Still Richer Than You

I was wrong about something, sort of.

I predicted that leftists would rise up and turn American into one big riot zone when Trump took office for the second time, but it didn’t happen. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was because everyone expected it, responses were prepared, and leftist terrorists are cowards. They don’t like committing their crimes when they think arrest and prosecution are serious possibilities. Nobody wants to be fired from Starbucks over an arson rap.

If they weren’t cowards, they wouldn’t wear masks.

While I was wrong to think a sudden conflagration of stupidity would arise, I believe I was right to think leftists would go nuts eventually. Look at what they’re doing to Teslas, chargers, and dealerships. Keying and burning cars and chargers. Trying to burn dealerships. Road-raging at innocent drivers, many of whom surely agree with their politics. Historically, the Tesla has been a badge of left-wing envirokooks.

Now some wackjob has created a website doxxing every Tesla owner and encouraging crimes against them. This is historic. We have seen leftists dox and torment people in the past, but this is a new low. It is the mainstreaming of Democrat terrorism.

A failed vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz, gloated in public about the damage the vandals are doing, saying he got a boost from watching Tesla stock drop. Never mind that the state he governs holds a huge amount of Tesla stock in order to support state-employee pensions. Even as recently as 2000, you could not have convinced me that a major political figure would pop up on the web celebrating the results of domestic terrorism.

Instead of a quick kneejerk response, we seem to be seeing something more gradual; more like what happens as a baby becomes aware its diaper is dirty. The smiles fade. A frown appears. Groans begin. Soon, the mouth is screaming and the arms are flailing. It’s diaper Defcon 1.

With regard to “liberals” (not worthy of the name, without quotation marks), we are probably at Defcon 3, approaching 2. The military says Defcon 3 is “a readiness posture that requires certain portions of the assigned forces to assume an increased readiness posture above that of normal readiness.”

Leftists have forced our president and AG to make policy changes to combat Tesla-related crimes. I would call that “increased readiness.”

They seem to think they can break Elon Musk financially by making people afraid to buy Teslas and become their victims. That’s a very unsound theory.

I checked, and Musk’s stake in Tesla comes in at around 100 billion dollars. That’s something like 25% of his worth. If the terrorists manage to hurt Tesla really badly, say to the tune of 50%, Musk’s share will go down to around 50 billion. That will leave him with a paltry fortune amounting to an insignificant $350 billion.

Perhaps these figures are a little off, but the principle is correct.

So you terrorize innocent people, you subject yourself to prosecution, you ruin your employment prospects (could matter to some leftists), you destroy your reputation, and the net result is that the guy you hate only has two million times the median net worth.

Two MILLION.

Trying to destroy Elon Musk’s wealth by keying Teslas is like trying to tear down the Taj Mahal with a sharpened popsicle stick.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to have even one billion dollars. What would I do with it? Sometimes I ask myself, and invariably, one thing comes to mind: I would get my truck painted. I used to think I would start flying my wife and myself around in first class, but now we have a baby, so it may be a decade before either of us sees the inside of a jet again. Anyway, a billionaire is an extremely rich person. Musk could lose around 99.75% of his worth and still be freakishly rich.

It is amazing that any leftist is stupid enough to get excited because Tesla stock drops a few points. Math isn’t for everyone, though.

Here’s what would really sting leftists if they knew it: they may not have hurt Tesla at all. Sure, the stock is way down from its peak, but that peak occurred before Trump took office, and the stock started declining in December. Also, Tesla has problems unrelated to Donald Trump.

Tesla stock has always been volatile. Tesla makes trendy gadgetry that doesn’t appeal to everyone. Its popularity waxes and wanes. I doubt Tesla stock would have continued shooting up this winter had Musk not joined DOGE, and I don’t think the vandals will be able to depress the price forever.

Personally, I am not a Tesla fan. I don’t care what anyone says; the cars are not ready for most Americans. The solar roofs are ridiculous. I was quoted something like $200,000, the roof would have been very ugly, and I would still have had to pay for electricity. Going “off-grid” is illegal in Florida. My feelings don’t matter, though, because enough people love Tesla to insure its long-term survival.

For the most part, the Tesla terrorists will hurt themselves more than anyone else, but they are still interesting because they are part of an increase in lawlessness, and lawlessness is a feature of the end times. Childishness and disorder will increase. Satan loves rebels, and he is doing a great job of turning human beings against order and legitimate authority. After all, he was the first leftist. Heaven’s failed revolutionary, exiled to the roof of hell.

We now have a political party largely dedicated to lawlessness. Lawless prosecutors have been appointed in major cities. Lawless mayors and state governments defy federal immigration authorities, even when it clearly benefits child rapists and murderers. Lawless judges are making patently absurd and even unethical decisions in order to harm a president they don’t like. And Trump himself is fomenting lawlessness to some extent. He rails against judges who disagree with him and says they should be impeached, which isn’t always true. A president should not do that. He strives to find ways to flout judicial authority. He quoted Napoleon, who said, “He who saves his country violates no law.” Apart from being facially absurd, this is a dangerous philosophy, and leftists are throwing it back in Trump’s face to justify their unending crimes.

I love President Trump, and I support him, but he is not Yeshua. He is a friend of Christians, but he is no man of God. He is not Spirit-led, and he sometimes does things that advance the agenda of the Antichrist, just as all leftists do.

I have always been disturbed by Christians who say Trump is the solution to our problems. Trump is a lot better than the alternatives, but he is still a secular figure.

I wonder about the Tesla-scratchers. Are they a temporary problem that will subside, or are they the seed of a larger revolutionary army of violent morons who will finally bring about a civil war?

Whatever the answer is, in addition to sinning and ruining their own lives, they are failing to harm the man and the ideology they hate. It is a pathetic spectacle of infantile self-destruction. Like leftism itself.

Clearly a Form of Squatting

I guess I should provide a report on our parenting experience.

My son is making his way through his second month on Earth. He is healthy and about as well-adjusted as a baby can be. Even the good ones scream a lot. He has put weight on faster than expected. This morning, we had to retire a romper that was supposed to last him several more weeks.

He has a funny toe that will need to be looked at, but he has no other problems, and he has never been sick. That’s a good thing, because his mother will surely flip out the first time mucus starts running out of that little nose.

He is still very strong for his age. He was the product of an induced labor because of his weight and his gigantic head, so he should be behind other babies, but handling him is like wrestling an alligator. From the time he was two or three weeks old, he has been able to lie on his stomach, push himself up with his arms, and hold his head up. He has never complained about being placed on his stomach, although his mother is afraid that if he goes more than 5 minutes, we’ll have to make a new baby.

We were having him checked out, and the doctor started hollering, “This is four months!” I had no idea what he meant. He’s Nigerian. It turned out he was talking about my son’s strength. He had lifted my son by his arms, and my son held his head up. The doctor was amazed. My son was a month old, and the doctor said he shouldn’t have been able to hold his head up until he hit four months. Which makes you wonder why the doctor did the test.

His legs are very strong. He has no problem holding himself and even jumping as long as I provide balance. When I hold him across my lap in a recliner, I have to make sure he doesn’t push against the arm with his feet and leap out onto the floor.

I don’t think he knows what his hands are, but he grabs things with them all the time.

We had to take the newborn pads out of his car seat, and he has been in second-stage diapers for a while now.

Mom says he gives off masculine energy. No argument there. You could look at this kid from a quarter mile and know he was a boy. He is rambunctious and vigorous. His voice sounds masculine. He thrashes around and punches and kicks his parents. He doesn’t cry when he gets hit in the head with a phone or banged against the inside of the utility sink. I don’t think the mental illnesses of homosexuality and gender confusion will be issues. Like my mother would have said, he’s as rough as a cob.

He has started smiling for the right reasons. We think. Experts say early smiles are based on gas or other disappointing causes, but he is coming up on the age when babies smile because they’re happy, and as usual, he is a little bit ahead. He likes to whine and holler when I change his diaper, so I play with him and bug him until he smiles, just to ruin the fun of being in a bad mood.

He has giggled occasionally for a week or two. That’s a relief. You get tired of a baby who has three modes: angry, hungry, and sleepy. When he engages, it makes you feel like you’re dealing with a person, not just an object that requires constant maintenance.

I don’t know how the parents of autistic kids survive without reinforcement from their children. Now that we’re getting some real feedback from our son, we realize how draining it was to do without it.

We’re learning how to cope with him. At first, every cry seemed important and was taken as an urgent call for help, and we didn’t know which cry meant what. Now we realize some of the crying is just plain stupid, so we’re not always supposed to jump up to help him. We are also better at figuring out whether he’s hungry or trying to poop. Those are the two main reasons he cries.

When he starts the poop cry, you don’t grab him and change his diaper. If you do that, he finishes pooping right after you put the new diaper on him, or maybe while you’re trying to stuff him into it. You let him wait until he shuts up. Then there’s a pretty good chance he’s finished.

Experts say babies aren’t suffering when they do the poop cry. Apparently it’s a way of building up pressure behind the poop to push it out. When he does the poop cry, as soon as the poop moves, he goes back to being cheerful and oblivious. Instantly. If he were in pain, he wouldn’t do that.

We haven’t figured out how to identify the tired cry, but then we’re not sure he ever gets tired. He routinely keeps us up until past 1 a.m. Right now, he is feeding as often as once an hour, so we don’t get a lot of windows during which we can put him to bed.

We found out that babies get a growth spurt at about 6 weeks, and when this happens, they may want to feed just about all the time. Of course, he got there a week or so early, and we didn’t know what was happening.

The hungry cry is pretty easy to spot, because he balls up his fists.

Boredom is something knew we’re going to have to figure out. I’m afraid this kid may be very, very smart. It could happen. His grandparents on my side were past the Mensa cutoff, I’m smarter than they were, and his mother is smart. I don’t know anything about my wife’s parents because they died young.

Leftism-tainted science tries to tell us any baby will be smart if given the right treatment, but it’s a huge lie. Genetics determine the child’s range of abilities, and you can’t move the high side by making him listen to Mozart. As for the low side, you could drop him on his head or raise him on a vegan diet that stunts brain growth.

People who aren’t smart very rarely have smart kids. I’m sure you can make a kid somewhat smarter or less smart by raising him in certain ways, but if Dad is a theoretical physicist and Mom is making advances in quantum computing, there is just about no possibility that Junior will not be very sharp, and if the parents are average, they aren’t likely to raise the next Archimedes.

If he’s really bright, it would explain some of the mystifying crying we’ve seen. I thought he was kind of like a potato with eyes, but I have learned that even at this age, babies want mental stimulation, and if he’s smart, he needs more of it.

I am not one of those parents whose mission is to create the next Leibniz. Those people are really misguided, perhaps because they’re not all that bright, themselves. They don’t know what it’s like to be truly, exceptionally bright, so they think intelligence is the answer to all of life’s problems. It’s not. A human being needs a relationship with the Holy Spirit, good habits, and a good personality in order to be a success, and by “success,” I mean a person who is saved and has a peaceful life of victory, love, and abundance.

I don’t mean a miserable, antisocial nerd who makes millions in tech, hangs out with incels and has no empathy. I certainly don’t mean a driven, spoiled athlete who throws up before every competition and can’t make himself believe Daddy loves him unless he wins trophies.

My wife wants our son to be a genius. Genius is lonely. It’s also not necessary. You can be a great surgeon or a good engineer without qualifying for Mensa. You can run an extremely profitable business you love without breaking into the top half of your high school class.

I would rather see my son go into business than a profession. College is the gateway to hell these days.

Genius makes it hard for you to find a mate. If you’re male and your IQ is 170, you’re going to be miserable with a 125 wife, and if you’re female, you’re going to need a 175+ husband unless you want to feel like your husband is your child.

Women need their husbands to be more intelligent than they are. They have a hard time dealing with men who can’t lead. They resent them. We’re not supposed to say this, but it’s true.

Math is merciless. If you’re in the 95th percentile, there aren’t many people in your dating pool.

If our son turns out to be really smart, I’ll teach him to cope with it. I’ll teach him he doesn’t always have to correct people. I’ll try to help him not to be snotty. I’ll tell him to be patient with others. I’ll keep telling him God will be distant from him unless he’s humble.

I’ll make sure he understands that brains and talents don’t make him more valuable than other people.

Anyway, we are doing a very poor job of occupying his mind, so I am going to work on it. He has a weird “baby gym” consisting of a colorful mat with hanging toys, a mirror, and an annoying keyboard he can play with his feet or his forehead, but he isn’t on it enough. I have been getting some other things. I am going to try to find things I can do with him, now that he is emerging from the potato stage. Eventually, we will find pursuits that will reduce his boredom.

He will start languages as early as possible, because they’re really easy for toddlers and babies. He will start music as soon as he is willing. Three isn’t too early. He will start reading at three or earlier. He will be introduced to math early. The other stuff…no one cares. You can learn history and so on when you’re 75. The abilities to learn languages, music, reading, and math drop off fast during childhood.

Here’s a great tip for coping with crying: get a set of Bluetooth earmuffs for shooting and connect them to your PC or TV. When the wife and baby make a racket, you will still be able to hear important things like The Lego Movie.

It works on wives whether you have kids or not, but you didn’t read that here.

Hygiene is getting easier. I insisted on getting a mesh seat and a sprayer for our utility sink, and they really help. At first, Mom was horrified by the idea of putting him in a utility sink, but now that she has changed about 3,000 poopy plastic burritos, she is all for it.

He got a little diaper rash, and she thought it was because I was scraping him with wipes. I learned that wipes don’t hurt babies, and I also learned you really need to dig in there and get everything out.

