci used chalk. Head start teachers use whiteboards.

I put a list of nagging tasks on the board as soon as I screwed it to the wall. There must have been 20 things on it. I’ve been wiping them out ever since. I highly recommend chalkboards.

Today I arranged for gutter companies to come by and give me estimates on some roof improvements. I also sold one of my old welding carts, and the buyer also bought my old 80 cubic foot C25 tank. He got a great bargain, but I had to get it out of my workshop. That put me in a position to knock another item off my list. I drove to Airgas and bought a 125 cubic foot tank. It’s on the new cart now. The cart is ready to work. I can still make little changes here and there, and I haven’t transfered all my welding paraphernalia to it, but I can pull it up to my table and start welding.

I wore my MAGA hat to Airgas. I’ll wear it until the fat lady sings. If a 74-year-old man who just got over coronavirus can do several rallies in different states every day for weeks, I can wear a hat. It’s not much of a gesture.

Things don’t look as bad as the MSM would have you believe. Trump seems certain to win Pennsylvania. Biden’s anti-fracking crusade really put a dent in his numbers. We are now learning that Arizona was called early. There are 400,000 votes yet to be counted, and there is a good chance they’ll put Trump over the top. North Carolina and Georgia look good, Alaska is a sure thing, and Trump is suing in Michigan and demanding a recount in Wisconsin.

If he gets Arizona, Biden is in trouble. If he gets Michigan or Wisconsin, Biden is in trouble.

My feeling is that God is making Trump sweat because of his pride. It’s not pure imagination. It’s a strong feeling I get during prayer. But a strong feeling is not a prophecy.

Of course, if I’m right, we will be up to our armpits in rioters soon, and it may be even worse than the riot routine we’ve gotten used to.

I’m sure they’re rioting somewhere today. They always are. Riots used to be unusual. Now they’re like rain. It may be dry where you are, but it’s always pouring somewhere. After Trump wins, we should expect heavy-duty simultaneous riots in as many cities as BLM and Antifa can afford to attack.

Maybe they won’t be able to riot everywhere. After all, George Soros and Hollywood celebrities aren’t made out of money.

The riots will be Trump’s fault, according to the MSM. Everything is Trump’s fault in Bizarro World. Hurricanes. Forest fires. A fat lady became Youtube-famous for claiming Trump made her obese. He really gets around, in the fantasies of the Antichrist’s children. In sane times, people would be amazed to see grown-ups blaming a Republican president–who isn’t allowed to send help–for terrorist riots performed by leftists. Now, it’s normal. Up is down, men are women, and blizzards are proof of global warming.

“Trump made me do it.” Flip Wilson should sue.

Trump reminds me of Jesus Christ. They are the most lied-about people in history. They are hated without reason by more people than any other figures I can think of. They do great things for others. The blessings are undeniable. Somehow, they are given no credit, the blessings are characterized as problems, and problems other people create are blamed on them.

The Antichrist’s children remind me of my sister, who appears to be one of them. The more you do for her, the more she hates you. Helping certain people is like playing war games with the WHOPR. The only way to win is not to play.

This is the only country on earth, apart from one outlier with a gigantic oil field, where large numbers of people pushed for socialism during an economic boom. It just isn’t done. You’re supposed to go socialist out of desperation. You don’t do it when unemployment is at a record low and the stock market is at a record high. It’s like demolishing a house because it looks too nice.

That blackboard is really something. It hangs there, silently disapproving of me. It motivates me to do things so I can erase items from the list. It does what nagging wives wish they could do, without the misery and dreams of divorce.

Here’s hoping Trump wins Arizona. I’ll write another item on the board: “Lie on face for three hours, thanking God.”

The Pennsylvania Problem

I managed to avoid looking at the election results until a short time ago, at around 8 a.m. I have to say that things aren’t looking hopeless.

1. Our left-wing terrorists were not stupid enough to do their act while the polls were open, so there shouldn’t be any issues with suppression of Republican votes. I’m judging by the news I can find online, so be gentle if I’m wrong.

