Fresh Reminders That This is Really Happening

What a week.

Remember me writing about flooding as a likely sign that God is preparing the world for the tribulation? I mused about Hurricane Ida, which was about to hit New Orleans, wondering whether it would signal a continuation of the global flooding crisis. After I wrote that, Ida did terrible damage in Louisiana, and yesterday, it flooded places like Manhattan, New Jersey, and Philadelphia!

I read that New York City had just issued its second flash flood warning in history. There were also floods there in August, when Henri passed over.

During the last week, there have been floods in New Zealand, Nepal, and Mexico.

Seems like the run-up to the rapture is really happening. The flooding problem is not going away. It will be interesting to see if it carries on into the fall.

When I chose this house, I made sure it wasn’t in a flood area. The government has a site where you can check every property in the country.

Of course, leftists look at the floods and blame global warming, which is a backhanded jab at capitalism, which is a backhanded jab at Christianity, America, and white people.

A gradual increase in global temperatures shouldn’t cause an abrupt increase in flooding, which appears to be what we are seeing. Doesn’t matter. Global warming causes every problem, regardless of what it is. It’s not a scientific conclusion. It’s a fundamental premise of a political religion.

My wife knows a lady who prophesies and prays for people. Sometimes she visits the lady. The lady is young, but she has said she expects to die before long, because God will take her before things get bad. This week, my wife dreamed about her. She saw her in church, saying she would be taken away like T.B. Joshua. In the dream, she told the lady they needed to pray to prevent it, but the lady refused. As they were talking, my wife saw a beautiful, green place full of mountains.

The heavenly place turned into an earthly place where a man swam in a river like the Nile. The river looked like blood. A voice asked if Satan was going to come and bring 6 plagues to the earth.

Rhodah is not an end times buff. She is young, and she wants to live out a normal life here. I would be thrilled if the rapture came tomorrow, but Rhodah is less enthusiastic. She has not studied the end times much.

Was T.B. Joshua taken because the tribulation was coming?

The book of Enoch says that when God decided to flood the world, he chose to wait until Methuselah, the grandfather of Noah and the son of Enoch, died. Methuselah was a righteous man, and God did not want to flood the earth while he was alive. When God told Abraham he was going to destroy Sodom, he agreed to forbear if 10 righteous men could be found, but when God sent angels to look at Sodom, the homosexuals there tried to gang-rape them, and 10 righteous men could not be found. God has demonstrated a pattern of sparing the wicked while the righteous are among them. In a parable, he said it was best to let weeds and wheat grow together instead of ripping the weeds out and burning them before the harvest. He said the best thing was to harvest the wheat and then burn the weeds.

Joshua is not well-known in the US, but he was one of the world’s most famous preachers. He did many miracles, and he never had a scandal. He didn’t beg for money or sell his help. He was a youthful and vigorous 57 when he died, and he went quickly, without suffering. Maybe it’s true that God took him because he wanted to spare him.

As signs become clearer, Rhodah is getting more interested in the end times.

On the subject of end times concerns, I decided to get myself some ivermectin, figuring there was no down side to it. When I visited Tractor Supply, I saw that ivermectin was not available, and there was a little notice cautioning people against taking it. I guess they sold out. I bought three tubes on Amazon, though, and Rhodah is bringing some ivermectin for humans to Turkey.

For what it’s worth, I learned that ivermectin has a sister drug which is also active against coronavirus microbes. The name also ends with “mectin,” and people are not rushing to buy it yet. Useful info if you can’t find ivermectin.

Another interesting end time fact: the silicon chip shortage is getting worse, and it wasn’t caused by coronavirus. Trump battled with China because we were being abused in our trade relationship, and that caused some problems with the chip supply. Then a major supplier had a big fire. On top of that, a drought hit Taiwan, making it hard for chip factories to get water for cleaning, which is essential to manufacturing. Right now, a huge number of vehicles is sitting in lots because automakers can’t get chips to finish manufacturing them. Automakers are shutting down production. Electronics manufacturers have products backordered, so you may not see your favorite video console (or motherboard, if we have to talk about things that are actually important to mature adults) until 2023.

Remember, the tribulation will be ushered in by murder and hate, death and disease, and shortages. See Revelation 6. We have all three problems, and we can’t blame coronavirus for all of it, so it’s not like our predicament can be traced to one natural cause or even a few.

By the way, beef is going to be in short supply for at least a year, and rubber supplies are expected to dry up shortly.

There is good news regarding our belated honeymoon, which has been delayed by coronavirus-related visa issues. We had our time wasted by Sweden, Iceland, and Spain, which rejected our applications, and we started looking for other options. We did not want to go to a New World destination, and we didn’t want to go to Egypt again.

We learned that Mexico, which is one of the top easy dates when it comes to visas, would not let Rhodah in unless she applied in South Africa. We looked at third-tier European nations. We learned that Georgia is a good safety nation for a Zambian. They let them in without visas.

We checked Turkey out. I thought it was just another depressing Muslim nation, but I learned that wasn’t true. The Turks are backsliders, so they’re easygoing. They have bars. They let women wear bikinis to beaches. They have a strong reputation for friendliness and great food, and the country is set up well for tourists.

We had some confusion about Turkish visas. Turkey has a website that dispenses electronic visas, but the embassy people in Zambia gave Rhodah the impression she would have to apply in person, which would take weeks.

The e-visa site said visitors from Zambia were required to have tickets from one of three airlines before applying, and I didn’t want to buy tickets in advance because if her application had been rejected, we would have lost a lot of the ticket money. Also, the only airline that offered round-trip flights for the needed route was very expensive.

I decided to apply on Rhodah’s behalf, and I clicked the box saying she already had a ticket. I figured I would find out whether they were checking before awarding visas. If they were not, we could always buy the ticket afterward. If they rejected her, we wouldn’t get a visa, but I would learn something useful.

It took me about 10 minutes to get her a valid visa. The visa itself merely said she had to prove she had a ticket on an approved airline WHEN SHE TRAVELED. That’s a piece of cake.

We are still hearing information from a friend of Rhodah’s, claiming she needs to apply in person in spite of the e-visa, but nothing the Turkish government says in emails or publishes on the web agrees with him. I am making inquiries. We should get final confirmation by Monday.

Now that we have a visa, I’m looking at videos and reading up on Turkey. The exchange rate is insane, so we can expect to pay about $7 for meals for two. The food picture is amazing. Istanbul has restaurants of every type, and the standards are said to be very high. Istanbul is on the water, so there should be things like dinner cruises. We can also visit Ephesus and see the city Paul wrote about.

The temperatures should be below 80, so it won’t be like Egypt, where we had days 35 degrees warmer.

I’m looking forward to visiting another country where Muslims are friendly. In the past, most of my impressions of Turkey came from the movies Midnight Express and Lawrence of Arabia, so it wasn’t a place I wanted to visit. Of course, I was crazy to think movies bore any relationship to reality. I mean, I’ve seen Deliverance, a preposterous movie in which the danger of being sodomized is low in cities and high in rural Appalachia, instead of precisely the other way around, the way it is in real life.

I feel bad about having the wrong idea about people. Turkey’s government may be anti-Semitic, and for all I know, terrorists are getting significant support from individual Turks, but I clearly misjudged the character of the nation.

I’m not crazy about visiting a place controlled by a man who has it in for Israel, but I can’t have everything the way I want it.

The Turks have had floods in 2021. Figures. But they happened on the Black Sea coast, and I don’t plan to go there.

People are supposed to be very nice in Georgia, and the scenery is beautiful, but the food is somewhat scary, and the country isn’t set up all that well for tourism.

My understanding is that Georgians have a love affair with bread stuffed with meat and cheese. They serve many variations on this theme. Sounds good to me, but I don’t know if I could handle it for a more than a couple of days.

Here at the house, things are going great, but I haven’t managed to trap the squirrel that has been chewing on my gate. I put out a live trap, and the bait disappeared twice. Then I tried triggering the trap and saw that it didn’t work. That would have made it more of a feeder than a trap, except that the second bait was a big chunk of rat poison. Whatever critter stole it is probably dead.