Poop bacteria turn pee into ammonia. Also, poo contains protease and lipase, two enzymes that eat flesh. Put it all together, and you get diaper rash. Scraping with wipes doesn’t cause rash. It prevents it.

A forceful stream of warm water is better than wipes. It cleans better, and it surely must feel better on irritated skin.

Our new policy is to hose him off late in the day so he will be cleaner during his longest time between changes. He likes the sprayer, so everyone is happy.

We have found that Vaseline is number one for the butt. We tried some expensive stuff, and he got worse. Now, I put on a glove, scoop out a generous portion of Vaseline, and pack it in there. Thank God for gloves.

I read that baking soda reduces the activity of ammonia and the enzymes. I don’t know if it’s true.

He no longer shrieks every time we change him, so we must be doing something right.

We got him a motorized swing. Everyone suggested it. These things move babies around and relax them. We got it for ourselves; let’s be honest. Anything that shuts him up is a blessing.

We stuck him in it, and he loved it. Went right to sleep. Then, of course, the world burst our bubble.

My wife read that you can’t let a baby sleep in a swing. What’s the purpose, then? I would really like to know. She also read that if he’s in a swing too long, he’ll get a flat spot on his head.

After listening to enough screaming, you start to ask yourself how much flatness is acceptable.

We could let him grow his hair long. Tell him he was born that way.

I have come to understand what’s wrong with baby swings. They’re too small. They need to make them big enough for parents. Put the baby in a broom closet and swing your way to relief.

An idea for a more enlightened age.

That’s about it. I guess talking will be the next major event. My mother said my sister spoke sentences at 6 months, so when I was merely very early, she thought I might be retarded. I don’t know what to expect from this one.

He better say nice things about his parents. We don’t have a broom closet, but I could build one.

Here’s a photo from earlier this month:

If you want good family photos, don’t pay a professional, learn about things like composition, and never EVER warn your wife or daughters before you shoot. Women ruin photos with their poses and preparation. Women have a range of about 5 trite poses you see over and over on the web, and unless you want your memories to look like Instagram, you need to shoot first and ask permission later.

Our son is unbelievably funny. We both enjoy him tremendously. I suppose things will be even better when he starts interacting more.

The System Works

Interesting experience today.

As noted in an earlier post, my wife and I have had trouble getting our son to breastfeed. When he was born, my wife was not thinking clearly. She was exhausted and full of overprotection hormones, and I let her start the boy on formula. The nurses and I discouraged it, but we gave in too easily, and one nurse said formula was fine, which it definitely is not.

My son decided plastic nipples were the only real nipples. They are easier for babies to suck, and the bottle people put big holes in them so they pass milk and formula much faster than real breasts. Babies get spoiled. Moms get spoiled because they finish in 10 minutes instead of 45 to 60. Spoiled babies raise hell until they get what they want, and moms give in because they are spoiled and also worn down. Dads don’t put their feet down because we live in a castrated society in which Satan has shamed fathers into failing to look after their families correctly.

A reader asked if my area had a La Leche chapter or whatever it’s called. It does not. It does have a breastfeeding office at the Health Department. It’s mainly for poor women on a program called WICS, but they’re not jerks about it. They gave us time. A few weeks back, we got some coaching from a lady named Debbie, and today we showed up without an appointment, and she saw us again.

As luck would have it, our soon-to-be-ex-pediatrician’s office is across the street from the building where Debbie works. We had to see the doctor today for a routine visit. We were asked about our concerns, and we brought up the breastfeeding issue. We couldn’t get the baby to latch properly. There was pain and bleeding. Feedings weren’t successful.

Our doctor, an old Nigerian guy, dismissed our concerns.

This doctor gives people free formula. We should have known this was a red flag. Formula is nearly poison. Nobody should push it on women who may be able to breastfeed. Formula causes diabetes, obesity, allergies, and a bunch of other problems.

We suspect formula companies are giving him free merchandise in order to hook low-income and low-information mothers. Somebody has to be paying for it, and I doubt our third-rate United Healthcare insurance is the source.

He said breast milk from a bottle was just as good as breast milk from a person. Well, I’m no doctor, but I can read. What I have read is that the breastfeeding process itself carries very important benefits for mothers and babies. It helps women’s uteruses shrink. It delays restoration of fertility. It relaxes babies. Today we were told it makes breast cancer less likely. These are just some of the benefits we have been told about.

Isn’t breast cancer a serious problem? Isn’t it worth trying to prevent?

I don’t think the many professionals who say breastfeeding is beneficial are imagining things or lying, but I do think there are doctors who lie to help companies promote medical products. Actually, I know it.

When we left, I told me wife she should call the health people and see if we could arrange an appointment with Debbie. We got an endless hold, so we decided to drive over and walk in. Before long, somebody found Debbie, and we were in her office getting priceless advice.

It turned out my wife was leaning forward, and she wasn’t waiting for the baby to open his mouth wide enough to get everything into it. Debbie told us something amazing. A baby can open its mouth 140°. So basically about like a blacksnake or a great white shark. Ladies, it does not matter how wide your equipment is. A baby can handle it. You could probably put your fist in there.

Debbie got the process started, and before we knew it, my son was totally absorbed. In maybe half an hour, he pumped himself full to bursting, and then he showed his approval by losing consciousness. Perfect.

He was quiet all the way home. He has been quiet almost all evening. He has fed a second time. Our problems are solved.

Now we can put the breast pump away. We can put away all but a couple of bottles, which we will use on rare occasions when normal breastfeeding isn’t practical. My wife isn’t in pain any more. I’m going to throw out what’s left of the formula.

Formula is hard to digest, and a bottle baby can’t regulate its intake even if it receives milk, so now we know our boy’s digestion will be optimized. He won’t have to digest palm oil and cow proteins, and his innards won’t be hammered by inappropriately large feedings that are hard to process.

Maybe he won’t scream before he poops now. I hope so.

My wife is over the moon, and so am I. We have had to do a huge amount of work in order to keep the bottles coming, and the irregular nature of bottle feedings ruined our schedule. It will be hard enough when our son is feeding normally. We don’t need bottle problems making things worse.

She told me she had felt despair. She had resigned herself to months of misery. She thought it was normal. Now she realizes things are going to be much easier, and her relief is immeasurable.

She is very happy I started getting patriarchal and controlling instead of sinking into the modern American wuss-dad mold. She sees that it saved us. I think it has increased her confidence in me. It will make things more harmonious. Leaders who don’t lead cause chaos and confusion.

I was afraid I was being too dominant, but I wasn’t being dominant enough. I’ll bet 90% of American husbands are not dominant enough.

I should have done better from the start. I will do better from now on. I will spend more time with God, increasing my submission to him. That will give me authority to rule my family, and it will help them submit to him and me.

The pediatrician has a couple more things to do for us, so we will wait a while to hand him the mitten, as P.G. Wodehouse put it. We will quit talking to him about feeding.

I am wondering if we can go back to our original pediatrician. He’s not covered by our insurance, but I am willing to pay. The issue is whether our insurer will let him refer us to in-network specialists when needed. If so, we will go back to him in a heartbeat.

We should have taken breastfeeding classes before our son was born, but as a man, I could not have guessed that sucking a nipple was complicated. In retrospect, I think delivery classes would have been worthless compared to breastfeeding classes. During the delivery, I never had a challenging decision. It was all simple and intuitive. Easy to figure out on the fly.

If you’re planning to have a baby, learn from our mistakes. Don’t even consider using formula unless you literally have no choice. Don’t use bottles except on rare occasions. Don’t give up on yourself or your baby. Find the right people, and they will get you hooked up. It can be done. Don’t listen to anyone who says breastfeeding is merely a nice option for affluent women and disgraceful women who choose to betray the memory of Susan B. Anthony by raising their own children. It’s the proper and normal way to feed children, and if it were not, none of us would be here.

Flag Down for Bringing a Walker on the Field

Someone on the web created a thread asking for unpopular opinions. When I saw it, I knew it was destiny. This is what I was made for.

I did quite a bit of writing. For one thing, I pointed out that pizza doesn’t go with beer. That must have made heads explode.

Pizza is acidic and a little sweet. It often contains oregano, a bitter herb. Obviously, you don’t pair that with a bitter beverage. Soft drinks and red wine go with pizza. Tea is acceptable. Beer? Insane.

I think people who drink beer with pizza are generally low-end beer drinkers who drink to get drunk. I think they must be people who drink really bad beer, chilled to the freezing point to kill the awful taste. People who drink stuff like Bud and Coors always drink it as cold as possible, and the reason is that when it warms up even a little, it tastes like seltzer with soap and a little sugar.

I think these people are likely to eat bad pizza from Papa John’s or Domino’s, and they just want something to wash it down and give them a buzz.

Beer goes with steak and rib roasts. It goes with Mexican food and seafood. It works with cheeseburgers and fries. Forcing it to get along with pizza is ill-advised at best. And nothing is worse than smelling other people’s beer-and-pizza burps while trying to eat.

If you think beer goes with everything, go eat an apple and chase it with a beer. It’s right up there with toothpaste and orange juice.

I also said Elvis was a lousy singer. It’s true. Elvis became famous because he caused girls with weak fathers to become sexually aroused. His early performances were basically riots, with little bacchantes fighting the ushers, tearing off their own underwear, and throwing it on the stage. People forget that. Today we make fun of people who call rock and roll the devil’s music, but it’s true. Any music that makes you throw your dirty underwear at people has some connection to hell.

Women still throw their dirty underwear at entertainers. It’s gross. They throw it at Justin Timberlake, for example. They throw it at the kind of guys who look like they take it home and put it on.

They should have men in Tyvek suits gather it and put it in medical waste bags. Someone could catch something.

Sinatra also mesmerized young tramps, but he was also an excellent singer whose style was innovative and unique. Jerry Lee Lewis was a much better singer than Elvis. Sam Cooke was far better. There were a lot of excellent male singers back in Elvis’s heyday. Nat King Cole. Eddie Arnold. Jim Reeves. Ray Price. Johnny Mathis. Ray Charles.

You can go into restaurants and bars today and still hear Sinatra recordings. Elvis? Not so much. It was never about the sound. It was about the pelvis.

I complained about sports worship. I said that if I wanted to watch overpaid illiterates work, I’d turn on The View.

I said I didn’t like it when people assumed I watched sports. People come up to me and try to make small talk about men I’ve never heard of, playing games I didn’t watch. “How about that Mahomes?” Who?

I pulled that name out of the air just now because I’ve seen it in headlines. I don’t know who he plays for or what his position is.

What if I went up to random men and said, “How about that Carl Friedrich Gauss? Is he the GOAT, or what?” He’s a fascinating guy. How can they not find him interesting? We wouldn’t have electronics or, well, any kind of serious technology without his discoveries.

Some guy responded and said I must have been rooting for Taylor Swift and the Chiefs.

How thick can a person’s head be?

Me: I never watch football. It would be great if the stadium where the Super Bowl was played was obliterated by a meteor and replaced with a Buc-Ee’s.

Him: You must have been rooting for Taylor Swift and the Chiefs.

What?

This is completely typical of my experiences with sports fans. “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” They can’t believe a man who doesn’t watch sports can exist. It’s like they’re under a spell. And they are. Demons are filling their minds with absurdities.

It also bugs me when men with hurt feelings try to tell me how empty my life must be because I don’t watch sports. What possible reason could you have to be angry at me for not sharing all of your hobbies? Do I get mad at you for not knowing how to weld?

I look down on you, sure. But I don’t get angry.

Kidding.

Yeah, my life is empty. I love my wife, and I spend a lot of time having fun with her. I don’t turn the TV on as soon as I get on and ignore her while I fill the house with obnoxious crowd noises and pray I don’t lose my ill-informed, emotion-driven bets, which I didn’t tell her about. Oh, the emptiness.

I have all sorts of time for my interests, like prayer, cooking, shooting, writing, and using tools. I get to spend time with my pet. I get to sit in the recliner with my son on my chest and relax in an atmosphere of pure love.

Empty, empty, empty. It would be so much better to be outside a stadium, trying to dodge as kids try to spit on me on my way in. I’d really rather be paying $11 each for cups of extremely bad beer and then standing in a quarter-inch of other people’s urine in packed men’s rooms. I long to get caught up in post-game brawls where people fight to defend the reputations of spoiled young athletes who pay armed men to keep fans away from them.

If only I could spend 4 hours fighting traffic, trying to get home from a stadium after my team lost, avoiding eye contact with drunk road-ragers and praying I don’t get stopped at a DUI checkpoint.

To get average seats for my three-person family, I’d have to shell out almost $500. I would happily pay $100 to be allowed to stay home.

But I must have been rooting for Taylor Swift and the Chiefs.

For $500, I can get my son a brand-new CZ 457 Scout in .22LR, and he can hand it down to his son. But no, I’d rather watch grown men play a game created to amuse children. When are the duck-duck-goose playoffs?

On a related note, I said Bill Burr was an idiot. A lot of men think he’s a genius and the world’s last straight shooter. A regular guy with a platform. Hello? It’s an act, and he’s an entertainer. If he were telling the truth, they wouldn’t call it an act.

Rock Hudson made romantic comedies with women. Just saying.

He’s not smart, and he’s not one of us. Normal men, I mean. He’s just another showbiz liberal, kissing the rings on the hands that feed him.

He has crippling TDS. Right after dozens of people died in the unnecessary LA fires, he appeared with another fool, Jimmy Kimmel, and made jokes about people who criticized California’s fire preparation and response. He ridiculed them. He stupidly asserted it wasn’t possible to put fires out with ocean water. He didn’t even think about the insensitivity of doing all this while bodies were literally still warm.

