We are Riff Raff

A reader has once again recommended an interesting resource: Nomad Capitalist. This is a company that helps people with assets and income move abroad. Its motto is “Go where you’re treated best.” They help people move to places like Singapore and Malaysia, where successful individuals are not yet considered enemies of humanity.

I can’t resist fantasizing about Singapore. Today I looked at some Nomad Capitalist videos. I was just playing around, but when my wife saw me watching, she said she would not hesitate to move to Singapore.

Why would anyone move from a peaceful red state to a tiny island between two dangerous Muslim nations? Does it sound crazy?

Here is what she said: in Singapore, you can let your child ride the subway alone.

Wow. Imagine doing that in New York, Philadelphia, or any other American city. Unthinkable.

We’ve been to Singapore a couple of times. On one visit, they held some kind of outdoor celebration that featured a planned walk among illuminated works of art. Even though we were in the middle of a big city, the park where the event was held was very dark apart from the exhibits themselves.

Families were everywhere. No worries.

Consider Central Park, the 880-acre oasis in the middle of New York City, created by Frederick Law Olmsted. Would you visit at night? It would be more convenient to invite the rapists and muggers to your apartment and get it over with.

America has a huge population of mostly-minority repeat offenders, and they do whatever they want. A couple of days ago, I saw a sheriff on Youtube saying a recent arrestee had a rap sheet with 102 felonies on it. In Florida, where we are supposedly tough on crime. When you hit a hundred felonies, execution, or at least life without parole, should be on the table.

I live in the reddest county imaginable, but you never see kids here riding bikes by themselves, as I did when I was young. You can’t let your kids walk to school as I did.

My dad’s partner had a young son who was stolen from a school bus stop a short walk from his house. He was raped repeatedly, shot in the back, cut in three pieces, and buried in concrete. You could practically hit his school from his house with a rock.

If your kids survive the violent perverts here, they still have to suffer with the tenured perverts in our public schools. The people who tell them Yeshua is a myth and that their parents are basically Nazis.

What about internal strife? Well, Singapore has had riots. The last one was small, in 2013, and before that, you have to go back to 1969. And no one is putting on black pajamas and attacking conservative groups for praying in public.

What about medical care? I’m no fan of nationalized medicine, but Singapore’s universal system is something I could live with. They force you to have your own medical savings account, an idea Democrats assure us would lead to the end of the world. In the US, medical problems are probably the biggest threat to people who prefer to die with substantial estates. At my age, with a family to think about, I am open to the notion that protecting our assets is more important than getting the doctor I want, when I want him. If we had Singapore protecting our assets, we would be better able to pay for private care on the rare occasions when it was needed.

My belief is that the better a country’s inhabitants are, the easier it is to have government programs that work. Singaporeans are better than Americans. We have huge, entrenched demographics that do nothing but bleed the taxpayer, commit crime, and vote for Democrats. When we try to help them, they take advantage and ruin everything. An entitlement attitude, not entitlements themselves, is the major reason our programs are disasters.

What about drugs? Singaporeans kill drug dealers. It works for them. There are no ghettos in Singapore, and when you walk the streets, you don’t see poop, tents, or used needles. You can park your car without assuming, as you would in many American cities, that a junkie will steal everything in it. Street crime, which is driven by drug use in the US, is extremely rare in Singapore.

What about housing? It’s small and expensive. Rent is sky-high compared to a few years ago. But is small housing a bad thing, in and of itself?

I hate being close to people, so I like big properties, but then I live in the United States. Americans are not the best neighbors. They steal. They’re loud. They form abusive HOA’s. They let their dogs terrorize neighborhoods. I don’t think living close to Singaporeans would be the same, because Singaporeans love boredom. They like peace and quiet. I may be wrong, but I’ll bet they get along better with their neighbors than we do.

Eventually I’m not going to feel like cutting trees and mowing large areas, so maybe a little house among nice people would be acceptable.

What about the Second Amendment? The need for self-defense is not likely to arise in a place like Singapore, and the people are at peace with their government, so I think guns would be less important. Let me think. How many Americans do I know who have been robbed at gunpoint? Three, off the top of my head. How many shooting victims have I known? Two. How many of my relatives have shot or shot at people? Two.

The more I think about it, the more I realize something: Americans are bad people. We really are. Not all of us, but enough of us to make America different from peaceful countries. We’re not Somalis or Brazilians, but we’re not the Swiss, either.

When we decided to visit Singapore the first time around, I thought I would hate it because I hate cities. I also thought Singapore was likely to have a culture of selfishness and callousness, because most Singaporeans are Chinese, and China is horrible. Instead, I liked it a lot. The people were nice. It was safe. It was very prosperous. The food was pretty good. Everything was orderly. They even had wonderful public landscaping. I think socialism is what made the mainland Chinese what they are.

After my wife and I came home, we both had the strange feeling that somehow, part of us belonged to Singapore. It felt like home, and I can’t explain that. I guess it was just nicer than America and Zambia.

What about religion? Surprisingly, Christianity, including charismatic Christianity, is on a dramatic upswing in Singapore, having risen from about 10% to about 20%. That’s bizarre. Shocking.

Isn’t Singapore boring and distant? I don’t care if it’s boring, because I’m boring, too. My wife and I live in a boring place, and we love it. As for distance, well, there are jets. We could travel from time to time. I don’t know how soon we would get around to visiting the US, given what it is.

I like dreaming about leaving the US for a better place. I don’t think Singapore is in our future, though. You can’t just walk in and ask for residency.

They have something called the Global Investor Programme. The idea is that if you have a lot of money to invest, you can put it into a Singapore enterprise, and they may give you permanent residency. It’s very hard to understand the criteria, though. I think you need to invest S$10 million inside Singapore. Let’s see. Did I leave my S$10 million in my other pants today? Must have.

A couple of years ago, the price was S$2.5 million. Singapore has decided to keep the riff raff out, though.

My understanding is that you can move to Singapore if you have a job there. “Job.” The word makes my skin crawl. Never again, I hope.

What is Left to Accomplish?

Based on weather forecasts, I made plans to do nothing today, and I am sticking to my plans. But I think I made a mistake.

Hurricane Helene’s weak outer winds were supposed to produce sustained speeds of about 40 mph here. Far as I know, it never happened. I would say the situation this county ended up with is 10% worse than the aftermath of Debby, which left a few downed trees here and there. We got nearly no rain during the Helene crisis, so that’s a plus.

I have some cleaning up to do. Yesterday I checked the forecast to see when it would dry up, because nothing is worse than doing heavy yard work on a 90-degree day when the air is full of steam. The forecast pretty much said it was going to rain until next Friday. The probability figure for today is 88%.

Of course, it’s dry and breezy without much sun. The temperature is about 82 degrees, or 8 degrees lower than recent days. This would have been a good day to clean up.

I don’t understand precipitation probability, and it turns out neither do meteorologists.

At some point in the distant past, I looked it up, and I read that a certain chance of rain meant that there was that much likelihood rain would fall somewhere in the area the chance applied to. So if you were in an area with a 25% chance of rain, the chance that it would rain somewhere in that area was 25%. How much rain? Whatever I read didn’t say. I assumed it had to be a significant amount, because if not, the figure was useless.

I just checked again. A British site says a figure of x percent means x percent of sources have concluded it will rain in the area. How much? Doesn’t say. An American site says it means x percent of the area will get measurable rain.

Either meteorologists have no idea what their own metric means, or they are letting uninformed people try to explain it to us.

Experience has taught me this: if a forecast says the chance of rain will be 60% or more, expect a nasty, rainy day, nearly every time. That’s more useful than the weird things I’m seeing on the web. Anything over 20% is reason to avoid outdoor activities as far as I’m concerned.

I am sitting here doing nothing. I still feel some covid fatigue, and I’m not sure I can start the tractor, so I am in no rush.

I’m not sure what to do with my life these days. We are done traveling. I doubt we’ll go anywhere until far into next year, and we will not be able to go any place exciting because of the baby. We still need to fix the house up a little, but that’s about it. What should we be doing with ourselves?

The world has turned into an immense toilet. Americans have proven they really are stupid enough to put Kamala Harris in the Oval Office. Wokeness is getting worse, not better. We are giving birth to generations of soft, useless, cruel, incompetent, spoiled, godless perverts who will make the last decade look like the Messianic Age.

I don’t know what we’re supposed to do here. I am spending more and more time in prayer. We think about things like good food, medical appointments, and managing our practical affairs. That’s about it.

Lately I have noticed I am sometimes bored. That’s a problem I thought I had left behind decades ago. It’s strange to see it creeping up on me again. I find myself thinking, “I remember this!”

I think I had started believing I was immune to it. I took not being bored for granted for maybe 35 years.

I have zero enthusiasm about America’s future. I don’t want to live here. I don’t know how I’ll defend myself when my son asks me why we put him here, to face seventy-plus years of hiding out in a world gone insane. I can tell him God wants people to have children. Best I can do.

While we are here, we will have to devote a lot of energy to sheltering him from godless friends, Satanic entertainment, exposure to perverts, and so on. We will really have to have God’s help, because we can’t generate our own safe Christian bubble.

I don’t have any projects in mind. There is nothing I want to do here. I don’t want to start big things in a world which has no future.

I try not to imagine a future under Kamala Harris. Obama was an arrogant homosexual atheist who was hard on the church, the unborn, and Israel. Biden was dumb and without conscience, and he appointed godless nutcases to rule over us. Harris would make us miss Biden. She is a complete zero as a human being.

She’s a wonderful exhibit to use in order to prove democracy doesn’t work. When Biden gave her affirmative action and made her his running mate, she was extremely unpopular even among Democrats. That didn’t change during her time in office. Now she may get a legitimate majority in a presidential election. The people didn’t get to vote for alternatives. She was simply installed, and Democrats could either vote for her or let Trump win.

Imagine the kind of pigs she will appoint to abuse and control us if she wins. The worst choices imaginable. Disgusting, vile, incompetent, corrupt, and stupid.

It seems like there should be something to do other than praying and waiting for Yeshua, but if there is, I can’t see it.

Maybe I should prepare a rapture-ready will. Will it matter? Will the wills of raptured people be triggered when they leave? Will they be respected? Will whatever I could leave people be helpful to them in a world where demons and fallen angels are running amok?

I assume people will run around killing each other, squatting in each other’s houses, and stealing each other’s money, so I don’t think a will would be helpful.

There must be something useful for us to do right now. I just need to be told what it is.

What if the rapture doesn’t come, and I have to age and die in Satan’s America? Terrible thought. But I know from experience that if I pray in the Spirit enough, things will work out for me. I can’t do all that much for others, so it’s a limited blessing.

I can’t wait for this place to be wiped clean and remodeled. I don’t know what it is to live in a world that works. I’ve seen better times than the present, but I have always been surrounded by death, disease, injury, deformity, murder, accidents, poverty, and every type of emotional pain. I have always lived in a world ruled by Satan’s children.

My patience with suffering is gone. A couple of years ago, it didn’t discourage me as much. Now, every time I see someone with a terrible physical problem, or I hear about a terrorist attack or a natural disaster or some other cause of suffering, I think, “I have HAD it with this. Please get us OUT.” Enough. I have seen enough.

A few people can be helped, but almost everyone will continue to suffer and fail. Most of the people we try to help will turn our help into curses. They won’t turn to God. Not really. They won’t pray in tongues. They won’t repent. They won’t be accountable. Things won’t get any better for them.

The blessed will stay blessed, and the people who hold onto them like Titanic survivors holding onto floating planks will continue to hold on. Nearly everyone who leads a cursed life will continue to be cursed.

People who lead cursed lives generally don’t want to know God. They want money. They think money will fix everything and they won’t have to repent. It’s frustrating, because continued abundance comes from a relationship with God. You tell them how to fix their lives, they pretend to agree, and they don’t change.

When someone listens, it’s like you’ve found a big gold nugget in a manure pile the size of an apartment building.

We don’t have enough money or time to buy better lives for the people who won’t repent. We have to watch nearly everyone sink. Elon Musk couldn’t fix them. Look at his son, the pervert.

I like to prophesy, but I keep hearing about how God is going to destroy people who are against his children. That means the vast majority of human beings. I would love to hear about revival and miracles.

The human race is just too crooked to help. We have always been that way. God is always ready to bless, but almost no one is interested.

Guess I’ll go pray and then think about dinner.

Full Price for Half the Show

I am waiting for my wife to get dressed, so I have a lot of time to kill. I think I’ll write about Rome.

Do not go to Rome.

Before we went to Rome, I tried to get advice on the best Italian city for a week’s stay. I figured the only real choices were Rome and Florence. Art, history, and so on.

People said Rome was the best choice, but they were completely wrong. The correct answer is Florence. I will explain.

Next year, Rome has a jubilee celebration. In preparation, they are cleaning things up. A lot of restoration is going on.

If you look at videos about Rome, you’ll see exciting shots of the altar at St. Peter’s, the Senate building, and various other sights. When you go to Rome, you see something very different: sights that have been fenced in or covered with fabric.

The altar is almost completely covered. The Pieta is a fake. The Senate is fenced off. A lot of things you could walk right up to a couple of years ago are off limits.