I fixed the trap, but the bait disappeared again. I have a theory that a bigger animal is reaching in and taking the bait without setting it off, so I got a larger trap and set it next to the little one. Yesterday, I found a coon in it.

Getting rid of a coon is always a blessing, but the job is not pleasant. I had to shoot it in the head with a .22 pistol. Because it was raining and I didn’t want to carry the coon to the burn pile in bad weather, I chucked it over a fence into some bushes.

Today I went back in dry weather, thinking maybe I should move the coon. It was gone. Evidently, coyotes and/or bobcats remove dead coons without even being asked. That’s nice.

I don’t know how many times I will have to empty the traps. Quite a few, I would think. It’s part of rural life, so I need to get used to it instead of becoming a sissy city transplant who names the squirrels that eat his patio furniture and tries to pet rabid coons.

A disturbing thing about dispatching game and pest animals with firearms is that it makes you understand that you could do the same thing to a person if you had to. Reluctance to shoot is grounded in moral questions and fear of negative consequences, not the repugnance of the act itself, which can be overcome by willing one finger to move. People who live in the country are used to overcoming it because they hunt. A typical hunter has ended many more lives than all but the rarest soldiers, and many are capable of much better stalking and marksmanship than ordinary combat veterans.

Our cities are experiencing a very sudden murder epidemic, and it will surely bleed over into suburbs and the country eventually. When that happens, spoiled urban terrorists who are used to dealing with police who are hampered by rules of engagement and career concerns will find themselves up against millions of civilian men and women who face far fewer constraints and don’t think twice about shooting a warm-blooded creature and pulling its organs out with their bare hands. Video-game-trained urbanites in search of easy prey will probably face an extremely steep learning curve, with lessons written in their own blood. Hope I will not be on earth to see it.

I hope I’m right about the Bible predicting a thousand-year age of love, led by Jesus himself and staffed by rapturees, following the tribulation. It would be wonderful to see the world function the way it ought to.

My New Perspective on Childhood Entertainment

Sometimes you realize something, and you can’t believe it took you decades. It’s so obvious, it’s shocking you missed it.

Here is what I realized last week. You remember the old Tom & Jerry cartoons? It finally dawned on me that Tom was the hero.

In case you’re so young you’ve never seen Tom & Jerry, possibly because your snowflake overlords had decided good cartoons were too violent/racist/sexist/fattist/speciesist/colorist/whatever, I can sum up the premise. Tom is a cat. Jerry is a mouse. Jerry lives in Tom’s house, and he regularly pops out of his little mouse apartment and wrecks everything. Tom, understandably, tries to kill him.

This is exactly what you’re supposed to do to a mouse. Mice are pests. They spread horrible diseases. They break into food containers and contaminate them so food has to be thrown out. They damage houses. They need to be killed.

A long time ago, I read a book or a story or something, and there was a scene in which a character stamped on a mouse. I thought that was shocking. I couldn’t believe a person could just put his foot down on a squirming mammal. Now I live in an area with mice, and so far this year, I have stamped on two of them. It’s the best way to kill them fast. My whole attitude toward mice has changed.

Maybe three weeks ago, I was sitting in my living room when I heard a noise. I looked toward the fireplace, and I saw a fat mouse flop off the screen and into the room. He took off. I couldn’t believe it. How, in 2021, could there still be a chimney not designed to keep mice out?

I put out the glue traps and poison I already had on hand, and I waited for success.

I had chosen the poison carefully. I picked bromethalin, a neurotoxin, in chunks of green mouse food.

In the old days, warfarin, an anticoagulant, was the mouse poison of choice. It made blood pour out of mice’s rear ends until they died. There were three problems with it. First, a mouse had to eat it for several days before it worked. Second, it was likely to poison anything that ate the dead mice. Third, many mice were immune to it. Their ancestors had developed resistance.

I didn’t want immune mutant mice wasting my time.

Bromethalin, supposedly, kills mice in one feeding. I read that immunity was not an issue, and I also read that if I threw a dead mouse out in the yard, it wouldn’t hurt whatever ate it.

My mouse ate the bait. He ate it for days. He throve on it. I kept thinking, “Tomorrow, he dies,” but it never happened.

I also set one of my old wooden Victor traps. I baited it with meat. I fixed it so the mouse absolutely had to pull on the trip mechanism. He tripped the trap, ate the meat, and retired, victorious.

He also stepped in at least two glue traps and shook them off. He dragged one most of the way down my stairs before freeing himself completely.

I got more serious. I bought Victor mouse baits with diphacinone, a newer anticoagulant. The mouse grabbed the little balls of bait and took them to various corners of the house for snacking. The poison didn’t seem to bother him.

I bought bigger glue traps, but the mouse would not go near them. They were white, which was supposedly to make it easier to see dead mice once they were trapped. Maybe the mouse preferred the black ones.

I got a bunch of small Catchmaster Gluee Louee traps. They were so useless, they didn’t even catch bugs.

I also bought two plastic Tomcat traps. These are nice because you can set them instantly with one hand. The trip mechanism has a little cup in the center, with a hinged platform around it. The mouse reaches into the cup for the food, he puts a foot on the platform, and the trap crushes his spine. That’s what the instructions said, anyway.

I put peanut butter in the cups and stuck balls of poison in the peanut butter for good measure. The mouse took the poison, ate the peanut butter, and laughed at me.

One day I decided to examine a trap carefully. I poked the trip mechanism over and over, and it was impossible to make the trap go off. I could not believe it. I had been feeding the mouse from what was, effectively, a safety feeder.

I started manipulating the trap, setting and resetting it, and for some reason, it started going off reliably. I had a pair of these traps, so I also worked on the second one. I baited them again, and the next day, I had a dead mouse with a broken neck.

Nice.

Why does the Tomcat company make traps that have to be broken in before they work? No clue here.

The mouse amazed me with its ability to defeat poisons. It reminded me of the death of Rasputin.

In case you don’t recall, on the night he died, Rasputin was fed a large quantity of cyanide-filled cakes, along with poisoned wine. He showed no ill effects at all. His attackers shot him in the chest and prepared to dispose of the body. He surprised them by coming back to life and leaping on them. He chased them until they shot him several more times. Then they bound his hands, wrapped him in cloth and threw him in a river. Some witnesses claimed that when the body was found, Rasputin’s hands were free, as if he had gotten them loose and started to work his way out of the cloth.

Rasputin has nothing on my late mouse.

I lost several pounds of beef jerky, along with most of a bag of diastatic malt powder and maybe 7 pounds of jasmine rice. The mouse didn’t eat much. He just made sure everything was defiled.

Yesterday, I had to go around the bottom floor of the house, cleaning out the corners where he liked to dine. I had to mop one staircase, too. I hope I won’t find any more surprises.

My recommendation is to be very serious and completely heartless with mice. It’s astonishing how much one mouse did to disrupt my house.

If I ever see a Tom & Jerry cartoon in the future, my sympathies will be completely with Tom. Now that I think about it, I wish Elmer Fudd had shot Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. They were annoying, and hunting is a virtuous, productive activity.

If you try those Tomcat traps, make sure you test them before you use them. Otherwise, your mice may die from gout and strokes before the traps themselves get them.

One More Thing I Shouldn’t be Making

The maple cream candy I made yesterday is doing what it’s supposed to. It’s turning soft and crumbly. It tastes fantastic. May be the best candy I’ve ever had.

In case anyone wants to try it, I’ll give the recipe.

INGREDIENTS

1-1/2 cups maple syrup (not fake maple)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Dump the syrup and salt in a deep saucepan. It will bubble up, so you don’t want a shallow pan. Heat until it boils gently. Add the cream slowly. You don’t have to stir it.

You can add the vanilla at the start, or if you’re afraid boiling will hurt it, you can drizzle it on the candy right before you pull it. Pulling will work it into the candy.

Boil the mixture until it hits 260°. When you start getting close to the final temperature, get a pan ready to chill the candy. Put several teaspoons in the pan, concave side down. Fill the pan with ice and water, a little deeper than the height of the spoons. Butter a smaller pan.

