You Can’t Have too Many Diesels

Every day I start my prayers with two things. I ask God to do whatever can be done to bring him success in me and in everything I own, and I ask him to separate me from people and spirits that are against him and put me in his presence and the presence of his people. I want God himself to have success. I want him to have a return on his huge investment in me. If you look at the Bible, this is what he has been trying to get all along. He creates people and tells them exactly what to do in order to succeed, and we listen to loser spirits instead. God is a parent who wants his kids to take his helpful advice so he can make their lives work out, so I ask him to help me cooperate.

This is another way of asking him to put his kingdom and his righteousness first in my life. Jesus told us God would take care of our external needs if we put his desires first. It sure seems to work. I can give examples of the ways God is making my life easier.

I was concerned that my dad would not have enough ready cash to buy a house while managing his business. Looks like that’s not going to be an issue. One way and another, money shook loose. I doubt I’ll have to lend him a cent.

I was concerned that my dad might flip out when I started throwing out his awful furniture. He doesn’t even mention it. He walks into rooms where his stuff used to be, and he acts like nothing happened. That’s a good thing, because it’s stupid to move furniture which is worth absolutely nothing. The cost of the move is a total loss.

The seller of the property has some farm machinery I’ll need. He was talking to the realtor about selling it to me, but he took a long time to give me a price. Today, I got the number. It’s excellent. For $11K, he’ll sell me a Kubota tractor with loader, several implements including a bush hog, an E-Z-GO gas-powered cart with a dump bed, and a top-of-the-line John Deere diesel tractor/mower with a cart. That’s so low, I’m embarrassed to counter. I think a reasonable price would be more like $17K. As long as this stuff checks out, I should give him what he wants. He has done a ton of stuff to get the place into shape, free of charge.

This may not be the perfect machinery for my needs, but it will keep me going for a long time, and I’ll be able to get my money out of it if I upgrade.

I’ll need a nitrous system for that cart. I’ll just put that on my list.

I can’t get used to being blessed. It is a strange way of life. When I was living on a kibbutz, there was a death camp survivor who worked in the dining hall. Every time he ended a shift, someone had to go behind him and look for food he had hidden. He would take loaves of bread and hide them in various locations. He couldn’t help it. He had been starved in the past. I feel a little bit like that. So many things have gone wrong in my life; things that had every reason to go right. Now things seem to go right regardless of what I do. How can that be?

I’m getting insurance quotes for the property. They’re asking me whether we’ll have livestock. What kind of livestock? Will we be raising them for profit? Those are nice questions to get, when you’re used to little lots in suburbs.

Here’s my plan for the “farm”: I plan to raise nothing. If I need a couple of steers to cut the property tax, I’ll get them, but the land is for me, not for animals. I want to be able to walk outside without having my neighbors in my face.

In a very short time, we’ll close on the property, and then two weeks later, we get possession. After that, I don’t care what happens to me. Whatever life brings, I will go lie on my face in the grass and feel like the richest person alive.

More developments as they occur.

Actor Turns Son into Pedophile Bait

Christians who can’t tell when the tide is coming in are going to be drowned.

Yesterday I saw another sign of the incoming tide. Actor Liev Schreiber turned his son into pedophile bait, and people are praising him for it. One commenter’s fatuous response: “This is what good parenting looks like.”

There was a comic book convention. These events are always sexually pressurized. Female comic characters have gotten more provocative, and confused girls like to dress up to look like them. This is called “cosplay,” which means “costume play.” Schreiber’s son, who is 8 years old, decided to dress up as a slutty female character named Harley Quinn. He showed up with his dad in a blonde wig, lipstick, and sequined hot pants.

Homosexuals and liberals have gone nuts praising Schreiber, but the images of Schreiber and his son are so disgusting, even some on the left are upset. They’re not upset because the boy has been dressed like a woman. They’re upset because he has been dressed up like a tramp. So they have some limited understanding of the evil they are witnessing.

I am appalled by Schreiber’s lack of insight. Forget the issue of whether it’s right to confuse the sexes. Doesn’t he realize men all over the world are now using his son’s photos for sexual purposes? For a homosexual pedophile, the boy is a feast for the eyes.

My dad’s law partner had two sons. In 1995, the youngest one was kidnapped by a Cuban alien farmhand, raped, taken back to his parent’s house to be released, taken back to the farmhand’s trailer after the farmhand saw police cars, shot in the back as he tried to escape, cut in manageable pieces, and buried in concrete. I am not even a little amused by what Schreiber did to his son.

We live in an age in which perverts roam our malls and theme parks; a time in which taking your eyes off your son for thirty seconds may result in his rape and murder. What kind of father would allow sexually provocative photos of his son to be made public?

For a long time, God has been teaching me about the concept of fatherlessness. As a race, human beings are fatherless. We cut God off. We threw out his wisdom and knowledge, which are our success and protection. One generation is supposed to teach the next so every generation doesn’t have to start over with nothing. Satan and the spirits that are against us don’t die; they keep their knowledge. People who practice Satanic religions don’t lose their knowledge; they preserve it. Our forebears threw our accumulated treasure away, so now when a person wants to know about God, he ends up in the hands of a fool like Joel Osteen or Pope Francis. It’s as if he’s playing in the Super Bowl and his coach is Richard Simmons.

A father is supposed to teach and protect. He is supposed to be on your side against everyone else. If you don’t have a strong father who is for you, you will end up with a collection of false fathers who are against you, or who help you so badly they might as well be against you.

Schreiber’s boy is in trouble. The dark forces of the universe are aligned against him, and his father is helping them. Who is he supposed to turn to?

I am not a pedophile, so I can only guess, but after Schreiber’s ridiculous blunder, I would expect his son to become a prize for perverts. If they can’t get him, at least he’ll give them ideas on dressing up boys who look like him. Later this week, the dark web will probably fill up with erotic fiction dedicated to him.

If the world lasts another 20 years, take a look at Schreiber’s son and see what has become of him. I prayed for him today, but he has free will, and he is enveloped by evil. If he listens to dad, don’t be surprised if he turns out to be another Hollywood casualty.

Imagine an actor trying to pull something like this even ten years ago. We were a mess in 2007, but this would have been too much. Look how fast we’re sinking.

Those who hate us as well as our God are no longer hiding in the shadows. Fear is leaving them; when the lights go dim, the roaches come out. They know this is their world now.

In 2017, the shadows are for us, not them. Our hiding places are going to get smaller and smaller in the coming years. You’re going to need supernatural help to survive. You need to know how to pray and bless and curse effectively. If you don’t do anything to prepare, don’t say no one warned you. The Bible says God laughs at the calamities of those who don’t listen to him. He sat by and did nothing while the Babylonians castrated the princes of the Jews.

I hope Liev Schreiber has a big budget for security. He is waving meat at hungry dogs.

All Particle Board is Vanity

Today is a day filled with potential, unlike the whole of my mostly-spent life.

Yesterday I made great progress with the impending move north. I got my dad new sheets. I threw out and gave away a lot of clothing. I got the mold out of my dad’s linen closet. Today I’m planning to throw out furniture.

At some point in the 1980’s, my dad bought some really terrible furniture. He and my mother were divorced, and he had a girlfriend. He bought art and furniture for his house, and he helped the girlfriend open an art gallery, which I never saw. In fact, I’m not sure what the woman’s name is. My mother was never allowed to spend on the kind of home she wanted, but my dad spent quite a bit during the girlfriend era.

My sister’s dog soaked a good deal of the furniture, so it (the furniture) vanished over two decades ago. I think my dad’s sawdust dressers and headboard, however, are vestiges of his spate of spending freely.

I hate sawdust furniture. You know the stuff I’m talking about. It’s made from sawdust and glue, molded into the shape of boards. It has very thin veneer (or plastic with phony wood grain) on the surface. Put a couple of drinks down on it, and the surface comes off.

Sawdust furniture is probably twice as heavy as wooden furniture. It’s weak. It has no real joints. Little crumbs of sawdust fall out of it. Terrible.

My feeling about furniture is that intelligent people buy real wooden stuff, used. It’s made much better than new furniture, and it either holds its value or appreciates. You might buy a desk for five hundred bucks and then sell it for a thousand ten years later, if you choose wisely. When you buy sawdust, you’re buying the Depends of furniture. Use it once and throw it away. If you manage to sell it at all, you’ll take a beating worse than the last two Ronda Rousey got.

My bedroom furniture isn’t too bad, so after we move, I’ll put it in my dad’s bedroom. I’ll get by with banker’s boxes until I find something suitable. My dad’s sawdust items have to go.

There is nothing like throwing out things you’ve hated for years. When you finally get the power of trash designation, it’s like growing wings. My dad has a piece of art his sister created. It’s a black frame containing a black figure on white paper. The figure is a stylized representation of a girl. It’s depressing to look at. Creepy. I yearn for the day I can discard it.