California and LA officials themselves have admitted they blew it. They admitted it in Donald Trump’s presence soon after Burr made an ass of himself. Talk about jokes aging badly.

Burr says he–“HE”–doesn’t get tired of winning football games. He supports the Patriots, and he uses the words “I” and “we” when he talks about them. “I don’t get tired of winning.” “We won.”

If Bill Burr is still capable of running 40 yards, he would probably do it in a minute and a half. On the field, he would move like Joe Biden trying to find his way off a stage. You could measure his vertical leap with a feeler gauge. His most likely tool for stopping an NFL pass is his forehead. Who is “we”?

You know those videos of drunken fans rushing onto football fields, careening around at 6 mph, and then having angry players turn them into Tex-Avery-style murals? That’s what a Bill Burr NFL cameo would look like, except maybe he would keep his shirt on. They would peel him off the turf like a fruit roll-up and bury him in a map tube.

If Bill Burr played in a game, he wouldn’t sit on the bench. They’d bring in a hospital bed and a bag with a zipper on it.

Bill Burr has never “won” a game. The people who win are paid to be there. If you have to pay, you’re not part of “we.”

Ticket Taker: Ticket, please.

Bill Burr: Ticket? I have to get in! We’re playing today!

Ticket Taker: Okay, pops. Ticket and DNR.

Burr says he feels bad for days when “WE” lose. Seriously? I don’t mean to be insensitive, but if the plane carrying the New England Patriots flew into a bus carrying the Kansas City Chiefs, I would be fine. I would be very sorry to see it happen, I would feel bad for everyone who knew them, and I would probably pray for their loved ones, but 15 minutes later, I’d probably be watching Paul Harrell videos on Youtube.

If your emotional wellbeing depends on how well a bunch of total strangers play a game you stink at, you need an intervention, because your life is devoid of meaningful pursuits. Burr felt jolly and sassy after dozens of people died in fires caused by incompetence, so maybe something in his head needs to be adjusted.

Some people got annoyed with me, but that just proved I was doing it right. If they wanted me to make them happy, they should have posted a popular opinion thread.

3

I have been asking myself whether I should write about the recent addition to my family. I don’t want to give cowardly, underdeveloped Internet nuts power over my wife and son. On the other hand, we have strong prayer lives, I can easily (both physically and mentally) kill anyone who endangers us, I’m in a jurisdiction where the police will pat me on the back for it and possibly take me out for ribs, and I feel I owe something to people who have read this blog for years.

Some people have been reading since the beginning, two decades ago. I have gotten to know a few people, even if at a distance. I have prayed for them. I have met a handful. I don’t know if I can call people I’ve never met friends, but if not, some are pretty close to it.

I think this is the first photo I took after we brought him home. It was not staged. It’s amusing, and it should also serve to send a message.

I thought it was really funny. We were extremely sleep-deprived and barely knew what we were doing. We tossed him in the bassinet and started squaring the house away for bed, and a couple of minutes later, I saw I had left him near a carry piece.

Not a problem, since he was not able to rack the slide at that point.

Second photo, equally funny:

He was due to wake up at any minute, and I wanted to shoot some video. I rushed around looking for something to weigh the tripod down. I couldn’t find what I was looking for, and then I saw some bags of .45 ACP handloads. Perfect.

He is healthy. He is happy and peaceful except when it’s time to be changed, and I wear ear protection for that. He really is as cute as the picture suggests. Not all babies have curb appeal early on, and we have learned that it’s a blessing. The staff at the hospital didn’t want to let him go home. I know they give good treatment to every baby, but it was pretty obvious that being really cute bought him some extra favor. They loaded us up with stuff we weren’t supposed to get.

I thought it was a little unusual for a baby to be this cute, so I asked people if it was just my perception as a parent, and apparently he is objectively cute.

The delivery process was a horror. They told us to go in at 4:45 a.m. on a certain day. Then after we had gotten up in the middle of the night, they told us to wait another day. Then they called us in at about 6:30 the next morning. Then they ran the air conditioner all night, and it was 53 degrees outside.

It was so cold, we put 6 blankets on my wife, and her hands still shook. I got the staff to yell at whoever ran the air conditioning, and we got them to provide two electric heaters. I slept in a winter coat with insulated gloves and two pairs of socks. The room warmed up the next morning at about the time labor got into gear. Then it got too hot.

The labor itself was terrible, which means it was normal. For medical reasons, we had to finish without an epidural.

It seemed much worse than it was, because we were both exhausted from lack of sleep and lying in a freezing room. The whole experience should have been much better.

We both had the feeling that the labor process was a crushing ordeal, but later we agreed that the main problem was that we had been deprived of sleep and subjected extreme cold. If she had gone into labor rested and warm, it would have been painful but quick and bearable, and it wouldn’t have taken us several days to get over the stress.

We are getting an acceptable amount of sleep now, although sometimes I start to doze off in a chair, and I make mistakes I wouldn’t make if I were rested.

The baby was 80th-percentile big, but he was not fat. He is heavy. He is now wearing stuff for 3-month-olds. He seems very strong. I thought newborns were like rag dolls, but he wrestles with us pretty forcefully. Yesterday he insisted on rolling onto his side. When I corrected him and put him on his back, he rolled back onto his side instantly, in spite of being swaddled. He lifts himself off his mother’s chest with his arms.

His eyes were very dark when he was born, but today, suddenly, they’re blue. I don’t know what to expect later.

He was hairy from the get-go, and the hair on his head is nearly black and pretty straight.

He feeds like a horse, so no problems there yet. He was supposed to lose weight, but I think he’s going the other way.

He seems to smile and light up when I bother him, which is a father’s duty. Web sources suggest the smile may be from gas, however. He has that to spare. He seems to like us. He appears to have fun sometimes.

For a long time, I prayed for God to give me a house of love, and now I have it, so don’t give up on your important prayers. I don’t think my son will ever have to know what it’s like to live in a dysfunctional home.

That’s about it. Don’t expect a lot of updates. We give our thanks to everyone who prayed for us.

Who Was She Writing About?

Yesterday I learned that the wife of my first cousin by marriage had died. I didn’t even know her name. I couldn’t pick her out of a lineup. I’m not even sure this is the wife I met. I saw a photo, and the face doesn’t look familiar.

My dad and I took my cousin and his wife fishing in the Bahamas. I guess this would have been 30 years ago. I remember the wife as a chunky lady with a round face, but the lady in the photo I saw has a prominent chin. I wonder if this was my cousin’s second or third wife.

I would guess I have seen the cousin fewer than 10 times in my life. On very rare occasions, our families got together when I was a kid. My cousin’s stepmother, my dad’s sister, died in 2014, and my dad insisted I accompany him to Tennessee for the funeral. I must have seen the cousin and his wife, but I have no memories to prove it.

To me, this underscores the difference between my mother’s family and my dad’s family. When I say “my family,” I mean my mother’s family, although bad behavior involving my grandparents’ estates has led most of them to distance themselves from me. When I discuss my mother’s family without mentioning my dad’s family, I generally don’t give my dad’s family a thought.

My dad picked up on this unintentionally. Often, he referred to my mother’s father as my father.

My cousin’s wife died last year. Cousin or ex-stepcousin? I don’t know how that works. The notice I saw didn’t mention a cause.

No one called me. No one emailed. I wouldn’t expect them to. I’m not offended. If I had stood in line behind this guy at Walmart this week, I would have had no idea who he was.

My dad’s older sister was a cruel sociopath, and my dad also had sociopathic tendencies. She was abusive to him when he was a kid. She stabbed him in the head with a pencil. He was sitting on the floor making noises and pretending his hand was an airplane, and she stabbed him. She must have been trying to murder him.

The pencil didn’t go through his skull, but as an adult, he liked to show people the deep hole it left.

My aunt was obese and brassy. She was not charming. Her first marriage produced one child. I don’t know if she was at my aunt’s funeral. Can’t recall. I was just counting the minutes until I could leave. It was boring, sitting among strangers, facing an ash container that looked like a styrofoam beer cooler, listening to them talk about their abusive parents as though they were wonderful people.

My uncle had 4 kids of his own, so I guess he needed help. I don’t know why else he would have married my aunt. They didn’t seem to feel anything for each other except annoyance.

My aunt’s child was a daughter. Maybe this is why my aunt hated my uncle’s daughter, who was kind, gentle, and honest. She used to beat her for no reason. She used to give her own child candy and let her eat it in front of her husband’s daughter.

I was Googling my cousin when I found out his wife had died. For some reason, I started thinking about his first name, which is a strange one. I wanted to know if anyone else had that name.

I also came across my uncle’s obituary, written by the kids. He died 11 months ago.

I’ll tell you what. I wish I had known the guy in the obituary. But truthfully, I was not worthy.

Scholar. War hero with a Purple Heart. Educator. Beloved dad. I never met that guy!

He was awful. He didn’t have the spine to protect his kids from his wife. I don’t think he cared. They made the kids work and buy their own clothes. They worked them hard. After the kids were grown, they sat their parents down and told them exactly what they thought of them.

I thought about him again today, because norovirus is spreading in America.

My uncle was a big baby who thought only of himself. He loved to travel, fish, and hunt. He loved to freeload in order to make these things happen. His son was a pilot, so when my uncle and his wife flew, they only had to pay the taxes on their tickets. Freeloading. They didn’t care much for my dad, but he had vacation properties and a yacht, so my uncle arranged to visit from time to time.

They came to visit us over Christmas one year. I wanted no part of it. Back then, I was still close to my mother’s family, so I wanted to be with them, as usual. My dad’s two sisters and their entire tribes packed themselves into his three-bedroom house. The nicer sister and her husband were also freeloaders.

We shared common dishes. Christmas. People started throwing up. Turned out my uncle had norovirus, and he didn’t tell anyone. He knew we would have told him to stay home.

Making matters worse, norovirus is only spread via feces. If you’ve had norovirus, you touched someone else’s poop. My uncle hadn’t been washing his hands after using the toilet.

He was a biologist. A professor. It wasn’t like he had no idea how germs worked.

Every single person who was present threw up and had diarrhea for several days, except for my mother, who was spared. Maybe the viruses couldn’t take the nicotine.

When I found out my uncle was making us all sick, I left and slept somewhere else. Didn’t work. I still ended up using the toilet every 20 minutes.

I’m pretty sure my other aunt’s daughter Judy thinks I’m a jerk because I left abruptly. My mother was angry with me. I loved my mother, but common sense was not her long suit. She was overly emotional.

I didn’t care about ruining our puking family Christmas. I knew my aunts and uncles a little. The others were like strangers. It wasn’t like I had any concerns about future resentment or lost connections. There was no possibility we would go on to have relationships.

I don’t owe anyone an apology for isolating myself from a disease. It seems like women put closeness above staying healthy, however.

That might make a little sense in situations where people care about each other and aren’t together simply because relatives want free Florida vacations.

Avoiding days of diarrhea and vomiting is not rude, and even if it were, I would still have done it. If I were sick, I would expect others to avoid me.

Maybe the problem was that I was smarter and more rational than everyone else there, and I had a better conception of the connection between present behavior and future regurgitation. I really hated norovirus. I was familiar with it.

My dad’s older sister never liked it when I stood up for myself. I think this was because it bothered her to see a young relative she couldn’t abuse and boss. She must have felt like a horse that couldn’t reach an apple through a fence.

All around her, in her own home, she had had kids who ran and fetched when she barked, and they were used to feeling her knuckles on their heads. Here I was, out of range. Acting like I had rights.

I suspect she resented my mother, my sister, and me because we stood in the inheritance path. She thought my dad was much richer than he was, and he let her believe it. Even though he didn’t like her, he enjoyed being seen as a financial guru and being asked for advice.

I never understood why he liked spending his time impressing people he didn’t like much.

My dad’s relatives liked inheriting money and stuff. When my grandmother started to decline, my dad sent money and helped arrange to finance her care. When she died, my aunts backed up to her place and emptied it with no notice to us. My mother was incensed on behalf of my sister and me. She was always appalled by my dad’s people’s selfishness and greed.

Of course, she didn’t live to see what her own daughter and sister did with her parents’ estates.

My dad’s bunch picked some heirlooms for my sister and me. A Baccarat angel and a Lladro horse my dad had given my grandmother. Street value about $75, combined.

They’re both gone now. I threw the angel out because it looked like an idol to me, and I accidentally broke the horse after my sister abandoned it. It wasn’t like these were things we had seen on fondly-remembered visits to my grandmother’s apartment. I don’t miss these things. I didn’t know the angel or horse existed until my dad presented me with them and told me to choose one.

Why did he do that? He paid for them.

The thing on my mind today is the contrast between my uncle and the guy in the obituary. He was lazy. He was selfish. He always seemed gutless to me, so the idea of him fighting bravely and competently in Korea befuddles me. Maybe it’s not completely true. He probably got on the other soldiers’ nerves and let them down.

They didn’t write the obituary.

We love praising combat veterans, like they’re Yeshua himself. They can do no wrong. We don’t look after their families well, and we warehouse the crippled ones in substandard facilities, but we tend to act like anyone who has seen combat is an inspiring figure. A lot of vets use their exalted status to shut other people up. “You weren’t in ‘Nam with me and my buddies, face-down, in the muck!”

It’s not true. Lots of combat veterans–even true heroes–are horrible, trashy people. I knew a Korea vet who thought it was funny to steal other soldiers’ helmets. He said that when he got tired of his heavy helmet, he would dump it. Later, when he needed a helmet, he stole someone else’s. Serving in combat doesn’t automatically make you a role model.

There are too many stories about my uncle to tell.