2. Biden lost Florida, and he lost BIG. The Realclearpolitics average had Biden up nearly a point, Florida had a huge influx of left-leaning Puerto Ricans, and Trump still beat him by over three points. That, all by itself, should have pollsters looking for new jobs. They really blew it. Again. They do nothing but poison the process.

3. Trump is expected to win Georgia and North Carolina. Alaska will go for Trump, of course. Not that it’s a major score. Michigan may well go for Trump.

4. Trump is way ahead in Pennsylvania, with the vast majority of votes counted. What if the uncounted votes are from Philadelphia County, home of a major den of incorrigible leftists? That must be what’s happening, because Trump is over 12 points ahead.

I said I was afraid Pennsylvania would be the new Florida, and I was right. Phildelphia is a slimy, corrupt city, and if my guess about the locations of the uncounted precincts is right, they may be forging and “finding” ballots in high gear right now. It’s very sad to see Pennsylvania caught up in this mess.

T.B. Joshua, the Nigerian evangelist who prophesied that 2020 would be a year of humbling, and who accurately said the Wuhan epidemic was going to end abruptly, made a vague prophesy about our presidential election. He said things don’t always turn out the way we want, and he said Amy Coney Barrett would be a major factor. Does it mean the Supreme Court will squash Pennsylvania-swamp vote fraud efforts? I don’t know. I don’t see Amy Barrett helping the Democrats unless the law is so cut-and-dried she has no choice. I don’t know if Joshua’s prophecy is real, and I’m not sure what it means. It’s interesting, though.

I’m not sure, but it looks like a Michigan win would leave Pennsylvania as the state that would determine the outcome. I don’t see how Trump can win without Michigan. Am I mistaken? I guess he could do it if Nevada went his way, but Nevada doesn’t look great.

The polls were wrong about Trump again, regardless of who wins. Is it because pollsters are incompetent (yes) and dishonest (probably), or because voters are afraid to say they support Trump? I think the last factor is a big deal this time around, but the more I look at polls, the more I realize the people who compile them are extremely inept. I’ve seen at least one pro-Biden result in which the vast majority of people sampled were Democrats. If you can do something that dumb, you have no business conducting polls.

I can’t recall ever hearing of a poll that oversampled Republicans. I wonder if it happens. If not, we should be asking why not.

The worst possible outcome, barring extremely unlikely events, is that Biden will win after getting stomped in states where he was expected to sleep his way to victory. I don’t see how this would help America, but it would provide some comfort.

My state made a big mistake. The public created a $15 minimum wage. Say goodbye to thousands of low-end jobs. Say hello to increased hiring of illegal aliens and higher unemployment. People never learn.

Ballot referendums threaten to make Florida a volatile state. Fringe nuts tried to put an anti-semiautomatic-weapon law on the ballot once. They could have caused real problems. Moms who vote with their maternal instincts instead of their brains could have turned Florida into Virginia.

I will continue to pray and hope for the best. My own peace, safety, health, and success come from God, not politicians, but a lot of people depend on presidents.

Things to do While America Tries to Kill Itself

It has been a pretty stress-free day. I woke up at 7:00, which was way too early because I was up past midnight. I prayed and so on, and when I woke up again, it was nearly 11. Not bad!

I had a strange dream. My grandmother was still alive, and she was driving me and another grandchild to Lexington, Kentucky. She was old, but her mind was clear. Nonetheless, her driving was scary. I kept suggesting she let me drive, but she said her doctor had told her driving was good for her.

We had to stop at a government facility where everyone emptied their pockets and set the contents in baskets on conveyor belts. I didn’t put my carry piece in the basket. When I got to the other side, my stuff didn’t come through. I remember longing for the good old days when Americans could get in the car and drive from place to place without stopping to be searched. Apparently, in the world of my dream, those days were over.

I don’t know if the dream means anything. My mother generally represents the church in my dreams. Who, then, does her mother represent? Catholics? The Jews? You would think it would be a body that gave rise to the modern church.

Last night and today, I received nice packages that gave me something to do.