Don’t go. In fact, don’t go in 2025, either. It will be a madhouse. Everyone who sees the Pope the way teenage girls see Taylor Swift will be there. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who take the pope and the Vatican seriously. They think the pope is super-holy and not just a cookie-cutter secular leftist who loves attention, and they think the Vatican is a holy place. They will pack Rome to the rooftops, and you don’t want to be there. It’s obscenely crowded right now, a year before the jubilee, so the jubilee will be a nightmare.

You want to go in 2026. Rome will experience a tourism dip because everyone on Earth went in 2025. It will be cheaper and less expensive, and the restored stuff will be accessible again.

Go in winter or early spring, or wait until late fall. You don’t need warm weather to enjoy Rome, and it draws tourists.

Here’s an interesting observation, from someone who has met God: the Vatican doesn’t feel like a church at all. There is no trace of God’s presence. You’re not going to feel awed by the holiness. You’ll feel like you’re in a crowded museum that makes lots of money.

Incidentally, the Catholics have decided forgiveness isn’t something you can get wherever you are, at any time. I learned this from my tour guide. There is some touristy thing or other in St. Peter’s, and the official belief has always been that if you walk by it or under it or something at a certain time–the jubilee year, I think–you get forgiveness for everything. St. Francis, generously, changed the rule. He decided you don’t have to go to the Vatican. You still have to get the time right, however, and you have to go to a church or something. I forget.

Apparently, the Catholics believe there are a bunch of sins God will not ordinarily forgive. No wonder ex-Catholics make the best and angriest atheists. They are recovering abuse victims.

Paul was a murderer of Christians. Moses was a murderer. David was a murderer who killed a man because he had gotten the man’s wife pregnant, and he led violent, thieving raids on towns. He had a man killed for throwing rocks at him. But a woman who got an abortion at 15 goes to hell unless she can walk through a certain door on a certain day.

It’s asinine. It’s sick. Yeshua will forgive you wherever you are, whenever you ask. He will forgive you for nearly anything. He saved a Roman centurion. Think of the things that man had done.

“Wrong day. Sorry. Come back next year.” Imagine Yeshua saying that. “Hope you’re still alive during the jubilee.”

Yeshua let people torture him to death because he was so driven to save sinners. He talked about his burning desire to reach the lost. But somehow he burns repentant Christians who can’t afford a ticket to Rome?

But this is the organization that decorated churches with naked statues, burned people over minor doctrinal disputes, and tortured Jews to death. It took the church until 1965 to stop holding the entire Jewish people responsible for killing Yeshua.

Everyone who has sinned is responsible for the crucifixion. This is obvious. The pope is responsible. Mary is responsible.

Yeshua visited me twice, and he never mentioned the pope or the catechism. He poured love through me and told me nothing bad could possibly happen to me while he was there. He annihilated worry and fear. He didn’t say, “It’s too bad you’re going to hell forever for rejecting the one true church.”

It’s a pretty safe bet that Yeshua has never met the pope.

I wish we had visited Florence. The art is much better. I don’t think they’re covering it up this year. But now I can say I’ve seen Rome. Whoo hoo.

Here Goes Literally Nothing

Today we have to run a medical errand, and both my wife and I almost certainly have covid, so yesterday, I had her call to find out if we should cancel or wear masks or have ourselves encased in carbonite or what. They told us to wear masks, but first they asked if we had any, which says a lot about current attitudes.

There may be one under my car seat.

As I have written, we just got back from Switzerland and Italy, where we were around all sorts of sick people. We flew home sick because there was nothing we could do to protect anyone, and staying in Europe would have been a huge and pointless hardship. The air was full of bugs everywhere, isolation has gone out the window, and our contribution to the airborn virus supply simply was not meaningful.

Yesterday I looked at the current covid stats, and today I’m looking again. According to WHO, the number of known active cases in Europe is about 70 times the number in the Americas. Not the United States. The Americas.

In the past, the case numbers were almost certainly overreported in America because we paid hospitals huge money to claim people had covid, without testing them. Now, the numbers are probably underreported. But is there any reason to think the ratio is affected significantly? I don’t know of one, except that it makes no sense for Europeans to have 70 times our rate.

Even if the data is wrong, it’s probably right enough for a person to safely conclude that coronavirus is extremely common in Europe right now.

There are so many sick people over there, doing nothing at all to isolate themselves, that removing us from the scene would have had no effect whatsoever.

Out of curiosity, I Googled to see if our overlords still want Americans to get tested. Of course they do. Why? So we can get treatment to protect ourselves from severe covid and so we can buy what are now referred to as “quality” masks.

Forgive me for chuckling. They never give up.

There is no treatment. I mean, okay, there are some things that seem to help a fraction of the people who are on death’s door, but for you and me, the mildly ill, no, there is no treatment. Except ivermectin, which does seem to help, especially when taken at the first sign of symptoms. Your GP won’t give it to you, however. You have to go to Tractor Supply. He isn’t going to pump you full of secret drugs developed for Jeff Bezos and Joe Biden just because you have the sniffles. Those drugs probably don’t exist.

If you have severe symptoms, what do you need the test for? Go to the hospital. You already know you’re sick, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s covid. Just go. If you have a fever of 104° but it’s not covid, are you going to stay home and die?

As for the masks, well, they do not work, and people who are at risk of severe covid should not be out in public where you can cough on them.

Look, if I absolutely had to be around someone who was likely to die if infected, I would get super-duper masks and make the best possible use of them. Mainly, I would avoid the person as much as I could, because that’s the only thing that really works, but, yes, in a pinch, I would wear a mask. But this is not the situation I face. I don’t know anyone like that, and if there are strangers in my area who need protection, they should be at home, because even if I put my head in a hermetically-sealed jar, other people will still expose them.

Science now tells us that the best masks made, worn 100% correctly all the time, have some impact, so there are scenarios in which I might use them, but come on. I’m not wearing one to Lee’s Famous Fried Chicken.

So why are Europeans all full of coronavirus while we are not? How can that be? There is plenty of travel both ways. It’s just about impossible to get covid on a plane, but people land eventually and move around.

It seems to defy physics.

Maybe Europeans are getting tested and we are not.

Not much has happened to us. My wife got sick first. She had a mild fever and a sore throat, plus skeletal aches.

My voice got raspy. Then days later, I had a night of chills and skeletal aches. Not bad. My butt really hurt. I never had a sore throat or much of a fever. I had another night of greatly reduced chills. I developed chest congestion, and when I tried to sleep, my breathing sounded like someone sitting on an accordion. My nose ran slightly. On the second leg of our flight home, my left ear got stopped up and would not let go, and it took a couple of days to drain. My appetite was affected, and it’s still not great. Sweet things still don’t taste quite as sweet as they are. I have been going to sleep very early, but that could be jet lag.

That’s about it.

We were able to walk around Rome and keep up with the crowds.

I think I wasted a lot of money on shoes. My Keen hiking shoes developed a leak in Switzerland the night before we left, and I had to do something, so on the morning before we took our train to Italy, I went to an incredibly overpriced sports store in Wengen and bought new hiking shoes. I believe they charged me 229 Euros for Scarpa shoes that can’t hold a light to Keens.

They felt wonderful during our train trip to Rome, but the next day, during a food tour, my feet started to hurt. Very unpleasant. I’m not used to having foot pain, so I was not happy.

They also filled up with water when rain caught us near the Pantheon, but that could have been because I got caught in the rain while wearing shorts. The water may have run down my legs and into the shoes. They were supposed to be waterproof. I always wear waterproof shoes when I can.

The next day, I went out and bought yet more shoes. Again, Scarpa. All I could find. They were much better. Only 199 Euros.

In retrospect, I wonder whether then first new pair was really a problem. Maybe I was having skeletal pain, and it made my feet hurt. Maybe the shoes are okay.

I’m afraid to try them on now. I’m out about $500.

The lesson: always check your shoes before traveling abroad. I thought my Keens were relatively new, but when I checked, Amazon said I had ordered them over two years ago.

Also, don’t wear shorts on cold, rainy days unless you like water in your shoes.

My Keens can be had for right around $100, and you can bet I’ll be getting new ones. I have no idea what to do with my Euro shoes.

I hope we don’t kill anyone at the doctors’ office.

Number One on the List of Stuff for the Messiah to Tear Down

Having returned from Europe, I put up a blog post, and reader Juan Paxety posted a comment about the Arch of Titus. As it happens, this landmark is one of the sights I really wanted to see while visiting Rome. It stands in the forum.

The arch of Titus is a “triumphal arch,” and that means it was built to be used in a triumph. A triumph was a huge victory celebration, and during these celebrations, parades would pass through triumphal arches. I don’t know if all arches were used for parades, and for all I know, there were parades that bypassed arches. I’m writing in generalities.

Titus was the vile pagan who sacked Jerusalem in 70 A.D. He destroyed the temple and took all the gold to Rome. According to Juan, the wealth from the temple was used to build the Colosseum.

The arch was built by his brother Domitian, who was known for tormenting and massacring Christians. Domitian is the idiot who deep-fried John for the amusement of the peasants. Sadly for him, John was not harmed, and the miracle is said to have lead to many conversions. That’s the story, anyway. We know John lived to be very old, and he wrote the Revelation while exiled to Patmos.

The claim about the financing of the Colosseum made so much sense to me, I had to look it up. History is full of fake facts that tie things together very nicely, so you have to be careful. Turns out Juan is right.

The story made sense to me for a very important reason: it was consistent with a supernatural theme that has been with us for millennia: the conflict between worship of the one true God and Hellenism, which is the global system of the spirit of Antichrist, better known as Satan.

The word “Hellenism” more or less refers to Greek customs and beliefs, but to me, it means the Satanic political and social apparatus, in totality. After all, the system we live with now is just a continuation of the Greek system, which was inspired by the Egyptians and stolen by the Romans.

Rome never went away. All over the Western world, it’s still with us. Greco-Roman architecture. Representative government. The mile. We even salute the Roman eagle. We use it. The Nazis used it. Lots of other nations use it. The Nazis called themselves the Third Reich, meaning a continuation of the Holy Roman Empire, which was descended, obviously, from the empire that was based in Rome and then Istanbul.

We still live in Rome, which means we still live in Alexander’s empire.

Hellenism was a big problem for the ancient Jews. The Greeks took over Israel, and they had something resembling our country club system. In the US, if you want to succeed, it can be very helpful to join a golf club and play golf, even if you hate it. Deals and connections are made on courses and in locker rooms. In the Greek world, they had the gymnasium instead.

Greek males (only) competed in sports before adoring crowds. They competed naked. After all, they were perverts. The word “gymnasium” literally means something like “place of nudity.”

Ambitious Jews under the Greeks needed to fit in, so they competed, too. They sinned against God, removing their clothing and making fools of themselves in exchange for social credit. In doing so, they exposed their circumcisions, which they came to see as barriers to acceptance. Instead of doing the right thing, many stopped circumcising their sons, and some resorted to primitive medical procedures intended to make them look as though they had not been circumcised.

Circumcision was very important to God. The Jews had a contract with God, and circumcision was the only way to sign it. No circumcision, no contract. An uncircumcised Jew was not really part of the Jewish people. They must have gone to hell, because salvation was part of the covenant.

Jews caught up in Hellenism celebrated nudity, perversion, pride, greed, and pantheism. They celebrated the fleeting and puny strength of the flesh instead of the lasting help of God.

Hellenism is one of the many reasons Catholicism is worthless and corrupt. Instead of teaching people to love the Holy Spirit, the ancient church held onto the Greeks they revered. You can see this in the stupid books people like Augustine wrote. They held onto pagans like Aristotle and Plato. They clung to pagan art. This is why the Sistine Chapel is full of paintings of hairless nude men waving their penises around.

We are so used to nudity in art, we think nothing of seeing it in churches. How do you think Yeshua feels about it? If he came down today and told you to build and decorate a church, do you think he would be happy if you said you wanted to include 40 paintings of men’s penises?

I saw the chapel last week. I thought it was ridiculous. The quality of the art is not the issue. The issue is the ridiculous notion that it’s okay to fill the walls and ceiling of a church with completely gratuitous nudity.

I get it. Michelangelo thought we would all be naked at the judgment. The Bible doesn’t actually say that. The judgment isn’t going to look like a parade in West Hollywood.

The Colosseum was a triumphal monument to Hellenism. It was Satan’s way of saying, “We won.” The temple was gone. Israel was gone. The church was dispersed. The treasure was in Rome. Time to build a huge outdoor theater devoted to cruelty and murder. A place to celebrate the flesh and honor the false gods. Satan made the Jews pay for it.

Jerusalem was God’s capital. Rome was Satan’s. It was that simple.

Jews don’t like Titus much, and they don’t like the arch. Sculpted into it are depictions of happy Romans carrying the treasures of the temple into Rome, including the lampstand that stood in the Holy of Holies. Pope Paul IV made Jewish leaders go to the arch every year to kiss his feet and swear loyalty. No wonder Jews hate Catholicism nearly as much as former Catholics.

The arch may have been designed by the same man who designed the Colosseum.

Today, we live in a country dotted with colosseums. They are patterned after the architecture of the Colosseum in Rome. We neglect God, our families, and our children to pump money to functional illiterates who run fast for a few years and then go bankrupt and spend the rest of their lives wobbling around on shattered knees, coping with CTE.

A proper Christian invests in eternal things. An idiot invests in things that are soon destroyed. We are a culture of idiots, and that includes every “Christian” who tells children Yeshua loves competitive sports.