A long time ago, my dad financed a souvenir shop for my sister. Nothing much sold. My parents ended up with some terrible Bybee pottery. It’s primitive pottery from Kentucky. It’s so bad, it appears they don’t even know what a potter’s wheel is. I’m not sure, but I think they form vases and bowls by hand, which is ridiculous. It’s very lumpy and crude. You can tell they just slopped it together in order to make a buck. To Goodwill it will go, unless it has some “accidents” between the house and car.

I got some tips from a caregiver’s forum. Goodwill will accept textiles no matter what shape they’re in. They can sell the unwearable things for recycling. They provide blank receipts, so when you donate, let your conscience be your guide. I’ve thrown out a lot of things I thought were too damaged to donate. Now I know better, although I will probably continue throwing textiles out when it’s convenient.

I’m not sure what to do with cigar boxes and humidors. They can be useful, but they are paraphernalia taken from a sinful, demonic practice. If I have them in my house or garage, will they give spirits a footbold?

I guess the humidors should go. They’re nice boxes, but they’re made for a specific purpose. They’re lined with cedar, and they’re constructed for high humidity. If you don’t store cigars in them, they dry out, and they may deform or split. I spent $400 for the one I used. I don’t know how I’ll feel about dumping it. Is it moral to sell it or give it away? It’s a lot like giving away a bong. When Abraham left his dad, the idol-maker, I doubt he sold whatever idols he had.

I believe I’ll give the humidors away and keep the cigar boxes for shop items. If I feel bad about keeping them, they can be thrown out later.

I threw out my dad’s personalized envelopes. He had them made for his law practice. Now he doesn’t practice, and the address has changed. It was jarring, realizing how useless they had become. We paid his bar dues for the upcoming year, just to avoid making him feel bad, but he is finished with law.

That’s what’s happening today.

I’m astonished at the way God has changed my life. I have a great deal of energy now. I’m exercising regularly. I’m not as lazy as I was two months ago. I have more self-control. I accomplish more, in less time. In short, curses are being peeled off of me and replaced with blessings. This is what being blessed is like. Life is supposed to be this way. No, it’s supposed to be better than this. I’m just experiencing the beginnings of it. I’m a greenhorn.

If you focus on God’s kingdom, and you work at confessing and taking responsibility, things start to move. It’s too bad preachers don’t teach this, but almost all of them are ignorant, and many don’t care at all about other people. They just want your money, so they say whatever will move you to give it to them. Most of the people on Christian TV should be horsewhipped.

I never listen to preachers any more. I have no use for them at all. I plan to join a church up north, but I don’t plan to drink the Kool-Aid. I’ll sit in the back and smile, and if people say stupid things, instead of getting in their faces, I’ll say, “Maybe that’s right.” I want to be helpful, but I’m nobody’s horse. I’m not going to try to carry anyone on my back.

Now I’ll sign off and count the minutes until I can throw out that furniture. Pray for my success.

Unless Motel Reservations Count

I am now so close to the closing on the new house, I have had to make a motel reservation. I won’t say the name of the motel, but I wish I could, because I would recommend all of you stay there when traveling in Florida. It’s the cleanest, most well-kept motel in the universe, as far as I know. It doesn’t have rugs! Hardwood (or convincing fake hardwood) all the way. Kiss your allergies goodbye in this place.

The pillows are so nice, I meant to remove the case on one and check the brand. How often can you say that about a motel? And the rooms run about $65 per night.

I still do not have my books packed. I was busy all day with my dad’s affairs, and I will be busy most or all of tomorrow.

I learned something that may be of use to you, if you care for someone who is slipping. You can make them pay you.

Heartless! Right? Well, not really. You may be dealing with someone who needs to have his or her assets reduced for various reasons. Estate tax is one reason. Medicaid eligibility is another. I have been advised to start charging my dad. I don’t know if I like that. I don’t want him telling me the customer is always right.

Here’s something weird. I have a list of people I pray for every day. I’m on the list. I keep praying God will help us not to be borrowers and beggars. I ask him to make us givers and lenders. It looks like he’s listening, because there’s a good chance I may have to lend my dad money so he can buy the new house. How about that! We have a ton of things going on right now, and cash is tied up in this and that, so it may be smarter for him to borrow from me than to spend his own cash.

I should foreclose on him, just to needle him.

Anyway, I thought it was remarkable.

Once your parents hit a certain age, you have to be careful about giving them things and paying for things. Everything they have has the potential to cause aggravation when they die. Besides, your worthless relations are likely to try to take everything you gave your parents.

When my dad’s mother died, my aunts and uncles literally pulled a U-Haul up to her apartment and cleaned it out. I got a crystal angel my dad gave her, and my sister got a porcelain horse.

I’ve learned a whole lot about taxes and estates and so on. You have to have a will, you have to have a power of attorney, you should have a living will, and then on top of all that, you have to think about avoiding probate. A will may not be enough, if you have a sleazoid relative who feels like suing. You may want to have real estate put into a trust so it goes from mom or dad straight to you, just like a joint bank account. My dad’s desire is to give me the house he’s buying. It would be a bummer if he passed away and I got thrown out after caring for him there in his declining years.

Here’s something ridiculous: in the state of Florida, you have to protect your parents’ wills personally. You have to preserve an original will if you want to get anything, and you can’t record it at the courthouse like a power of attorney or a deed.

What if your dad is worth a billion dollars? You could end up a situation where all you have to secure that money is four sheets of flammable paper. But a copy of the will is admissible, right? Yes. If you can find a disinterested witness who can confirm its contents. So you have to find a reliable person, show him the original will, make him learn it, and then hope he outlives your parents.

The answer, of course, is to put the will in a safe deposit box and hope the bank doesn’t burn down. But what if you have to change banks? Every time you get in the car with the will, you risk a very expensive accident.

I’m no estate attorney, but it seems like a smart person would keep copies of the will and have his best friends look at the original, just in case.

I’m not obsessing on my dad’s passing. He’s doing fine. But dealing with his assets and helping him buy a house and sell other properties has brought financial matters to the forefront of my attention. Joining a caregiver’s forum accentuated them even more. There are horror stories out there.

My grandfather died with a very bad will, and it screwed up the whole family. There are hard feelings. Some relatives have behaved badly. Belongings that should have gone to other people magically turned up in their homes. My aunt sued my cousins over an insurance policy. It may seem crass to get into the particulars of estate planning, but if you don’t, a loved one’s death may be the match that burns the family down.

I rarely hear from my relatives. They have holiday dinners without my dad and me. No invitations. I can understand why my sister isn’t invited. It would be like dumping a bag of angry snakes on everyone. But I haven’t done anyone wrong.

Too bad. I miss them. I miss Kentucky. But I can’t unburn what poor planning burned.

Soon I will be living in a place where people hang American flags on their houses and end emails with “Have a Blessed Day.” I will be able to shoot rifles from my front porch. I will be five minutes from Cracker Barrel. I’ll have a yard big enough to require a motor vehicle to tour it. Whatever struggles I have to go through in the next month or two will be well worth it. I’ll get us moved. I’ll get the financial stuff in order. Tiny price to pay.

I look forward to sharing photos of my first northern-Florida front yard pistol targets. Stay tuned.

“Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.”

The good news keeps coming. It’s amazing how God gives you relief when you start thinking about his priorities and trying to tell the truth about yourself.

As people who read the blog know, my dad is buying a large property in northern Florida, and I will be the major domo. He will be Robin Masters, and I will be Higgins. With better shorts.

“Remove yourself from Mr. Masters’ lawn or I shall release the lads.”

Yesterday I was talking to the realtor about a survey, and the realtor pointed something out. The northern boundary of the land–the second-longest boundary–is bordered by an 85-foot-wide strip that runs its entire length. The strip is wooded, and it is made up of two parts, each of which belongs to a different neighbor. It was intended to be two driveways, to provide access to their land. Bonus for me: they decided not to build driveways. There was no reason to. There is already a public road that reaches their land, and they don’t have to pay to maintain it.

This means I have an 85-foot-thick barrier of woods between me and my neighbor to the north, and it will remain wooded for the foreseeable future. Another possibility: I could buy the strips eventually and keep people off for good. No one will ever want them except me and my neighbor to the north.

This is the biggest blessing I could have hoped for, short of a spray that makes neighbors evaporate.

Of course, my neighbors are probably great. I have a bad attitude toward neighbors because I’ve lived in Miami, listening to Celia Cruz through my windows at 1 a.m. and having neighbors’ party guests park all over my yard without asking.

There is also very bad news. I am still listening to continuing legal education materials. Right now, it’s a discussion of the process of altering the Florida constitution. It’s a bunch of men and one woman. The men are okay, but the woman screeches like Gloria Allred sitting on a red-hot spoon. You can probably hear her as I type this. Somewhere in the feminist manifesto, it says men won’t respect you unless your voice sounds like a subway train hitting the brakes. She who talks loudest is respected most.

Life doesn’t actually work that way, but the notion obviously sells.

How low can I turn this down without secret snooping bar software squealing on me? My God. This woman has to be single.

Please shut up. Let someone else talk. Please, lady. I’ll stop manspreading. Whatever it takes.

When I turn her down to the point where I’m not in agony, I can’t hear the men.