I don’t want a bulky, expensive grill that costs $2000 and does nothing a cheap grill won’t do, so I have a turkey fryer and a small stainless Pit Boss Grill. For a long time, I’ve had them on the patio on a cheap Home Depot table. The heat did a number on the plastic, so I ordered myself a stainless prep table. They sell them on Amazon for a little over a hundred bucks, but the Amazon jobs use thin steel, and their lower shelves and legs are galvanized, so they will rust. I decided to splurge and get a real commercial table with stainless shelves and legs. It’s very sturdy. I should be able to clean it very easily, and any rust should be negligible.

I also got a stand for my smoker. They cost a lot, but it’s no fun putting meat in a smoker that sits nearly on the floor. I now have a much more convenient height, and the stand has wings for things like BBQ tongs, sauces, and seasonings.

I had to assemble everything. Putting the smoker on the stand was quite a job.

I’ll post a photo. Yes, there are shovels on my patio. I’m still not done removing the stump from the poolside planter.

I haven’t bothered getting a real patio table. I looked around, but I didn’t see anything good on the web or at the local consignment place. I don’t want to blow $1500 on a new set. It doesn’t matter. My plastic folding table is very practical, and no one seems to mind.

Tomorrow, I expect to receive a wireless BBQ thermometer with two probes, and it should be accompanied by some other items.

I installed an induction stove a while back, but I did’t get nonstick pans, and somehow, a couple of my saucepans didn’t make the trip from Miami, so I ordered two induction-ready skillets and some replacement saucepans. I have several pans I should get rid of because they don’t cooperate with induction. Time to visit the Salvation Army, I guess.

The thermometer will make barbecuing easier.

The runup to the election has been unpleasant. I would hate to see a great president who honors God and puts his country first put out of office by witches, terrorists, a corrupt and vile press, the Chinese, and a lying, demented hack no one in his own corrupt party respects. Now that there is nothing to do but watch and pray, I feel better. If Biden wins, it won’t harm me personally. God looks after me regardless of what happens around me. Other people won’t fare so well, but they will be getting what they chose, and I don’t have the power to control their actions.

I will try not to watch the returns, and I hope I can sleep without help. I don’t want to find myself staring at the computer at 3 a.m.

I hope I won’t continue watching the news after today, apart from occasional glances. I hate reading the news. Smith Wigglesworth wouldn’t allow newspapers in his house, and he did just fine.

It’s nice to have pleasant projects to pass the time during what could have been a rough day. Hope everyone who reads this has peace. Don’t forget: our president isn’t the source of your safety and blessings, so there is no reason to despair if a man the Democrats rejected for three decades somehow wins the prize. Like all hard times, a Biden rule would be hardest on people who don’t know God.

One More Cloud in the 2020 Perfect Storm

For a long time, I’ve been expecting a Trump victory followed by a huge, prolonged, possibly unending explosion of leftist terrorist riots. Tonight, it occurred to me that something even worse might happen.

Most Democrats have already voted. They’re terrified of coronavirus because they’re addicted to the screeching, unscientific nonsense coming from leftist networks and politicians, so they were afraid to go to the polls. Republicans have generally chosen to wait until election day to vote. As a result, we have a situation in which conservative votes could be disproportionately suppressed if terrorists rioted and kept people away from the polls.

The question is whether the terrorists are smart enough to understand this. If they are, they will surely riot. If that happens, and there is significant voter suppression, the election may be delegitimized, and we may end up in a situation in which the President justifiably refuses to vacate the White House until a fair election is held. That would throw the nation into chaos for months.

I’m writing this to ask people to pray terrorists will stay home tomorrow. Maybe God can influence them without violating their free will.

It looks like Pennsylvania is the new Florida. Florida used to be the state that gave everyone heartburn during elections. Trump is doing very well in Pennsylvania, the state’s attorney general has made an ass of himself by declaring that Trump can’t win the state, and Philadelphia is a current terror hot spot. Maybe Pennsylvania will be the spark that sets off the civil war.

Of course, it maybe that terrorists will disproportionately suppress Democrat votes, since they concentrate in leftist strongholds. Maybe their plan will blow up on them. But I don’t think that could happen. Even in cities, the remaining voters are probably mostly conservatives.