When the candy is ready, put the small pan in the big pan and pour the candy into it. When the candy is cold enough to remove with your hands, remove it and form it into a long rod. Stretch the rod, fold it, and stretch it again. You want to do this for about 5 minutes. The candy will develop a satiny look.

Stretch the candy until it’s thin enough to make pieces of a convenient size. Cut it into small pieces with shears. Set it aside until it “creams,” meaning until it turns soft and chalky. This may take a whole day.

You should be able to use any flavoring you like. You could buy menthol crystals and make peppermint candy. You would need to use table sugar instead of syrup. A cup of sugar is about equivalent to 3/4 cup syrup.

I want to make this candy with Jack Daniel’s and cover the pieces with chocolate. My relatives would freak out. Cream candy is a big deal in Eastern Kentucky, and so are bourbon balls, but no one combines them, and all the bourbon balls I’ve had were made pretty badly.

Let me know if you try this stuff.

In other news, I decided to try Popeye’s spicy chicken sandwich today. I read a roundup of fast food chicken sandwiches, and Popeye’s came out on top. They beat Chick-fil-A. I found that hard to believe, but I found it easy to believe that our anti-Christian, pro-homosexuality press would lie, so I had to find out the truth.

I went to a nearby Popeye’s. Let’s just say it was different.

At Chick-fil-A, they have long lines of cars, and they have courteous kids outside taking orders and directing traffic. I was the fifth car in line at Popeye’s. After about 10 minutes of sitting still, I went inside. I ended up getting my food before people who arrived earlier than I did.

One of the things I noticed was that one of the employees was wearing what appeared to be fishnet-panel yoga pants. Another employee was on the phone in the dining area. A third employee was using a table to do the books.

The place was filthy. I was nervous about eating the food. A bunch of employees were bustling around busily, and one was mopping, but I didn’t see anything fresh coming out of the fryers. The chicken was piled up under lights, and there was a small clump of fries in one small corner of the fry area.

I ordered a spicy chicken combo with “Cajun” fries and a lemonade.

Chick-fil-A makes fresh lemonade all the time. They use water, lemons, and sugar. The Popeye’s lady gave me a cup and a straw, and I made my way to the dispensing machine. I wondered about bacteria in the ice. They serve Minute Maid “lemonade,” and the tag on the tap said, “0% JUICE.”

If it doesn’t have lemon juice in it, how can it be lemonade?

Chick-fil-A is always spotless, and they put little vases with fresh flowers on the tables. It’s also crowded. No other customers showed up inside Popeye’s while I was there.

I took my food and drove home, wondering if I should eat it.

When I got home, I found that the chicken and fries were only slightly warm. I ate my food, drank half the drink, and threw the rest out.

My surprising verdict is this: I would definitely eat Popeye’s chicken sandwiches from now on, IF they did a few things. They need to train their employees, clean the restaurant, put something other than pickles and sauce on the sandwiches, and sell real lemonade, even if it’s prepackaged.

The sandwich was beautifully spiced. Unfortunately, it was lukewarm, and it wasn’t juicy. There was no lettuce on it. There was no cheese on it. There was no tomato. Just sauce and pickles. If Chick-fil-A used Popeye’s seasoning along with their cheese, sauce, and vegetables, their sandwiches would be even more popular than they are now. The difference would only be like 10%, though.

I put “Cajun” in quotation marks when mentioning the fries, because there was nothing Cajun about them. Cajun seasoning is required on “Cajun” fries, and Popeye’s didn’t apply any.

Because Chick-fil-A is clean and otherwise properly managed, and Popeye’s is not, Chick-fil-A still wins. Like I always say: I would say the people at Chick-fil-A treat me like family, but my relatives don’t treat me that well.

For me, Chick-fil-A is not a practical option. I visit rarely because it’s so popular. They rush you through the long lines, but it still takes a while to get food. Also, the nearest Chick-fil-A is a long way from my house.

Chick-fil-A doesn’t expand quickly, possibly because they pay their owner/managers squat, so I don’t think things will improve for me soon.

There is another Popeye’s near me. Maybe I’ll try it, but it’s so close, it may be owned by the same lame franchisee who owns the one I visited today.

Anyway, it may well be that the people who rank Popeye’s sandwiches above Chick-fil-A are right, provided their conclusion is limited to Popeye’s locations that aren’t run by lazy bums.

Maple Cream Candy

Today I decided to try my hand at making cream candy.

You may not know what cream candy is. People in Eastern Kentucky make it. It’s a strange, light, rich, buttery, chalky candy that collapses and dissolves in your mouth. My grandmother used to make it over the holidays.

I have wanted to make it for years, simply for nostalgic reasons. I wasn’t absolutely crazy about it though, and I figured it was a big project, so I put it off. I knew I was supposed to have a marble slab for making cream candy. Where do you get a thing like that? I didn’t care enough to find out.

To make it, you heat a mixture of sugar solution and cream until it reaches the “hard ball” stage. Then you dump it on a very cold slab, and it crystallizes or something. Then you have to pick it up and stretch it over and over, like taffy. Eventually, you cut it in pieces with scissors. Then you have to let it sit overnight. As it sits, it becomes very soft and fragile.

I still don’t have a marble slab, and I am not willing to drop boiling candy on a stone counter. I decided to try something different: an aluminum pan in a bed of ice. Cold is cold, right? Should work.

The one unsatisfying thing about cream candy is the flavor. It’s just vanilla. I thought maple would be better, so I’m using maple syrup from Walmart instead of sugar and water. I don’t know if this will work. Sometimes you just have to experiment.

Bourbon would also be a good flavoring.

I’m trying to make a traditional sweet, but I’m using a flavor from a different part of the country. You have to try what works instead of banging your head against tradition.

A mature person would not have changed so many variables at once. I’m pretty confident my approach will work, though.

According to various sites, the “hard ball stage” occurs when a sugar solution hits about 92% sugar. If you take candy at this stage and drop it in cold water, it forms a ball which is hard, but not so hard you can’t deform it.

I don’t know what pulling the candy does, but it must be important. It reminds me of taffy, which is also pulled. My understanding is that before it softens overnight, cream candy is taffy. I guess I’ll know soon.

MORE

I just finished pulling the candy and cutting it into pieces. Even if it never turns into cream candy, it’s wonderful taffy.

I don’t think I understood how the process worked when I first read about it. I had always been told I needed a super-cold marble slab to cool the melted candy, so today, when I poured it into the cold pan, I waited until it got very cold. That made it so hard it cracked in places. It was impossible to pull until I wrestled with it for about 10 minutes. After some very hard work, it loosened up so I could finish.

I believe “hard ball” just means “Sugar Daddy consistency.” If you’ve ever eaten a Sugar Daddy, you have eaten candy very much like the hard ball candy I made today. It wouldn’t flow, but it was also impossible to crack at room temperature.

It’s embarrassing to say it, but Eastern Kentucky is not a hub of engineering creativity. I don’t know why people there are still using heavy marble slabs to cool candy. I used one pan sitting in another pan. I filled the lower pan with ice and water. I put 4 upside-down spoons in the lower pan to keep the upper pan from rocking. It seems like it worked just fine, and I don’t have a slab to contend with.

Now that I’ve made the candy, I think I understand the purpose of chilling a marble slab in a freezer. I thought maybe it was necessary to have a super-cold slab in order to cool the candy extremely quickly and cause some kind of weird crystal formation. I think that’s wrong, since it’s very clearly undesirable to get the candy very cold. I now believe the only reason for a cold slab is to speed up the cooling process so you don’t have to stand in the kitchen and wait forever.

I thought I would also be able to change the cutting technique. People say you have to use scissors. I thought that was silly. They also say you have to chill the scissors for at least an hour in a freezer to keep the candy from sticking. That made no sense to me at all, since scissors get as cold as they can possibly be in maybe 10 minutes.

When I tried a cleaver on the candy, it was useless. Poultry shears snipped pieces right off, however. The traditional approach was correct. I didn’t have to chill them. They worked just fine.