“YARP YARP YARP YARP LEGAL LANDSCAPE YARP FACEBOOK YARP YARP YARP ESTROGEN.”

Did Beethoven really go deaf, or did he jam conductor’s batons through his eardrums so he could finally concentrate on his work? Was he married? I don’t even know.

“YARP YARP YARP YARP I’LL GET YOU MY PRETTY.”

I’m going to tough it out. This video is “only” 2.5 hours long, and you get 3 general credits and 1 ethics credit. Ethics credits are the hardest to find. It’s a shame you can’t steal them.

I’m going to pause it after I’m halfway through. I have limits.

I’m still not done packing my books. I’m up to 29 boxes. I couldn’t pack them all. I have to have something to read until the move. I figure I’ll hold 50 books back. Once I’m done with the books, things should speed up, because instead of doing an item-by-item inventory, I can just dump things in boxes and apply labels like “KITCHEN.”

Anyhow, things are going pretty smoothly, given that I have no help whatsoever. I cannot wait to kiss this place goodbye, and by “kiss,” I mean “spit on the ground while shaking my fists.”

Back to CLE. Surely things will get better. Surely they tased this lady at some point.

Have a great day.

More

This is funny. I texted another lawyer.

Me: Found a bunch of free CLE. Almost as wonderful as free enemas.

Her: I think I’d prefer the enemas.

Me: I checked. The bar won’t give credit for enemas.

Her: That’s bc those are useful tools.

Then later:

Me: Enemas are brief.

Her: And more productive.

Everyone hates CLE.

Moving Strategy Gradually Takes Shape

Plans for my move are progressing. Today’s big step: joining a dementia caregiver forum.

The new house has a crazy-big upstairs, and that’s where I plan to establish my headquarters. The downstairs will be arranged to suit my dad and his needs and pleasures. That means new living room furniture and the largest TV currently known to man.

Because the furniture will be new, I will want it to have the best possible shot at staying clean and undamaged. I don’t want to name the types of contaminants that can get on furniture in situations like this; you can probably figure that out. I realized there were millions of other people dealing with this problem, so instead of reinventing the wheel, I should reach out, via forum, and see what has worked for others.

I am fine with the fact that the downstairs will be maybe…not a prime example of the Martha Stewart ethos. That’s okay. I’m a man, and I am fine in a house with no indoor plants and no wall decorations. I think the best wallpaper is tile. But I want the furniture to be something better than Ikea, and I don’t want people to smell anything when they walk in the front door.

I’m amazed at how God has provided for me. I looked at a ton of properties, so they tend to blend together in my head. I no longer have distinct memories of every room in every house. I have the plans for the new house, and I see that it’s almost as if it were designed for me.

The house has a huge master suite on the ground floor, and it’s beside the kitchen. Problem, right? No. The bedroom is between the kitchen and bathroom, so if anything unfortunate happens in the bathroom, there will be three doors between it and the air of the kitchen. Yes, three. The bathroom has a toilet room with its own door. You walk in the bathroom, close the door, walk into the toilet closet, close the door, and get down to business. That’s civilized compartmentalization.

No matter what happens in that little room, I should be able to kill it by mopping it with bleach two or three times a week. If it damages the walls, so be it. That can be fixed in the future.

The upstairs has a “bonus room” which is…get this…thirty-four feet long. I thought it was more like fifteen by twenty. Big TV which also serves as a monitor, couch, two chairs, exercise bikes, stereo…paradise. And the top of the stairs serves as a choke point for killing zombies as they approach.

Oh, yeah. Are you kidding? Bring that on.

Even with my disgusting packrat habits, clutter should be a thing of the past. I should have ample room for my 93 tons of books. In addition to the bonus room, the downstairs has a study.

I am getting clarity on the workshop dilemma. I have two garages to choose from (attached and detached). I have learned that the attached garage isn’t all that big, so instead of dividing my power tools between buildings, I think the best course is to jam everything in the detached garage. It sort of makes sense. You don’t want to have to walk back and forth between two shops all day, and I don’t want to have to buy a second big compressor.

This would leave the house’s garage empty. What do you put in a garage, if not giant machine tools? Surely not vehicles. That would be asinine.

I can put a second set of house-only tools together and put them in the attached garage, so I don’t have to walk outside every time I need a screwdriver. Then, of course, I’ll need a third set for the upstairs, so I don’t have to walk down the staircase, and then I’ll need a fourth set for my bedroom.

Too much?

I was thinking the bonus room, soon to be known as the Oberbunker, needed a convertible couch, but there will be a couple of vacant bedrooms, so maybe it’s a stupid idea. Convertible couches are heavy and uncomfortable anyway.

Maybe a better name is “Masada West.” How about “The Fortress of Rectitude”?

“Rapture Staging Area.” “Base Camp.”

I know what can go in the garage. The nasty, awful lawnmower. Which probably won’t even have A/C. It really looks like I will have to learn lawn-mowing. Maybe Udacity has a course.

With any luck, I’ll have the hygiene problems solved today or tomorrow. I hope other caregivers can help me with my questions. It will be wonderful to have something resembling a plan.

Guess I’ll pack more books today. More than ever, I regret learning to read.

Boxing Day 2017

Reality is sinking in, and for once in my life, that’s a good thing. I am really leaving Miami. I need to start packing!

I’ve been stupid enough to be present at maybe 15 moves in the last seven or eight years, so I have learned a lot. Here are some rules I plan to observe:

1. Small boxes. You have to be an idiot to put more than 30 pounds in one armload. I have seen people take boxes big enough for large microwave ovens and toss books into them until they were full. Guess what a box like that weighs? Maybe eighty pounds. No.

2. Computerized inventory. Number the boxes, list what’s in them (fairly well), and put the list in a computer file. Do not use a legal pad. Trust me on this.

3. Remove the contents of all drawers and box them up. I have seen people tape their drawers shut and ship their furniture full of heavy junk.

4. Throw out, sell, or give away everything you don’t love. My dad doesn’t know it, but the Salvation Army is coming for about half of his furniture next week. It’s too crappy to move. They will also receive his golf clubs. At 85, he is not going to be hitting the links any time soon, unless it’s the sausage links at Bob Evans.

5. No Hefty bags. Come on.

6. Buy and bring every conceivable moving aid. I have a couple of handtrucks, plus those weird arm strap things, which really work.

7. Loose items are not acceptable. It may seem like it’s smart to jam your loose stuff between your big items as padding, but it will just get smashed and covered with moving grime, and people will step on it while you’re moving.

8. Never lift or move anything heavy. This is what movers are for. If you’re poor and desperate, you do what you have to, but if you can afford help, LEAVE THE PIANO ALONE.

9. If you have to move anything in an uncovered vehicle, wrap it securely, because it WILL rain. I don’t care if you’re moving in the Gobi Desert. And anything that can move will fly off into the road.

10. Pack the fragile stuff yourself, and try to move it yourself. Movers do not care about your crystal. They just want to get paid. Let them handle the books and furniture, and even then, stand and stare at them while they move it. Have a conspicuous pistol bulge in your pocket, and try to look mentally unstable. From time to time, look up at the ceiling, laugh maniacally, and yell, “YEAH, THAT’S A GOOD ONE, ROY!” Don’t explain.

When I left Texas, I got royally dinged on the price of boxes. I needed 22 small boxes for books, and it wasn’t like I could go into HEB (the grocery store) and find empty soup boxes just the right size, waiting to be taken. I bought boxes at U-Haul because I was desperate. I forget what they charged. Probably fifty dollars each. Maybe I’m exaggerating. Home Depot sells little boxes for 82 cents. I can swing that. I could drive all over town trying to save fifty dollars, but…I won’t. I have no wife and no kids, and my friends will be very little help. I am not going to suffer more than I have to.

Today I plan to pack books. I’m going to get Home Depot boxes and tape. I’ll identify the books I can live without for the next two months, and in the boxes they will go. I wonder what they weigh. A lot. That’s for sure. I will also try to pack my CD’s, which I have not used in maybe two years. MP3’s changed my life.

Some of my friends are offering to help as I write this. Maybe I underestimate them. I hope so.

I will be back before long, probably with a photo of a ziggurat constructed of boxes of books.

I Can’t Say Hasta la Vista, so Let’s Just Say Adios

I’m in shock. I am moving to northern Florida. More importantly, I am LEAVING MIAMI FOREVER. The deal has been concluded.

So that’s it. No fireworks. No earthquakes. Just an email and a phone call from a realtor, and my ordeal is over. Shouldn’t someone be throwing me a party right now? Shouldn’t the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse be visible in the sky?

I tried to make this happen for so long, and I kept running into walls. Then I changed my prayers and started focusing on inner change. I started casting things out and asking God to do whatever he wanted in me, without restraint. Now the chains are broken. It was fast.

Today my dad and I met a boat broker and took my dad’s boat out to make sure it ran. We couldn’t get the generator started. We decided to go without it. The starboard engine wouldn’t shut down when we ran the engines to check the transmission oil. The broker found the engine-room shutoff and got it under control. The steering was out of fluid, and our bottle of fluid was nearly dry. A guy across the dock had a fresh bottle in a cabinet on his boat. The broker’s drone malfunctioned and flipped into Biscayne Bay, so I took pictures from a dock.