We treat athletes with reverence, as though they were making sacrifices for us. Like they were little Yeshuas.

They’re selfish. They’re rich. They are often brutal and violent. Many are too dumb to do their own work in college, even in simpleton majors like English and Public Recreation. They do nothing whatsoever for us at work, they take as much as they can, and we pay for their sweaty jerseys and dirty pants and hang them in our houses. If an athlete with an IQ of 90, and 10 illegitimate children he ignores, touches something, we treat it like a holy relic that cures cancer.

It makes perfect sense that Titus, a son of Satan if ever there was one, would loot the temple and use the wealth to build a stadium used to placate and control the masses. Nothing has changed.

A 50th-percentile dog entering middle age, leading a sedentary life, could run circles (literally) around any athlete who ever lived. No marathon runner could hope to win a race with a dog in good condition. A scared cat has a vertical leap of 8 feet, which no athlete will ever approach. What are we so excited about?

The world is disgusting. As bad as we are, we are now being replaced by generations of people who are even worse. They are soft. They are inept. They love cruelty. They can’t understand why anyone thinks the truth is important. They worship themselves. They live for Internet likes. They think the people who built the world they live in are morons.

They will make things worse. They already are. They are openly calling for the murder of the entire nation of Israel, and they can’t see anything wrong with it.

God needs to wrap things up. This place is finished. There is no reaching these people.

Go Ahead and Fly With Covid

Yesterday, I was reminded of the vast coronivarus-information gulf between conservatives and leftists. Leftists are irrational and hysterical, always advising ridiculous, harmful overreactions, and conservatives are always patiently refuting their hysteria with facts. Then we are accused of ignorance and selfishness, as always.

I just got back from Europe. My wife and I got covid on our trip, as we often do when traveling. Somewhere on the web, I mentioned it, and I said I was glad we were able to fly home sick. In the past, we were often in danger of forced and extremely expensive quarantine.

Some character responded and said I had been “very considerate of” my fellow passengers.

Right away, I had questions about his brainpower. We are considerate TO others, not OF them.

I don’t know if leftists will ever catch up. These are the people who, when polled, said they thought an infected person’s chance of requiring hospitalization was about 40%. The world would have ended. I’m pretty sure the black death is down around 30%.

My wife and I were probably infected in Switzerland, because my voice sounded a little raspy before we left. By the time we left Italy, where we heard sick people coughing all around us, we were getting better. Neither of us is completely well, but we’re fine.

What’s the standard these days when it comes to covid and travel?

In practical terms, there is no standard. Do what you want. There are no tests or travel bans. As recently as ’22, it was easy to find entrepreneurs to do PCR tests on tourists. Now the industry has collapsed, because no one cares.

I have Googled, and while I have seen random sites that have no authority telling people to stay home, actual government sites say it’s best not to fly until you start to feel better, and that’s about it. They don’t say to hide out until you’re completely well.

Why are they saying it’s okay to fly as long as you’re getting better? My guess: no scientific reason at all. They just need to say something in order to look like they’re doing something. It’s like the 6-foot rule, which we now know had no basis in science.

The web says covid is contagious for 8 to 10 days after symptoms start, and if that’s true, then you can be contagious after you start feeling better. So the rule is horse manure.

The travel bans had no basis in science, either, nor did the mask laws. America kept travelers out while half the population was sick, as though flying a few thousand more in would make an important difference. The masks only worked when they were expensive masks, worn properly, changed several times per day. No one did any of that outside of hospitals. Even then, they worked poorly.

Whatever. We were getting better when we flew, so we are good little do-bees.

People can be really thick. Imagine how things would have gone had we decided to stay in Rome.

1. No food. The hotel had no room service. If food delivery is a serious industry in Rome, we saw no sign of it.

2. No laundry. The hotel didn’t do laundry.

3. No hotel room. Our booking would have run out. Where would we have gone? Maybe we could have found a room nearby, but hotels in Rome were really jammed. How would we have moved without exposing lots of people? Two “dangerous” sick persons, dragging luggage up the road and having it thrown into and out of a cab. All the way around, it’s a stupid idea.

4. No tickets. We would have been charged huge change fees. And who knows when we could have gotten flights? We would have had to wait until covid decided to test negative. A week? Ten days? If we had tested negative on a given day, who is to say we could have flown home the next day? Our flights were crammed. This isn’t the month for flying home from Rome on the day of your choice without advance notice.

5. No one to look after our house and business.

6. No place to store Marvin, my parrot. He was staying at a boarding place, and it was busy. He could have been thrown out. What then? Maybe I could have gotten the boarding people to hook me up with some stranger. That would have been irresponsible.

7. No health insurance. Our health insurance, like yours, only works in the US. We had travel insurance, and it would have expired while we were quarantining.

We would have had to go out for meals and laundry. No way around it. We would have exposed people every day.

What about flying home?

Science preexisting the hysteria clearly says the chance of catching covid on a jet, while seated next to a sick person, is about one in half a million. Jets are really good at keeping air clean. So we exposed some people in Italy, then we got on jets where we were no threat to anyone, and since then, we have exposed a few people at a hotel, one restaurant, and a grocery store.

The people we exposed in Italy were already being exposed every day. I’m sure the same is true of the people we encountered here.

Here’s what I told the person who thought I was inconsiderate: if you’re a bubble boy, stay in your bubble. You can’t put a bubble around the world.

On the web, you can find left-wing writers saying that if you fly with covid, you may kill people. No. They may kill themselves. If they’re going out in public, knowing they may be exposed, failing to protect themselves, it’s on them, not me.

My presence doesn’t change anything in a world full of people wandering around with covid. Remove me, and people still get exposed.

They never complain about asymptomatic people–a huge demographic–killing people. They never complain about people with false negatives killing people. They’re not bright enough to understand.

Covid is no big deal to me right now. Maybe that will change as I age. If it does, you better believe I’m not going to put on my Karen hat and run around trying to get other people to wrap themselves in Saran Wrap.

Many sick people don’t know they’re sick. The ones who know they’re sick are not willing to quarantine; no one does that. If I become unable to fight covid, the world will continue to spray me with viruses every time I appear in public. This is an absolute certainty. My only hope, if I start needing help, will be to stay home. Maybe I could get some really good masks and observe mask protocols rigorously while doing necessary shopping, but that’s about it.

I will probably never be in any danger from covid. Age is a risk factor, but there are plenty of old people who never get very sick, and covid has already given me its best shot several times without harming me much. If it isn’t hurting me now, it probably will not hurt me when I’m 90.

Leftists love using their real or imagined health problems to control others. I saw an article the other day about a kook who tried to get everyone on a plane to give up peanuts because her daughter was allergic. No; the world does not work like that. You don’t drag other people down to the lowest common health denominator because you’re hysterical and love attention.

Nut allergies are not triggered by the mere presence of nuts, by the way. I could eat nuts next to an allergic person all day without doing any harm.

Imagine what the news would look like if nut allergies were triggered through the air. “Today’s nut death toll: 300,000! When will we have sensible nut control?”

Time to wrap up. I need food, and there is none here. I’m about to get in the car and take my viruses shopping. If you live near me and you’re a bubble boy, better stay home for a while and play Trivial Pursuit.

Frightened Critics Torch Movie to Protect the Revolution

I am editing photos from our trip to Switzerland and Italy. It’s a real challenge. In the past, my cameras shot JPG files, and after that, I adjusted them to some degree (or not), and that was that. Now I am shooting raw files, and I have to use a program to make them look nice.

My knowledge of digital photography is weak, but if I understand things correctly, a JPG is an edited photo. If your camera shoots JPG’s, it’s editing them before storing them, based on some set of parameters nerds put in there. The photo you end up with doesn’t contain all the data your sensor picked up, because the camera discards it to save space. A JPG is pre-edited to look pretty good, and it usually works.

A raw file is whatever your camera picks up, whether it looks good or not. Your job is to take the file and mess with it until you like it. Because the file is raw, there is a lot more to work with, so you can make much larger adjustments without ruining the shot.

Correct me if I’m wrong.

I’m sitting here being disappointed over and over in the shots I took, because a lot of them look horrid when I open them. But they do clean up well, in many cases.

Editing is slow because I am not used to Photoshop. It’s not like my old copy of Photoshop Elements, which was very easy to use right from the start.

I’ll post a couple of shots. Not life-changing, but good enough to prove we went somewhere.

I’m taking a break right now because I hate Photoshop.

I’m thinking about a movie I saw during the trip. I rarely watch movies because Hollywood is an abcess and I think God does not like fiction, but when you are stuck in a tiny hotel room with covid, and you have three woke-country TV channels in English (they all seem exactly the same), you will be tempted to expand your options.

Somehow I came across a Youtube clip of a film about demonic possession. I don’t like entertainment about the occult, but I found the clip compelling, and my wife wanted to see the movie, so we watched the entire film. Maybe this was hypocritical. Not sure. You have to be careful with bright lines.

The movie is called Nefarious, and it’s about a serial killer who is about to be executed. A psychiatrist is engaged to determine whether he’s sane enough to kill, and the psychiatrist commits suicide. A doctor the psychiatrist mentored replaces him, and the movie consists mostly of his interview with the murderer.

The murderer says he is completely possessed. He rarely speaks as his human self. He says his name is “Nefariamus,” and he tells the second doctor that he, the doctor, will become famous for writing a new book: the dark gospel.

The doctor is an atheist, so you can imagine how impressed he is at first.

The demon tells the doctor all about Satan’s kingdom and the things Satan’s spirit cronies have done to destroy the world. Abortion, every type of immorality Hollywood loves…you name it. He explains why evil spirits hate God and how this hatred is the foundation of their unprovoked cruelty to human beings. It’s really something to hear. It’s pretty accurate.

Most Christian movies are bad or mediocre, but this one features top-notch acting and dialogue. It’s low budget for sure. Almost all of it takes place in one room. But Sean Patrick Flanery, the actor who played the killer, was nothing short of spellbinding. Everyone enjoys a clever, superhuman film villain, and I thought this guy was better than Anthony Hopkins.

The movie has its flaws. Not all of the actors are great, and there were things that could have been improved, but it was very good. Certainly better than much of the garbage that brings people major awards these days. Like I always say, Cher and Marisa Tomei got Oscars.

Those awards seemed remarkable to me, because I did not yet live in a world where a huge man in ladies’ underwear could win a prize for giving a girl brain damage in a volleyball match.

Having seen Nefarious, I wondered why I had never heard of it before.

Of course, the obvious occurred to me. We live in a world where Barack Obama was given a Nobel Peace Prize for winning an election, but Donald Trump, a man known for spreading peace, was ignored after putting the Abraham Accords together. Maybe the critics had killed the movie because it honored God and exposed their industry’s patron spirits.

Well, here is a screenshot for you.

That’s from Rotten Tomatoes, the famous site where critics and actually human beings review films side by side. In case you don’t know, the critics say movies are “fresh” or “rotten,” and actual human beings use a star system. The rating generated by human beings is called the Popcornmeter.

This movie has 21 critic reviews and over a thousand reviews from real movie watchers. Look at the difference. The critics say 33%, which is abysmal, but the audience says 96%, which is about as good as a movie can do.

Wonder why there is such a difference. Hmm.

Let’s quote some critics.

Nefarious has been inaccurately described as a horror movie. It’s a poorly made psychological drama about a death row inmate, with no real scares and too much over-acting. As this dull movie drones on, it becomes preachy propaganda for right-wing beliefs.

I like that one, because that critic really dropped her pants for us. She admits leftists think Christianity is “right-wing.” How long have I been saying leftists hate conservatives because conservatives are associated with Christianity? I doubt she even thought about the way she was exposing herself. There is virtually no political material in the film, but it’s full of religious matter, and that’s what set her off.

As for “preachy propaganda,” wow…should I sit here and try to list all the leftist propaganda films critics have loved? I’d be here for days.

Nefarious advertises itself as a possession thriller but pulls a bait & switch to deliver a Christian and Conservative propaganda piece. Flanery does his best to elevate what is otherwise a 90 minute sermon on abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty.

If you like your demons on the preachy side, then you may enjoy [this movie]. The rest of us will find [it]…tedious, heavy-handed and indoctrinating.

The film’s heavy-handed and bogus message tells us that Hollywood is immoral because it acts to corrupt its viewer’s minds.

The only thing not covered in this Christo-fascist manifesto of a movie is “guns.”

While there are moments of intensity in Nefarious, there isn’t a moment in the film that feels like cinematic horror unless you’re talking about one of those evangelical haunted houses where demons pop out of the walls to warn of the evils of the world.

Nefarious builds to a howler of a climax that delivers exactly what you’d anticipate from the makers of God’s Not Dead, just in an even more preposterous way. The big scene would be perfect for an Airplane!-style spoof of evangelical-themed films.

Subtlety is not the film’s strong point. Neither is casting.

That’s idiotic. Do critics pan other movies for not being subtle? Not if they push the left’s agenda. And the two central characters in this film did great jobs. It has been years since I’ve seen a performance as good as Flanery’s.

They filmmakers cast Glenn Beck as himself, interviewing the psychiatrist a year after the execution. That was a mistake. For one thing, Beck is not a Christian. For another, he looked like Johnny Depp dressed him. A creepy chin beard and bunch of old-looking and seemingly-unrelated clothes piled on top of each other, as though he found them in a Salvation Army box. And his performance was bad. It was very odd. He leaned toward the psychiatrist and maintained an expression I would ordinarily associate with strong sexual arousal, as though he were talking to an Onlyfans model after a long period of solitary confinement. His lower lip hung loose and swung as though trying to wave at the other actor.