My grandmother hated him, but because they lived near each other, he and my aunt had to drive her around. She used to sit in the backseat and watch the gas gauge. He would refuse to stop and get gas because he didn’t like being told what to do, so more than once, he ran out of gas with her in the car and ended up walking to gas stations. He kept a gas can in the car for this reason. She used to call him a fool.

On a Bahamas trip, his wife fell on our boat and caught her ring on something. It ripped the skin on her finger wide open. We had to go to the nearest island where there was medical help, in very rough seas.

While we were en route, with the seas pounding and things falling on the deck in the saloon, while my aunt held her bleeding hand in a paper towel, he told her to get up and get him a Coors Light.

Why the glowing obituary?

I wonder if Mormonism is the reason.

I don’t know a lot of Mormons, but my impression of them is that they have an inferiority complex about their non-Christian cult. The feeling I get is that they want people to think they’re the real Christians. They want to convey a false image of success and blessings in order to convince actual Christians we’re wrong.

“Look how much money we make.” “Look at our beautiful families.” “Check out our family photos.” They seem to be aggressive about it.

They say you should never fish with fewer than two Mormons, because if you fish with one, he’ll drink all your liquor.

My uncle’s daughter is a Mormon spiritual advisor of some kind. Women listen to her. She seriously believes American Indians are really Jews. She believes every wacky thing Mormonism teaches. Maybe she wrote the obituary.

I said she was honest, but many people who are otherwise honest lie in obituaries.

My aunt and uncle were miserable, and so were their kids. My aunt and uncle were immature. They were not good people. They were sometimes embarrassing. They hurt their children.

They didn’t actually believe in Mormonism. They were both atheists. They went to hell. Their local shaman or whatever told them not to worry about losing their faith, if they had ever had it. He said they should stick around for the social life.

I wrote a nice obituary about my dad. I did not say he was an alcoholic. I did not say he beat his wife when he was younger. I left a lot of stuff out. On the other hand, I did not craft a deceptive blurb intended to make people think he was an exemplary human being everyone should envy. That would have been wrong. The unnecessary damage he did to his family was immense.

Lying about the dead in order to make people admire them is sinful. Other people need to learn from bad examples.

Why should we make each other feel bad about our lives by pumping up the resumes of dead scoundrels?

I sound like I’m calling my dad a scoundrel now, which was not my intention. Well, he was. But he changed. During the last months of his life, he was wonderful, but the past can’t be erased.

When we laud each other unrealistically, we discourage people. We make them feel as though they are particularly wicked or unsuccessful. We destroy their hope. Everybody is a failure. Everybody is despicable. Pretending otherwise is harmful, not helpful.

My uncle was a jerk. My aunt was a wicked stepmother. If they ever did anything good for anyone else, I am not aware of it. If they ever expressed concern for people with problems, I don’t remember it. They didn’t even take us to dinner when they showed up to freeload.

I should make it clear I didn’t hate my aunt and uncle. There were times in my life when I got along well with them. But they were what they were. The person who wrote the obituary erected a monument to an illusion.

Thank Goodness the Weeds are Okay

Los Angeles is burning again.

What a mess. Houses are coming down. Roads are blocked. People are getting out of their cars, leaving them in the street, and taking the keys with them so bulldozers have to move them.

Some Christians are saying God is showing the world what he thinks of Hollywood, but is that true? Los Angeles is like a giant boil Satan created to pump infectious pus out over the world. Great evil is done there. On the other hand, floods wiped out a lot of homes in Appalachia not long ago, and there are a lot of Christians there.

Here’s what I find interesting: there are two schools of thought as to why California keeps burning. One theory is that there is nothing anyone can do about it. The other is that the blue-state population and the officials it elects refuse to cut the brush that burns over and over, because every weed is sacred and a child of Mother Gaia, as important as an Californian and definitely more important than anyone wearing a red hat.

Today I read a web post from a guy claiming to be a firefighter. He is on the hopelessness side. He said the fires approach at 60 mph.

Sorry, but I can’t believe these fires move that fast. If they did, the fires would have gone out in a day, because they would have burned all the way to the ocean in a few hours. By now, we would be used to seeing gee-whiz Youtube videos of fires moving at freeway speeds. They don’t exist. There is no way Youtubers would miss out on catching a wall of fire moving over a brushy area at freeway speeds.

Is he saying bits of flaming material move on 60-mph winds? That is surely true, but there is a big difference between having sparks fly by you and being IN a fire.

The real speed is probably more like a mile per day. If I’m mistaken, maybe someone will show me a video of a fire moving a mile a minute.

I set my pasture on fire once. Embarrassing. The grass was very dry. A spark landed maybe 60 yards from a burn pile, and the grass started burning. I would say the actual fire moved at about 50 yards per hour. Even slower than I do while carrying a hose. Thank God. I guess it would have been faster had the wind been stronger, but it spread slower than the wind at the time. A 60-mph wind would not have spread the fire at 60 mph.

I have seen hopelessness promoters saying it’s stupid to tell people to cut brush, because it would take a billion lifetimes or something to cut the brush covering the whole state. Well, that’s stupid. You don’t have to denude the whole state. You have to manage brush around buildings and roads. And even if you can’t fix the entire problem this way, you can do a great deal of good.

If cutting brush doesn’t help, why does the Getty Museum spend a king’s ransom cutting brush on its property? I doubt they just enjoy wasting money on projects they know are pointless.

People love to say things don’t work or can’t exist even when they do work and do exist. I’ve seen numerous Christians tell people miracles don’t happen any more, because apparently God has retired while Satan has kept his miracle business open. I’ve experienced miracles, personally. You can see other people experience them on Youtube.

People also like to argue that things happen when they really don’t.

Remember the ivermectin-overdose-tsunami lie? Rolling Stone published a completely false article saying people couldn’t get into emergency rooms because poor ignorant Trumpers were overdosing on ivermectin and tying up the staffs. Never happened. Good luck finding even one example of a death caused by ivermectin. They’re about as common as deaths caused by lima beans. The myth persists, however.

The other day, some guy trying to justify buying $500 kitchen knives told me putting knives in the dishwashwer would beat them up. This is true of fragile Japanese knives, but I have been putting my cheap commercial knives in the dishwasher for maybe 15 years, and nothing has ever happened to one. He loved his theory, and all I had were proven facts.

I think clearing brush works, because it has worked all over the globe since the dawn of history, and I think the fires we see in California would be much, much smaller, if they existed at all, if everyone there were conservative.

We now live in a world where a person who catches a fish and puts a photo on the web is treated like Heinrich Himmler, celebrating the ash output of a new crematorium. People worship nature and animals with astonishing intensity, and they turn their hatred, which is literally murderous, on human beings. They say there are too many of us, like we’re lionfish, decimating snapper and grouper on American coral reefs. Like we’re kudzu, not the highest-ranking life on the world God created for us.

To me, it is completely plausible that Californians have decided flammable scrub is somehow important even though it flames up, destroys homes, and kills people. Even though it burns on its own all the time, as part of the natural process, and never amounts to anything.

Here’s what I always tell my wife: the environment can drop dead.

By that, I mean the world was put here for human beings, we are the only thing that give it importance, and it is our right and obligation to do reasonable damage to nature when our interests are sufficient.

I don’t really mean I want all life on Earth to cease. I mean we need to use common sense. But “common sense” is an oxymoron.

We need dams. We need to cut wood. We need oil. We need to kill a lot of creatures that make trouble for us. We and the rest of the biome or whatever they call it now would be better off if certain species were rendered extinct. That is especially true of microbes. The world doesn’t actually need anthrax, covid, syphilis, fleas, lice, or ticks.

Leftists love to tell us every obnoxious species is vital and that the world will collapse if we lose even one. Hmm. In 1900, the US was covered with gigantic chestnut trees. They dominated forests and provided wood, food for animals and people, and places for animals to live. They’re gone now. If the chestnut can disappear and leave us with thriving forests, why do we need every subspecies of cockroach and slug?

We lost the passenger pigeon, which used to darken the sky with its numbers. We lost most of the bison. We killed off the mammoths and mastodons. The ecosystem has not collapsed. Shouldn’t we be okay if we cut a few weeds?

I think Californians could do better. This has to be true, because people who cut brush, even in California, get better outcomes.

Maybe they love standing on their flammable decks with the inevitable white wine in hand, admiring the natural desert weeds. I could understand that, but I destroyed something like 15 big, irreplaceable oaks that made my property look nice. I didn’t want them falling on my house and shop in storms. Houses surrounded by big oaks definitely look better, but they also get crushed. When the storms come, I sleep soundly.

I could have left them up. I could have said, “When the roof is crushed and hundreds of gallons of water pour in and ruin the walls and our expensive belongings, I’ll just put my wife and infant son in the car and move to a Hampton Inn for 6 months, and when my son is older, I’ll tell him how we did the right thing for Mother Gaia.”

People love to say it’s okay if you have losses when you have home insurance. No, it’s not! You’ll always lose more than the insurance companies will pay you, they won’t give you a dime for the many hours of hard work you’ll have to do when you set your house back up, they won’t be able to replace unique items, and you will have to start over on all the things you worked hard to get just right. Not everything comes out of a box just the way you want it. And who wants to live in a hotel room?

As for who God is punishing, he hasn’t informed me. But I have some thoughts.

My wife and I pray for the destruction of the entertainment industry, including sports, every day. We pray for the filthy people and spirits involved in it to be exposed around the clock. When bad things happen that impact the industry adversely, and when celebrities are exposed as filthy criminals who hurt the innocent, it certainly comports with our requests. I’m sure other Christians pray for the same things. Hollywood leads our children to hell.

As for heavily-Christian areas that receive disasters, I think most Christianity is very weak. We don’t teach people to repent. We don’t teach them to pray in tongues. We push the fake prosperity gospel on them, and it separates them from God. We don’t teach people they need to know God supernaturally and spend time with him in order to be protected. I don’t think it should be a big surprise if bad things happen in an area where the church itself cuts people off from God while pretending to bring them closer.

Receiving prophets brings blessings. Receiving false prophets brings curses.

Lots of bad things happened to me when I was an uninformed and disinformed Christian, but as God has corrected me, things have gotten better and better.

God promises us things like healing, protection, and prosperity. If we don’t receive them, how can we not be doing something wrong? He can’t lie.

Read the Old Testament and see how he treated the Jews when they behaved well.

God has a special love for the Jews, but the destruction of Israel and the Holocaust happened anyway. They rejected their Messiah and the Holy Spirit, so they weren’t as protected as they should have been. Surely the same things happen to Christians.

Yeshua said he wanted to protect Jerusalem, holding the people under his wings like a mother hen. The false doctrine of the Jews of that time prevented him.

It is amazing that rich areas in a rich state in the world’s richest country in 2025 could have a crisis like this; the kind of crisis you would expect to see in Africa or India. But then it’s also amazing they can’t keep their electricity on or get the poop off their sidewalks.

In Los Angeles and San Francisco, it’s a crime to fail to clean up your dog’s poop in public places. Think about that for a second.

Imagine walking your Chihuahua in San Francisco. You might have to pick up his ounce of poop while leaving a two-pound pile of human poop right next to it.

You know what they should do? They should pass a law saying that if your dog poops, you have to leave it and fill a bag with human poop.

Or used needles.

Digression: I wondered why Canada gave Trudeau the boot. I knew it had nothing to do with “common sense,” because if Canadians had that, Canada would be a lot different. My wife is more aware of international news than I am, because I’m an American. She filled me in. One reason is that Canadians are sick of Trudeau letting illegals in from India. There is now a big street-pooping problem in Canada.

If you search the web, you’ll see two kinds of websites. The ones where credible public officials and citizens complain about Indians pooping in public, and the ones that swear it has never happened even once.

There are 1.5 billion Indians in India, and every single one wants to move to North America. The ones in Canada all want to move to the United States.

Canadians are concerned because in some places, Canadian culture, which is unimportant, is being replaced by wonderful, vibrant, pagan Indian culture, which is extremely important because it’s not European or Christian.

It would be wonderful if Canadian culture were completed replaced, because then Canada would be as wonderful as India. Indians have all the answers.

It’s going to be interesting, following the California story. It will be interesting to see homes belonging to billionaires and people with hundreds of millions collapsing in flames, seemingly unnecessarily, simply because weeds are more important than human beings.

It’s a shame to see so much wasted.

Taking the Gas Out of Gaslighters

My buddy Mike sent me some interesting photos on December 31. His son works in Manhattan, and while his son was at work, a man showed up on a balcony below his office and set up a sniper rifle. Here it is.

At first, I thought the photo was more interesting than it later turned out to be. I thought Mike’s son’s building was locked down due to a terrorist situation. Then I realized the rifle belonged to a cop. Mike sent me a video, and it featured a burly guy in black clothing with big white letters on the back.

If you were dancing, getting drunk, and doing drugs in Times Square when the ball came down, you were surrounded by guys with precision rifles.

I thought this was interesting, so I went to a community of shooters and asked if they could identify the gun. I have a precision rifle, so it was natural for me to be interested. You could call my gun a sniper rifle if you wanted. Professional snipers use precision rifles, just like shooting hobbyists. Military snipers didn’t always use them. They used to use deer rifles that were nicely set up to maximize accuracy.

I don’t know if it’s correct to say our military still uses deer rifles. The Marines use a modified .308 rifle based on the Remington 700–a deer rifle–and you can buy a heavy-barreled 700 in .308 for $690. The Marine designation for its rifle is M40A5.

A company called Georgia Precision sells the M40A5 for about $6500 without a scope. Do Marine rifles come from Georgia Precision, or are there a bunch of companies selling different M40A5’s? Not sure. I saw an Internet forum post which suggests the Marines build their own rifles.