Got it done.

While we were fooling with the boat, my realtor up north called with the good news.

Now I have to move money around and get ready for our closing. What’s it going to feel like, sitting in that beautiful house, far from Miami, taking the keys from the seller? Overwhelming. Like watching the gates of heaven close behind me.

I don’t want to have unrealistic expectations of my new home, but I promise it will be much better than Miami. The people are nice. They speak English. Most are conservative. Most are Christian. There isn’t much traffic. I will have lots of land to disappear on. I will even have seasons, and the air won’t smell like wet socks every day.

With any luck I’ll be dead before America goes completely to hell.

I can’t absorb it. I may sit and look at pictures of the new place all day.

Thanks for your prayers. If you’re stuck in a bad place, my advice is to consider God’s advice. Put his kingdom and his righteousness first, and he will fix your problems. You don’t have to start an orphanage. You don’t have to go to Africa and be burned alive by communist guerillas while trying to convert the lost. Just work on your heart and mind, and the rest will follow.

Peace out!

I Can Almost Smell Freedom

Things are not looking too bad in the realm of top-level real estate negotiations.

Two days ago, I submitted an offer on a place. The seller did not drive down to Miami and spit in my face (unlike last time), nor did he fill my mailbox with horse manure. He came down to nearly to the maximum price I wanted to pay, and he asked for one concession. He wanted to be able to take two weeks to move his junk after closing. That’s fine with me, because I dread the actual process of moving, and two weeks will give me time to procrastinate. I will not procrastinate because I feel bad about leaving Miami. I will procrastinate even though I am eager to leave, because I dread dealing with moving.

I sent back a counter-counteroffer, not too far from his price, and I think he will take it. That is disturbing. It means I will be leaving Miami, for real.

I do not like this place. I want out of this place. Nonetheless, it will be jarring to leave permanently. If you’ve ever seen a video of a zoo animal that was released into the wild after 15 years in a cramped cage, you’ve seen me, getting out of the car at the new place.

Prison officials use the word “institutionalized” to describe prisoners who have a hard time leaving prison. Even though they hate prison, it’s what they’re used to. They know how to get by there. Miami is full of poisonous memories for me, but I am used to it. I am not a rock. I feel something when I think about leaving. I feel distressed about the way everything went wrong here. I am burdened with the sense of waste and the wish that my life here could have worked.

Still leaving! Don’t fool yourself. As soon as I see daylight, I’m gone.

I am not trying to hammer the seller. I think I could do better, but all I care about is getting a good deal. I do not have to get a killer bargain. As a Christian, I would like to be something of a blessing to the people I deal with. I don’t want them to be miserable because I took advantage of them. I think about that when I buy things off Craigslist these days. I pass on deals that are too good.

Sometimes you can’t help but get a killer bargain. Some people are cursed with poverty and failure, and they will push you to take things at low prices. For example, someone with debt may need to unload something fast in order to raise cash, and because it’s something you don’t particularly need or want, he will have to cut the price way down in order to make it interesting to you at all. You may buy a thing like that as a favor to the other person. Generally, though, I don’t feel I have to draw blood every time I buy anything.

It’s unnerving to deal with someone else’s money. I do my best to involve my dad, but he keeps saying, “It’s all yours now. I trust you implicitly.” You can’t imagine how strange it is to hear that.

I think I’m doing okay. I will be coming in way under the appraised price on this house, and I’m coming up with ways to save a bundle on taxes on his other properties. If he didn’t have me, he would be in a world of trouble right now. I’m sure there are many people who could do a better job, but I believe I’m on top of things.

By the end of the week, I should know if this deal will work, and I will be amazed if it doesn’t.

Leaving will not be complicated. I have two friends to say goodbye to. One will even help me out with moving. No church.

There isn’t a lot more to say today. I hope to have good news soon.

More

I watched the video, above, of a bear that was rescued from a bile farm, splashing around in a pond at his new home. Suddenly I felt a wave of emotion. I felt the weight of every rotten thing that ever happened to me in Miami. I didn’t see this coming.

When you go through a hard experience, you don’t let yourself feel all of the pain, even if the experience lasts decades. When it comes to an end, the feelings make it through your defenses. I should have expected it.

I won’t have a pond at the new place, but the house has a pool.

I will make do.

My Beef With Miami Coming to an End

Good news on the housing front. I am putting in an offer on a second house in northern Florida. I can’t steal Internet photos of it and put them up, because nuts would be able to search for the photos and find the address, but I can use some shots they can’t track down.

That’s the workshop. Here is what I like about that, apart from the fact that it’s a big honking workshop: it has a porch. A SHADED porch. Okay, so you spend your morning breaking things, failing to use tools correctly, making a mess, and sustaining minor injuries. All the things guys like to do in their shops. Then in the afternoon, you open the side door, lift the lid on your cooler, grab a Sierra Nevada, and sit in your swing, staring at the confused steers that ground your agricultural tax exemption.

That, my friends, is living.

Here’s another interesting shot.

That is the “wet weather pond.” The listing agent claims it’s a feature. I would think of it as more as a pedestrian hazard/snake and mosquito breeding pit, but then I am a suburb person. There is a big berm right near it, and I’m guessing the berm came from the pond, so that would mean someone actually built this hole deliberately. I don’t know about that, but I know what a berm means: no gun range fees.

Here is a partial view of the cleared side of the property. Here is what it contains, that I like: distance. I can be on this lot, a minimum of say 120 yards from anyone who is a) yammering in Spanish and angry with me for not speaking a foreign language in my own country, or b) just generally being rude to me. In practice, that distance would typically be more like 175 miles, but 120 yards is about as small as it could get in a worst-case scenario.

Here’s another great shot.

That’s one of my driveways. Notice that it does not go anywhere. That’s the beauty part. Aggravating people will make it 15 feet down the driveway and then find themselves in dirt and leaves, behind a gate which I will probably have welded shut. There is a gate that works, up by the house. I may weld that one shut, too.

Now I know what to call the place. “GET THE HELL OFF MY LAWN FARMS.” If not that, then “GRAN TORINO ACRES.”

“No. I don’t believe Steve is interested in buying any Girl Scout Cookies.”

Why do people name their farms “farms”? If you have one farm, it’s not “Sunny Hill Farms.” It’s “Sunny Hill FARM.”

I am hoping I may be able to retain the farm’s staff. Here they are on a break.

Actually, they may be working in that photo.

The lady who showed us the property called those creatures “bulls,” but I suspect they have had some minor surgery, along the lines of what Bruce Jenner recently had. It would be a little odd to put two bulls together on one lot, even in 2017. I have spent most of my life in the suburbs, but I am pretty sure bulls hate each other.

My grandfather had two in one herd, though. I guess I don’t know everything.

This ought to work out. The appraisal came in close to the asking price, so the owners aren’t living in a fantasy world. I want a little money off, because the place has been on the market for 400 days, but I don’t expect them to give it away. With God’s help, we will have a contract next week.

How do you get a property inspected from 300 miles away? I guess the owner will deal with the inspector. They always miss things, anyway. Inspectors make you feel good, and then they leave you holding the bag. A lot of the money we pay to professional people is mainly intended to make us feel good.

Getting out of South Florida is like being released from hell. By that I mean I felt like I was trapped here. My dad agreed to get out four years ago (when I started looking to move and leave him here), and then reasons to delay kept coming up. Then he forgot our agreement. Now he’s all about leaving. He hates Miami. It’s like it was his idea to leave.

I’m going to sell every last thing we have here, as soon as tax considerations permit, and I will cut every remaining tie. After that, forget this place. Let global warming come and drown it. I’ll be safe and secure, at a lofty elevation of nearly 80 feet. Like the Grinch on Mount Crumpet.

“MOUNT CRUMPET FARMS.”

If, for some reason, this place doesn’t fall into my hands, I have another one lined up, and it’s even more rural. I’m talking Deliverance without the perversion and inbreeding (I assume). That place will suit me just as well. It has a workshop you could build a space shuttle in.

I’m thinking of getting a remailing service. The Florida Bar requires me to maintain a mailing address, but I don’t practice, and I don’t want spammers and idiots bothering me. For $15 per month, you can have your mail sent to a service, and they scan it and send you pictures. Then you tell them to throw it out.

Hannibal Lecter used remailing services. How could I ask for a better referral? I’ll see if I can have my mail sent to “Get Lost, Florida.”

It’s an exciting day. God really comes through when you start getting with the program. Unfortunately, most people can’t do that, because no one is telling them what the program is. Preachers just beg for money and drive people into bankruptcy.

I hope soon I can post a photo of me enjoying a beer with my staff, either on the hoof or medium-rare with Bearnaise sauce. Pray for me.

Only Three Inches of Paper Between me and Freedom

I feel I should update the world on my progress with the Columbia College Literature Humanities reading list. I am tunneling my way out of it like Abbe Faria in the Chateau d’If. Unlike him, I expect to emerge soon.