By this time tomorrow, I’ll know whether this is cream candy or just extremely delicious semi-hard candy. Either way, it’s a win. The flavor is magnificent. I like traditional cream candy pretty well, but this stuff will be a home run if it works. I’m already thinking of other uses for reduced maple syrup.

This Seems Totally Normal to Me

When I asked my new wife Rhodah what her favorite food was, all she said was, “meat.” It was nice to hear that in these times of self-righteous, controlling vegetarian women.

When we got together in Egypt, I took homemade beef jerky and dried apples to keep me alive on flights. Naturally, she took a big share of the jerky. Now she wants me to bring more, as well as a good supply of dried apples and Colgate toothpaste with Scope. I had a nearly-fresh tube with me on the trip, and she confiscated it. Now she’s hooked.

Recently, a mouse invaded my house. Before I managed to trap it and stamp on it, it found my jerky stash. I had a lot of inviting foods within mouse reach, but it only broke into the jerky and a bag of emergency rice. It nibbled on some containers holding bird food, but it gave up before it got in.

Jerky was clearly the mouse’s favorite item, and that makes sense, because making each bag required about two pounds of fresh beef. Jerky is expensive, and pests always destroy the expensive stuff. Now beef prices are going insane, just when I have to replace my contaminated jerky and also make more for Rhodah.

Yesterday, I got a blessing. A local store was selling London broil, which makes very nice jerky, for $4 per pound. I bought about 5 pounds. I may go back today and buy 5 more. Maybe I should buy 10 more and load up the freezer. I don’t want to spend the whole week making jerky. If I freeze it, I can dry it later. I doubt freezing has any serious effect on the texture and flavor of jerky.

I have around 2.5 pounds of marinated beef in the dehydrator right now, and I have over a pound marinating. I decided to use the same marinade twice. What kind of bacteria can grow in cold soy sauce and Worcestershire with added hot pepper sauce? Reusing the marinade will save me a couple of bucks.

I have discovered that the dehydrator will hold about 9 pounds. I need to get about that much meat together before turning the machine on again. These small batches increase the work.

Here’s a useful tip: you can finish jerky in the fridge. Your refrigerator IS a dehydrator, as you have surely already noticed. I want my jerky heated to reduce germs and add flavor, but once it has been heated, it can go in the fridge if it comes out too wet.

Will jerky and other emergency foods save us if society gets crazier and food gets scarce? I doubt it. Even if I store enough food for 6 months, which is pretty optimistic at my character level, a real food disaster would last longer than that, and we would still starve. I’m not sure why I bother. I guess doing something feels better than doing nothing.

Maybe we could manage to grow our own food, given 6 months to try. That’s something to think about. The soil here is useless, the weeds and pests are overwhelming, and it’s impossible to grow food by conventional means, but we might be able to build raised beds and fence them in.

I have read that potatoes do well in sand, which is the kind of soil I have. That would be helpful. Potatoes are high in calories and vitamin C. Sweet potatoes might grow here, too.

Protein is the big challenge. I think I could reliably kill three squirrels a week without running out, but that would change if desperate neighbors started poaching. You can eat any mammal, so coons and other pests could make our menu, and crows, which we have in abundance, are supposedly delicious. There was a time when people who ate them called them “black partridges.” Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad.

Crows are very smart, though. I could probably kill 10 today if I tried, but would they be as cooperative tomorrow?

One big advantage to eating crows is that most people would be slow to start. I doubt anyone here would try them until they ran out of other ideas.

In any case, I look forward to having jerky again. The store stuff can’t compare to homemade.

I hope Rhodah will let me keep some.

Finally, Something the Swiss are Really Bad at

It looks like my wife and I will not be honeymooning in Switzerland. I bought Pimsleur’s German course and started listening to Youtube French conversation videos for nothing. “Ich mochte bier trinken.” That cost me fifteen bucks.

The Swiss are allowing visitors to come in from all over the world, but they have made the visa process very hard for Africans. Citizens of countries that don’t have Swiss embassies have to apply through embassies in countries that do. In Rhodah’s case, that means South Africa.

Switzerland belongs to the Schengen group of nations. More or less, this means mainland Europe. These countries cooperate on immigration matters. If Rhodah had ever had a Schengen-area visa, she would be able to apply to the Swiss embassy in Pretoria by email. Because she hasn’t had a Schengen visa, she has to go in person and have her fingerprints recorded.

She lives over 700 miles from Pretoria, which is near Johannesburg. She doesn’t want to travel alone, so she would have to have a friend go with her. Each of them would need two coronavirus tests in order to enter South Africa and re-enter Zambia. A coronavirus test takes 24 hours, so they would have to spend at least two nights in South Africa.

If either of them tested positive on the way home, she would have to stay in South Africa until she tested negative. During this time, I would be paying for her food, lodging, and repeat testing. If only one tested positive, the other would be left alone in South Africa, because the healthy one would have to get out as quickly as possible in order to avoid testing negative and being trapped.

Best-case scenario: I’m out something over $2000, and we get a visa in a little over two weeks. Worst-case scenario: Rhodah and/or her friend get trapped in South Africa, and one or both of them could be there for a month or more.

We could take a chance and try it, and I could forget about the money. Things would probably go well. There’s another problem, however: South Africa is disintegrating. Racial and political violence have resulted in nationwide looting and arson over the last two weeks. Pretoria has been hit. I can’t send two women there while the nation is falling apart. Black women are safer there than Indians and whites right now, but what kind of man sends his wife to a riot zone?

If you don’t know what’s happening in South Africa, I have two possible explanations for your uninformed status: 1. our leftist press doesn’t want to show you anything negative involving the post-Mandela rainbow paradise, and it isn’t anxious to show hordes of looters and arsonists who are all black, and 2. American journalists aren’t all that interested in what happens in other countries unless it somehow reflects poorly on Donald Trump, conservatives, or Jesus.

For a long time, I’ve watched videos from a South African Youtuber. He calls himself Serpentza. He moved to China in his mid-twenties, and he lived there for 14 years. He married a Chinese woman and moved to the US. I started watching his videos because it was interesting to see what was happening in China. He didn’t mention South Africa often.

Early last year, he started putting up ominous videos about coronavirus. This was before Americans had any idea what it was. He said it was a big problem in China and that the CCP was covering it up. He turned out to be completely correct. Now he’s putting up videos about South Africa. He put up a two-hour video this week, and he made some surprising claims.

He said the looters were organized. In some cases, they show up in convoys, including buses. One group showed up in armored cars, armed with machine guns. They confronted 30 armed guards protecting a property and told them to leave or die. He said the looters use common strategies suggesting organization. They remove their car tags, and when they are confronted, they recite the same excuse. They claim they need food.

There are many Indians in South Africa, and, along with whites, they are being targeted. Militias are forming. The Indians are using rifles to drive looters away, on a grand scale.

He says looters are also destroying black businesses and burning down food stores and other businesses that are essential to the distribution of food. Obviously, these behaviors harm black people. They can’t snap their fingers and make groceries appear to feed their families. It’s not a big surprise to anyone who knows that looters are not protestors. They’re all about hate and free merchandise.

The problems arose because a former president named Zuma was charged with over 700 counts of corruption. Zuma is popular among Zulus and the poor. He repeatedly refused to show up for trial, so he was sentenced to 15 months for contempt of court. When he turned himself in, the violence and destruction started.

I watched some of the video last night, and I kept thinking about the tribulation. Three spirits resembling horsemen will go out, and they will cause murder, shortages, and disease. The spirit of the Antichrist–the Beast–will go out and cause people to yield to peer pressure, not reason or the Holy Spirit. They will behave like beasts in a herd. We’ve seen it in BLM and Antifa, and now we see it among Zuma supporters.

Under the influence of the Antichrist spirit, people act like sharks in a feeding frenzy. They don’t think. They let hate and other iniquities possess them. They give up human status.

This is the world’s future, and I think it will be the near future. More and more, we will be ruled and tormented by crowds of vicious, demon-controlled berserkers who pretend to be victims.