Beck should not have been cast in this or any other movie, but the two leads were excellent.

I don’t know how Beck got in there. Did Mormons back the movie? They are a real problem for ignorant people who think Mormons are Christians. I wonder if Beck invested in the film on the condition they include him.

I have never been a Beck fan. Not for 10 seconds. He’s a kook.

I still remember the nutty video he did, in which he claimed he was nearly killed by a hemorrhoid laser. Try and imagine a scenario in which that is even possible. No, don’t.

By the way, The Passion of the Christ got a whopping 49% from leftist critics at Rotten Tomatoes.

Not subtle enough for them, I guess.

I don’t know if you should see Nefarious or not. Just telling you what I thought about it. But I can confidently say that if you still don’t think Satan controls Hollywood, you need to snap out of it.

Now I can Rest

A longtime reader asked if I was okay. I am definitely okay. It’s nice to know people think about my welfare.

My wife and I were traveling. I don’t like to blog while traveling. At least not in ways that show I’m not home. The reason should be obvious.

I should have continued to blog as though I were home, to obscure things more effectively, but the trip was exhausting. We went to Switzerland and Italy. We went up and down mountains, and then we tromped around the Vatican and sites from imperial Rome. Then, of course, we got covid, as we generally do on our expensive trips. Mexico, where a hotel suite goes for $100 per day? No problem. Lucerne, where they charge you $7 for a glass of tap water? Covid.

The virus seems to lurk in ambush in the very best destinations. Everyone in Italy was coughing, and it wasn’t merely because every Italian over the age of three smokes.

I’ll bet no one is sick in destinations like Miami and Somalia.

I failed to bring ivermectin with us. It always seems to help dramatically, but it doesn’t work from 4500 miles away. I took a big hit when I got home. Can’t hurt, and like I always say, I definitely don’t have worms.

Of course, I felt much, much, much better after about two hours. Anecdotal? Unscientific? Whatever. The difference is like day and night, whether or not it’s the ivermectin. I will keep using it, because maybe it’s actually doing something.

I am not kidding about the tap water. I think I saw it as low as two Swiss Francs in one place, and the maximum was 6.5.

TAP…water. Which is available for nothing, not just in hotel rooms, but also from numerous outdoor fountains, the safety of which is something the Swiss are very proud of.

Hooray. Your tap water isn’t full of dysentery. You’re as sophisticated as Bulgaria.

A bar where I used to hang out when I was 16 sells cheeseburger platters for 28 Swiss Francs without a drink.

I really admire the Swiss, but there is no way to explain a $33 cheeseburger or a $7 glass of tap water without mentioning greed. I don’t care how bad the exchange rate is. I suspect they have realized they will always have more tourists than they can handle well, so they are jacking prices up in order to get people who are more upscale. Maybe they’re trying to thin out the Chinese.

There are many bad tourists among the mainland Chinese. Many are rude and aggressive, they let their kids poop in public, sometimes the adults poop in public, and they do horrific things in public toilets other people have to use. Check out this sign from the train station in Wengen:

I’m not sure, but the bottom row may be for people from places like Greece, where toilet pipes are often too narrow to swallow paper.

The covid isn’t really bad. I prefer it to a cold, because covid doesn’t give me much in the way of throat problems, and I can breathe through my nose most of the time. We did feel some weakness on a day when we needed to climb steps.

My short take: Lucerne is a lot of fun, but you will pay a steep price. Also, the food in Lucern is not very good. We went to the Bernese Oberland after Lucerne, and the food was bad there, too.

I don’t mean it was so bad you wouldn’t want to eat it, although that was sometimes true. I mean it seems like the Swiss have no idea what other people mean when they say food “tastes good.” We got things that were bland, and, in some cases, a little gross.

It’s no fun paying $100 for an unappetizing meal for two. Over and over.

Our hotel in Wengen was generally good, but they priced a smallish load of laundry at 150 Swiss Francs. The owner, a very nice lady, felt sorry for us and reduced our bill to 75. It pays to dress poor. In Rome, a bigger load, in the tourist district, would cost 25 Euros, and a Euro is about the same size as a Swiss Franc right now.

The mountains in Switzerland were spectacular. You look at them and can’t believe they’re real. We went up Pilatus, Rigi, the Schilthorn, and the Jungfrau.

I eventually cut way back on shooting photos and videos. Every 10 minutes, there’s a sight that knocks you off your feet. After a while, you get tired of taking the camera out, removing the lens cover, et cetera et cetera.

If you want to see something amazing, go to Lauterbrunnen, take the train to Wengen, and look back at Lauterbrunnen as you leave. Get ready to pinch yourself.

Here is my message about Rome: go in the winter. We didn’t have that option. There is nothing in Rome you can’t enjoy in cold weather, and the crowds are much smaller. The Vatican was like the subway in Hong Kong in terms of crowding, not to mention covid transmission. The Colosseum was also pretty bad.

Another warning: don’t buy tours from outfits like Viator. We did it because we didn’t know if it was safe not to, and we thought the Swiss, who were handling our Schengen visa request, would want to see booked activities.

Tour companies buy government-issued site tickets and resell them. We paid $333 for Vatican tickets that appear to cost 40 Euros when you get them from the source.

What about the guides? They’re experts! You need a guide!

You really don’t. One of our tours had 22 people. Way too many. The guide kept getting away from us. The audio quality on the earbuds they gave us was terrible. We couldn’t stop and enjoy anything. You can find yourself a guided tour on Youtube and use it with your phone. We did this for the Forum, and it was better than having a guide.

You’re not going to become an expert on anything just by spending three hours with a human being, so don’t worry that you’re missing something by using Youtube. You’re not. Think about this: real scholars put tour videos on Youtube.

We used electronic guides at the Pantheon, and they were great.

No tips expected.

The food was really nice, except for breakfast. I enjoyed Roman-style pizza. But Italian food is all there is. We saw one Italian restaurant after another. We didn’t see much else. Obviously, you can find other kinds of food in Rome, but you have to look. It’s not like New York, where you can find 8 nationalities on one block.

I never thought I could get tired of Italian food until this trip. By the end, I was so put off I went to McDonald’s, which is really bad in Rome, unless covid just made it taste that way.

The beer was disgusting. Like mouthwash. Very harsh. No body or sweetness to balance the hops. No aroma to speak of. No complexity.

More later, I would guess. Right now I am exhausted.

Temptation Reveals Character

I was thinking last night about my mother’s family and how sad it is that some of us decided to trade priceless relationships for money.

I really do mean “sad.” People use the word in a snotty way, to lash out at others. “It’s so sad you think eating meat is cool.” “It’s so sad you have white fragility.” I’m using the word in its proper sense. We lost something of tremendous value, and we will never get it back. I miss the relationships we used to have.

When I was a kid, I lived in a miserable home. My dad drank and chased women. He strangled my mother twice in front of me. He beat her for things like failing to match his socks. My mother, my sister and I were afraid of him. I had a repeating nightmare in which he cut them up and they talked to me while they were dying. We looked forward to his business trips because when he was gone, we had more peace.

My sister was sick and sadistic. My mother was always unhappy. My dad and my sister both abused her. I was not much of a son. I was irresponsible, afraid of people, and unsuccessful. She loved me deeply, which is not surprising, but she was also proud of me, which made no sense.

I loved going to visit my mother’s parents. They had a big custom-built home on a hill with three spare bedrooms plus a basement room and a sewing and gun room that could be used for guests. We visited in both summer and winter.

When Christmas, came, the families of all 4 daughters gathered at the house. The families that didn’t live nearby stayed there. It was wonderful. I treasure the memories.

My branch of the family drove up from Florida, where the air was hot and never smelled quite clean. I remember how things changed when we got to Kentucky. The air was crisp and cold and smelled like coal smoke. If we were lucky, we also smelled snow.

The house would be full of homemade cookies and things like stack cake and fried apple pies. Sometimes there would be a crate of oranges in the foyer. By the time we got there, the tree and decorations were always up, and the house smelled like pine needles.

With the exception of my strange Uncle John, who was cruel to me for no reason, and who was never held accountable by my parents, I looked forward to seeing everyone. When I heard the door to the carport open, it made me happy, because I knew another bunch had finally arrived.

We opened presents on Christmas Eve, which was a mistake, and we generally got in a couple of days of playing with things like race car sets.

I liked all of my aunts. At different times of my life, each one was my favorite. I liked two of my uncles.

In the summers, I got to work on my grandfather’s farms, and he would often put me in his car or truck and take me to one. He let me run his tractor. When I was small, he would set me on the right fender, and I would sit on it while he ran it. Sometimes he would stand on the floorboard to my right and coach me while I steered.

I remember him taking me on a long hike on a farm that bordered the Red River Gorge. He showed me an old moonshining camp by a little branch. He dug up some old bottles and gave them to me, and I cleaned them up. Of course, someone took them from his house later, along with a remarkable chunk of solid mica I found in the Chattooga River in North Carolina, below Potholes Falls.

Sometimes we shot, or shot at, rabbits. Sometimes he would take me to a local restaurant, and after he sat down, a big group of people who knew him would pull up chairs and make the place crowded. To me, he seemed like a king. The boss of three counties.

He was actually a corrupt politician, and he made a lot of money suing insurance companies in front of mountain juries, but I didn’t know those things.

Corruption was considered cute up there. Still is, I suppose.

I used to walk up the road to his brother’s house, and we would sit in his carport and trade pocket knives. I still have one I got from him. He was like an extra grandfather.

All that is behind me now. Two aunts are still alive. My mother is dead. All three uncles are dead. My dad and my grandparents are dead. Estate preparation was poor. There has been division. People have taken advantage.

I still get along with one aunt. The other is in charge of the interminable distribution of my grandparents’ wealth. My grandfather died in 1994, my grandmother died in 2003, and my aunt still resists selling land and closing up the estates. Things will probably wrap up very quickly when she dies, unless the family puts her unsuccessful nonagenarian second husband–not a blood relative or heir–in charge.

I trust God to compensate me for anything I lose, I don’t need money, my life is very peaceful, and my mother always told me not to get into a certain kind of fight with a skunk, so I don’t push things.

The last time she talked to me, she was furious. I told her she needed to sell everything, and I said she had never given any of us a monthly or yearly statement. I asked why she bothered me about prospective land deals. I said she was going to do whatever she wanted anyway. She said, “That’s right!”, without a trace of shame or any concern about civil or criminal liability.

She blurted out, “I HAVE MORE THAN YOU.” She wanted me to know she had more real estate than I did, as though that justified mishandling things. She told me I was trying to get money because I was poor. She started bragging about her kids and grandchildren, and she said all I had was “maybe a sorry dog.”

Very weird. At the time, as now, I was married to a wonderful woman, and I had a parrot. I don’t have a dog. I have no idea whether she has more real estate than I do. God bless her if she does. I don’t claim to be rich. All I know is that I have a wonderful home from which my wife and I have made a lot of foreign trips, all of which were paid for without borrowing. I have no debt.

All of my property is in areas where values have gone insane, very much unlike prices in Eastern Kentucky, so I am grateful for the way things have worked out. I don’t know if I could take the stress of working a real job in a world that has given itself over completely to Satan.

She said I had sponged off others all my life. I did sponge pretty badly in my twenties while I was trying to make it as a writer, and it’s true that I lived with my dad after law school, but that was a choice, and I paid my own way. I worked when I was in law school, I had inherited money from my mother, and I paid half of my tuition from stock market trades.

Our relationship improved tremendously when I was in law school, and afterward, although I was working, I thought a lot about joint families and the way families worked in the Bible. I felt God wanted me to stay. I started thinking the nuclear family was overrated and that it was better to be around older generations. As it turned out, that was correct.

It was strange to hear her sputtering at me in anger. Others had told me about her cursing them out, but I had never seen it. I don’t know how much of it is dementia. Age has a way of exposing people, though.

As personal representative of the estates, she hired her son to do legal work my dad and I offered to do for nothing. In my opinion, her son is not a real lawyer. He’s intelligent enough to practice, but he ended up at the second-worst law school in the US. I guess my aunt’s connections could not get him into the University of Kentucky, but I don’t know. I can’t imagine going to a horrible law school far away when you can go to a better one nearby and pay in-state tuition.

I won’t toot my own horn, but my dad was third in his class, and he made a living beating Ivy League lawyers in federal court. He defended 11 people charged with murder and got 10 off completely. I will say that I kept up with him.

The estates’ legal affairs turned out very badly, but my cousin got paid a lot. He did some shocking things, and his representation seemed completely inept to me. I called him on it, and he was rude and nasty to me. But I didn’t feel God wanted me to file a bar complaint or sue.

These are people I used to love seeing. It’s hard to believe it ended up like this. I thought we would have loving relationships as long as we lived.

I have never done them wrong. I never stole a penny or a paper clip from the estates, but I have been told things were taken by others. I always said I would not charge for helping, but others got paid. Now here we are. My aunt is slowly dying, her husband is in similar shape, and I suppose it would be awkward if I attended their funerals. Not that I plan to return to Eastern Kentucky for any reason. If my other aunt is living there when she dies, I’ll go, but that’s about it. I am going to avoid the whole area as well as I can. It’s a trashy, cursed place full of people who never grow up. A white ghetto.