Paradise Lost is behind me, so I feel sort of the opposite of the way Adam felt when he got kicked out of Eden. Freedom, at least from that stage of my torment, is sweet. Reading books that (sort of) make sense, and then running into Milton, is like digging through soft sand and then hitting rocks. Milton was a terrible writer who punished the reader with his pedantry. Enough said about that.

Now I’m bogged down in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It’s the Nineteenth Century equivalent of a chick flick, and it’s nearly as painful to sit through. It’s about a bunch of upper (but not too upper) class British people who have nothing to do but gossip. There are lots of female characters in the book, and Austen shows her gender no mercy, putting all of its characteristic flaws in a blazing spotlight. Her women are petty, shallow, conceited, vain, spiteful, envious, conniving, manipulative, deceitful, vengeful, cruel, and a bit stupid. That list gets longer every time I review it.

I don’t know why the book was included. They could have chosen Dickens. Well, I’m wrong. I know why it was included. Jane Austen was a great literary titan because she managed to write passable books in spite of the monumental handicap of being female. That, surely, is the reason she was included. Affirmative action. She’s the Gal Gadot of her age.

Tangent time. What’s with all the fuss about Gal Gadot? If you don’t know who she is, let me burden you with some useless knowledge: she is the star of a recent Wonder Woman movie. People are acting like they’ve never seen a woman in a movie before. They gush over her. It’s silly. There are tons of women with female protagonists, and some of these protagonists are based on actual human beings, not the absurd fantasies of the least talented men in the fiction industry. Some of the movies have discernible depth, which is not something you have to fear encountering when you watch Ms. Gadot.

Even comic book movies have had strong female characters. There was a whole Cat Woman movie. You’re lucky if you didn’t see it, but it exists. The X-Men movies are jam-packed with scary women, including one who is so strong she’s a sort of manic-depressive god. The fuss over Wonder Woman is bizarre and probably due to some supernatural cause.

When you work too hard to promote what you perceive to be a disadvantaged group, often you end up exposing your sincere, hidden belief that people in that group are inferior. If women are as talented as men, professors shouldn’t have to force people to read their books.

I don’t know what Austen’s book is about. I’m something like 70 pages in, and nothing has happened. A single girl named Elizabeth has met a man named Darcy, and he is too rich to marry her. She has the hots for a young army officer named Wickham. Darcy’s dad left Wickham an income, and Darcy took it away from him. Elizabeth thinks Darcy is a filthy beast. Darcy is trying not to fall in love with her, but it’s not working. That’s all I know. Aren’t you glad you didn’t have to read 70 pages to learn that?

Maybe she will turn out to be wrong about Darcy, and Wickham will have some awful secret. Maybe they caught him prancing round in Darcy’s mom’s underthings. Maybe Wickham is a great guy, and Darcy will use his wealth and power to get him sent to Crimea or wherever and blown to bits. Then Elizabeth will marry Darcy, not knowing what happened, and then Wickham will turn out to be alive after all, and he will come back and expose the whole mess. Like Edmond Dantes. Then Wonder Woman will jump out of her invisible plane, land at Darcy’s house, and punch him in the mouth.

Don’t give me any spoilers. Don’t make this book any more boring than it already is.

I assume Pride and Prejudice will turn out to be a condemnation of the British caste system, along with capitalism, the church, God, apple pie, heterosexuality, fossil fuels, and accurate gender pronouns. Lit. Hum. has helped me understand how long academia’s hostility to everything good or traditional has existed.

My experiences with the Lit. Hum. reading list make me feel like I hate literature. I’m always saying the books are boring. Herodotus was okay, though, and Shakespeare was great. I haven’t been a lover of literature since I was about 25, but I don’t hate it. I just hate most of the books on the list!

I’m looking at the list. I didn’t mind Thucydides. Euripides was not that painful. Boccaccio started out okay and then got repetitious and dull. Dante could have been worse. These, along with Shakespeare and Genesis, were my positive experiences.

I don’t have any insecurity about saying I don’t like most of these books, or about questioning their merit. My record proves I’m smart (considerably smarter than the vast majority of literature professors). I’m educated. I have reasonably good taste. I don’t read trash like Dan Brown and John Grisham, for the same reason I don’t have coloring books.

You don’t have to think Cervantes is a good writer in order to be intelligent or informed.

Blech. Cervantes. I wish Trump would put a copy of Don Quixote over Vince McMahon’s face in the now-famous video and release it again.

I want to put Jane Austen behind me, but beyond that frying pan lies the fire of Dostoevsky. I have never been able to finish one of his books. I only tried once, I admit, but I failed. I was too busy going to tractor pulls and not believing in global warming.

Austen is not hard to read, thank God. It’s just unpleasant to visit her world. It’s like spending time with your wife’s friends, whom you can’t stand. “Oh, come on. It’s just one night. So what if Rain won’t let us go to restaurants that serve meat, and she makes us all do yoga breathing before we touch our salt-free Quorn patties?”

I can get through Austen as long as I have no distractions. This weekend I took her to the car wash, and I tried to read her book for maybe 45 minutes. It was very hard to do. People around me were talking, I could hear the radio, and there were windows to look out of. Everything around me was more interesting than the book. To read Jane Austen efficiently, you need to lie in a sensory deprivation tank and have the words projected on the ceiling.

Audio books! Why didn’t I think of that! I’m going to look into it. It’s legit! If I were blind, Columbia wouldn’t expect me to read real books. I am so doing this.

So far, there has not been one laugh in Austen’s book. Now that I think about it, there have been no laughs in any of the Lit. Hum. books. King Lear has some jests, but they’re not funny. They’re cruel. Herodotus was lighthearted but not really funny. Cervantes is supposed to be funny, but he’s not.

Academics are sour people who enjoy bringing other people’s spirits down. They are humorless and sanctimonious; always hoping for a revolution so they can put the “right” people up against the wall. I wonder if the lack of humor in these books is a reflection of their grey and mildewed inner workings.

It probably is. When I didn’t know God, my inner workings were greyer than grey. They were moldy, damp, tenebrous, and cold.

“Great” literature is generally gloomy and pessimistic. It’s whiny. The world of fiction is an unrealistic world where God is absent and hopelessness is realism. To God-hating academics, it must be a comforting affirmation of all their self-destructive notions.

The reading list calls for Virginia Woolf, but I canned her and inserted William Golding. I malewashed the reading list. Good thing, I guess. Woolf was a miserable person, and she drowned herself. She didn’t do it quickly, either. She prolonged and savored her suffering. She filled her pockets with rocks and walked into a river. Her book must be a knee-slapper. I’ll bet Golding’s black tale of murderous children is cheerier.

Imagine walking into a river with rocks in your pockets, thinking you were ending your misery, and waking immediately in hell, with an eternity of worse suffering before you and no one to praise you for your toxic talent. This is probably what happened to Virginia Woolf. I wonder what she would say if she could come back and be a guest lecturer at Columbia College. It must be strange to be in hell and know that people back on earth are buying your books and heaping compliments on you.

Wherever you go, heaven or hell, the people you influence will follow you, and knowing that will make the experience even better or much worse.

When Woolf learned that the poet T.S. Eliot had accepted salvation, she wrote this: “I mean, there’s something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.”

That’s chilling. Woolf is not living, she is always near fire, and she believes in God more than you and I do.

Dead to the flesh, alive to God. And vice-versa.

I don’t recommend Jane Austen, except for the purpose of broadening yourself or propping up a short table leg. If you like soap operas, you will probably enjoy it. It’s not for me.

AUDIO!

Check this out! The whole miserable book is on Youtube! I am saved!

On Earth as it is in Heaven

I find metaphors for the supernatural all around me.

Lately I have been getting huge mileage out of “casting out.” I wrote about this. I cast this and that out…of myself. It works. I feel better. I get more done. I’m losing weight. My self-control has improved tremendously. Things keep going my way.

I didn’t know anything of use when I was young, but now I know we are surrounded by stupid people, vicious spirits, and our own treacherous flesh, and they never stop trying to wear us down. They tempt us, discourage us, make us ill…around the clock, every day. When you speak defeat to your problems and enemies and use the power of casting out, you aren’t doing anything new. You’re doing exactly what your enemies have been doing to you, continuously, since before you were born.

My telephone situation reminds me of this.

I take care of all my dad’s business now, and I use his phone and his office. It used to be intolerable. He had given his phone number and God knows what other personal information to hordes of hostile people who wanted to scam him. The phone rang all day, and sometimes, the calls worked (at least when he was in charge). A company called Mellberg got him to look at annuity plans.

Do you know what an annuity is? I’ll explain it to you. Say you have ten million dollars. You give it to an annuity scammer, and he pays you $800,000 until you die. Then he keeps the remainder. Guess what your wife and kids get? Nothing.

It’s a beautiful scam. You find someone who is almost certain to die within five years, and you convince him he’s getting a guaranteed income for life. Then if all goes well, he dies a year later, and everything he has is yours.

Let’s say my dad’s first name is Mel. People would call, and when I answered the phone, warm, friendly voices would say, “Mel?” As if they were his best pals. They had some bad experiences when I answered the phone.