Anyway, I’m throwing the topic out there and suggesting people pray.

Isn’t Democracy Wonderful?

Today I dove deeper into the sea of pre-post-election-dystopia preparation. I picked up some more panic-related items while I was shopping.

I grabbed a bottle of ghee. I don’t know how well butter will keep if left-wing terrorists manage to mess with the power, but I want to be able to make macaroni and cheese while the apocalypse dawns. I picked up 8 cans of evaporated milk, and I may go back and buy Velveeta. It may not be cheese, but it’s pretty close, and bacteria are afraid of it.

I bought oatmeal and disinfecting wipes, too. Oatmeal can be eaten raw, and sanitizing wipes are supposedly in danger of vanishing again, just as they started reappearing on shelves. I love sanitizing wipes. Being without them is not an option.

I should dry apples. I should do that whether or not the world ends. Dried apples are wonderful.

Right now, I’m smoking a chicken. I still haven’t produced a decent smoked chicken with the new smoker. I used too much of this and that. Hoping for a home run this time.

I injected it with Jim Beam, salt, and sugar, and I gave it a cautious sprinkling of my BBQ rub. I’m smoking it with citrus wood taken from the diseased trees I had to cut down. I don’t know if citrus is the best choice, but I want to see what it tastes like, and even if it’s not optimal, it will surely be good.

I have a wireless thermometer on the way so I can keep a close eye on future smokes. It has two probes. One will go in the food, and the other will measure the smoker temperature.

I guess I should have waited until tomorrow to smoke the chicken, because I still have some smoked ribs. Oh, well. I’ll manage to deal with the surplus.

Some time tomorrow night, we should have some idea whether or not America is irredeemably insane. They say mail-in ballots may delay the election results, but we’ll probably have strong evidence as to who won. I hate to think of Kamala Harris running this country. She strikes me as a nastier person than Biden, which is saying a lot, and she’s the farthest-left senator we have. She will do incredibly stupid things if she finds her way into the Oval Office. When I pray, I keep feeling very strongly that Trump is going to win. That would be wonderful. The morning of November 9, 2016, was one of the best of my life. Reliving it would be even better.

I just found out I’m better prepared than I thought. When I moved 3 years ago, I left a box of junk in the garage and ignored it. Today I looked inside and found 4,000 pistol primers, a bunch of brass, and unused pistol bullets.

Anyone who says laziness doesn’t pay is a fool.

More

The chicken did not make me happy.

I have come to the conclusion that the people who wrote the directions that came with the smoker know a lot about how much wood to use but not much about anything else. Today I set my smoker at about 225, and I cooked the chicken until it hit 172 inside. The directions said to go to 165, but it just didn’t seem right. Anyway, I was only a few minutes off, and the chicken was extremely juicy but tough.

I think I need to go back to my old ways. Go down to 200 and go 4 hours. It invariably worked. If you can pick your barbecued chicken up by the leg, it’s no good. The leg should fall off. I don’t want a chicken that fights with me.

I stuck the chicken in the oven in a covered dish at 300, and I’m giving it an hour and a half. I know I can save it.

As for the citrus wood, I don’t like it. It reminds me of the smell of burning shrubs. Next time I’m using hickory again, and I’m going to cut up some oak so it dries out for future use.

The mac and cheese was wonderful, but I think I can make it better. I think I should forget about baking it, because that breaks the cheese into chewy clods. I like the chewy clods, but I also like smooth, silky cheese sauce. Next time, I’m going to make it in a saucepan on very low heat, move it to a casserole dish, and only bake it long enough to set the bread crumb crust. It will be magnificent.

Citrus might be good for smoking fish. People say it is. It’s not for chicken. Avoid.

This is How You Prepare for Guests in 2020

Today I decided to take a small step toward preparing for post-election leftist terrorism. I looked into protective gear, and I ordered a red dot scope and a better laser for my rifles.

I have been through a number of elections, and I have been concerned about election outcomes before, but I can’t recall being concerned about the other side trying to harm me physically or take my home, my possessions, and my wealth. This is new, for the United States of America. I don’t think we’ve seen an atmosphere like this since Sherman marched through Georgia.