My wife and I just got back from North Carolina and Tennessee. So different. The houses and businesses were well-kept. We didn’t see a single discarded school bus in a yard; this is a popular Eastern Kentucky decoration. We didn’t see old cars and refrigerators that had been dumped in creeks. The people were much nicer than people in Eastern Kentucky. You don’t have to be white trash to be from Appalachia.

I wish I could go back in time and tell my grandparents about the future of their descendants. Maybe we would still have a family. They could have done something to lock everything up so no one could end up controlling and taking advantage of the others Good fences make good neighbors.

I thought our family, dysfunctional though it was, was great. I thought we had such warmth. We seemed privileged. An illusion. I saw a veneer. Now if I want a blood family, I’ll have to start one, in my old age. And of course, my Spirit-filled friends are my family. God has given me excellent friends and godchildren.

Speaking of dysfunction, I had a startling revelation last night. I realized my wife and I were not dysfunctional. It came home to me, how strange it was to be all right. Most people are dysfunctional.

Out of 8 grandchildren, I think two may have families that are reasonably free of dysfunction. The rest are a mess. Can’t say I’m sure about the other two. I don’t hear from them. Maybe that means things are going well. My suspicion is that one or both deliberately limit contact with the rest of us in order to protect their peace, but I don’t know. Maybe they just outgrew the family.

I don’t beat my wife. I don’t drink much. We don’t take drugs. We don’t argue. I have no interest in other women. She doesn’t sit by herself and contemplate her existence, thinking about how disappointing it is and what a letdown her husband is. We love each other’s company. We treat each other well.

We have long prayer sessions every day. No one has to be coerced. We both want it.

She didn’t marry me hoping to turn me into a status symbol and money fountain. I didn’t marry her hoping for a perfect sex object that never aged. We don’t think about other people’s opinions of us. We don’t social-climb. We won’t be buying cars we think will impress people. Right now, I’m investing a ton in my old Dodge Cummins so I can drive it until I die.

We don’t go on Facebook and try to convince people who know better that we are Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, living in a fantasy world of blissful marital dreams come true. That’s a common affliction. We are not trying to impress people to make them feel inferior; especially people we don’t respect.

I don’t have to worry about cleaning the house myself or doing laundry because my wife is a slob. She doesn’t have to call tradesmen because I’m too sorry to have repairs made.

I don’t wonder if my newborn son should have a DNA test. I will never try to convince people he’s the next Mozart or Newton because I feel bad about myself or him. He will never have to tell people I lied about him or that he’s not what I held him out to be.

I don’t know how smart or talented he will be, but I know he will have a dedicated father who teaches him about the Holy Spirit and passes on as much wisdom as possible.

We don’t have any mental disorders. I was depressed pretty much continuously until I was 30, but it’s gone, and I feel better every year. We’re not neurotic. We don’t have delusions.

It’s so strange, knowing we’re not dysfunctional. I’m used to thinking of myself as dysfunctional, because I was, and I think of dysfunction as normal, because it is. It’s hard for me to think of acquaintances who aren’t dysfunctional.

Childishness is a big problem everywhere, but it’s SOP in Eastern Kentucky. People hold grudges and maintain feuds. I’m sure a lot of them go to hell for it. If the members of a family can learn to be accountable adults, they can spare themselves a lot of unnecessary suffering. A long time ago, I realized I had never seen two people who were not jerks divorce. Not once. At least one person was always a problem. The same thing is true in all relationships.

Prayer in tongues repairs hearts and minds. It also keeps husbands and wives aligned with each other. It aligns you with God, and if you’re aligned with him, it’s not possible to be out of alignment with each other. You can have little speed bumps, but you’re not going to throw plates at each other or hire attorneys.

We both come from dysfunctional homes, but God repaired us and continues to repair us. If we stop doing what he has taught us to do, we’ll be as dysfunctional as anyone.

It would be great if everyone in the family were praying in tongues. I don’t see anything like that happening in the future. Old people are hard to save. I have one cousin who, like me, is recovering. By the grace of God.

I wish the family had not turned out this way. It would have been wonderful if we had continued to be close. The worst thing about succeeding is watching people you care about continue to peel off and fail.

Trading Alligators for Bears

My wife and I did something extraordinary last week. We went on a trip inside the United States.

We went to a bunch of weird countries while we were separated by the State Department, which was busy letting illegals into the US and watching daytime TV because employees were at home waiting for covid to go away. Until this month, however, we never visited another state.

We went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. A place I loved as a child.

For those who don’t know, Gatlinburg is in the Smokies. The physical location is beautiful. It’s in a valley surrounded by mountains. To get to Gatlinburg, you have to travel scenic two-lane roads. The area is very nice. Appalachia isn’t as staggeringly beautiful as places like Switzerland and Utah, but it certainly beats the rest of the Eastern United States.

I don’t know when Gatlinburg became a tourist town. It happened before I was born. By the time my family started traveling between Florida and Kentucky to see relatives, everything was already established.

When I was a kid, it was considerably less tacky. It had a bunch of fun souvenir shops, including one called the Rebel Corner, which was decorated with huge Confederate flags. There was a place that made and sold candy. There were some okay restaurants. There were hotels built over the Little Pigeon River, which is really just a rocky creek. You could sit on your balcony or by your open window and listen to the soothing sound of the water.

There were trails and sights. I remember walking up Clingman’s Dome, a mountain nearly 7,000 feet high. My grandfather, the guy who taught me tact, was with us on the paved tourist path. He saw a man who looked like he checked in at about 350 shambling up the path with his own family, and he said, “It’s a good thing you’re not big and fat!”

Sometimes we saw bears. Back then, tourists did brilliant things like feeding them by hand through open car windows.

In those days, I enjoyed Gatlinburg and the nearby town of Cherokee, North Carolina, because to me, they were part of the experience of visiting Kentucky, which I wrongly thought was heaven on Earth.

Gatlinburg has gotten seedier with time. It’s a little trashy now. They used to have a tiny Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum, and now there is an array of Ripley’s attractions. They have a big saltwater aquarium where you can see sharks and sawfish. They’ve built a big concrete parking garage.

Watch the video below to see what Gatlinburg has turned into.

There are weird little attractions that don’t seem to make sense. One features a robotic horse in a dress, sitting out front to attract customers. We didn’t see the appeal.

Even though Gatlinburg is a somewhat downscale tourist town, we enjoyed ourselves. We walked in the woods. We had big breakfasts.

We didn’t go to Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s creepy amusement park. It’s in nearby Pigeon Forge.

I don’t like Dolly Parton. I thought she was perfectly okay when I was a kid, but over the years she and her park have worked hard to promote abomination, and all the time, she has pretended to be a Christian. She’s a complete hypocrite, but lots of stubborn, rebellious Southern women, and I don’t just mean lesbians, think she’s almost a co-savior, like the false Catholic version of Mary. Like a white Oprah.

I don’t know if her attitude has something to do with her unmarried brother who died young from an undisclosed disease or what, but I don’t want any part of her act. I never liked her music, either. She is no Patsy Cline.

The main reason we stayed in a tourist spot was to have a base from which we could look at the area. We have both had thoughts of moving to Eastern Tennessee, and if you stay in Gatlinburg, you can have good food and a nice hotel while you look around. Appalachia is not known for quality food and lodging, so to me, finding these things was a blessing.

We looked around Sevier and Blount counties. The geography and the trees and plants made a big impression, as did the sub-95 temperatures.

When you live in Northern Florida, you get used to living on sand that won’t support anything you really want to grow. You can’t grow apples, real peaches, blackberries, cherries, tomatoes, corn, or anything else without a lot of struggle. The grass is something called bahia. It’s thin, and when you walk across it a few times, you leave obvious damage. It’s full of stinging bugs, and nettles are a problem. Lying down in your own yard is not possible.

Once you get far enough north, you get into real soil. You can have apple trees and grow tomatoes. You can have a lawn.

I have been concerned that if we moved, the people might be backward on racial issues. I’m from Eastern Kentucky, and I’ve also spent a lot of time in Western North Carolina, and I know there are parts of Appalachia where you can have problems if you’re in an interracial marriage or even if you’re just black.

My grandfather was a circuit judge over Breathitt County, Kentucky, and during his time, a black woman moved there and tried to practice law. I never thought of him as an enlightened person with regard to race, but he supported her. The people of Jackson, Kentucky eventually burned her house down. And it wasn’t that long ago. He died in the mid-90’s.

On this visit, I was shocked. In Gatlinburg, we saw one interracial family after another. What a relief. And they were definitely Southerners. I also saw many clones of myself. Men in cargo or work shorts, T-shirts, and baseball caps. It was like they were pumping us out of a factory.

We saw two black families in rented Rzrs. A Rzr is a factory dune buggy made by Polaris. It has no windows. Apparently renting them is popular in Gatlinburg.

Maybe things have improved.

Southerners are very, very big on powersports and unnecessary vehicles. If you’re a Southerner, and you don’t have a golf cart, an ATV, a dune buggy, a dirt bike, or a Jeep, there must be something wrong with you. I use a gas-powered EZGO to get my mail.

The people were very nice. I was concerned that if we left our area, the people would not be as pleasant. There are a lot of childish, rude, stingy people in Eastern Kentucky. In Tennessee, just about everyone was great. And there were signs of Christianity everywhere. There were signs advertising help for women who were considering abortions. There were signs telling people Jesus was coming back. I loved it.

I have had the feeling God wanted me to move to Tennessee, as have many other Christians. I don’t know if we’ll do it, but now I am less concerned about the possibility of making a bad decision.

During our trip, we applied for a Schengen visa so we could finally visit Europe. The real Europe, not Ireland or Turkey. Incredibly, they granted our request, so now we have to decide whether we should go. My wife is going through some medical treatment right now–nothing bad or permanent–so we’re thinking it over.

We only saw one bear in Tennessee, but it was a whopper. We were walking down the main drag of Gatlinburg, and we saw a bunch of people staring at the area behind a hotel. I looked and saw a black shape not much smaller than a cow. This thing was enormous. It must have been checking out the bear-resistant dumpsters.

When I think of black bears, I think of animals about the size of a hog. Maybe 150-200 pounds. They sometimes hit 600 however, making them as big as medium-sized grizzlies. The record is over 900. I don’t know what this bear weighed, but it looked a lot more like 600 than 200.

It took my wife a while to spot it, which is bizarre. She finally saw it walking up some stairs.

I knew we might see some bears. I expected typical disappointing bears about my own size. Not this time. This baby could have fed a small town for a day. It would make a beautiful rug.

I enjoyed seeing real trees instead of one water oak after another. We saw hickories, walnuts, sycamores, maples, black oaks, chestnut oaks…serious trees that have practical uses other than fueling smokers. They made me think of the times I had spent with my grandparents in the woods. They seemed to know every plant’s name and purpose.

We saw a lot of people who were obese or had leg problems. Diabetes, maybe. We saw people who clearly weren’t on top of the financial ladder. We saw a lot of tattoos and cigarettes.

I thought about Gatlinburg’s status as a second-tier tourist town, and I felt like God showed me some things. We were there as people who did not have to work. We were able to stay at a very nice hotel. We weren’t going into debt to do anything. Both of us knew God very well and never felt that we were alone or that we might have to handle life’s problems on our own. Our health was good. We were surrounded by unhealthy people who were loading themselves with debt.

Many of the others would have to go home shortly and work at jobs they didn’t like, in order to pay for things they had already received. When you borrow, you get your reward up front, and then while you’re working to pay for it later on, you have no reward to look forward to, and you can’t quit.

It reminded me to keep humility, gratitude, and fear of God in mind. We earned very little of what we have. God gave it to us in spite of our evil natures and deeds. Every good thing we have is part of an inheritance from God. We should never feel superior to anyone. What is uglier than an arrogant heir who has no empathy? I have been that person.

We aren’t sure what we’ll do. Sometimes I think we should go to Utah instead of Europe. It’s a lot less complicated, and it’s a shame for Americans not to see their own enormous country.

In any case, my wife is now in the Schengen visa system, so if we decide to travel in the future, it should be easier.

One More Shot at the Lost Continent

Before too long, my wife and I will find out whether Europe’s racist visa policies apply to African green card holders as well as Africans still in Africa.

We have traveled a lot since we found each other. Egypt, Turkey, Singapore, Ireland…destinations that were pleasant enough, yet which were all compromises. We have never been able to get to Europe.

I mean the real Europe, not Ireland. The place with the alps and the great food. Going to Ireland is like going to Boston, only the people are much nicer.

Well, they would have to be, though, wouldn’t they? Okay, they were nicer than most Americans, not just the interesting residents of urban Massachusetts.

Ireland seems like a pleasant place to live. The climate is gentle. It’s green, just like you would expect. The countryside is pretty. It’s fairly prosperous. It could conceivably be possible to hole up in the sticks and hide from the national psychosis of leftism. But the cities are kind of dumpy, the food is worse than it is here, the sweaters are thin and cheap, and when you’re there, you feel like actual Irish people are a tiny minority.

The Irish have abandoned Ireland. Why is that? They’re all here now. Not completely true, really. They’re all over the world, and they didn’t quit leaving after the potatoes came back. Is Ireland really that bad? Seemed fine to me.