Scammer: Mel?

Me: Who are you and why are you calling?

Scammer: Is this Mel?

Me: Don’t you know Mel’s voice?

Scammer: Who are you?

Me: I’m the guy who answered the phone. What are you calling about?

They really hate me.

A big percentage of the calls come from India and Pakistan. Sometimes I answer the phone with that in mind.

Phone: RINNNG.

Me: (Slumdog voice) Hello? Hello, Devadip? Is that you, my good friend? Hello? I am wanting to speak to the chai wala.

Sometimes I order the chicken vindaloo.

They get very angry, which is okay with me, because it may encourage them to get real jobs where they don’t annoy people and steal their savings. Also, it’s really funny to take a chance and drop that bait out into space and then hear an outraged voice with an Indian accent.

The guys who use my dad’s first name are typically selling “energy investments.” Sometimes I beat them to the pitch.

Scammer: Mel?

Me: (cheerful, booming voice) HI! Are you selling ENERGY INVESTMENTS?

Right away they know they’ve stepped in it.

They’re like the Omaha Steaks people. Thankfully, that company seems to be doing poorly. Their “franchisees” borrow money to buy refrigerated pickups, and then they ring your doorbell. Their clever trick is to start walking backwards when you open the door. They say, “Hi, I’m from Omaha Steaks, and I have some great products in my truck for you!” Something like that. The idea is that you’ll naturally start following them. I watch them walk back into the yard, say, “Not interested! Thanks!”, and shut the door.

I know someone who bought their steaks. They are little, thin, frozen steaks I would only use if I needed meat for soup. Not good at all.

It’s too bad, because the franchisees aren’t just scammers; they’ve been scammed, themselves. They have to buy all that junk, and what percentage of them make a profit? You know what happens. They and their relatives eat the food, and the trucks get repossessed. I can just hear the higher-ups in the Ponzi (sorry: “multi-level marketing) hierarchy talking to them. “You just walk backward to your truck, and people will pay you ten dollars for a three-dollar steak! We only take 65%! The rest is PURE PROFIT!”

Perhaps I am wrong. I say that so they can’t sue me.

If I get sued, when we approach the courthouse, I’ll start walking backward to my car to make them settle. “I have a crisp, fresh five-dollar bill I want to show you!”

Oh no…I’m Googling, and I see claims that the truck people don’t really work for Omaha Steaks. In that case, I’m sure Omaha Steaks is a fine, reputable company that sells wonderful products (which I will never, ever buy, because I know what a grocery store is).

I wonder if there was anything bad in the meat I ate.

Anyhow, Satan’s children are just like him. They use the same techniques. Spirits buzz around us like flies all day, trying to get us to allow them to land and feed. Scammers call old people all day, for the exact same purpose.

I hooked my dad and myself up with Nomorobo, a service that runs all calls through servers that keep the scammers from getting through. It’s almost fun when a scammer makes it to my ear, because then I can report his number to Nomorobo, and after that, he has problems. If you report a number to the Feds, nothing at all happens. The government is very stupid. Nomorobo is a private company, so it gets things done.

Reporting a number to the feds is like calling the cops when you’ve been burglarized. The cops show up, take notes, and shoot a couple of pictures. Then they go back to the police station, do nothing whatsoever to help you, and wait for their pensions to kick in so they can buy motorboats. As far as I know, except for murder, most crimes are solved only when a civilian calls, turns someone in, gives directions to the criminal’s house, and threatens to blog it if they don’t get action. I have known a lot of crime victims, and I have never known anyone whose property was found and returned by the police. If the feds are doing anything about scam calls apart from making a list no one looks at, I am unaware of it.

I’m looking at a log of calls I’ve been blessed to miss. Some company calling itself UPLIFT calls over and over. The caller ID number is (214) 453-68xx. No idea what they want. When you see that Nomorobo is blocking a caller, you can block it manually as well, and then you don’t even hear one ring when they call. Too funny.

I also get calls from Grangeville ID, at 208-494-16xx. No idea who it is. The log says, “Grangeville, Grangeville, Grangeville.” It must be pretty important.

“Monetary Gold” is another caller I will never speak to directly. Maybe it’s a Jewish guy, and his first name is “Monetary.”

Demons are a lot like the scammers my dad let into his life. They come in through doors we open. You don’t have to invite them. Unfortunately, by the time I understood how things worked, I had broadcast invitations throughout the known universe.

I look forward to getting rid of my old phone number as well as my dad’s. Then Devadip and Bakhtiar can call someone else and pretend to know them. “By Jove, are you sure this is not my good friend Mel? It seems like only yesterday that we were bathing together in the Ganges.”

I will keep closing the windows and doors and spraying fly repellant. I suggest you do the same.

Serve me Cold Decaf at Your Peril

The Terror of McDonald’s is at it again.

I have written about my annoying problems at McDonald’s. When I forget to get breakfast food, I end up filling the gap with McMuffins, and then I run into the Perplexing Wall of McDonald’s Incompetence. Chick-fil-A manages to get minimum wage employees to treat customers like royalty, but McDonald’s can’t get them to brew fresh coffee every half an hour or give you what you ordered.

As you will see if you read earlier posts, I found my bad experiences at McDonald’s to have deeper meaning than one would expect. I believe God told me it was a bad idea to drink caffeine, and because McDonald’s employees kept drugging me with regular coffee (because it’s just too hard to keep decaf on hand), I had nights when I didn’t sleep well. I wrote about a day when I felt crabby and irritable because McDonald’s had dosed me.

Today a friend called and asked if he could come over for prayer. I still had not gotten my breakfast supplies together, so I went to Mickey D’s before his visit. There was no one at the register. A girl sauntered by, thumbing her smartphone. She stood at the register, texting. I asked her if she was taking my order, and she said “no” and went about her business. I decided to try again. I asked her if ANYONE was taking my order.

She walked over to a place where she could see into the kitchen, and she started yelling at “Areli,” who was busy in the back doing something the first girl didn’t approve of. She kept saying, “Really, Areli? Really?” Eventually, Areli emerged and took my order, and I went home. I didn’t give anyone a hard time. Not even the classic Miami woman who came in and tried to get in front of me while I was waiting for Areli.

The store was cleaner than usual. Strange.

My friend was hungry when I picked him up, so we went by the same McDonald’s. Areli took his order, and I stood back and waited. A neatly dressed man came up and asked if I had been waited on. I said I was just waiting, and I expected him to place an order.

He approached me again, and I said I was waiting for my friend. “And waiting…and waiting.” To my surprise, he started apologizing and told me he was the owner.

This explained the sudden cleanliness.

I felt like I had an audience with President Trump. I started delivering my laundry list of complaints. No fresh decaf, mainly. I told him the story of Areli and the smartphone. I wasn’t trying to get kids fired. I was trying to let a businessman know what was happening to his investment, and I was hoping some day I might get some decent coffee.

I told him nothing happened when I commented on the McDonald’s websites, and he said that stuff takes forever to get to the owners.

My friend stood and took all this in. We had been talking about the slack attitude of the employees on the way to the store. After we left, he started talking about the obvious way God was favoring me.

Does this mean everything is fixed at the local McDonald’s? I don’t know, but it definitely means I can’t go back for at least a month. Not unless I want boogers in my food.

I don’t feel bad for the kids. They needed to have their butts kicked. A good lecture will make them better employees, and it will result in their making more money later in life. Or it will weed out the hopeless; the stubborn mules who drag everyone else down.

It was a very strange experience. It made me realize I had never been in a really clean McDonald’s before, and that I had never seen a McDonald’s owner who gave a crap.

I thought it was an interesting experience, so here it is for your enjoyment.

Today I bought food, so I’m all set for the next two weeks or so. By then, maybe Areli will have forgiven me.

Cocoa is the New Coffee

I don’t want to encourage anyone in error, but I believe the Mormons are right about one thing: caffeine is bad news.

God gave me a strong habit of daily prayer in tongues, and the more I did it, the less caffeine I was able to tolerate. I suppose that makes sense. Caffeine is a drug, and we use drugs to compensate for a lack of blessings. If you’re in line with God’s will, you won’t need drugs to get you out of bed in the morning or get you through the workday.

It’s funny how used we have gotten to taking this powerful drug. It’s as if it’s completely normal to get up in the morning and pour yourself full of something that speeds up your heart rate, jacks up your alertness, raises your blood pressure, and increases your ability to focus. Speed and cocaine do the same things, only better, and no one thinks it’s normal to start the day with several lines of blow.

It’s also funny that people don’t see caffeine as a powerful drug. Eat a tablespoon of instant coffee and see if it’s powerful or not. It will have you climbing the walls. You can overdose on caffeine. People have done it.

Every so often, I go to McDonald’s and get McMuffins to take home. I run out of the stuff I usually eat for breakfast. Problem: the McDonald’s kids don’t make decaf.

McDonald’s doesn’t care about decaf. It’s an afterthought. They don’t police their employees to make sure they have fresh decaf ready all the time. When you order decaf at McDonald’s, you will almost always get it one of three ways: 1. hot and stale and smelling like cat pee, 2. cold and stale, or 3. not decaf. It’s virtually impossible to get real, fresh decaf unless you ask for it and wait a long time for it.