The McMillan stock they use runs about $1400, and the aftermarket barrel probably costs something similar, including customization.

Do you need to spend that kind of money to get a super-accurate .308? No. But not every custom part is intended to improve accuracy, and the military can afford frills.

How much of the money is, basically, wasted? No idea. I’ll bet a lot of it is.

The Marines use a barrel made by a company named Schneider. So Schneider must make unbelievably accurate rifles on one else can match? No.

I don’t know why the Marines use .308. It’s an obsolescent (not obsolete) cartridge that loses velocity quickly. It drops below supersonic speed at around 800 yards, and when that happens, the bullet jiggles in flight, and it degrades accuracy. A 6.5 Creedmoor round is supersonic to about 1400 yards. It’s a more modern cartridge, designed with better technology.

When I took my precision rifle course, an instructor said my .308 had a trajectory like a mortar. The bullet goes up, slows down, and comes down, creating a path that looks like the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

All rifle bullets do this, but a .308’s arch is a lot shorter and steeper than a 6.5 Creedmoor’s arch.

A bullet that slows down and drops fast is a pain to shoot accurately a long way out. When you do precision shooting, you have to know how much your bullet will drop over distance so you will know exactly how high it will be when it gets to your target. A short arch means the bullet’s path will be more nearly vertical far away. That means it will drop a lot more over a given distance out there. You have to have a good accurate range figure, because the round is less forgiving than a flat-shooting round.

The .308 delivers somewhat more energy to a person or deer at 200 yards than 6.5 Creedmoor, but farther out, the 6.5 delivers more energy because it’s moving faster. Because it wasn’t designed during the Truman administration.

I don’t know why any sniper would use a .308. Tradition, maybe? I don’t know any Marine armorers, so maybe I’ll never know. Maybe they have a great reason. It can’t be the increased energy at short ranges. A 6.5 Creedmoor will kill a moose just fine, so there is no reason to think a .308 is needed to kill a person. And there are a bunch of other cartridges that are better than 6.5 Creedmoor.

It’s not because a .308 rifle can use spare ammo from machine guns when things get bad. You can’t hit anything with machine gun ammo. I have tried.

If the .308 didn’t exist today, no one would invent it, because the technology is so backward. It would be like inventing a black and white TV with 13 channels.

The .308 was invented 73 years ago. Penicillin was about 11 years old. The transistor was just being made available to the public. The only intelligent life that had been to space was a few perverted beings that liked to abduct guys out of bass boats in Mississippi and probe their unmentionable parts. There were no satellites.

I guarantee you, you can get a Remington 700 that is just as accurate as the Marine version for way, way less than $6500. Maybe it will weigh more or not have wifi or something, but it will shoot fine, and given the short useful range of the .308, it will never need to shoot better than maybe 0.75 MOA. One MOA is 10.5″ at 1000 yards. How wide is a person?

Remington rifle: $650. Timney trigger: $250. New barrel: $500. Precision chassis (stock): $400. Bipod: $100-$250. Ballpark figures. Under $2000. Good scope (Vortex Viper): $1000. Rings: $150.

You don’t actually need the precision chassis, but it looks neat.

What are we at? $3050? Have my 3,000 university math credits paid off?

I think I have something like $2700 in my precision rifle, and I can promise you it will shoot 0.5 MOA with the right ammo and shooter, because I shoot close to that with crap off the shelf, and I am not a great shot.

You know what? Boys like their toys. It’s a blast, customizing, well, nearly anything and getting it just the way you want it. The Marines are boys, just like the rest of us.

As King Lear said when his daughter tried to tell him she couldn’t keep his drunken entourage in her palace, “O, reason not the need!”

To get back to the sniper photo, I asked some forum people if they knew what it was. It turns out the NYPD bought (or was given for publicity) Sako Trg M10 sniper rifles, which sell for about $12,000 without accessories. This is a 14.6-pound gun, and apparently, the NYPD went for .308.

Sako is Finnish, so yay for supporting US jobs.

I asked if anyone knew why the NYPD used this gun when Chris Kyle managed to get by with a TAC-338 which you can buy for $6500.

The TAC-338 uses a real sniper round which stays supersonic out to maybe 1500 yards and can be useful farther out.

The best answers I got involved politics. Basically, the NYPD does not care what it spends, and if it fails to spend whatever it gets in a given year, it gets less the next year, so it tries to spend up to its allotment.

I believe this is the correct explanation, because it comports with my understanding of human nature and blue states.

Anyway, I got a few unbelievably stupid answers. One guy called me a Fudd, which is a nasty name for a person who thinks the Second Amendment only applies to things like hunting shotguns. His answer contained zero useful information. He wanted to know how I had been on the forum for 4 years without knowing exactly why the NYPD needed a $12,000 rifle.

The answer was dumb for multiple reasons. First of all, they do not need the rifle. They could do the same job with an RPR from Bass Pro. Second, since they do not need the rifle, it is not possible for the justification for the rifle to appear anywhere on the forum. Third, who sits and memorizes every post on an Internet forum for 4 years? Fourth, his answer was rude, and he was a bully. I put him in his place and left him there.

Another guy said I had posted a dumbass thread. Another bully. I trimmed him down to size as well. A whole bunch of other users–knowledgeable people including former snipers–had responded with useful posts full of great information. A bunch of them agreed with me. I asked him if they were dumbasses.

I was called a whiner, by someone who has no idea what whining is. Whining means exaggerated, useless complaining. I didn’t complain. I pointed out problems with the arguments supporting the Sako purchase. That makes me a hater, not a whiner, right?

The Internet is a big playpen for jerks and bullies, and forums can be really trying. And certain interests draw unusually snotty people. Firearms. Bodybuilding. Christianity. Fishing. Electronics. Professional machinists are so rude they’re barely human. Hobby machinists are in the middle along with homebrewers. Welders are really nice. Foodies are Nazis. Not regular guys who like barbecue and pizza; they’re okay. I mean people who call themselves foodies and worship Food Network windbags who can’t really cook. Photography people are okay.

It’s funny, but bodybuilding draws bullies, but bodybuilders can’t actually fight. Fighting is a skill. It also requires cardio fitness, which many bodybuilders don’t have because they’re on drugs and don’t do cardio. There are bodybuilders who get tired climbing stairs. A lot of guys pump up show muscles in order to push other guys around, but actual martial artists who could pummel them easily are less obnoxious.

Bodybuilders aren’t even that strong. The kind of lifting they do produces big muscles that don’t do as much as smaller powerlifter muscles.

There is a skinny guy on Youtube who goes to gyms and humiliates drugged-up bodybuilders, tossing their weights around and saying how light they are.

Nineteenth-century-pistol guru Massad Ayoob is a forum guy, and he’s pretty obnoxious. Goes into panic/attack mode when anyone shows him up, which is not hard to do, or, more accurately, hard not to do. He has set himself up so many times. He got me banned from The High Road for disagreeing with him in a thread he was not even part of. Must have sent a note to his pals the mods: “I HAVE BEEN BLASPHEMED!”

Christian forums are awful. The Catholic forums are full of Catholics telling each other all Protestants go to hell. Protestant forums are full of people telling each other they’ll pray God helps them with their errors, when they really mean they hope they go to hell.

You literally have to treat electronics people like mental patients who could have full-blown slobbering-and-head-banging crises if you say the wrong thing. You can’t think of them as human beings. You have to act like you’re trying to extract data from bombs without setting them off. Like you’re playing Operation, with no funny bone.

Reddit is swarming with moderators who have no interest in moderating. They live to delete useful posts and lecture people. “Stand in awe of my deletion powers, mortal! Nanna, get me more Hot Pockets! And shove more Funyuns in them!”

In any case, I think I know why New York City spent a king’s ransom on rifles that work no better than Bass Pro merchandise.

People should be nice to each other. We should be patient. It makes life so much better. If you’re going to be hostile to someone, you should have a very good reason.

When people are nice to you, it gives you a lift. Sometimes I remember nice things people said to me decades ago, and the memories still give me strength. I remember nasty things people said and did, and I realize they still drag me down. It’s funny that I attached so much weight to remarks made by inferior people who were little better than chimps and who failed at life.

When you’re nice, you form attachments to people, and you go on to be helpful to each other in life. Snotty people push others away and end up fending for themselves unless they can control others.

God put us here to help each other. It would be wonderful if more people realized that instead of seeing humanity as a muy thai bag to use to vent their baseless cruelty.

Guess it’s time to take my new rifle out and see what it will do.

Make Silent Movies With Your New $320 Microphones

Time for some practical information that will probably be interesting to about 30 people.

When I got married and we started traveling, I began investing in camera gear. Normal families take pictures and make videos and recordings, unlike my family. They like spending time together. I can’t even guess what that’s like.

Eventually, I realized the microphones that were built into cameras were not intended to be used routinely. They are for times of desperation. When your real microphones aren’t available.

Put a camera 5 feet from a speaker, in a room with normal noise, and you get bad audio. Put both outdoors in a light breeze, and all you hear is the wind. You can put a hairy mike cover (“dead cat”) on the mike to cut the wind sound, but you will still get bad audio because the mike is too far from the speaker.

You’re supposed to use external microphones. Some connect to cameras mechanically. Others send sound to cameras via radio.

You can get a “shotgun” mike, which is a little tube you mount on your camera’s hot shoe. It’s directional. You can point it at your subject, and it will emphasize sounds coming from his direction. You can also buy mikes with long cables.

What you really want is a wireless mike set with at least two remote microphones. And you want lavalier mikes. I mean mikes with wires that connect them to transmitters. Apparently some people think a mike with no wires at all can be a lavalier, but that goes against the definition of the word.

The remote microphones go with your subjects. If you’re a subject, you can attach a remote mike to your collar and capture your speech perfectly when you’re a long way from the camera.

A lavalier mike is a tiny mike with a long cable. You plug it into the remote mike or transmitter, which is larger and more conspicuous. You can put the remote mike in your pocket and clip the lavalier mike to your shirt. This way, you don’t have a big, heavy black thing pulling on your shirt, and the remote mike can’t fall off and land in a toilet or a river.

I got my first remote set in Hong Kong. I wanted DJI, but DJI was hot, and no one had them. I got a Saramonic set. It’s pretty neat. It has two remote mikes you attach to yourself using magnets. It works great.

Problem: it’s very easy to knock the mikes off the magnets. Then they roll down the street. It has happened to us more than once.

Problem: you can’t plug lavaliers into them.

Problem: if you need a part, forget it. Saramonic is an unreliable company. I lost a dead cat for a while, and I could not get a new one. They are still unavailable.

Problem: the magnet in the receiving unit, which sits on your camera, may interfere with your camera’s monitor screen. You have to install a ridiculous spacer on your hot shoe. Saramonic promised me one and never sent it. I had to go aftermarket.

I decided to eat the $250 loss and get a new set. I had to choose between Rode and DJI. Both seemed pretty good. I went with a Rode Wireless Pro set for some reason I don’t remember. Rode is a serious company that makes professional stuff. The set I got is on their low end.

We decided to make a Christmas video with the Rode set and a Sony A7IV camera. Couldn’t do it. There was a horrible buzzing noise that took over most of the audio signal. I could sort of hear words in the background, but that was it.

Rode knows this problem exists with at least one product. The set one step below the one I got. I don’t know how much they know about this issue and the Rode Wireless Pro.

Let’s cut to the chase. There was a short cable that connected the receiver to the camera’s audio jack. Rode claims it’s a shielded cable. Whatever. It passed all sorts of noise and very little audio. It was the problem. When I contacted Rode, they gave me bad advice, like suggesting I crank the gain way up. Yes, so then I’d hear the audio AND the buzz. If I had listened to them, my set would now be in the return pile at an Amazon facility.

I had a similar cable I bought in an electronics shop in Lucerne. I think it was Lucerne. Could have been Singapore, but I don’t think so. I put this cable where the Rode cable had been, and all the noise disappeared.

Either:

1. Rode’s cables are pathetic, or
2. I got a defective one.

Based on Rode’s reputation, I would guess my cable is defective. I certainly hope they’re not sending useless cables out on purpose.

I got a Rode rep to send me a new one so I could find out. In any case, the camera works now. The new cable is longer and more likely to get in the way. I am hoping the replacement cable from Rode will function.

They asked me for my phone number before shipping the replacement. I told them they didn’t need my number, but they insisted. I didn’t want junk calls, so I gave them the number for a local Burger King.

Our relationship needs work.

Other than this, the product seems great. The batteries drained faster than the ad copy suggested, but every company lies about battery life. The audio sounds beautiful

Should you buy a Rode system? No idea. I don’t know whether DJI’s competing products have this problem. I know you should avoid Saramonic. If they can’t supply parts, it almost certainly means they are going out of business slowly. If you have a Saramonic set, guard the dead cats with your life, because you will never get a new one.

A Rode set like mine runs about 40% more than a Saramonic set, but at least it’s from a real company that has real support, and you won’t drop your mikes in the toilet.

The Saramonic mikes are still nice for indoor work. When the subjects aren’t moving around or leaning over deep fryers or anything.

How do you replace the batteries in products like this? That’s a great question. I’m pretty sure the product is finished when the battery quits. They don’t make a point of putting this information in the ads. “DIES PERMANENTLY AFTER 200 SESSIONS! COULD HAPPEN DURING A WEDDING OR EXPENSIVE VACATION!” That wouldn’t help them move merchandise.

I just emailed the Rode rep to find out. Not going to bother with Saramonic. They already owe me a part, and I don’t think I’ll ever get it.

I see some people on the web replacing batteries for a different Rode set, so maybe there is hope.

If you bought a Rode Wireless Pro, and you can’t record anything, maybe this blog post will fix the problem. I recommend trying your set out before your return period expires.