I would not go back to Ireland, simply because it’s dull. There is really nothing there except the cliffs of Moher. Other European countries are different. Those alps. The fjords. Renaissance art. Medieval architecture. Magnificent food.

I wouldn’t go to England, either, and I suspect Ireland is just England without the sights.

Most of my ancestors are supposedly from England and Scotland, but I have no interest in seeing those places. I don’t understand people who want to “visit the old country” and who get all weepy about places maybe 3% of their ancestors came from. Let’s face it; if you have a name identified with a European country, and your people have been in the US over a hundred years, your genetic connection to its people is like a gram of coke that has been stepped on 10 times. If genes were paint, the country’s genes were white, and other countries’ genes were black, you would be charcoal gray.

My parents were under the impression we were mostly Scottish. I don’t think this is true, but anyway, they went to Scotland and looked up my dad’s ancestors, who are dead and were not able to receive him. They enjoyed bad food and mediocre scenery. On a rare and prized, not to mention expensive, foreign trip.

Forget that. Give me someone else’s ancestral homeland. Give me Switzerland, Austria, Italy, France, Germany, and possibly the Netherlands. Give me a place with great sights and wonderful food. Give me excellent weather and hotels that aren’t full of mold.

My parents could have had Paris. Back when it was safe, I mean.

England is full of furious Muslims now. That’s not for me. If I want to go to a country full of furious Muslims, I’ll visit Michigan. With a side hajj to Minneapolis.

London has worse crime than New York now, and like New York, it prevents decent people from carrying weapons. Should I take my wife to a place like that? How would I explain that decision to her in a London emergency room?

It’s true that England has great food now. It’s called curry. No one goes there to find the best spotted dick and toad in the hole.

I would have to rank Egypt at the bottom of our destinations. I would never go again unless I had a sudden desire to do another Nile cruise. The people were very nice everywhere, and sometimes the food was good. The cruise was relaxing and interesting. But Cairo is a slum, straight out. A real mess. And Egyptians throw their garbage everywhere.

The best restaurant we visited had dozens of dead flies decorating the windowsills.

Singapore was the real sleeper. I didn’t want to go at all, but now we have gone twice. We have a bizarre sensation of being at home there. Inexplicable.

We enjoyed Turkey, and the people were wonderful. Now Turkey is threatening to annihilate the Jews, so that takes some of the shine off of it. Ireland is antisemitic, but at least they’re not planning genocidal military action.

I don’t know if they can. Do they have an army? A real one, not the kind that blows up department stores?

We are giving Switzerland another shot because its nearest consulate is on the way to Tennessee. Before too terribly long, we intend to visit the Volunteer State to see if we should move there. Switzerland has a consulate in Atlanta. I figure we can get in and out of Atlanta fast enough to avoid being soiled too much.

Other countries would have required us to go to places like DC, New York, and Miami. If you see me in Miami, alert the police, because I have been kidnapped. Miserable, stinking hole. Thank you again, God, for getting me out.

We were going to shoot for a short trip to Switzerland, but given that this may be our last real trip for years, I decided to tack on some time in Italy. Rome, to be exact. I have been to Florence a couple of times, and it’s wonderful, but I think a person who has never been to Italy should probably pick Rome.

We don’t jam lots of destinations into short intervals. We are not the kind of people who would do three days in Florence and 4 days in Rome. If you haven’t been to a place for a reasonably long spell, you haven’t really been there. If you spend a day in Rome and then say you’ve seen it, you might as well say the same thing after walking through the airport between flights.

It has to be Rome or Florence. Not both.

We are planning to cut Switzerland up a little, but I think that’s different, because as beautiful as it is, you can’t stare at the mountains all that long without wanting to do something else. We expect to do a few days in Lucerne and a few in Wengen. Go up some mountains. Eat some plates of potatoes and cheese. Move on.

Will they let us in? No idea. The visa picture is supposed to be better for green card holders than Africans in Africa who are married to Americans, but we have been lied to before. Every time, now that I think of it. We don’t know what’s true and what isn’t.

I’m starting not to care. We liked Hong Kong and Singapore. We got a Taiwan visa quickly and easily. We haven’t seen America together. We don’t actually have to go to continental Europe. There are other places to go.

I want her to see the nice parts of Appalachia and maybe the Rockies. Utah is breathtaking. We can skip the entire Northeast, all major cities, and anything south of Orlando. No wacked-out West Coast destinations. Sliding around on other people’s feces is not for us.

Traveling with one or more kids is a future concern. I don’t know how people do it. I don’t know how they deal with kids on short trips to the grocery store. My wife doesn’t think overseas trips with children can be done. Not well. Maybe she’s right.

So where do you go in Tennessee? Gatlinburg, of course. Good old touristy Gatlinburg. I went there many times as a child. I saw people feed the bears through car windows. We walked up Clingman’s Dome. We went to Cherokee, and my mother took a picture of me with a bunch of guys who claimed to be Indians. Did braves really wear Chuck Taylors?

It’s touristy, but on the other hand, it has the best hotels, there is real food, and it’s a good base for exploration. And we are, in fact, tourists.

I haven’t seen Gatlinburg since the early 2000’s, I think. My family got together. A cabin was rented. Two aunts, my dad, my sister, me, and some cousins. My sister tortured the rest of us with her nasty unhousetrained Maltese and her constant unprovoked attacks on me. I think things will be better this time. In the recipe for an excellent vacation, or any other pleasant or even bearable experience, the secret can’t-miss ingredient is her absence.

Some people have a gift; the gift of making every occasion better by being elsewhere. This explains the rapture, the tribulation, heaven, and hell.

We are gearing up for all this stuff now. We hope to travel during the coming month.

If the Swiss let us down, I guess it will be the Far East and rural America for the foreseeable future. We have to do something for recreation until Yeshua gets us out of this world.

Maybe the Grass Really is Greener

Reader Tiomoid of Angle left a comment referring to a Youtube called Nomad Capitalist. The comment says, “Go Where You’re Treated Best.”

That’s really interesting.

I know nothing about the channel. I sort of skimmed the “Videos” page, and it looks like it’s a guy who tells people about countries where they might be better off than where they are. Maybe it’s aimed at Americans.

I’m writing to relax, so I have no plans to do unpleasant research that resembles work.

What I perceive, perhaps incorrectly, to be the thesis of the channel is interesting. Why stay where you’re not wanted? Why stay and be treated the way a lamprey treats a bass?

Today I had a revelation, which I posted here. The brief, generalized version is this: bad people want to stay close to good people, but good people want to get away from bad people.

To understand why this is true, you only have to refer back to the lamprey/bass simile. A bass would be way better off if every lamprey died right now, but lampreys would shrivel and die without fish to eat alive.

This is the kind of interaction Scott Adams had in mind when he made the remarks that changed his life.

He says he’s not a racist. He says he was being “hyperbolic.” I don’t know what’s true. I do know that people with a ghetto mindset are parasites, and the people who support them are hosts. This is also true of spoiled Antifa kids and most Palestinians.

He said people should stay the hell away from blacks. That’s ridiculous, but if he had said we should stay away from racist blacks who prey on everyone else, he would have been correct, and he should have extended the notion to other parasitic groups. For example, no honest person can say it’s smart to live near gypsies.

America the nation is parasitic now. I mean the government and cultural establishment. As policy, it torments, libels, censors, imprisons, beats, and robs people who are its biggest assets, in order to feed vicious common trash who happen to be of voting age. So why not leave?

Is it really that big a deal to be an American citizen? What do you really get?

1. Stability. Well, that is off the table now that civil war is approaching. And having a continuous line of government doesn’t mean individuals have stability. The USSR was around for a long time, and people there lived in terror and never knew when they might be whisked off to camps or places of execution. And lots of countries are stable.

2. Wealth. That sounds fine, but the fact that your country is wealthy doesn’t mean you are, and the fact that it’s poor doesn’t mean you’re poor. You can be wealthy anywhere, and it’s best to be wealthy in a place where half of the population isn’t trying to take what you have, claiming falsely that you stole it. One in six Swiss citizens are millionaires by American standards. That’s not bad. There are several countries where it is easier to get rich than it is in America. And maybe you’re already rich, so all you need is a country that won’t rob you.

3. Quality of life. This is a slippery quantity, because the people whose efforts to define it are generally not conservative, but still, the US is not at the top of most lists. Here’s an important part of quality of life: not having racist, anti-Christian, antisemitic, murderous terrorism-lovers constantly threatening to take what you have and turn you into a voiceless slave.

The weather in most of America is bad for a big part of the year. The food is not very good except for prime beef. The people in most areas are rude. We have a couple of large demographics, plus some small ones, that run around shooting, robbing, and raping everyone else plus each other. This is not paradise.

What if you travel and a foreign country locks you up or otherwise mistreats you? Uncle Sam will save you! No, he won’t. I mean, he might, but don’t count on it. Foreign prisons are full of American citizens. If you’re a famous lesbian who willfully committed a stupid crime with a severe penalty, you might get help, but in the process, a far better person might be left imprisoned in the foreign country for political reasons. Not that this has happened recently.

Is it heresy to criticize our food? No. Go to Europe or the Far East some day and look at the produce. We breed plants that taste bad but generate higher profits. They breed plants that taste fantastic, and often, they also look better than ours.

The produce in Singapore (where there is virtually no farmland) and Hong Kong (also almost no farmland) is magnificent. Wonder why we can’t do that.

Consider the Red Delicious apple. I loved them when I was a kid. Now they’re disgusting. I can’t understand why stores sell them. They bred the flavor out of them and made the texture sort of like a mixture of sand and wet styrofoam. They apparently ship quite well, however.

Our Granny Smith apples are like sour croquet balls. Can’t remember the last time I saw a ripe one. They’re great for constipation.

We have the Second Amendment! True, but then we need it more than many countries. I don’t think the Czechs and South Koreans worry too much about carjackings and home invasions.

One of the videos on Capitalist Nomad’s channel is titled “You Don’t Owe Your Country Anything.” Wow. In America, that’s blasphemy. But is it true? In many cases, yes.

I obey the law. Mostly. I cost the taxpayer virtually nothing. The police don’t come to my house three times a week to make me stop beating the putative mother of some of my illegitimate children. My kids aren’t in “the system” because I abandoned them. I don’t get affirmative action. I paid full tuition when I was in college. I don’t get student loans and then force better people to pay them off. The amount of tax I pay is really extraordinary because of the nature of my business. It’s fair to say I work for the government. When my grandfather died, my country confiscated enough wealth from his heirs, who had done nothing wrong, to make a person rich. When they brought the Selective Service back, I signed up, agreeing to give my life if they ordered me to. I wasn’t called to serve, but I would have. That’s not a small thing to offer.

Help me understand why I would think I owed America anything. I think our military people have done more for me than anyone except my parents and my mother’s parents, but is our military “America”? Most people have never served.

I do a lot for other people through taxes, but people don’t do anything for me unless I pay them. If I pay them, how can anyone say I owe them for what they’ve done for me?

I benefit from the taxes a certain percentage of Americans pay, but they benefit from mine, too. We use the same roads. I would say the rich benefit me more than anyone, because they pay way more than I do. Thank you, billionaires. Someone appreciates you.

Thank you for infrastructure. Thank you for hospitals and universities. Thank you for aircraft carriers. Thank you for all the things disgraceful politicians bought us with your confiscated money. Thank you for all the corporations that provide great stuff. Thank you for taking risks I won’t take and working harder than I want to.

I’m surrounded by people who cheat the rest of us every day as a matter of routine. Welfare scammers run into the tens of millions, at least. I live in a country where people with no conscience use EBT cards to buy liquor and cigarettes while better people buy their own ramen noodles.

There are whole neighborhoods that are nothing but wealth sinks. The government raises their kids. In prisons, it houses a huge fraction of the adult males and quite a lot of the females. It hands out food, medicine, phones, apartments and all sorts of other things. It pays for programs that help almost no one because almost no one wants to be helped.

Some people owe this country. I am not one of them. If I move somewhere else, America will be worse off, I will be better off, and the country I move to will be improved.

I’m assuming I can move to a decent location. That is still possible.

I don’t often hear people saying they don’t owe America anything, but it’s true for many of us.

I can understand immigrants saying it, provided they didn’t come here from places like Luxembourg or Japan.

Funny thing: I don’t even owe God. That sounds bizarre, but it’s true. He paid the debt I owed him. I don’t owe him for anything in the past, but I definitely have a son’s duty to serve him in the future. And I want to serve him. He’s wonderful, and serving him is a joy. Every good thing in my life came from him, and he gave it all in spite of my revolting attitude and slimy deeds.

I don’t claim America owes me, except that it has a duty to do what our stupid, cruel, clumsy government has promised in return for being a good and loyal citizen. I have done a lot for the citizenry, but I was forced to do most of it, and I don’t consider anyone to be indebted to me for it.

Saying I don’t owe America isn’t the same as saying I don’t love America. I do. Or, rather, I love what America was. I love what little vanishing bits of it still are. I can’t love the whole country. No one in his right mind can love Chicago or Newark. It would be like loving kidney stones.

I suppose I’ve written enough. I have unwound. I don’t know whether I have guessed correctly about Capitalist Nomad’s content. Maybe tomorrow I’ll actually watch a video.