Serpentza interrupted his video with some footage of his half-Chinese daughter playing with American kids. Various races were represented. They played together in harmony, as kids of different races generally do in America. He scolded all the liars who pretend America is a racist country. He said they had never seen real racism. In South Africa, rural whites are being beaten, cut up, raped, and killed by black Africans so frequently, it looks like a movement. In America, unhinged snowflakes say our country is racist because we have Thomas Jefferson on the nickel or because Barbie has blue eyes and a flat butt.

There is a huge gulf between “country with limited racism problems” and “racist country.” America is not a racist country, even if racism has not been completely eradicated.

Watch the video if you want, but it’s full of profanity.

He came to America to get away from hatred spawned by identity politics. He will be disappointed. It’s much better than South Africa, but it’s deteriorating quickly. Overt racism toward whites, Asians, and Jews is now mainstream on the left, and the Antichrist’s white children are starting to look for the answers in secession, rifles, and racism directed at non-whites.

No one is going to win in the Antichrist’s future. Everyone who gets caught up in the hatred and false victimhood will lose.

Rhodah and I are now stuck with honeymoon alternatives like Iceland, Sweden, and Mexico. There is no way I’m going to Mexico. A friend of mine goes there for dental work, and he says it’s like a crummy neighborhood in Miami, only worse. That leaves Iceland and Sweden, unless we want to visit a depressing Muslim country or a European country known primarily for vampires and werewolves.

Iceland has astounding natural beauty. Not as good as Switzerland’s, of course, and no alps. The food picture doesn’t look good: pickled things, rhubarb jelly, rotten shark meat, and high-end hamburgers. The people are supposed to be great. Nothing has ever happened there, however. In Iceland, you’re not going to get a tour involving Roman buildings, Renaissance art, a world war, a famous composer, or anything else. Because nothing has ever happened there.

My guess:

Nature: A
Food: C
People: A
Relevance to my existence as a Westerner: F

Sweden has SOME natural beauty, but overall, it appears to be flat and not rich in landscape features. The food sounds somewhat better than Iceland’s. They really do eat meatballs. I could probably eat those twice in 10 days without feeling oppressed. I don’t know if the burgers are any good. Sweden is reasonably close to the rest of Europe, though, so maybe there are some decent non-Scandinavian restaurants. A few things have happened in Sweden, but offhand, I can’t think of any. I would have to say that culturally and historically, it’s probably only marginally ahead of Iceland. The people are known for a total lack of reluctance to engage in any type of sexual activity. My understanding is that getting a one-night-stand there is about has hard as hailing a cab. This national characteristic would not have much relevance to two Christians enjoying their honeymoon.

I haven’t known many Swedes, but they seem somewhat rigid and stuffy, except when it comes to sex with strangers.

Score:

Nature: B
Food: B
People: B
Relevance to my existence as a Westerner: C

Iceland gets a 2.5 GPA, and Sweden gets a 2.75.

Let’s do Switzerland, for a giggle.

Nature: A+ (rough draft for heaven)
Food: A
People: A
Relevance to my existence as a Westerner: B

I get 3.825. That will get you into a good state university. With a 2.75, you’re probably looking at community college.

Now Mexico:

Nature: B
Food: A-
People: C (hello, robbery)
Relevance to my existence as a Westerner: B

I get 2.925. That’s surprising, since, to get me to go there, you would literally have to drug me. The food really pumped up the score. Truthfully, though, American Mexican food is way better than authentic Mexican food.

I only gave it a B for nature because it has nice beaches and good fishing. If you ever see me on a beach, it means my ship sank. I can’t understand people who like beaches. It seems like mental illness to me. You lie on a lounge chair and sweat under the broiling sun, doing nothing, or you swim in water than stings your eyes. It’s okay for walks, but that’s about it. I sort of suspect there is an upper intelligence limit for beach people. Intelligence correlates with susceptibility to boredom.

If lying in intense sun is so wonderful, why do all cultures love air conditioning and shade? A beach is like a sauna that gives you skin cancer. And the Japanese used saunas to torture POW’s.

Next, Egypt:

Nature: D (hot sand, 3 trees)
Food: C
People: A
Relevance to my existence as a Westerner: A

The land of the pharaohs gets a 2.75.

The only place that tops Switzerland on my list is Israel. I’ll score it even though I can’t go, due to the fact that my brief presence might cause a coronavirus wave in a country where even the dogs and cats are vaccinated. Way to commit economic suicide, guys.

Israel makes so many bad decisions, it makes me wonder if anti-Semitism is even necessary.

Nature: B
Food: B
People: B
Relevance to my existence as a Westerner: A

I get 2.6. Maybe my scale should be weighted. The food in Israel was not great when I lived there, but I give it a B because surely it has gotten better by now. The people get a B because a lot of people there can be annoying, even if you love and support them. Just keeping it real. Not comparable to the French, though. As for nature, it’s nice in some parts and the rest is desert.

My scoring system appears to be useless, because here is my actual list, in descending order of preference:

Israel
Switzerland
Sweden
Iceland
Egypt
Mexico
Random Turkish Prison
Whale’s posterior
New York City
Miami
Hell

The drop from Egypt to Mexico is bigger than it looks. I think Egypt is probably a decent destination in the winter. I had a great time there in the summer, but the smells and the weather were problems.

Rhodah is going to talk to the Swedish embassy on Monday. They do both Iceland and Sweden, so they can give us guidance.

I’m very disappointed. I was hoping to share a magnificent destination with my bride, but now I suppose we’ll spend a lot of time trying to build a second-choice country up, saying things that start with, “Of course, it’s not Switzerland, but…”

“Check out the breakfast buffet! Free rotten shark!” “Hey, look who’s buying a Big Mac! Stellan Skarsgård!” “Mmm…who wants Swiss chocolate when you can have boiled whale!”

As I said above, once Rhodah has been given a visa to one Schengen country, Switzerland will let her apply for a Swiss visa by email. I wish we had known this in June. We could have applied for a bogus Swedish visa. As it is, the earliest we could hope to be in Switzerland is late September, after the polar ice re-forms. Brown leaves, fog, and grey skies.

Wish I had better news.

On the whole, though, I can’t complain. I have a wonderful wife and nothing but first world problems.

Belgian Frymasters Confirm my Rants

Two days ago, I wrote about the most important thing that had happened in my life, apart from getting to know God. Today, it’s time to write about something trivial.

Five Guys makes lame French fries.

I know what you’re saying. You’re pounding on your keyboard, calling for my execution. Everyone loves Five Guys fries, and they give you such huge servings! They stuff a cup with fries, put it in your bag, and pour more fries into the bag on top of it.

Don’t think about the fact that a Five Guys meal costs up to $20. It’s not generous to go heavy on the fries when you charge that much for a $9 meal.

I will agree that I enjoy Five Guys fries, but they’re nothing compared to fries that are made correctly. Five Guys fries are soggy; never crisp on the outside. They’re always dripping with peanut oil, which doesn’t taste particularly good. The best fries are like other good fried items. They’re crunchy on the outside, and they’re not wet with oil.

Years ago, I found out how to make good fries. It’s very simple. You use russet potatoes. You don’t cut the fries very big. You fry them once at something like 260 degrees, just until they’re cooked. Then you drain and chill them. Then you fry them at around 375 until the outsides are crisp. And you use BEEF FAT.

I remember telling a person who managed restaurants about this. He said beef fat would never work. It wasn’t a good frying fat, he said. Good thing the people at McDonald’s never heard that. They used to make all of their fries in beef fat, until the vegetarian extremists got to them.

Yesterday I watched a neat video, made in the capital of the French fry world: Belgium. How do I feel? In one word: VINDICATED. They do exactly what I say to do.

Until I saw the video I did not understand what fries meant to Belgians. I learned there are fry stands all over the country. Belgians actually consider fries a meal. Even the government is involved. They have a rule that every fry joint has to provide at least 10 sauces.