The kids don’t care. They think you can’t tell the difference between decaf and regular. They just want you out of their hair. They’ll give you whatever looks like decaf just to make you shut up. They give me regular coffee all the time. Complaining to the kids doesn’t help, because McDonald’s employees don’t care at all about the quality of their work. Complaining to corporate doesn’t work, because McDonald’s only cares if a franchise makes money on the whole. They’re not going to go in and knock heads just because a few of their customers can’t get a decent beverage.

People who run McDonald’s stores don’t hang around keeping an eye on things. They buy franchises because they want money machines they don’t have to supervise. If you want an owner who cares about your happiness, you’ll have to go to Chick-fil-A, where you will be treated like visiting royalty every time.

There are no Chick-fil-As near me.

Yesterday the McDonald’s kids drugged me again. I was complaining about the perpetual decaf issues. They give you hot food, and then they tell you to wait for decaf to brew. Then you have cold food. They could tell I was not happy, so they drugged me.

I was suspicious, because the fresh “decaf” came out as soon as I complained, but I figured I would be okay. If it was regular, I would take two Benadryls to help me sleep.

I knew something was wrong after I drank the coffee, because I felt too good afterward. I was full of energy and caffeine euphoria. After that, I got what you always get when a stimulant wears off. I was cranky and somewhat depressed. I felt bad for hours.

I went to the corporate website and complained, but I knew I was wasting my time. From now on, I’ll have cocoa, and I’ll make it myself. Coffee makes McDonald’s a lot of money, because it’s practically free to make, but they’ll have to get by without my coffee money.

It’s weird, because all the other restaurants manage to serve people decaf. Denny’s never gets it wrong. The local deli never gets it wrong. Never. It’s not that hard to get right.

Cocoa contains a miniscule amount of caffeine, plus a chemical called theobromine which does not cause caffeine problems. Good enough. And the milk is good for my bones. I drink it every day anyway.

A long time ago, God gave me this: “Caffeine destroys peace.” Yesterday helped me understand how right he is. I was annoyed about things that shouldn’t have annoyed me at all. I was annoyed about being annoyed. I didn’t want it. I fought it. I didn’t want to be cross with innocent people.

I thought about the millions of people in this county who chug Cuban coffee all day. This is espresso with so much sugar it makes it thick. No one even pretends it’s a beverage. It’s just a drug. They sell it in tiny cups that hold about an ounce. Drink it, and get back to installing rain gutters. That’s the Miami way. And Miami is an extremely hostile city. People here are angry all the time.

I wonder how much of America’s anger and violence can be attributed to caffeine and nicotine (another stimulant). When the drugs are working, all is well, but the crash always comes, and then your patience and cheer evaporate.

I gave up cigars because the tiny amount of nicotine I inhaled started keeping me awake at night, and because I felt God wanted me to stop smoking them. I wonder what life is like for addicts who smoke 30 cancer sticks a day, inhaling as deeply as possible to satisfy a burning desire for nicotine. Smokers can be irritable and hard to deal with even when things are going well, and God help you if you’re around one when he can’t get his fix. My mother used to grab butts out of the car ashtray and unroll them to keep her going until she could get to the store.

I would hate to have a drug dependence that started to make me angry at people every 45 minutes.

Before Jesus, people who believed in God were concerned about what they said and did. External things. They couldn’t do much about their inner selves. Jesus demanded more. He wants us to change so the things that well up inside us aren’t black and toxic. Under the old system, it was okay to have a spring of filth inside you as long as you sat on it and restrained it. That’s not how Christianity works. Because we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, we have the power to change our roots. We can change our insides so the evil doesn’t rise up in us in the first place.

Pre-Christian Judaism will help you not to have sex with your neighbor’s wife, but it won’t keep you from thinking about it. Holy-Spirit-led Christianity will help you hate the thought of it.

I thought about things like this while caffeine had me in its grip.

TV is full of lying preachers who tell us to give them money in order to get God to fix our finances. It’s a crock. It makes people poorer. But the New Testament does provide perfect financial advice, and here it is: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” That’s a promise, from God itself. Either it’s true, or God is a liar.

Christians don’t know the Holy Spirit, because there is no one–no person of national prominence–who can teach us about him. I’m sure there are lots of obscure people dispending good advice, but there is not ONE SINGLE well-known preacher who can be trusted. The Pope knows nothing at all; he’s a garden variety socialist. Billy Graham is a nice guy, but he’s not that helpful. Rick Warren teaches pride and self-salvation. The money preachers are just pigs.

We don’t know the Holy Spirit, so we live like pre-Christian Jews. We try to fix ourselves, and we work on external things. We don’t have much confidence in inner change.

If you want things to go well in your life, you’re supposed to be focusing on building his kingdom, and as Jesus said, that kingdom is inside you. The kingdom isn’t a giant, money-stuffed church. It’s not a nation with laws taken from the Bible. It’s God, ruling inside a clean vessel. You have to be a place in which God is comfortable. You have to be a little tabernacle or Ark of the Covenant.

I thought about lust yesterday. Steve Munsey, who knows as much about God as a baboon, says it’s okay to look at women as long as you don’t touch. Jesus said that looking on a woman with lust was inward adultery. In the past, I believed what Munsey believes, so I got in the habit of fantasizing about women. I had a disturbing realization yesterday. I would not want to go anywhere near a porn theater, but I had turned my own mind into one, and I expected God to be comfortable there. How about that?

Here is what Paul said:

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

When I take stimulants, I invite things like anger and cruelty. Of course God dislikes stimulants! God doesn’t want to live on the set of the Jerry Springer show! How could I not have known this?

God’s truths are obvious. As soon as you understand one, you wonder why you didn’t see it sooner.

Last night I thought about the reappearance of Jesus. After the crucifixion, he appeared to the disciples and spent a long time with them, explaining things to them. They knew Jesus. They had traveled with him and worked with him. But when he reappeared, they had no idea who he was. It was as if they were Lois Lane and he was Superman with Clark Kent’s magical glasses. They thought some stranger was talking to them. Then he allowed them to recognize him, and they were shocked to see who their new companion was.

That’s how Christianity works. The truth is obvious and simple, but we can’t see it because we are supernaturally blinded and deafened. When God takes away the barriers, his truth is so plain it’s bewildering.

Lately I have been focusing on inner change more than ever, and it has paid off in natural rewards. I have more time to do what I want. My business affairs take up very little of my time. Problems pop up, and when I prepare to handle them, they disappear, or I find out someone else is taking care of them. Surely this is Jesus, adding “all these things” to me. It has to be true, because it’s what he promised.

It’s a disturbing process in some ways. I don’t know what it’s like to live a truly humble and honest life. I know how to be proud, and I know how to be defeated and full of self-loathing; those things are easy. Now I have to be humble yet untroubled and confident of my future.

I am not a person who is worthy of respect. No one who knew my worst thoughts would respect me. It’s not pleasant to have God remind me of this, but on the other hand, it’s the key to relief. The Bible says God fights the proud (including those who are in denial), and he helps those who have broken hearts and contrite spirits. Help is what I want. A little painful introspection is a small price to pay.

Pride is like a goalkeeper who keeps God from helping us, and humility is a key that opens the door to God. There is always symmetry in the supernatural

I feel bad about what I am and what I have wasted, but my situation is understandable. When I was young, I had absolutely no one to teach me, and that is still true. There isn’t one preacher on earth I care to listen to. I haven’t seen a single one who is even close to right. If they knew what worked, they would be focusing on it and giving practical instructions for making it happen, and they do not do that. I recognize God’s voice, as he said I would. I recognize an imitation.

Thank God for the Holy Spirit. If I had to rely on human beings, I would be as good as damned. We are as filthy and treacherous as rats. At best, we are ignorant. The Holy Spirit knows everything, and he is one hundred percent trustworthy and loyal.

If you rely on drugs, my advice is to go to God and find out why you need them. Something is amiss,and if you admit that, you can find the answer.

I’m going to get used to cocoa. I don’t want to have any more days like yesterday.

TDS Penetrates Better Than Liquid Wrench

Trump Derangement Syndrome gets worse and worse, and it works its way into every area of life.

I belong to a number of forums, and I subscribe to a bunch of Youtube channels. I have a lot of interests. Last night I saw a link to a Youtube video by a person who runs a forum I belonged to, and I took a look.

Like many forums, the forum he runs has a politics ban. Nonetheless, he started his video with footage of Trump making an off-the-cuff proposal about an idea which involved the use of certain technology. That technology lay within the area of expertise of the forum proprietor (he claims), and he proceeded to sneer at Trump and “debunk” his plan.

Mind you, Trump did not say he had a serious plan, or that he was sure it would work. He just mentioned an idea, and he issued a disclaimer, saying it was just an idea, and that his own expertise lay elsewhere.