One Day Dallas and Atlanta May be as Pleasant as Mumbai

Is it bad to be a Christian nationalist?

That depends on what the phrase means.

I have seen it defined as part of white supremacy. That claim is completely asinine and belongs in the toilet with the whining about how white people can’t eat tacos because it’s cultural appropriation. It’s beneath the dignity level of tinfoil-hat stuff.

Incidentally, the web says most Christians are not white. You have to be pretty provincial not to know that. There are Christians other than Pope Francis and Franklin Graham.

Christianity is like gender or shoe size. Unrelated to race.

I have also seen Christian nationalism defined as a belief based on the notion that America is, and always has been, a Christian nation. That belief is fundamentally true, regardless of historical nitpicking and cherry-picking to the contrary. Overwhelmingly, the drafters of the Constitution represented Christians. But this doesn’t concern me. I don’t care what we believed in the 18th century. I would like to do whatever is best in the present, regardless of what Americans did two centuries ago.

If Christian nationalism means a desire to turn America into a Christian nation with special accommodation for Christians and a certain amount of favoritism for Jews and Israel, then I’m all for it. I would love to see Yeshua honored in our Constitution. Other countries have done this, and the earth hasn’t swallowed them up.

When I was young, I was indoctrinated, of course. Leftist teachers convinced me that religious freedom was extremely important. That is true, up to a point. But the First Amendment wasn’t drafted with Satanists and witches in mind. It wasn’t drafted to make room for Islamists, any more than the part about freedom of expression was drafted for Hugh Hefner.

“Islamist” doesn’t mean “Muslim.” It means a person who wants to establish a political state under Islamic law.

When the First Amendment was written, nobody considered the possibility that demonized people would eventually insist on putting monuments to Satan in front of courthouses. If this had been foreseen, the text would be a lot different. The First Amendment was intended to prevent the government from establishing a particular type of Christianity and forcing it on people. The Old World has a long tradition of turning denominations into governments and murdering people who disagreed. The founders didn’t want a Church of England here.

I guarantee you, Thomas Jefferson would not have been in favor of forcing city councils to let kooks wearing horns invoke Satan’s blessing at meetings. It’s childish to suggest otherwise. I very much doubt the founders would have expected Muslims and Hindus to be made goverment-employed chaplains. Our military didn’t get a Muslim chaplain until 1993.

I didn’t think about these things when I was in high school. I figured we were supposed to let people build mosques and Hindu temples and leave them alone, and I suppose I just assumed it would end there. I didn’t foresee the courthouse devil statues, and I didn’t know we would have a huge problem with radical Muslims establishing sharia law and committing thousands of murders.

I didn’t know one minority religion’s barbarism would result in the government forcing us all to pose for naked pictures at airports.

My plan now is to vote against the spread and encouragement of heathen faiths every chance I get. I am allowed to do that under our laws, so it’s what I’ll do. I am also against the wholesale importation of heathens from places where hatred of America and Christianity are common.

Right now, H1-B visas are in the news. Vivek Ramaswamy, a Hindu whose religion is the worship of evil spirits, has said we need to increase the flow.

Worshiping evil spirits is bad. Is it still legal to say that? It’s very bad. They are evil, after all. Hell is real, and not all religions will save you from it. Demonic doctrine is incorrect. Hindus have been fooled. It’s very serious.

Yeshua is the God of everyone. Hindus, Muslims, wiccans, atheists, Jews…everyone. There is only one God. The others are impostors who ruin people and cut them off from God’s love. It’s okay for Christians to say this. To do otherwise would be like living in America and refusing to name the president. It’s absurd for us to hesitate. Saying Yeshua is God should be routine and commonplace, spoken without any reluctance, like saying Elon Musk runs Tesla. To Christians, it’s a simple fact.

Incidentally, Ramaswamy is a Brahmin (big surprise), so he’s in the top Hindu caste. Apologists claim the caste system doesn’t come from Hinduism, but that’s a lie, because their religious texts lay out caste rules. They say Ramaswamy can’t eat food prepared by certain castes, for example. Also, Brahmins are generally lighter-skinned than the people Hinduism sets beneath them. The darkest people are in the lowest caste. And the castes are preserved and sometimes enforced among Hindus in the US. Caste discrimination is a big problem in America’s tech industry.

If there is a white man’s religion, it’s probably Hinduism.

Ramaswamy has as much as said that Americans are too lazy to fill the need for tech professionals. He thinks this means we need to open the floodgates. To all sorts of people we clearly do not need.

I looked up HB-1 visas. If what I read is correct, you can get an HB-1 visa in the fields of education and the arts. You can even be a fashion model.

No. We do not need to import more Hindu and Muslim teachers. We are perfectly capable of finding citizens and existing residents to teach. And paying people to come in and act or sing is moronic. Entertainers spread corruption, and we already have plenty of them. Why we would need fashion models so badly we would move them ahead in the immigration line is beyond me.

Extending the program beyond areas where we have a legitimate need makes no sense at all, unless it makes sense because it’s normal for our government to do stupid, woke things. It definitely makes sense. In that sense.

Ramaswamy just happens to come from a country full of educated people who live in squalor and who would love to come here and write code or give people prostate exams. And only a small fraction of them are Christians or Jews. A suspicious person would say he may be more interested in helping Indians than Americans. I’m not sure, but I have to wonder.

We get a lot of very good African professionals who are Christians. I’m all for bringing them in. I wish we could deport American citizens who practice wicca in exchange for them. But loading our country up with heathens is a bad idea. They will continue to push Christianity aside. Christianity is correct, and heathen faiths all belong to Satan, who hates humanity. The more heavily-Christian a nation is, the more blessed it will be. Heathen faiths bring problems.

Look at India. They work like slaves. They’re smart. They have ports and farmland. They work extremely hard to get education to the poor. In spite of all this, they live in horrible circumstances in a low-trust, low-empathy culture. Which we should expect them to bring with them.

Work and education aren’t the big factors in a nation’s success. Yeshua is.

When God blesses a nation for honoring him, people from cursed nations start moving there. Eventually, they can overwhelm God’s people to the point where the curses overcome the blessings.

If I were the king of America, I would drastically limit immigration except for Christians–real ones–and Jews. I wouldn’t worry about whether we had enough chip designers, because I would know God would look after us for being faithful.

Whenever I get a chance to cast a vote that will favor Christianity or disfavor heathen religions, I will do it. If that makes me a Christian nationalist, so what? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s the only intelligent policy.

It’s too late, though. The lifeboat is already sinking. It can’t be fixed. We now live in a nation where a big, strong, masculine rapist who has a moustache, no women’s clothing, a man’s name, and no feminine mannerisms can be sent to a women’s prison at his own request. That’s how demonized we are. Demons have made most Americans insane. We’re not coming back from this.

Excuse me While I Kiss the Sand of Florida

In our daily prayers, my wife and I pray for divisiveness.

We pray for God to separate us from worthless people. The worthless are the people who are so determined to stay in pride and reject Yeshua, there is no hope for their salvation. They are vexatious and discouraging to be around, they do great harm, and whatever good they do in our lives is not worth the cost.

Division gets a bad rap. It’s actually a huge blessing. Associating with degenerate people is harmful.

The other day, God told me something. Good people avoid bad people, but bad people pursue good people and want to live among them. Parasites can’t get by without hosts.

This is why America has so many destructive immigrants and illegal aliens. People from what are kindly described as “low-trust cultures” come here to get away from their own kind and abuse people who have established a relatively orderly society. On the other hand, good people flee low-trust cultures to get here and experience reduced predation.

Many conservatives are upset because their deranged far-left acquaintances are cutting them off. They complain because toxic people refuse to spend the holidays with them. What are they thinking? There are few greater blessings than having people who do harm removed from your life.

Ordinarily, the type of people who love leftism make an effort to be around successful, productive, orderly people, because they know they can take advantage of them. It’s wonderful when their derangement and hatred overcome their common sense and they decide to separate themselves from us.

I haven’t heard my sister’s voice since 2015, if memory serves. Often, I pray God will keep her away from me forever. I don’t have to be told to separate myself from parasitic people. God got the message through to me years ago.

She sent me an email a few years back. Why? She wanted money. She had moved in with my sick aunt, ruined the aunt’s life, and refused to leave. By the grace of God, my sister fell in a ditch and broke her leg in several places, and while she was being treated, my aunt’s daughter took her junk to a hotel. Then I got the email. I deleted it and blocked the sender. Every day that passes with no communication from her is a big victory, and I literally thank God every day for the separation.

I didn’t shut her out because of a political disagreement. I did it to protect myself. But a leftist relative who ruins family gatherings with vicious diatribes is also a fine candidate for ostracism.

Think about this: far-left nuts generally go to hell, because most never repent and get to know Yeshua. If you invest in them while they’re alive, you’re wasting. What are you wasting? Time, money, affection, company…you name it.

You will die, and after that, you’ll never see them again. You will never share fond memories in heaven. The things you did with them prove to be worthless and not fit to be remembered. Eventually, you will be cut off from them for eternity, so you may as well let them go now.

The more you invest in such people, the more you lose.

Why am I thinking about this? Naturally, it’s because I read about a gun control case.

Hawaii is a far-left state. A horrible place. Hawaii’s government has decided to violate the Constitution over and over. In Hawaii, only a tiny percentage of carry applications are approved. This obviously conflicts with federal law.

A guy who lives in Hawaii was prosecuted for carrying a gun while hiking. He got the case dismissed based on federal precedent, but Hawaii’s Supreme Court reversed and wrote a deranged leftist opinion. The case was appealed to the US Supreme Court, which denied certiorari on procedural grounds. Basically, they decided the case was not ready for Supreme Court consideration. Eventually, it will be.

Hawaii’s Supreme Court said something really stupid. Here is what OUR Supreme Court said, quoting the lower court:

[I]t denigrated the need for public carry in particular, rejecting as un-Hawaiian “a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons.”

People carry deadly weapons everywhere. Even Honolulu and Martha’s Vineyard.

Legally, many things can be considered deadly weapons. The case law is clear. A wrench. A screwdriver. A bronze figurine. A rock. A car. A canoe paddle. In the George Zimmerman case, a sidewalk was used as a deadly weapon.

People have access to deadly weapons all the time. On top of that, many people ARE deadly weapons. If you’re a 250-pound athlete with 15% body fat and a 300-pound bench press, your hands and feet are deadly weapons.

Carrying firearms doesn’t introduce deadly weapons into an environment. It just makes the playing field more fair to the weak. If you can’t carry a weapon, and you’re small and frail, you pretty much have to accept being beaten up and otherwise abused by stronger people.

There are lots of Hawaiians who are very physically dangerous but unarmed, and unarmed Hawaiians commit a lot of violent crime. Native Hawaiians are extremely prone to criminal behavior. They are known particularly for beating women.

Wife-beating is a big problem among Pacific Islanders in general. It’s not just Hawaii. But you can’t talk about it, because if you do, you’re a racist.

To get back to the opinion, permitting people to arm themselves is not a “mandated lifestyle.” No one will be forced to carry a weapon.

“Un-Hawaiian” is divisive virtue-signaling, and it evinces contempt for the union. Residents of Hawaii are supposed to be American, not Hawaiian. There is no country called Hawaii.

Please don’t tell me how great Hawaiian culture is and how idyllic Hawaiian life was before Christians showed up. They loved human sacrifice. They thought incest was normal. Hawaiians killed Captain James Cook, and 4 of them shared his heart at a ceremonial meal. They murdered many of their babies, supposedly to avoid overpopulation.

If carrying a weapon is un-Hawaiian, then presumably, Hawaiians won’t want to do it, so no harm done, except for the continuation of the harm of allowing the weak to be preyed upon. Tough luck for women abused by native Hawaiian husbands.

I’m very tired of the dishonest anti-2A arguments. They’re all lies told to keep citizens weak and compliant, and, frankly, to turn crime victims into sacrifices on the altar of misguided gun control.

I think the worst lie is the one about militias. The Second Amendment says we have the right to own and carry firearms. It mentions militia work as a motive, but it does not say we can only possess and carry guns while serving in militias.

How stupid would it be to write a Constitutional amendment giving people the right to possess and carry arms in the military?

The Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, which is a list of changes representatives of states forced on the union before agreeing to join up. Its sole purpose is to limit the federal government’s power over states and citizens. It does not give the federal government any power.

It should be obvious that it makes no sense to grant the people the right to carry arms in military service. That’s not a right. That’s something that has historically been forced on people.

Hitler allowed German and Austrian citizens to carry arms in the military. Genghis Khan allowed it. George III allowed it. The pharaohs allowed it. Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh…every tyrant who ever lived allowed it. Their regimes depended on it. They didn’t allow their military slaves to NOT carry arms.

Governments force arms into people’s hands. What kind of idiot would write a law pretending carrying a weapon for military service is a right? It’s like saying you have the right to pay taxes.

Incidentally, 2A says militias are needed to protect the security of free states. Not the union. The states. Against the union. The framers weren’t thinking a state might need to defend itself from Canada. They were concerned that states might be overrun by union troops or forcibly absorbed into the union. Which is exactly what happened in 1865, but let’s not go there.

Leftists stupidly say 2A is only about militias, even though they hate militias, and they also claim we should only be able to carry the types of guns soldiers carried when 2A was written. They like to say this means muskets, but we fought the British with rifles, swords, pistols, and cannons, too.

If the purpose of 2A is to assist with military service, then we should be allowed to carry the military weapons of our time. Full-auto. No nation on Earth goes into battle with AR-15’s that fire one round at a time. Imagine showing up for militia duty to fight the Russians, carrying a flintlock.