I’m not overreacting, either. Leftist terrorism started months ago, so no one can say I’m concerned about something that isn’t going to happen. It’s happening today. It happens every day. The only uncertainty concerns degree and duration. Will the terrorism decrease or increase? Will it go away quickly, or is it a permanent part of a new way of life?

It’s a permanent part of a new way of life. You can take that to the bank. The terrorists have no goal, so they have no reason to declare that their campaign of violence is over. When sane people fight for a cause, they have a goal in mind, and when they reach that goal, they stop. Leftist terrorists don’t have a goal that has been articulated or which can be achieved. Some say they will stop when racism is abolished. Of course, that can never happen. It would be like the abolition of bad table manners or shoplifting. There are nearly 8 billion people on earth, and they can’t all be changed. Even if they could, leftist terrorists redefine racism all the time. These days they say all white people are racists. That means racism can never end until all white people are killed. Terrorists have come up with a farcical goal which, to them, justifies unending anti-white racism and violence against innocent people.

Will terrorism decrease or increase after the election? I think it will ramp up until our cities and suburbs are Iraq-style “red zones,” at least where Democrats are in charge. Terrorists in such areas have no reason to quit, and they have ample incentive to continue. They get free stuff by looting. Many are paid by BLM, which is a multi-billion-dollar concern funded by insane Caucasians. The lowest people on earth, who would ordinarily be ignored, are now given bullhorns and the privilege of cursing at random citizens; they enjoy a certain type of local fame, so their already-swollen egos are pumped up. They don’t face prosecution. They don’t have to compensate their victims. What possible reason could they have for quitting? It’s not like they have productive careers they’re putting on hold.

Today I went so far as to look into body armor and helmets. I couldn’t resist. I’ve even considered spending $3000 on an infrared rifle scope so I can kill terrorists who invade my property at night.

Helmets are interesting. These days, armies use plastic helmets which can turn small-arms fire. They’re more resistant than the steel helmets our soldiers wore in Vietnam. There are problems with them, however. If you hit one near the rim, it’s much more likely to let a round go through. If you hit it once, you will shatter the plastic where the round lands, and the next round will either go through or push the shattered plastic in so far the round will shatter the wearer’s skull. Plastic helmets are only good for a few rounds.

A couple of companies have tried to market steel helmets made from better steel than the old Vietnam helmets. When you shoot these helmets, it doesn’t matter whether you’re near the rim. The protection is the same. And they don’t shatter, so if two rounds land in the same area, you aren’t relying on a floppy mass of kevlar to protect you. They don’t deform as much as plastic helmets, so if you’re hit, the round is less likely to push the helmet into your skull. A damaged helmet can be pounded back into shape. And steel helmets don’t weigh any more than plastic ones.

People ridicule steel helmets. Do they know what they’re talking about, or are they like the backward folks who resisted the use of rifle scopes for 50 years? My guess is that steel is better, but asking me about ballistic helmets is like asking a podiatrist about astronomy.

Steel bashers say plastic helmets confine bullet fragments after they’re hit, while steel bounces them in random directions. You can coat a steel helmet with stuff that supposedly reduces this problem, but does it work? And is the risk of being hit by fragments more important than the higher risk of being killed by an intact round while wearing plastic? I don’t know.

You can get a used military helmet for $200 on Ebay. A new steel helmet costs the same amount, without accessories. A new plastic helmet from a top company like Wendy will run over a grand. That’s a lot of money for a helmet that caves in and becomes flexible after one round. Are you supposed to buy several and keep spares on hand in a conflict?

Here’s the only thing I know for sure: protecting your head from bullets is very expensive.

I checked out vests called “plate carriers.” They have pockets for armor made from steel and other materials. Depending on how badly you want to stay alive, you can get different types of plates. Supposedly, ceramic is the best, but if you drop one, you ruin it. I don’t get that. How can a plate that can’t be dropped survive a rifle round? There are also bare steel plates, which throw fragments, and there are coated steel plates which throw fewer fragments. And some plates are heavier than others.