The Belgians seem to be belligerent about fries. A fry expert in the video attacked France over the misnomer “French fries.” He pointed something out: France, unlike Belgium, isn’t jammed from one end to the other with fry stands. If France gets the credit for fries, why aren’t the French making more of them?

Belgium boasts a unique job: French-fry joint proprietor. Think of that. There is no such job in America. If you make fries here, you also make burgers. There is no such job in England. If you make fries there, you also fry fish. To find a landscape speckled with establishments that only sell fries and drinks, you have to go to Belgium. That’s how serious they are.

In the video, a fry guru tells his secrets. He says he uses nothing but beef tallow, just like McDonald’s in the 1950’s. Just like KFC in the good old days. Five Guys uses peanut oil. The fry king says he has tried things like peanut oil, and his customers started complaining immediately. The fries just were not as good.

Why aren’t American restaurants using beef fat? It’s a shame the vegans are controlling the lives of normal people who lack food-related mental illnesses. As far as I’m concerned, Wendy’s still has the best fast food burger. Imagine how great Wendy’s would be if they used beef fat for frying. It gives me chills.

We need an American burger chain to start offering beef fat fries. They could run beef fat in one fryer per store to see which fat customers liked best. They would find that vegans only speak for vegans, i.e. self-hating omnivores who genuinely find good food offensive.

You know what vegans are? “Trans herbivores.”

It’s amazing that burger chains are crazy enough to pretend to worry about heart disease and obesity. I can go into a McDonald’s and order a sandwich with two beef patties, mayo, and cheese, plus a buttered, salted biscuit stuffed with eggs, bacon, and cheese, plus a huge ice cream dessert with Oreo cookies swirled into it, plus a Coke that literally has half a cup of corn syrup in it, but I can’t get fries made with beef fat. Yeah, Dr. Ronald is really looking out for my arteries. All the poison is in that extra gram of saturated fat.

For the first time in my life, I actually want to visit Belgium. Who says that?

The one thing Belgians are screwing up is the shape of the fries. They really need to try crinkle cutting and waffle cutting. Come on. They invented the waffle. How can they not want to show it off in packets of fries?

Belgium needs all the good PR it can get. The world barely knows it exists. Belgium gave its potato glory away to a country that did nothing to deserve it. Almost no one knows how good Belgian chocolate is. Belgians make the best beer on earth outside of the US (where the best microbrews are based on Belgian beer), but for some reason, the whole world thinks of boring German beer as the height of the brewer’s art.

What is Belgium famous for? Tiny, bitter cabbages and Jean Claude Van Damme, who doesn’t even use his real Belgian name.

I was totally right about fries. It’s sad that America makes them so badly.

Coronavirus Makes the World Very Small

I appreciate the kind words I received after writing about the unnecessary, preventable death of my gentle little friend Maynard. Thanks, everyone who left a comment.

Things are slowly getting better, but I have waves of grief when I’m not busy doing things. The life of an animal can’t be as important as the life of a person, but you can certainly love an animal more than a person and grieve harder when he dies. These things are particularly true when you know your errors helped cause the death.

Marvin, my other bird, doesn’t miss Maynard at all. Not one bit. They lived next to each other for 25 years, and Marvin didn’t bond with him in the slightest way. That’s a blessing. I wouldn’t want to see him pull his feathers out because he was lonely.

He likes certain people, so it’s surprising he never felt anything for Maynard. Nothing positive, I mean. When he was young, he assumed Maynard liked him, but Maynard bit him as a reward for his advances. I guess Marv took the hint. Maynard was originally very friendly to other birds, but my first African grey, Frank, was nasty to him and changed him.

Marvin actually seems happier now. His attachment to me seems stronger. He becomes very emotional when I take him out of the cage. I didn’t see that coming.

Bird maintenance is easier now. One cage to clean. One poop tray to empty. Two dishes to clean, instead of four. No looking at the clock when Marvin is out, to make sure I leave time for Maynard. Every time I notice these things, I feel sad.

I feel sad when I bless Marvin at night. I used to decree that God was ending his hatred of Maynard. I don’t have to do that now. When I pray for God’s protection over me and all I have, I don’t have to say, “Marvin and Maynard” any more. Just “Marvin.”

Maynard’s death was made more painful because I had spent a lot of time using the birds to help me project love into the world. I didn’t have a wife or kids, so I made a special effort to pour love into the birds, just to open up the channel. I would hold them against my face and focus love on them. I asked them if they felt loved. I guess they thought I was crazy. From being near God, I knew love poured from him, and I believed it should pour from us, too, so I didn’t hold back. That left me more open to grief.

Maynard was not one to resist affection. Sometimes I held him against my face as long as I could, just to see how long he would stand for it. He didn’t protest at all. I always gave in first. He was happy to be held and loved for as long as I could manage it.

I would say I feel somewhat worse than I did when my dad died. I’m not sure. If so, it’s probably because my dad made his own bed, I tried to do right by him, his death was expected, and we were together at the end so I could say what I wanted to say. Maynard died young, I wasn’t as good to him as I wanted to be, his death was mostly my fault, and he was killed in a locked room in a veterinary hospital, where he could not see, hear, or feel me.

So much for that.

Today I’m working on arranging my marriage. The coronavirus picture keeps changing. Suddenly, it’s possible for Rhodah and me to go to countries that were locking us out a week or two ago. To my surprise, I found that even places like France and Switzerland were available.

We were thinking of Iceland, but I ran into what seemed like a roadblock. “Stronghold” is the word that will pop into the minds of Christians.

To marry in Iceland, you have to produce proof you’re not married already. In many countries, it’s simple to get what is called a “no impediment” certificate. Rhodah already has one. In the US, the federal government does not provide them, and many states don’t offer them, either. It’s stupid, because marrying abroad is not very unusual.

I researched a lot, and the best information I found said Florida would not give me a certificate. I contacted Iceland, and although the people who corresponded with me responded at length, they were not that helpful. They didn’t answer the questions I actually asked. They told me what they thought I should know.

I can understand that. People from Northern Europe can be very rigid. It’s a fact of life. I’ve dealt with it before.

Iceland said it would accept documents from every state I’ve lived in since I was 18, saying a search had been performed, and that nothing had come up. Having lived in several states, I was not happy about this. I started looking at state websites and making calls.

It turns out New York will give me a document, even though their website clearly says it’s impossible. I also ordered one from another state. A third state doesn’t answer the phone, so I left a message.

Regrettably, I didn’t check Florida first. Their website is not great, but when I called, they directed me to a page where I was able to download a form ordering a certificate proving my single status.

This means the money I sent Texas was wasted. On top of that, they take up to 25 business days. Now I have to try to cancel. They even provide apostilles which are tailored to various countries.

I will ship the Florida application out today, and I should have my marriage-ready document in maybe 2 weeks.

Iceland is looking good.

Before I got help from Florida, I was looking for alternatives. Gibraltar’s website seemed to indicate that they would accept Rhodah as a tourist, and they would also let us marry using an affidavit from me, notarized in Gibraltar. I started planning a trip.

Gibraltar is too tiny to hold much interest, so I thought we might take trains up into Europe. We can go to Spain, France, and Switzerland right now, unless I’ve misunderstood things. Right now you can check different “authoritative” sites and get differing information on coronavirus restrictions. I thought we could hit Marseille and then spend some time in Lucerne, where I spent part of a summer when I was in high school.

The first time I visited Lucerne, I fell in love with a cheerleader named Debbie. She seemed to be on board briefly, and then she started running around with a guy who played football in Calera, Alabama. I thought the world had collapsed. I thought love was supposed to be forever.

Of course, this girl was wrong for me. There was no way she could have been a good wife. I was young, though, and no one had taught me anything at all about women and marriage. I really believed God would put a boy of 16 and a girl of 14 together for life.

I didn’t eat for 13 days. I lost weight. I didn’t move fast enough when the cheerleader’s roommate showed interest. On the night before we left Europe, she asked me to dance and planted her lips on mine. I flew home on a high note, but I wished I had done something instead of waiting.

Visiting Lucerne with my new wife would feel like a victory lap.