I’m glad I don’t live in Hawaii or any other blue abscess. Thank God I live among good conservative people. Thank God I don’t have to go to work every day and be pushed around by sexual deviants, socialists, and environmental tyrants. I’ve never had to take a seminar and be told how evil my race is. I’ve never been pressured to honor a coworker who chose a same-sex marriage. A friend of mine works at a university, and she could not discuss the pandemic at work for fear of being fired. I don’t have to deal with such things.

My best friend has another friend who is a senior engineer at Raytheon, a company we rely on for our defense. The engineer complains of being forced to take wokeness classes, not because he has done anything wrong, but because all employees have to take them. He says the company is filled with affirmative action hires who are incompetent. Everyone else does their jobs for them. I don’t have problems like this. I am so blessed.

I never have to say, “I don’t know how I can stand this, but I have a mortgage.”

It’s good to live among conservative Christians. It’s very good to limit your exposure to demonized leftists who have no future. I don’t chase the people who have shunned me because I turned to Yeshua. We were going to be separated eventually anyway.

Fries WILL be Great Again

RFK Jr. is about to become the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, a department which sounds leftist when you say its name. What conservative would use the phrase “human services”? It’s idiotic. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s too broad. I’m a human. When I hire someone to look at my AC system, it must be a human service. But HHS doesn’t send out air conditioner repairmen.

We had better department names when we had fewer departments. The Department of Defense was the Department of War. No apologies. Truthful. Trumpish.

Let’s Google.

HHS, which is called “HHS,” even though the DOJ is called “the DOJ,” was put together in 1939. Already, it makes sense to me. A socialist put it together.

It was originally called the Federal Security Agency, which is a pretty good piece of leftist PR for its day. “We just want you to be secure and know there are no monsters under your bed.” It was supposed to be in charge of Social Security, health, and education. They must have rejected “the Department of Intrusiveness.”

The guy who ran the department was a man named McNutt. That’s too easy. Before leading the Department of Buttinskyism, he was the governor of Indiana and burdened the citizens with the state’s first income tax.

Perfect.

Eventually, the government felt that the jobs of using Social Security and centrally-planned education were so important, they should be given to separate organizations with independent armies of stooges, so we ended up with the Social Security Administation and the Department of Indoctrination. I mean Education.

HHS includes the CDC, NIH, and FDA.

That’s all I need to know. Let’s disband it.

Okay, okay. We do need someone to keep really awful drugs off the market. I mean, if we didn’t have a government agency doing that, some company might put out untested vaccines that cause blood clots and myocarditis, leading to an epidemic of excess deaths among young people, which the government’s unofficial department, the MSM, would have to tell us did not exist.

All right. All right. We do need the FDA. I think. Even though it keeps Americans from receiving excellent medications used everywhere else in the world. Look up Rowachol. I got covid recently, and the pharmacist in Rome gave me two well-regarded drugs, neither of which had I ever heard of. Thanks to the FDA.

Anyway, the FDA is out of control. It lets lobbyists tell us what to eat. It gave us the Food Pyramid, which was originally known as the Iowa/Nebraska Joint Pro-Diabetes Pyramid. The Pyramid told us to stuff ourselves with all sorts of carbohydrates which rotted our teeth, strangled our pancreases, filled our arteries with placques, gave us high blood pressure, and made us one of the fattest nations outside of Polynesia.

Carbohydrates are the single biggest killer in the US. Think about that.

Here is the Pyramid.

It says to eat 6-11 servings of carbohydrates per day. I overeat, I love food, and I can’t manage that. I can’t even picture the people who do. They must make Jabba the Hutt look like Olive Oyl. All by itself, their gas must have raised sea levels an inch.

Rice and pasta, it says. Bread. Know what you’re eating when you eat those things? Glucose. A sugar so bad for you it’s used as the standard for the glycemic index, a metric which tells you how much damage your food is doing to your body. You chew your bread, mixing it with an enzyme in spit that converts starch into glucose, and before long, excess glucose is pouring into your veins, threatening your eyesight, your circulatory system, your brain, your nerves, and your chances of marrying anyone remotely attractive.

The weird thing about this is that you don’t need carbohydrates at all. We all love them, but you can go your entire life and be extremely healthy without carbs in your diet. Can’t do that with fat and protein.

The Pyramid discourages consumption of meat. I guess the pork and beef lobbyists had a lower budget for hookers and trips.

Meat is harmless. It’s great for you. Plant-based foods cause diabetes, tooth decay, obesity, and high blood pressure. It’s pretty much impossible to have those things without eating plants, and the fewer carbs you eat, the less likely you are to have these issues. Meat simply can’t cause them.

The FDA used to tell us to get 25 grams of fiber every day. Have you ever tried to do that? That’s 6 bowls of raisin bran. You would literally wear out your toilet seat. You would go through life clearing elevators and subway cars.

The government has no business managing our diets. The government is corrupt and stupid. It tells us what lobbyists and leftist freaks tell us to. And nutrition is not properly part of the government’s business. What’s next? Compulsory calisthenics?

Guard the borders. Fight our enemies. Protect business. Run the courts and prisons. The government should do these things. Where does it get off telling us what to put on our dinner tables?

All this being said, RFK is kind of a nut. He seems like he would be a great guy to hang around with, but come on. He eats roadkill. He thinks vaccines cause autism, a theory which is right up there with Pizzagate.

Not taking vaccines causes things like polio, diphtheria, smallpox, and rubella. This is proven.

I don’t know whether he’ll be good or bad for us, but it would be nice to hear less propaganda from HHS, and it would be good if Americans could buy the same drugs that save lives in Europe.

He hates seed oils. I don’t know whether he’s right or not. He loves animal fat, and there, I am with him.

He said something wonderful. He reminded America that McDonald’s used to fry potatoes in beef tallow. They quit in the Nineties. Bad research and the FDA convinced American women animal fat and eggs were bad, which they are not, and women have strong voices when it comes to food purchasing. All sorts of companies started cutting out animal fat. Oreos abandoned delicious lard. We even have skinny pigs now. You can’t make much gravy from a country ham these days.

Women are much more gluttonous than men, and they drive the chip and ice cream industries, but they do more than anyone to deprive the rest of us.

Beef-fat fries are magnificent. I’ve made them. They smell like prime rib. A beef-fat fry is Jane Russell. A canola fry is Elizabeth Warren.

I wonder if he’ll be able to bring beef-fat fries back in some major restaurants. Maybe he can make them trendy. That would be a dream come true.

Potatoes are practically poisonous, but there is no denying their impact on cuisine. They taste wonderful. Fried. Mashed. Baked. Boiled. You name it. Beef fat makes ingesting an inherently unhealthy vegetable worth it.

People say potatoes are actually healthy. They have vitamin C! They’re low in fat! Whatever. Try one without salt and added fat and then return to the discussion. Worthless. Prison food.

I always feel bad after eating potatoes, but they’re too good to give up.

Even if the FDA were right about everything, I would still want it to shut up about our diets. It’s outside the government’s lane.

Getting back to RFK, I don’t think vaccines cause autism. Demons cause autism, and if autism has increased, it’s because America has turned into Sodom. We invite demons to rule us now. They cause disease, mental illness, and other misfortunes. Unfortunately, the FDA will never admit demons exist.

Regardless of what Roadkill Robert says, I plan to take every well-tested vaccine I can get, except for those made with mRNA. That stuff is horrifying. My son is going to be vaccinated, and he will live under the same policy. I don’t want him dying needlessly of some ridiculous 1900’s disease like tetanus or whooping cough.

My son will never be vaccinated for covid.

Covid vaccine : young person :: birth control pills : Caitlyn Jenner.

Trump needs to put a libertarian in charge of the Department of Education. A real Ron Swanson, unlike cookie-cutter kneejerk liberal Nick Offerman, who played him. We need someone who will destroy the department from the inside. The suggestion that states can’t run schools is asinine and insulting. I could run a school. Nearly any educated adult could.

The business of education requires a very low level of competence. You know it’s true. Remember your teachers?

I had one who told us there were 52 states.

I hope RFK succeeds in doing good things and is restrained when he tries to implement ideas he heard from Alex Jones. All in all, I prefer him to anyone Harris would have appointed, sight unseen.

Leading Democrats Express Concern

Was I wrong about the left’s response to the second Trump election? I was sure the usual spindly, stoned, spoiled white kids would be out in the streets burning buildings and attacking the cops by now, but it has not happened.

What’s going on? They have gone berserk so many times. Why not now?

I wonder if it’s because even leftists are tired of them. I saw that Oregon’s governor, a lefty wackjob (I didn’t actually check, but I am willing to guess) threatened to meet Antifa with the National Guard. Are Antifers intimidated because they think blue-state officials might actually do their jobs this time?

Maybe leftists are tired of Antifa because it was a fad. BLM seems to be drying up. Maybe kids no longer think it’s cool to post selfies and videos from riots, not because they have grown up, but simply because it has been done already, and other kids are not as impressed as they once were.

I just saw a video from Seattle, where a group of about two dozen black-clad punks with a combined chest measurement of 35 inches tried to buffalo a few bike cops. It went nowhere. They ended up wandering off, chanting some nonsense questioning the cops’ parentage.

Aren’t we supposed to refrain from shaming the unfathered?

Is the rain killing their drive? Leftist nut riots generally occur in decent weather. American leftists are soft. They may dress like the Viet Cong, but they cry when the cops intercept their Grubhub orders. Literally. Maybe they’re afraid rain will wash the food coloring out of their hair.

Riot-prone punks are generally drug users. Has the dope gotten so good, it destroys their motivation to leave the basement? We all know weed kills motivation, except for the motivation to eat Frito-Lay products.

Could it be they’re planning action for later, on the assumption it will surprise THE MAN, who was counting on post-election chaos?

I don’t think so. I don’t think they plan that far ahead. I think they are bad at thinking about the future. After all, Jew-hating leftists at Harvard showed their faces while expecting to receive legal internships in New York City. That’s like showing up for a job interview with an ankle bracelet.

Maybe they’re waiting for a spark. Someone has to go first and make protesting cool again. Someone has to get a whole bunch of likes for fighting the police naked or something.

Herd creatures don’t like to be the one who goes first.

Tiktok gals are telling other gals to poison men. Is that the new leftist intifada? The police can beat you up, and felony arrests can keep you out of cushy jobs, so perhaps it makes sense that crazy, unfulfilled women whose cats aren’t getting the job done would go on Tiktok with their faces uncovered and tell other women to poison husbands and boyfriends they will never actually have.

The poison girls practically worship a long-dead Italian lady who (probably not true) sold poison to women with abusive husbands. The poison is called aqua Tofana, and it contains lead, arsenic, and belladonna.

It’s not like we know these women had abusive husbands. It’s not like there were trials. Maybe their wealthy husbands abused them by not dying soon enough.

By the way, as long as we’re revealing top secret information, McDonald’s special sauce is thousand island dressing. I know you had no idea. Nearly every secret sauce is ketchup plus mayonnaise with or without pickle relish.

The Tiktok assassin wannabes tell other girls aqua Tofana is undetectable after the fact. And that is true. If it’s 1650 A.D.

Lead, arsenic, and belladonna can be detected with no problem, and this has probably been true for over a century.

Girls really are bad at science. I’m sorry.

I don’t know why anyone would think lead was a good poison. Pretty sure cigarettes are faster.

When I was young, I did not understand that lead was bad for us, and I liked the taste of it. Sometimes I chewed on lead split-shot fishing sinkers. You’re supposed to close split shots with pliers, but I used my teeth, and I noticed that lead was kind of tasty.

Maybe this explains a lot of things about me now. Anyway, I did not die or even get sick.

Opponents of the aqua Tofana movement have speculated that very few of these women have access to men on a regular basis, for reasons that are obvious when you watch their videos. But, as an Internet denizen said, going to Starbucks could be scary. And I’m not talking about the prices.

Where are these girls going to get arsenic? Amazon? Let me see. Let me search and put myself on yet another secret list.

Amazon lists a homeopathic medicine made from arsenic trioxide. It’s called arsenicum album, which probably means “white arsenic.” Given that it’s sold openly as a medicine, and the fact that it’s homeopathic, i.e. ineffective, this stuff can’t contain enough arsenic to change election outcomes.

“Homeopathic” is a funny way to spell “placebo.”

Well, this is something. I just found a 100-gram bottle of pure arsenic metal on Amazon for $380. God bless the Internet. I should have expected it.

I just checked, and I can buy a cobra online for $1,000. Not at Amazon, so forget free shipping.

Never doubt the power of online commerce. I can use Paypal. I can’t use Paypal to buy a box of .22 shorts, because Paypal thinks selling gun-related items is harmful to society. But I can get a highly venomous snake that will breed just fine in my yard.

I can buy an inland taipan. Look this thing up. It’s worse than 10 cobras. These things will chase you and bite you over and over until they’re dry.

They’re like long, skinny scorned women.

I don’t like gun control, but shouldn’t we have cobra control? Isn’t that obvious? A gun just sits around until someone uses it, and it can’t reproduce. It can’t eradicate or displace native species, either. We should be controlling dangerous animals like cobras, pit-type dogs, and Will Smith.

If the kooky aqua Tofana girls get serious, maybe some witch with the prerequisite nose hog ring, who works at a university chemistry lab, will start filching arsenic and mailing it around to girls who will end up poisoning themselves and their cats accidentally. Or maybe some girl who doesn’t know Amazon keeps records of sales will just order some.

I can already see the cop videos in my mind. Girls in cuffs, screaming “THEY SAID IT WAS UNDETECTABLE! Oh, and I CAN’T BREATHE!”