It looks like I would have to blow close to $700 to get something that would work against typical rifles.

When you start thinking about preparing for war, you understand how inexpensive peace is.

There is good news. The best material for building bulletproof barriers is cheap. It’s sand. You just need bags. It’s too bad you can’t buy a vest full of sand, plus a sand helmet.

I think it will be a long time before terrorists make it to my farm, but many people aren’t so blessed. I wonder what people who are stuck in cities are feeling right now. I wonder about people who live in suburbs that are close to cities. They used to be safe from rioting, but the terrorists are now making a point of taking it to people who fled cities for protection.

Not only are people close to cities more likely to be harmed; they are more likely to be prosecuted for defending themselves. Look at the McCloskeys and Kyle Rittenhouse. Where I live, the McCloskeys would never have been charged, and Rittenhouse–as pure a victim as has ever existed–would have been given a parade. If you’re trespassing on my land with a weapon and bad intentions, I can shoot you dead, and that will be the end of it. If I lived in a place like Chicago or Austin or Atlanta, and an armed invader approached, I would have to choose between death and a high likelihood of a bankrupting prosecution followed by an unjust imprisonment.

I’ll say it again: the rapture can’t come soon enough.

The Bible calls the tribulation “the hour of temptation.” Murderous feelings will increase, and people will menace each other. Leftist terrorists are in tribulation mode already. When you know a group of evil, incorrigible, unthinking people are out to get you, you will naturally be provoked to anger. Provocation is a form of temptation. It’s one of the things raptured Christians will be spared. God doesn’t want us to be down here dealing with extreme temptation which is likely to land us in hell due to bad decisions.

God raptured me out of Miami, and if I play my cards right, he will rapture me off the earth before I find myself looking up the barrel of my rifle at a deranged animal in man’s clothing.

I’m still preparing a little. If I had more certainty about the immediate future, maybe I wouldn’t bother.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Harder

I have to point out that there is nothing as great as living in the South. It’s like a big playground for adults. If you’ve ever watched Ducky Dynasty, you’ve seen exactly what I’m talking about. You may think that show is all fantasy, but the truth is that it shows exactly how Southerners live.

If you’re jealous, take heart. You can always move. My Uncle Jim was born a yankee, but he moved to Kentucky, and in a few years, he was totally healed.

Today I went to the heterosexual barber shop where I always get my hair cut. I wore a MAGA hat, and I thought I might stand out among the customers. A couple of guys who only spoke Spanish were in the chairs when I arrived, and they kept quiet. Soon afterward, another man arrived.

The barber said, “It’s Mr. Trump himself.”

The man was about 5’11” tall and weighed maybe 135 pounds. He was wearing a MAGA visor, the sides of his head were cut close, and on top of his head, he had a puff of orange hair that looked like a pom-pom.

Best of all, he had a Bush tall boy in his hand. And no intention of getting a haircut.

I told the barber I didn’t realize alcohol was allowed, and he asked me if I wanted a beer from the fridge. I turned it down, but the gesture warmed my heart.

I could not drink; I had to drive to Harbor Freight. Also…Busch.

Mr. Trump told us about the rallies he had been to. He said there was one in The Villages–the giant retirement complex to the south of me–drew over 10,000 golf carts. I don’t recall the exact figure. Golf carts! How Southern is that? And of course, he had a story about an idiot who grabbed someone’s Trump flag and ripped it. The perpetrator ran off in a pickup, but his triumphant escape was cut short by a traffic accident. Remarkably, no one in the shop gloated.

Only one person–another quiet individual who could have been Mexican–wore a mask. The rest of us criticized coronavirus hysteria and talked about the horrors of a Biden administration. The barber said if they tried to lock the shop down or pull any more shenanigans, he would just go to jail instead of cooperating. Of course, jail is one of the few places in this county where you’re highly likely to catch the bug.

If Biden wins and the rapture doesn’t come this year, at least I picked a great place to die.

By the way, Harbor Freight has a 15% coupon on tool chests. That’s pretty rare. It expires tomorrow, so strap one to your golf cart and take it home.