Today I learned that Gibraltar is not accepting Zambians after all. That kills my plan. Maybe we should marry in Iceland and then fly to the continent for our honeymoon. Iceland looks great, but I can’t imagine spending more than a few days there.

Missing Spain will be a bonus. I’ve heard enough Spanish for a lifetime, and there is something dark about Spanish and Hispanic culture. It has a similar feel to Muslim culture, which should not be a surprise, given that Spaniards and Hispanics have so much Arab blood.

Spain is bigger than it looks on a map, so getting out would have taken at least two days.

I was disappointed to learn that the trains in Europe had changed. I knew there were fast new trains in Europe, but I didn’t know how common they were. I had been hoping for comfortable cruising on the nice, old-fashioned trains I remembered from over 30 years ago. It looks like Star Trek trains are all over the place now. You zip along at 200 mph in a double-decker car.

I’m not interested in speed. I enjoy watching the countryside roll by. I liked stopping in little towns and leaning out the windows to buy food from vendors. I guess those days are ending, except maybe in America, which has a backward passenger rail system.

I suppose a person can drive in Europe. Maybe we could fly to Marseille and drive through the alps. The gasoline would probably cost hundreds of dollars.

Jeremy Clarkson says Switzerland is like hell for drivers. The speed limits on many roads are very low, and being the kind of people they are, the Swiss enforce them. It’s strange the Germans don’t have the same policy. Maybe the highway is the only place where Germans can cut loose. But for the Swiss speed limits, people like Clarkson would probably spend every weekend in the alps, driving Porsches into guard rails.

My two favorite hangouts in Lucerne–Fugi’s restaurant and Pickwick’s Pub–appear to be gone. Fugi’s had nice, fatty Swiss food, which I liked. Pickwick’s was where I learned to drink way too much beer, at the age of 16.

I have looked at restaurants online, in Lucerne and other European cities, and I have been disappointed. Many, many places are full of the same nouveau garbage they serve in America. Cold kale and blue corn soup with locally-sourced squid ears. News flash, Europeans: no one goes to your countries to eat pretentious food they can get at home. They want the food your parents ate. I’ll have to screen restaurants in advance in order to avoid being buried in Gordon-Ramsay-wannabee gastronomic science projects.

Food doesn’t actually have to be creative to be good. A rib eye steak, prepared correctly, is still as wonderful as it would have been in 1905. In fact, most restaurants prepare steaks and other simple foods badly, after centuries of practice. It’s still a big deal to walk into a restaurant and get a perfect steak, a fluffy baked potato, and a proper martini without disgusting olive juice in it. I’ll bet I would have to drive 90 miles to get that meal, unless I wanted to cook.

Update

It’s frustrating, trying to get solid information on travel, especially for Zambians, because no one really cares whether they get to go anywhere. I have three sources for information on Switzerland. One says Rhodah will have to quarantine for 7 days. That’s no good. Another, the official Swiss travel information site, claims she does not have to quarantine at all. My third source, the Swiss government, has not responded to the email I sent.

France doesn’t look good. One source says Rhodah would have to quarantine for a week. I would not. I’m not sure why a vaccinated Zambian has to be treated differently from a vaccinated American. We get the same shots. Is the delta variant more likely to accompany a Zambian? I don’t know.

I just found a claim that Iceland has a 5-day quarantine requirement, but it sort of looks like it only applies to unvaccinated people. I see indications that if you’re vaccinated, you only have to quarantine until you get the result of a post-flight test.

Maybe we can marry in Iceland and then fly to Switzerland so we can honeymoon in a more pleasant location. I’ll have to delay applying for proof that I’m single until I know where we’re going.

My friends Alonzo and Teri have announced that they want to come. That will make for an interesting trip. I never thought they would want to spend that much.

Anyway, God will get us married one way or another. Getting the answers is a challenge, but it’s a nice problem to have.

All I Wanted was to Buy a Nice Wife

The Zambian fiancee and I continue to work on formalizing our relationship and importing her permanently.

Previous research suggested the best thing was to try to get a K-1 or “fiancee” visa. They let you bring your fiancee to the US for 90 days, and during that time, you must get married. After that, you have to file for a green card and permission for your new spouse to stay in the US for two more years.

I had read that K-1 visas were better than spouse visas because they took less time. Having looked deeper into it, I am hearing that the time difference is very small. I thought a K-1 was the way to go, but now we are thinking of changing our plans.

If we marry in another country, we will no longer have to be concerned about male/female sin. We won’t have to worry about separate beds and rooms. That would be a big plus, because marriage with limited intimacy is a strain. We wouldn’t be united permanently right away, but we would have considerably more liberty during pre-immigration visits.

So where should we marry? Right now we’re considering Iceland.

You may wonder why Iceland came up. It’s pretty simple. There are very few non-Muslim countries that will take us in right now, within reasonable flight times from our homes, where we can marry without excessive red tape. Even Mexico requires things like chest x-rays. Iceland demands a pile of papers you can file in advance, and that’s about it.

Malta and Mexico are available as rendezvous locations, and we will probably need a few of those while we wait for Rhodah to be issued her visa. Iceland is not a good place to visit except in warm seasons, so if we choose to go, we should do it before the end of September. That, along with the possibility of a trouble-free wedding, makes it a good choice for our next stop.

What’s in Iceland? I don’t know much about it. Volcanoes and glaciers, I’ve heard. People who have been there say great things about it, so I am satisfied that it will work for us. It won’t be as dirty or hot as Egypt, and there will be real stores and restaurants serving things other than traditional Arab food, so it’s looking pretty good to both of us. I’ll be honest. After Egypt, just about any clean, peaceful place with normal access to food and merchandise would look great.

I heard from my friend Mike yesterday, and when I told him we were considering Iceland, he was surprised. He and his girlfriend are planning a trip there. Now we may have to make it a double date. They wanted to go to Paris, but there were various issues, and somehow he came up with Iceland.

They would not be able to stay as long as we would, but they would be around for a little over three days. That ought to be fun. Then we would be alone together, and that would also be fun.

I talked to Mike about the women he knows who are suspicious of Rhodah, and I’ll tell you my sexist conclusion, which is nonetheless correct. I don’t blame them for thinking she just wants a green card. Why? Because they’re women, and women understand women. They are used to seeing other women deceive men. They hear what women say about men when men aren’t around. A big percentage of women would lie to a man about a green card, paternity, love, attraction, or any number of other important issues. It’s no wonder they assume Rhodah is up to no good.

Men get what they want through their careers. Many women do the same thing, but many others achieve their goals by manipulating men they’re not attracted to. It’s an ancient truth.

Iceland requires a strange document from people looking to marry. You have to have a certificate stating that you’re not married already. In the US, many jurisdictions don’t provide these. It appears the answer is to swear an affidavit, notarize it locally, and then get an apostille, which is like an international notarization. Whatever. I’m working on it. Zambia issues the required certificate, so Rhodah’s job is easier.

When all this is done, we may have to wait a year for a visa. Should I give up on Rhodah and look for an American? Of course not. Women are not fungible. I can find an American bride, but I can’t find an American Rhodah. I’ll just have to wait. Thank God I can pay for occasional visits.

I’m going to start looking up restaurants, hotels, and things to do in Iceland. Mike wants an AirBnB. I don’t get that. In a hotel, they clean up after you, and they provide room service. In somebody else’s second home, that would all be on me and Rhodah. Mike says he wants a kitchen. I can’t really see myself going to a weird Icelandic grocery and then trying to cook on someone else’s hopeless foreign rental cookware.

Imagine the kind of cooking equipment people leave in their houses for tourists. It can’t be good.

Rhodah is also against AirBnB. She says you go to a foreign country to try their food, not yours. Like me, she wants room service and maids.

I don’t want the homey feeling of someone else’s house. I want to avoid it. I like the cold, impersonal cleanliness of hotels. I want to know the toilets are clean, everything has been dusted, and no one’s heart will be broken if I break a glass or leave a stain on a carpet or towel.