I don’t know why America hasn’t erupted in violence, but I am confident it will happen, because you can’t say we’ve changed just because Republicans won elections by small margins.

Maybe the riot-prone are avoiding important dates like the ones like January 6 and January 20. Maybe they’ll flip out and go berserk over minor provocations, when we don’t expect it. Maybe they’ll hear there will be no Barbie sequel.

Farewell to the Wizard of America’s Id

I created another Twitter account so I could survey the situation following the election. When I have created Twitter accounts in the past, I have not been able to stand it very long. I thought this time might be different. I could stay in the background, not get too much dirt on me, and have the ability to look at other people’s pages in chronological order, which is something Twitter took away from non-members.

I lasted 4 days.

I was swamped with fake and/or bot accounts. I don’t know what purpose these accounts serve. They must be making money somehow. Most of them featured posts sort of like this: “I have had it with Mike Pompeo! If you agree, say ‘YES’!”

A lot of them had ridiculous names like “PresOfficialDonaldTrump.” They were labeled “Parody,” not always in a conspicuous way. They contributed nothing at all to the discourse, and they pushed real accounts out.

I had to keep muting these accounts. Muting means you can’t see their posts, but they can see yours. It seemed like it didn’t work. I kept seeing the same trash. Maybe they were posting on multiple accounts with very similar names. I tried blocking. I blocked and blocked and blocked.

I started getting slut posts. One of the first was some sleazy little trollop dropping the top of her bar-grade minidress. Then I got flooded with Cardi B fan posts. “Cardi be CRUSHIN’ it in this dress!” I would guess I muted and blocked over 30 accounts like this, but they kept coming. Cardi B is a slut, she is unintelligent, and she is also homely.

I received similar posts from other rap sluts. I got one from Sexxy Red, another homely pop star. She was bending over in a short dress, facing away from the phone. She looks like a budget prostitute of the sort favored by economically-minded military personnel.

I use harsh terms, I know, but so does the Bible.

There was also a ton of disinformation from the right and the left. The guy who debunked Pizzagate raped a bunch of kids! No, he was caught with child pornography. Doug Emhoff’s daughter had to be committed to a mental asylum after the election! No, that did not happen. RFK murdered 83 kids in Samoa! Really? Read up on that.

Twitter now has “community notes,” meaning you can post a note correcting disinformation. I saw very few of these.

There were a bunch of sick women, telling the world how they hated their friends and relatives who voted for Trump. TDS is not imaginary. It’s real, and it’s everywhere.

Many people were gloating over the Democrats. This is a practice I battle within myself. Here is what the Bible says:

Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth:

Lest the Lord see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him.

I don’t want the Lord to stop defeating these people and the filthy spirits they serve.

I saw a lot of people bragging about a Trump landslide. That was annoying. There was no landslide. Ronald Reagan was elected twice, and in the process, he got over 1,000 electoral votes. Those were landslides. Trump got 312 votes. Why can’t we be honest? He did pretty well. That’s all.

Trump got 304 votes in 2016, and no one called it a landslide.

People were talking as though the Democrats were finished. A lot of people think we own the country now. No. We do not. We won in a squeaker. We had a feeble loser opponent who repelled people, and we still ended up with tiny majorities in the House and Senate. America still loves Satan’s values, and the left will eventually overtake the right. Get ready for it. You will not save America, but you can save yourself by getting to know God.

We will probably lose one house of Congress in the midterm election, so get ready for it.

I don’t know how you’re supposed to get anything good out of Twitter. There are a lot of citizen journalists there, but think of the sewage you have to wade through to get to them.

The big conservative brains on Twitter are disappointing. For example, people say James Woods got a 1600 on the SAT and went to MIT, but his posts are pretty ordinary. Some are immature. He’s not “owning” people right and left. I tend to doubt what people say about his intelligence. It’s true he went to MIT for 7 semesters, but not everyone there is Niels Bohr.

On top of all this, Twitter is a time sink. You sit down to check it briefly, and then suddenly, 90 minutes are gone, and you have nothing to show for it.

I’m out. I’m done. I think Twitter is important, because you can say things all the other social sites delete, but I can’t find a way to make it work for me. Maybe I’ll start another account if something big happens and I want to keep track of it, but I am on the sidelines for now.

My Personal Trainer’s Name is Milton

Life here is going extremely well, although I have some concerns about my wife because she holds her belly and sings to it. I am pretty old, I have seen lots of pregnant women, and they have all seemed pretty miserable. My wife isn’t getting the message.

I’m having fun moving hurricane trees. A real whopper flopped in my woods, over the dirt road that goes down the middle of the lot. I would say it’s 80 feet tall, or, more accurately, long. It’s about two feet thick at what used to be waist level. It fell so the crown got stuck in some other trash oaks.

Some of the upper branches hit the ground, and others were caught in the other trees. In a situation like that, it can be impossible to predict what the tree wants to do. Is it firmly stuck at the top end, or is the root ball holding it up? If you cut it, will it do nothing, fall straight down, or fall while rotating? Which end will fall when you cut? Will the tree’s canopy drop, ripping limbs off the other trees? Will the stump end come toward you? Will it go up or down?

Making things worse, this is a V-shaped tree. It has one big trunk and one small one. It fell in the direction of the small trunk, pinning the smaller part of the tree to the ground. The V-shaped base of the tree held the big trunk up so the lowest good place to cut was at waist height. When you cut a nearly-horizontal tree which is three feet off the ground, the part that falls can fall…three feet. With you close at hand.

I have two new chainsaws. I got frustrated with my Echo Timberwolf and the little Jonsered CS2240 I bought in 2017, because I had trouble keeping them running. This year, I bought a Husqvarna 562XP with a 24″ bar, and I just picked up a 50-cc Echo CS-501P with a 16″ bar. The CS-501P usually comes with a longer bar, but I wanted a light, overpowered short saw for bucking. My new saws are commercial saws. The old Echo came with commercial innards for the most part, but it also had some residential-grade stuff, some of which I have replaced.

As you can see, this is a scary tree to cut. If you cut the top end, it could come loose and crush you without warning. If you cut the bottom end, you can’t tell which way it will go. It was surrounded with vines and other trip hazards, making it even more fun.

I will call the big part of the tree “Tree 1” and the small part “Tree 2.” I decided I should try to get most of Tree 2 out from under Tree 1 so Tree 1 would not fall on it and then roll toward me. Using my knowledge of tree behavior, accumulated over 7 years, I cut Tree 2 a couple of yards from the root ball, confident I could keep it from pinching the saw. Which it did, almost immediately.

I had to go back to the house and get the cordless Makita to get it loose. I could not get a wedge into the wood to open it up, so I had to make a second cut close by, while standing nearly under the trunk of Tree 1.

I can’t say enough about the cordless Makita. If you have a lot of trees, you can’t really get by without a gas saw unless you want to buy maybe 8 expensive batteries, but for most jobs, the Makita is fantastic. It has incredible torque, it cuts really fast, it makes no noise, it always starts, and Makita engineered it so it’s very easy to use. You don’t need a scrench to install or adjust chains.

Makita makes top-quality gas saws under the Dolmar name, but they don’t have much of a presence in the US.

If I only had a few chainsaw jobs to do every year, I’d be happy with the Makita and a cordless pole saw.

Well, that’s not true. I’d also want a small gas saw to free the Makita if it got pinched. Which it would.

I got a fair amount of Tree 2 out of there. Tree 1 did not move. I figured the next thing was to cut Tree 1 by the root ball.

I have bucked a lot of fallen trees, and the root balls have pretty much always stayed put. Not so this time.

Guessing that the root ball wasn’t applying any torque to the trunk, I figured the top of the trunk was in compression and the bottom was being pulled. After praying not to die, I cut into the top and made a slot deep enough for a wedge and a chainsaw bar. I pounded a wedge in to keep the cut from closing. Then I bored into the side of the trunk and cut up to the slot I had made. Then I noticed that the wedge was moving deeper into the wood.

The cut was opening, not closing as I had expected. The canopy of the tree was trying to fall.

I ended up going back to the house and leaving the tree alone. I planned to get back on it the next day. The cut was gradually widening, so I didn’t think it was a good idea to poke at it.

When I got back the next day, the trunk was nearly separated from the stump. There was a strap of intact wood under it, holding things together. The stump had rotated upward, and the stump of Tree 2 had inconveniently positioned itself under Tree 1. Tree 1 was resting on it, preventing the trunk of Tree 1 from falling and ripping the strap apart.

I had to get a pole saw and cut the strap. I was not going to be near the tree when it gave up. When the situation resolved, the canopy of the tree fell straight down, so it was no longer hung in other trees. Anyone trying to work under it, thinking it was hung securely, would have been squooshed.

Now I have to start nibbling the tree and moving the bits away from the road. I can keep nibbling until I get close to the stump, and then I’ll get the lowest segment of the trunk off the stump and onto the ground.

I used to burn everything I cut, but I eventually realized it didn’t matter if there was debris in the woods. It goes away in three years, and while it’s there, it doesn’t bother anyone. I plan to put this year’s junk in piles and leave it.

Burning piles of trees is kind of fun, and it makes you feel like you’re doing a good job keeping your land neat, but it’s also a pain. You have to be around to make sure nothing gets out of hand. You have to get permits. You have to put your piles out before a certain time of day, which is not always possible. Sometimes a pile will smolder for several days, and I just count on the condition of the surrounding grass and trees to prevent problems. It’s very hard to start a wildfire in unfavorable conditions. Impossible, really.

I don’t like going to bed knowing something out there is still burning, but it’s either that or stay up all night with the hose and tractor. It’s not unsafe to let things burn, but I can’t help thinking about worst-case scenarios that can’t actually happen.

Since I learned burn permits aren’t needed for piles smaller than 8 feet across, I am making an effort to cut trees in smaller pieces.

I am going to hop up the new CS-501P. I didn’t have a great need to buy it, but my other two small saws have some limitations, and I thought it would be fun to have a better one and increase the power. The Makita is limited by battery life, and the Jonsered is very unpleasant to work on.

I bought a new exhaust deflector. This won’t increase the power much, but it may help heat escape. It’s aluminum. Heat is what kills chainsaws, and their greenie exhaust systems hold it in. Arborists really hate environmentalists. It’s amazing how conservative they are. I can see why, when I think about all the ways environmentalists hinder their work and cost them money.

The saw has a strange removable tube in the muffler, and that’s coming out. This should make a noticeable difference. I think Echo made it removable for this reason. I may also drill some holes in the muffler.

I got myself a decent-quality tachometer. I already had a tach, but I learned the model I got was not considered accurate. Hard to believe, at the high price of $7. When the new saw has gone through a couple of tanks of fuel, and the exhaust stuff is installed, I’ll use the tachometer to check the top speed when the saw is tuned orrectly. When that is done, the saw should be making substantially more power. The dyno guy, referenced below, got something like 15% this way.

I don’t really need to check the top speed. It turns out a tachometer is not really needed to tune a saw. You do it by ear. I didn’t completely understand things when I bought the tachometer. But it should help when checking modifications to see if I’m getting improvement.

I might even open up the cylinder’s ports. I could take this little saw up to 5 horsepower, which would be an increase of about a third. My 60-cc Echo Timberwolf has a bigger engine and only put out 4 horsepower before I changed the carb and timing. My Husqvarna 562XP only produces 4.7, and it pulls a 24″ bar very well.

Does it make sense to soup up a saw when I’m planning to use a 16″ bar? Maybe not. I don’t care.

Actually, it does make sense. Most of the time, I’ll be cutting things under 4″ thick, but it would be convenient to have a light saw that really rips through things a foot across. I would be able to leave the bigger saws in my shop more often.

Adding a couple of pounds to a saw’s weight makes a surprising difference over the course of a job. A little extra weight makes the saw wear you down.

Chainsaw people are nuts. They love modifying their saws. There is a guy on Youtube who built his own chainsaw dynamometer, and he hooked it to a computer. He does modifications and tests the saws before and after. He gets saws to put out 50% or more power than they did from the factory. This stuff is not shade-tree-mechanic ignorance.

The weird thing is that modified pro saws don’t lose reliability or endurance. Reasonable modifications actually make them last longer and make them harder to damage. This is what the professional mechanics say, anyway. They also say homeowner-grade saws are different because they have plastic cases that may not like increased power. A pro saw will always have a metal case.

I will lose my warranty if I modify, but I don’t care about that. Echo is notorious for horrible customer service and weaseling out of warranty obligations, and anyway, I don’t want to leave my saw with a mechanic for 6 weeks. I went a whole summer with a saw in the hands of bad mechanics.

I should be able to fix anything at all that goes wrong. I don’t know if I will ever be able to fix complicated saws with electronics issues, but I can deal with the mechanical things.

I really enjoy cutting wood. I have never been one of those people who look forward to working out, but for a few years, I’ve felt like there was a ball of excess energy inside me. I have gone out and bucked trees just for the sensation of cutting, lifting, and hurling. It’s very odd.

I was cutting yesterday, and I was breathing a little hard. I kept going. I wanted to feel that way.

I started wondering. Was I really experiencing physical strength and energy, or was it all mental and spiritual? What if I was putting my body in danger because it wasn’t as strong as I felt?

Here’s something weird: I don’t get sore after doing this kind of work. I get dehydrated and tired eventually, but the day after I work, I feel great. I am not working out these days, and I’m old. I don’t take medicine to keep me alive. I eat a lot of ice cream. I’m not preparing myself in order to avoid soreness. I don’t know what’s going on.

I hope it lasts.

This type of work makes me lose weight. When I do a lot of wood removal, I can’t keep weight on. May that happen this time as it has in the past. The Ben & Jerry’s weight has to go.