We Yearn to Breathe Free

My wife and I had a good day yesterday, not that this is unusual.

We had an anniversary recently, and we had problems finding her a good gift, so I decided we needed to go to the big city. We succeeded in getting the gift, and she also got to eat at the Cheesecake Factory, where she would happily take up residence if they would let her.

We also visited an African grocery run by Nigerians. I thought maybe they would have a lot of interesting food I would want to try, but it was pretty bad. The store did not smell good, it was run-down, and they sold things I didn’t know were edible. Potato leaves, for example.

The web suggests “potato leaves” are really sweet potato leaves. That would make more sense. The potato is a member of the nightshade family, and you’re not supposed to eat nightshade leaves.

I was glad we managed to get her things she liked. I thought about her good fortune. She used to bathe in a bucket, and here she was, buying nice things at upscale malls and living in a big house will all sorts of appliances, not to mention air conditioning and a power grid that almost never fails (sorry, California).

I asked her if she was glad she was in America, and she surprised me by saying she wasn’t. She said she only preferred America to Zambia because I was here.

In Zambia, she lived with two other women in a cheap apartment. She had to wash her clothes by hand. She had no car because an ex-boyfriend had taken hers. The power went on and off constantly. She had to buy used goods from China. But she prefers Zambia to America. Why?

One reason is that she was raised in Zambia. The other reason, however, is that America is insane.

In Zambia, men in dresses aren’t holding antisemitic protests outside Jewish businesses. Perversion flags are rare. Homosexual marriage is not legal. Zambians don’t riot. Wokeism isn’t a threat. Political censorship is not much of a problem. Christianity is in their constitution.

Here, we are preparing for a civil war because leftists have become cruel and oppressive. That’s not happening in Zambia.

Her preference actually makes some sense.

Zambia has other problems. Drunkenness is out of control. Paganism does great harm. Corruption is severe. The economy is always disastrous. According to my wife, Zambians are lazy, so things are not likely to improve. Still, apocalyptic violence will probably be much less severe there than it will be (is) here.

Zambians don’t hate each other the way Americans do.

Am I saying I would consider moving to Zambia? Sure. If things got bad enough here, and Zambia looked better. I want to survive like everyone else. I don’t want to spend my days shooting and burying black-clad trespassers who want to punish my family for the crime of existing.

I really, really don’t want to move to Africa, but what if we have no choice?

To leftists, the existence of everyone else is a capital offense. We have seen them try to cleanse the world with rifles. They did it in places like China and Cambodia, to name two examples. Many here have praised Trump’s failed assassin. They’re always waiting to be released on better people so they can destroy them and take what they have. After they get what they have, they destroy that, too, because leftist traits, not social inequities, are what made poor leftists poor.

Alan Dershowitz just did a podcast in which he expressed dismay over an anti-Jewishness protest.

Dershowitz loves admiration and being associated with celebrities, so he lives in Martha’s Vineyard. As we all know, Martha’s Vineyard is a rich leftist enclave where wealthy socialist hypocrites pat each other on the back all day.

Unbelievably, Martha’s Vineyard has a Chabad branch. Chabad is an ultra-Orthodox Jewish organization. Maybe they’re in the Vineyard so they can milk guilt-ridden Jewish celebrities for cash. I very much doubt a significant percentage of Martha’s Vineyard Jewish residents have any interest in giving up sin and pepperoni pizza.

Chabad is not affiliated with Israel or the IDF.

Chabad held a sort of festival of Jewish culture. Music, food, and so on. Dershowitz says antisemitic Democrats showed up in a mob and protested. As he noted, they were protesting Jewishness itself. The organization and the event had nothing to do with the war in Gaza.

Democrats showed up to accuse Jews of the crime of being Jewish.

If your crime is being Jewish, what is the appropriate punishment? Let me be more obvious: what is the final solution?

What is your defense? There isn’t one. You can become a kapo, though. You can join those who persecute your people and postpone your own destruction. Many Jews are doing this. Many did it under the Greeks and Romans.

You don’t know about the protest because you don’t watch his Youtube channel. It should have been on the national news, but as a Babylon Bee character has said, hating Jews is cool now. That is literally true. Our press is about 90% leftist, and leftists crave admiration. To get excited about the problem of antisemitism is to break with the cool kids. Coverage could also bring disrepute on the Democratic Party, and no one in the press wants that to happen.

The thing that puts a knot in one’s stomach is knowing Dershowitz will complain and admonish and then vote for Kamala Harris anyway. American Jews will continue assisting their persecutors and persecuting their friends.

Americans in general are starting to behave the same way. Notice how we give privilege to hostile military-age immigrants from Muslim countries, China, and Latin American nations that are not friendly.

I keep wondering if I’ve given Dershowitz too much credit. He’s supposed to be brilliant, but I haven’t seen him say anything really clever, and I’ve seen him say things that would appear to indicate that he is not brilliant, even for a lawyer. His analysis of the Baldwin manslaughter case was very poor.

Law is not that hard. Law professors are smarter than most professors, but not a whole lot smarter. They are not in the same lofty stratum as STEM people. You can be a Supreme Court justice and be substantially less bright than a state college professor of electrical engineering.

America is turning into something resembling Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, so I understand why my wife would want to live somewhere else. You wouldn’t think a poverty-stricken African nation would tempt anyone, but these are strange times.

I wonder if Christian countries in Africa would accept Jewish and Christian refugees from America. Maybe they would. They need money and educated people with skills.

I used to think I might be called upon to shelter Jews. I now think that would be impossible, because you can’t hide anything in modern America. I no longer consider it a serious possibility.

Now I think a foreign country may have to shelter me.

Here is a funny fact no one ever talks about: good people want to get away from bad people, but bad people want to be with good people.

When you judge two parties that don’t get along, the one that wants nothing to do with the other is usually right, and the one that wants to force the other to stay close is usually evil.

The other day, I was thinking about my health, and I wondered if something I experienced could be a symptom of cancer. My reflexive response was to think, “Maybe I can get out of this place!”, meaning the world. That was the very first thing I thought of. Remarkable. This is not new. Whenever I read that a person has died, I can’t help thinking, “Good for him!”

Then I thought about my family and regretted it, because I would be abandoning them. I also thought about the suffering cancer patients go through. Then I thought about cancer patients who didn’t suffer all that badly. A year or so on painkillers, a sudden downturn, and then off they go. Worse than growing old and feeble and being tormented by leftists? No. That’s a chilling realization. Millions of people leftists have abused, both dead and living, would have preferred cancer and death.

I actually had these thoughts. As much as I enjoy life, I can’t feel enthusiastic about a future in this sick, twisted country.

Has Anyone Seen my 56 Million?

The other day, I was confused about some things somewhat-conservative actor Tom Selleck said, and I wrote about it. He lives on a 63-acre avocado farm in California, and at the age of 79, after a very successful acting career (for a conservative), he says he may have to sell his farm in order to finance a pleasant old age.

Thomas Magnum, the eighties pinup man, is 79. About as old as Biden. Can you believe it? He’s not in the same boat, though. Biden looks like his father or even grandfather. I wonder how old Higgins is. I’ll check. The actor who played him would be 91 today. Zeus and Apollo have been dead since no later than 1995.

I looked up his taxes, and I found out he pays about a thousand dollars per acre per year, which is bad, but not shocking. My dad’s home near Miami had a tax bill not far from half that high one year, and it’s a merely somewhat above average home on half an acre. Thank God that place is gone. What a horrible area. Living in that miserable place is bad enough, but then they force you to pay an amount equal to a living wage in exchange for the privilege of suffering. I can’t understand the people who bought that house.

I wondered how Selleck could be worried about his finances given the money he has made, the value of his property (about $12 million), and the fact that he will almost certainly die within 15 years. His kids are grown. Even a reverse mortgage should keep him up in fine style, and surely he has assets other than his home.

Well, someone in Hollywood got mad at Selleck and criticized him for complaining. This person says he was paid $56 million over the last 14 years for his work on a CBS series. Maybe I’m easily impressed, but that seems like a lot of money to me.

Unless he has a drug addiction or a gambling problem, he should have been able to pocket over $20 million, even in California, even after paying his agent. That’s just the last 14 years. Doesn’t include Magnum, P.I., his movies, or his ad work.

I don’t know, man. I’m starting to wonder about this guy.

Maybe he doesn’t realize he will be dead by 2040. He has already exceeded the average American life expectancy, and he is about 7″ above average height. Tall people don’t live as long as short people. If he can support himself for 15 years, he’s okay.

I remember telling my dad he needed to get professional help with his weight, and he would always say his grandfather lived to be 100. That was true, but his grandfather didn’t drink and weighed about 140 pounds. My dad started to lose it noticeably at about 82, and he died in assisted living when he was not far into his 86th year, at the age of 85. His older sister had the same grandfather, and she died at 84. She was huge.

My mother’s father didn’t think realistically about age, either. He rented a farm to a 68-year-old man with the provision that the man could stay as long as he lived. When he was questioned about this, he said, “That old man can’t live long.” My grandfather was 72.

I think I’m pretty realistic about being old. When I think about taking up a new pastime, I think, “I’ll be dead before I get anywhere with it.” I have thought about planting trees here, but barring the rapture, they will still be small and useless when I die. When I work in the yard and I get tired, I go in the house, leaving branches and leaves and whatever on the ground if I have to. I’m not going to die for yard work. Heat exhaustion is something old people can’t play with.

When I put heavy things on high shelves, I wonder if I’ll be strong enough to take them down if I ever need them. I take that into account.

Regarding Selleck, maybe he has spent a lot of money enjoying life. Maybe he has put millions in trust for his two grown kids, where he and his wife can’t get it. I certainly hope he has arranged for his kids to be rich without work. That’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re not supposed to stuff yourself like a turkey and then die poor.

If every generation in a family has to start with nothing, it’s a stupid family. Inheritance is supposed to help people not to have to have the same problems their ancestors did.

We don’t force new generations to come up with their own languages, writing, and science. We don’t burn all the books every 20 years. We treasure and protect these things and do our best to pass them on. No one ever says, proudly, “No one gave me electrical engineering and medicine. I figured it out for myself!” But fools love to say, “I’m a self-made man!” Like it’s great that their parents and ancestors were also fools.

Money is no different from other good things. It should be passed along, and so should the ability to make and handle money.

Inheritance is one of the big differences between advanced cultures and backward cultures that amounted to nothing. Africans and American Indians didn’t preserve knowledge through writing. They didn’t build things that lasted so their descendants could use them. They didn’t amass wealth and pass it on. They managed to go millennia without developing technology. As a result, they ended up living like cave men while people in other places had running water and calculus. They died from diseases that can be prevented by wearing shoes and boiling water. When advanced people showed up where they were, they were running around just about naked, and they didn’t have things like chairs. They were worse than children.

The wealthy people who didn’t have to work to get wealth make up a tiny percentage of Americans. That’s disgraceful. The grandchildren of most wealthy people have to build their own wealth, and many of them have nothing. If your grandchildren end up worse off than you, what was the purpose of making yourself rich? Was it just to make your own life better?

Americans are hypocrites. They really hate heirs, but nearly all of them want their children to be heirs. We love making fun of wealthy people who have problems, but we all want to be wealthy.

Wealth is good. It is completely good. It has no bad qualities. Christians have given it a bad name, and that’s ridiculous. Saying wealth is bad is like saying health is bad. Good looks are bad. Nice weather is bad. It’s idiotic. God himself says wealth is good. In the Bible, he promises it to people who please him. Would he reward people he likes with a curse? Of course not. Wealth is only a curse when you make it a curse. Your nature is the problem.

Giving heirs things is very good. Spoiling them is not. Two different things. Wealth can’t spoil anyone. We all know or know of rich heirs who are not spoiled, and prisons and poor ghettos are full of the most spoiled people in America.

I certainly hope the Sellecks have set their kids up.

What if he gave most of his earnings to charity, and he hasn’t said anything? That would be better than wasting it on yachting vacations, Hermes, and Balenciaga.

Looking around, I see the web says Selleck has had other homes. In 2016, he was featured in Architectural Digest, a magazine devoted to showcasing homes owned by extremely self-indulgent people with sick fringe values. The article says he had an 1800-square-foot apartment in Los Angeles, and he covered the walls with expensive paneling. He and his wife brought in very, very expensive professionals to fix the place up. They spared no expense.

They will never get that money back. Most of it is not an investment. Spending tons of money decorating a house generally will not pay off. The furniture will be removed, and the kind of people who buy fancy homes will want to remove a lot of what was done and replace it.

I fixed up a house and sold it, and it was a terrible idea. If I had sold it as-is, I would be a lot better off today. I sold another one with problems, and it was a much smarter decision. House flippers only make good money when they get good renovation work, cheap. Most of us aren’t in their shoes. Contractors generally treat their clients badly, costing them huge sums of money and wasting valuable months. If you want to live in a torn-up house and be your own general contractor, it’s different, but Tom Selleck wouldn’t do that.

In the article, he speaks lovingly of a table in the apartment, saying it used to be used for slaughtering pigs. If your grandfather made a table, I can understand why you would love it, but the pig story sounds exactly like what a designer would say in order to get you to make a sucker purchase.

“In this very chair, Vin Diesel read the script for Fast & Furious 6.”