Maybe the idea was not sound. I don’t know. It was probably something one of Trump’s friends tossed out over dinner. It wasn’t a formal plan. Anyway, Mr. Forum was pretty nasty in his “debunking,” and to make matters worse, he’s a foreigner. He wants Americans to use his forum and help him make money on Youtube, but he feels entitled to insult our president and butt into our internal affairs. And we’re not allowed to respond, because that would be political.

On the forum, I complained that his video made me feel unwelcome, and I suggested it was possible to debunk ideas without taking a nasty tone. Mr. Forum criticized me and deleted my account. By that time, I had destroyed all of my posts, and I was looking for the button that would flush my account. Anyone who looks at threads in which I participated will be very confused, because I deleted most of my stuff, and the rest was replaced with a short non-sequiturial quote from a popular book.

What he did was very bad business. Let’s face it; Americans are a big force in the marketplace. We can pretend Internet forum proprietors support themselves off attention from people from backward places like India and Morocco, but they don’t. The vast majority of his supporters come from the US and Europe. In all likelihood, around half of the Americans who feed his family are conservative. If I’m offended by his rudeness, others are, too. In fact, I’m not the only one who left the forum. And he needs us. We don’t need him. There are tons of forums out there. Besides, if I feel like it, I can start a new account under a new name, I can use well-known methods to escape IP address detection, and I can ask all the questions I want. Then I can delete my new account and the content I posted. I didn’t lose access to his forum, but he lost my support.

I quit watching the news a long time ago. I don’t submit to the presence of left-wing nuts voluntarily. I don’t go to political forums. I would never put a Trump sign in my yard or wear a Trump shirt, because I don’t want to be the victim of petty crimes. I read books and watch Youtube to get away from the hate. Now the hate is following me into new venues.

I wasn’t rude. I didn’t call anyone names. I was very polite, at least until I used Mr. Forum’s own phrasing to quit his forum. I was treated very rudely, without provocation, by a person who needs my business.

On a supernatural level, this is a symptom of the darkness that is creeping over our nation. There used to be walls that held it back, but we dropped our walls when we turned away from God, and now spirits and people who are against God have more access to us than ever. They can come into our businesses and shut them down. They can take your children away if they don’t like the way you’re raising them. If you send your kids to school with Oreos in their lunchboxes, they may have the temerity to confiscate their food and send you nasty notes.

It’s going to get worse. Property rights will disappear. Liberties that are deeply personal will disappear. We are already losing the right to speak freely, but here is what’s worse: we are losing the right to refuse to speak as we are told. You can be fired from certain jobs for refusing to call a man a woman, or for refusing to call a sexually confused person “them” or “ze.”

That’s really something. God respects free will; he preferred creating hell to abolishing our ability to govern ourselves. Satan is different. God doesn’t want robotic children, but Satan is happy to take them. Until he can get our hearts and minds, he will settle for our bodies and tongues.

That is a long stretch from Internet forum intrusions, but it all comes from the same battle plan. The hate is coming at us from all directions now, around the clock.

How do you think Obama got the power to force us to buy insurance, not to drive cars or run businesses, but simply to live? That was a supernatural defeat. The law was not on his side, and neither was the public. Miraculously, we still ended up with a bizarre new government compulsion. When crazy things happen, look for a supernatural cause.

Man, I’m glad I’m moving to a conservative area full of Christians. I don’t want to deal with the children of darkness every single day. I’m aware that I’m climbing on a coffee table in a basement which is quickly flooding, but it will be better than standing on the floor with the water around my neck.

Here is what bothers me: what percentage of future persecution targets are aware of the threat? How many take it seriously? How many are preparing? It’s hard to develop a relationship with God and gain his protection when the freaks and flakes are at the door to drag you off to your undignified end. It takes time to get to know God.

The smart Jews got out of Germany before the Nuremberg Laws were passed. We know what happened to the rest.

You can’t escape to a safer country. The US is the end of the road. When the US is gone, there will be nowhere to move to. But you can move to better areas in America and prosper longer, and you can get into the shelter of God’s protection.

Look how used to persecution we are. We’re not marching in the streets when homosexuals close businesses. We barely respond when celebrities joke about killing the president. A lunatic leftist just tried to assassinate an entire pack of GOP congressmen, and he hit one and shot three other people. The outrage was muted, to say the least. There are more people protesting Michael Brown’s justified shooting, which happened years ago, than the DC ambush.

A funny thing happens when you get used to mistreatment. It increases. You focus on shutting out the unpleasantness, not resisting or preparing.

I am all about getting poisonous people out of my life. I snip ties to abusers and bad influences the way other people snip their nose hairs. I do it instantly and usually without warning, and I never go back. I forgive. From a distance.

No one wants to turn into a pillar of salt!

I was thinking about friendships last night. I remembered some things my mother told me. She did not originate them, but she was wise to repeat them. She said, “People are no damn good,” which is also what the Bible says, and she said, “If you have one real friend, you are very lucky.” I make friends easily, but I don’t have a lot of casual friends. I don’t respect people who think they have a lot of friends. If you think you have a lot of friends, you’re gullible or you’re selling out. You’re a friendship slut.

To me, there are two types of friends. There are real friends, and then there are people you enjoy hanging out with. If you can’t call a person at three in the morning to come give you a jump start, that person is not your friend.

I thought about people my dad knows. He has an ex-partner named Rufus (perhaps not his real name). Rufus is very greedy and shallow, and he has a cruel streak. Rufus married a shallow but attractive lady named Isabel, and then a very good-looking woman named Gertrude (not) joined the firm. Gertrude is a nice person, but she is not deep. First thing you know, Rufus and Gertrude are married, and Isabel is out in the cold with a greatly reduced standard of living. Then one day word got out that Rufus was sleeping with Donna the receptionist, and Rufus was divorcing Gertrude. Here is the excuse people said he gave: Gertrude stopped going to the gym. Is it true? Wouldn’t surprise me. They got back together in the end.

Back around 1982, my dad bought a boat in partnership with Rufus and Rufus’s “friend,” Jim. I should have known something was fishy. My dad never spent money on such things when I was a kid. We never had a real vacation. He did not support expensive activities for his kids. We didn’t have much in the way of toys. I think Rufus manipulated my dad in order to get himself a big boat and only pay for a third of it. He also got him to buy a third of a luxury waterfront condo.

Later on, Rufus got my dad and Jim to invest in another boat, which was eight feet longer. At some point, Rufus wanted to make a big expenditure on the boat. My dad said he was game, but he said he wondered about Jim. According to my dad, Rufus said, “Jim’s stupid. He’ll do whatever I want.” My dad thought that was funny, and it was, but if Rufus said things like that about Jim, what was he saying about my dad?

I don’t feel bad for Jim, whose real name is Jim. He really disliked me. He was rude to me from the first time he met me, and for some reason, my dad never defended me. Jim loved to start conversations by accusing me of things. For example, he accused me of failing to properly tie down the dinghy they kept on the front of the boat. It eventually came through the boat’s windshield in a high sea. I’m sure this is not relevant, but Jim had a not-wholesome-looking teenage boy who was almost certainly capable of believing a rubber bungee cord (yes) could hold down a 500-pound boat. Unlike me (I lived out of state), he knew how to run the davit and lower the dinghy into the water.

In those days, I was not much of a Christian, so I put Jim in his place in front of people without hesitation. Jim was mentally slow, but he had a Dunning-Kruger thing going on. He was convinced he was smarter than I was, but he was never right about anything, so when we conversed, things went poorly for him. No matter how many times he got stung, he never learned not to provoke Happy Fun Ball. He always expected to come out on top.

Here’s a funny thing: Rufus and his wife voted my dad out of the firm, after my dad made him a partner at an early age and helped make him rich. They then sued him unsuccessfully (In terms of ability, Rufus << my dad.) over a client that went with my dad. After all that, they maintained a practice of inviting him to their Christmas party every year, which they held on his birthday. And he went! Even when I invited him to celebrate with my friends and me instead. I never went with him. I was offended that they had the gall to invite me. And thanks for taking him away from his son on his birthday. This is what friendship is, to many people. In all likelihood, Rufus has never had a friend. People find him entertaining and funny, but they laugh at him, not with him. When people talk about him, they don't have anything nice to say. I have never heard anyone say they liked him or that they admired anything about him, but I've heard people make fun of him a great deal. When I was young, I was not all that sensitive to contempt and abuse, because I was raised with it. The older I get, the less willing I am to tolerate it. The price I put on my company says a lot about me. I like being alone or with a few people I know to be decent and sincere. I don't get lonely, but subjecting myself to the presence of the Rufuses of this world would be unbearable. I don't miss the people I've cut off. I am relieved they're gone. I feel good about abandoning a snippy Internet forum owner who doesn't appreciate my patronage. I feel good about my reclusive ways. One day God will take me from the earth very abruptly, and the experience will be similar. The screeching and fighting will be in a far off place while I look forward to better things. It seems like I am becoming a person who is easier to kill than to assimilate. I have no problem with that. Be careful who you hang around with, and don't cast your pearls before swine. That's what I say. It would be hilarious if Trump put his plan to work and turned it into a yuge success. I might just visit the forum to see what people had to say.