Selleck lived in Hawaii for a long time. That’s expensive. Everything except pineapples and sand has to be brought in on boats or planes. I don’t know how many homes he had there, but one is pretty nice. The address is 4161 Akulikuli Terrace, in Honolulu. You can see a video of it below.

Does he still have the L.A. place? If so, he is paying the state serious money.

Even if, by some unforeseen fluke, I become extremely wealthy, I will never have a home in Architectural Digest, nor will I ever pay a decorator. I made a decision. I decided my home would be usable. We expect to have kids. We will have guests. I have a parrot. We can’t have really, really nice things, and I don’t want them anyway. Things have to serve me. I can’t stand serving things. If I can’t sit on a couch without taking a shower first, I don’t want it.

We will have pretty good furniture. We will make a pretty good effort to make the downstairs look pretty good. Upstairs, I have a fairly cheap couch and a recliner no woman would own, and only one of the beds has a headboard.

I have a Ford and a Dodge. Both were bought used. The newest one is 9 years old. I may replace the Ford with a Toyota because the Ford I have has a reputation for turning into a money pit after a certain number of miles, but if I buy a Toyota, it will be at least a year old.

I think we will continue to live very well by global standards, even without Selleck’s earning potential, and I don’t think we will have to move. If you have a nice house, good food, good medical care, and somewhat nice stuff, you are rich as far as I’m concerned.

It looks like Tom Selleck has spending problems, not money problems.

My grandfather may have been worth what Selleck is now, in terms of buying power, and he lived in a nice, comfortable house that was kept up perfectly. He drove Buicks from his car dealership, bought at cost. He wore his pickup trucks out. He got his clothes from department stores in Lexington, Kentucky. He didn’t have a wine cellar or a tennis court. I would guess he never flew first class in his life.

He didn’t worry that he might have to move out of his house. When his television went out, my grandmother told the people at the store to bring another one, dismissing their concerns about her ability to pay, saying, “We’ve got enough money to burn a wet mule.”

He was generous with other people. He helped his children when they didn’t deserve it or show him gratitude. He didn’t spend his money on decorators so he wouldn’t feel bad when shallow rich people showed up for expensive parties he never threw. He left some money and land behind when he died, and so did his wife.

I think he handled his money very well. He was probably the only person in Eastern Kentucky who subscribed to The Value Line, and read and understood it, in the 1950’s.

My dad bought a lot of real estate, and he did some investing. He could not match my grandfather, but he wasn’t like some of his partners, who had to spend every dime they got before they got it. He never talked about having to move out of his house, and he eventually became very concerned about making sure what he had went to me smoothly. He could have had a new Mercedes every year, but he chose to fund his future, and that of his descendants, instead.

Any couple that can’t find a way to live well until they die, on what must amount to at least $30 million, is doing something wrong. With that kind of wealth, you can take two very expensive vacations per year, wear excellent clothing, drive very nice cars, and live on an avocado farm. You should be able to get excellent help when you become feeble. I’m sure of it. Maybe you can’t have three or four mansions, and you might have to shop at normal malls sometimes, but lots of movie stars shop at malls that don’t have Neiman-Marcus or Bulgari.

Selleck will be dead by 2040. His wife will be dead by 2055, tops. They’ll both be fine if they show even below-average restraint.

Ostentation is sinful. Spending to be accepted by trashy rich people is wrong. It stirs up resentment among people who have less. It makes you think you’re better than you are. It lands you among empty, disgusting people. It sucks money away from better causes. You can have an incredibly cushy life without making a spectacle of yourself and spending in order to obey your insecurity.

Ostentation is partly aggression. It’s a way of insulting others. The Bible says that if you mock the poor, you insult God himself.

I just happened to run into an article about Antonio Brown, who was apparently an NFL player. The article says his career earnings were about $80 million. Wikipedia says he signed contracts amounting to well over $100 million, and that doesn’t include earnings off the field. Now his net worth is negative, and his earning potential is not much better.

He’s not a smart guy, so he can’t run out and get another high-paying job. Football was all he could do, at least for more than $20 an hour. It’s a horrific story. Imagine making $80 million in about 12 years, losing all of it, and then having to think about how long it would take to make that much money with your other abilities. In his case, it’s about 2000 years. That is the actual figure.

He’s a friend of Kanye West. West has a very shaky sports agency firm called Donda Sports, and Brown is the nominal president. Brown appears to be nearly illiterate, though, so it’s not clear whether he can actually perform any duties. Maybe West will pay him a lot anyway. But if he does, Brown will lose it. It won’t help.

I understand the desire to spend money on fun things, and I have certainly wasted money, but you have to have some sense of proportion. If your net worth is two million dollars, and the Lamborghini you want costs $1.5 million, it doesn’t mean you can afford it.

I can waste money, but I don’t understand insane spending.

Give me a billion dollars, and I’ll get my pickup truck fixed up really well, I’ll move to a nice rural property in Tennessee, and I’ll probably get some better heavy equipment, used. A bigger tractor and an excavator. I’ll have trouble-free appliances. If I travel long distances, I’ll definitely go business class, because long flights in coach are very unpleasant. I’ll get survival supplies and a generator. Nice stuff for the wife, but not too nice. Can’t think of much else.

Prime steaks more often. I would do that. Beef is a luxury in Biden’s world. I would probably get a lawn service. I would want an air-conditioned workshop for sure. That’s like $45,000. I’d quit buying all forms of insurance not required by law.

I really like the shoes and shorts I wear. I like Hanes T-shirts for about $3 each. I could see getting a good horsehide jacket not designed for motorcycling.

No boats. Been there. No planes. No vacation homes. Absolutely no club memberships. No jewelry for me. Jewelry on men is effeminate. No servants except maybe a maid to come in weekly. No ridiculous assistants to stand between me and commoners. No bodyguards. No entourage. No public giving of any kind. It’s ostentation.

I’ll tell you what. A comfortable home in Tennessee, all my bills paid, good food, good vehicles, zero concerns when buying things like tires and refrigerators…what else could you want?

Then I could invite Architectural Digest in to photograph my synthetic area rug from Lowe’s and the good downstairs recliner.

I’m not great with money, but I don’t see myself auctioning off private planes and gold chains to pay my creditors. I should be able to avoid getting a real job. I hope so. If I ever have to sell this farm, it will most likely be because I am too old to maintain it personally.

I hope I continue to improve, increasing my income and net worth while having the privilege of giving effectively to people who need help.

It’s Working

Here’s to traditional marriage. I think my wife will agree.

Today I decided to make a big step on making this property my own. Sometimes I’m intimidated because I can’t help thinking the original owners knew what they were doing when they made bad landscaping decisions. I am getting over that. Today I killed a magnolia and two bottlebrush trees.

It seems like I fix just about everything these days. My tractor’s poorly-situated steering cylinder started gushing oil, so I took it out, modified the frame (drilled and painted a big hole) to make it easier to remove next time, and took it to a hydraulic place for a rebuild. I would have rebuilt it myself, but there were problems identifying the parts. Now I have the numbers, because they were on the receipt.

I managed to bust the engine’s front cover while putting the cylinder back in, necessitating an expensive visit to the dealer, but at least I know how to deal with the cylinder in the future. And I painted up the new cover I bought, so it looks a lot better than the old one.

The house’s original owner had some horrible brush tines that were held on with chains and chunks of wood. I cut them in pieces and turned them into a quick-attach fork which is a thousand times as good. Welding, cutting, painting. Got it all done without help. No one else has a fork like this one. It’s fantastic.

I put a Pat’s quick attach set on my 3-point hitch, and it made it easy to switch attachments. Totally superior to the heavy, overpriced adaptors other people still, for unknown reasons, buy. I stuck a ballast box on the hitch, so now I have a compact ballast and a great brush fork to work together.

Today I went out and ripped my bottlebrush trees out because they were sick and planted two feet from my workshop. You never plant anything two feet from a building. Not even shrubs. The trees threatened to beat up the eaves during storms, and if they had been big trees, their roots would have threatened the foundation. They were in the way. Planting them was a bad choice. I pulled one out pretty easily with a chain and strap. The other one took more work, but now it’s on the burn pile. I plan to replace them with this: dirt. Or maybe two small shrubs with roots at least three feet out.

The magnolia was maybe 15 feet from the workshop and 10 feet from a water oak. It had to go. It had no future. It could have fallen on the shop. Every tree that poses a falling hazard is on the way out.

I am terrible at felling trees because I rarely have to do it. To gain practice, I tried to lean the magnolia away from the shop. When it started to move, I ran away like Sir Robin facing the Mad Chicken of Bristol, and the tree decided to stop falling. I decided brute force was the answer, as it so often is, so I chained it to the tractor and pulled it over.

I cut it in pieces and got rid of it, and now the cattle are snacking on magnolia leaves. I put glyphosate concentrate on the stumps.

When I came back in the house for breaks and to shower, my wife stared at me. I think she was starting to appreciate what I do around here. I was soaked in sweat. I had a mashed fingernail from a farm jack. I had a stick in my hair.

I had done maybe $1000 worth of work in around 3 hours. I base that on absurd quotes I’ve received for tree work. It was definitely work, but I enjoyed it. I have good tools, and my skills are adequate.

When I started taking off my work clothes, I was going to put them in the laundry room, but she told me to leave them where they were and let her know when I wanted food.

I showered, drew myself a Yard Boss Lager, put on my new glasses, sat in my new recliner, and relaxed.

My wife doesn’t know how to weld, cut metal, paint, fix chainsaws, cut trees, take a tractor apart, or operate tractor hydraulics. She can’t cut a tree. She has no idea who to call for a burn permit. She doesn’t know what one is. These things are not her problems. On the other hand, I don’t do laundry any more. I don’t wash dishes. I open drawers, and my ironed clothes are there. I open cupboards and see clean dishes.

It’s a pretty good system. God knew what he was doing when he designed it.

I got up yesterday, prayed, ate, dealt with a business lease for a rental property, fixed a cabinet door my wife had leaned on…I did all sorts of stuff. I can handle things that would leave metrosexual modern husbands in tears. I can drive a manual transmission. I can shoot, and it doesn’t bother me to kill cute animals that cause problems. I can make ammunition. I own taps and dies.

In return, my wife looks after wife stuff. She doesn’t compete with me and try to find an edge every day. She leaves the toilet seat up.

Satan has turned modern marriage into an endless competition. A series of selfish negotiations. It was never supposed to be like that. We were supposed to know and love our roles.

When you drive a car, the engine doesn’t decide it wants to be an air conditioner. The battery doesn’t decide it wants to be a transmission. The parts of a family should work together the same way.

Interestingly, in news related to old guys with rural properties, I have read that Tom Selleck is afraid he will have to sell his farm.

Tom Selleck must surely have a lot of money. He was in a very successful TV series 40 years ago, and he made a number of okay movies. He did a bunch of Hallmark movies. He has been in a CBS series for the last 14 years.

He lives on an avocado farm in Ventura County, California. Reports about the size of the farm vary, but it’s around 60 acres. He says he may have to sell if his series is cancelled, in order to have a good lifestyle until he dies.

How can that be true?

I looked it up. You can find the address on the web. He pays about $65,000 per year in property taxes. He may live another 15 years, so let’s say $1.5 million yet to pay, with numerical increases for inflation. Shouldn’t he be able to pay that?

His home is an avocado farm. Aren’t avocados expensive? Shouldn’t there be at least six figures of net income from that?

I decided to find out what John Travolta pays in my county. It’s about $27,000 per year. He has a smaller property, but on the other hand, the improvements are nuts. An incredible mansion that connects to a system of runways. He has carports with jets in them, at his house! One jet is a commercial airliner QANTAS used to own.

Travolta pays no state income tax, unless he has property in other states. He pays no county or city income tax. His property tax, during the same period during which Selleck will pay $1.5 million plus increases, will be about $400,000 with increases.

He can have all the guns he wants. He can keep an AK-47 in his car. If he shoots a criminal, our sheriff, Billy Woods, will probably take him to Dairy Queen.

He doesn’t have rolling blackouts. The power is always on.

I wonder what Tom Selleck is paying California, his county, and his municipality. And why is he there? He’s supposed to be conservative. My guess is that his wife won’t let him move. Or maybe he’s a RINO.

He could be in Tennessee or Florida right now. Or Idaho. Or Wyoming.

Zillow says his property is worth about $12 million, and Zillow is usually pretty accurate. Zillow thinks Travolta’s house is worth $3.5 million, which is very modest considering his wealth. The acreage is about a third of Selleck’s, which is still pretty good for a non-agricultural property.

If you don’t need runways, I guarantee you, you can get 60 acres here for what Travolta’s house is worth. With an agricultural exemption, your taxes will be around $16,000 per year.

You can have horses, cattle, goats, sheep, ostriches, emus, donkeys, or just about anything else you want. What you can’t have is California.

Selleck should not have a mortgage right now. Unless something is wrong, his home is paid for. He should be able to sell his ranch, pocket maybe $9,000,000 after capital gains, move to a better state, buy a better farm, and have well over $5,000,000 in additional retirement funds. He should have something saved up from his work. He should have the maximum Social Security benefit.

Maybe he just spends too much. When you’re 79, and you’re worried about your future, you ought to be able to rein in your spending and survive on a net worth of over $12 million. Even if all he has is a reverse mortgage, he should be able to fly business class to nice places every year and eat anything he wants.

If he moves in next door, I’ll be happy to help him and his wife find the best local barbecue.