Nothing is set in stone now, but it’s possible we could be married in a little over a month. How about that? Until today, I didn’t see it happening that soon. Marriage will open up new questions I wasn’t thinking much about. How does God feel about birth control? Should we risk having Rhodah carry and bear a child in Zambia, even if the risk is small?

Here’s a question: do I want to risk having a child who is not an American?

America has an idiotic law which says any person born on our soil is a citizen. It makes no sense, and it encourages hostile foreign women to come here to have children. It originally came from English common law. The idea was that the British king wanted to rule over everyone born in his kingdom. Why the Founding Fathers, with their leftist, sovereign-hating bent, allowed this ridiculous time bomb of a law to be adopted is beyond me. Maybe they felt America needed to build up its population.

As a result of the internal conflict over slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment reiterated the common law principle. Now we’re stuck with it.

Even the children of illegal aliens are citizens, as long as they’re born here. Unbelievably, however, there is no blanket law that makes the children of Americans citizens. Some children born abroad are citizens, and some have to apply for citizenship. I suppose this shouldn’t surprise anyone, since birthright citizenship was originally intended to help the state at the expense of the people. Maybe it makes sense that the law isn’t always helpful to us.

It sort of looks like my children would be citizens, because their mother and I would be married. A State Department release says the foreign-born child of at least one American citizen is considered a citizen at birth, as long as his parents are married. A press release isn’t the same thing as a legal opinion, however, so I don’t know how reliable this one is.

It boils down to this: marriage is not a lovers’ paradise, free of all earthly cares. I had lost sight of this well-known fact. I was thinking mostly about the other aspects of marriage. I thought I should have a partner in life. I wasn’t focused on generating my own tribe.

New blessings always bring new challenges. Like Rosanne Roseannadanna said, it’s always something.

I hope to post exciting news some time between now and the end of September.

Exodus Begins

I am now the proud owner of a bouncing baby fiancee. I am even allowed to use her real first name on my blog.

That’s a picture of me and Rhodah at some heathen temple or other. We spent 9 whole days and two half-days in Egypt, satisfying the requirements of the American fiancee visa program, not to mention our own desire to see each other in person.

I think the photo was shot at Luxor, but I’m not sure. Our Guide Ahmed (no, the other Ahmed) shot it and sent it to me, so it comes up out of sequence with the photos I shot.

I know a summary will be more interesting than a long description of the trip, so here it is: we had a magnificent time. The weather was unbearably hot. We both got colds. The food was usually bad. We were sleep-deprived nearly every day. Doesn’t matter. In person, we get along exactly the way we get along in video chats, and that’s what counts. I have zero misgivings about inviting this woman to share my life.

We met at Cairo International. Her flight arrived shortly before mine, so she was waiting for me with our guides. We had private guides for the whole trip. It was expensive, but it was the right way to go. We never had to find ways to get to and from airports and hotels. We had expert advice on everything, including getting PCR tests before leaving for home. We were spared a lot of hard work.

We booked our flights to and from Egypt and our main hotel ourselves. After that, we left everything to a company called Emo Tours. Every penny was well spent. They handled everything professionally, and we were allowed to focus more on each other than on the difficulties of travel.

We spent two days in Giza at a pleasant hotel with views of the pyramids. Of course, we toured the pyramids and the Egyptian Museum, along with other local sights. Then we flew to Aswan and joined a Nile cruise Emo Tours booked for us. For four days, we never had to worry about food or activities. Everything was provided for us. They even did our laundry in about three hours. After the cruise, we chose to spend two more days in the hotel in Giza, doing nothing whatsoever. This was the best part of the trip. I highly recommend scheduling idle days during foreign trips. Otherwise, you start to feel like a UPS package, being hauled from this place to that with no time to think.

I suppose I should give my impressions of travel in Egypt.

First of all, I was very glad to find that the Egyptians were extremely friendly, even when we weren’t doing business with them. They were very polite. They almost always tried to be helpful. Most spoke English.

After 911 and all the friction America has had with Muslim jihadists, I felt my attitude toward Muslims and Arabs was way too negative. I was glad to see that my experiences with Egyptians took the edge off that. The Bible says God loves Egypt, and it says the Egyptians will be brothers with the Jews and Assyrians. No matter how many problems come to us through jihadis, God’s perspective is the one that matters.

In Isaiah 19, God refers to Egypt as “my people” and Israel as “my inheritance.” Obviously, God does not hate Egypt.

After landing in Egypt, we were driven from the airport to Giza, and it takes an hour or so. Cairo has a poor highway infrastructure. The president of Egypt is building modern highways, so there are some nice exceptions, but generally, you will find yourself moving slowly among drivers who appear to be trying to kill themselves.

Egyptians have no regard for lane markings, and they routinely drive with their cars less than a foot apart. Virtually all cars in Cairo have body damage. Drivers also honk the horn constantly, to the point where they have developed a Morse-like language that includes insults, questions, greetings, and expressions of gratitude. There are very few traffic lights. People just jam into intersections and negotiate.

You will see interesting sights on the road. I saw one toddler in a van, propped up so she could lean out an open window and enjoy the breeze. I saw a man driving with his tiny daughter on his lap. I saw scooters zipping around in heavy traffic with three men on them. People hang off the steps of moving buses. Women sit behind their husbands on scooters, riding sidesaddle without a care in the world.

The bottom line is that it’s a very bad idea to rent a car in Egypt, even if you’re used to driving in a place like Miami.

On the way to the hotel, we saw countless half-finished apartment buildings with bare rebar sticking out of their uppermost stories. They generally had no window glass. I was not able to get a good explanation for their state of incompletion. Maybe the Egyptians build them one brick at a time, as money becomes available.

It looked as thought some people had arrived in the area and started building a city, and then they ran off suddenly.

I saw some bizarre sights, such as an incomplete apartment building with an excavator on the roof. Who puts an excavator on a roof? How did they get it up there?

I don’t have a lot of complaints about the hotel. It was reasonably clean, everything worked, the toilets had bidets, and we had a good view of the pyramids. The restaurant was acceptable. The neighborhood was a mess, however. Streets were torn up everywhere. More of the president’s projects.

Our hotel had a sliding steel gate and a guard booth. Whenever we entered in a vehicle, they made it stop outside, and a sniffer dog walked around it before it was allowed in. We went through this in more than one place. They also had a metal detector with a conveyor-belt x-ray machine. I don’t know exactly what they’re expecting, but they are obviously determined not to let tourists get blown up.

Tourist attractions had barriers set up, and armed police were everywhere. We went through too many checkpoints to remember.

We found Giza to be a difficult neighborhood to live in. In the hotel, we were fine, but walking around the streets was not easy. The Egyptians had built strange sidewalks. First of all, they were maybe 10″ higher than the street, so there was a lot of stepping up and stepping down. Second, they were incomplete. There were many places where you could walk down a sidewalk for a long distance and then find the sidewalk ended for no reason, making it necessary for you to walk in the street among moving cars. Taking a walk in Giza didn’t make sense. Exploring required a vehicle, and for that, you had to pay a driver. Then the driver would probably take you where he wanted to go, not where you wanted to go. They were always promoting businesses.

In Athens or Paris, you can step out of your hotel, walk down the sidewalk, and take your pick of restaurants and shops. Not so in Giza. Walking a block was a difficult project, and there were very few businesses you would want to visit.

The sidewalks and streets were filthy. No matter where I was, I always smelled one kind of poop or another. There was litter everywhere. We saw an Egyptian open his car door just so he could throw a fast food wrapper in the street.

Giza, like much of Egypt, was full of construction rubble. When they performed demolition, they didn’t clear the mess away. They just learned to walk around the piles. In Egypt, there are piles of concrete and stone that have obviously been in place for years.

They say open-toed shoes don’t work in Egypt. This is true. By the end of the day, your feet would be caked with filth.

For us, the answer to the Giza problem was to eat at the hotel. As long as we had food, nothing else mattered.

Our tours started the day after we arrived. First, we went to the pyramids. A guide named Osama ran the show. He had our driver take us to the pyramid area, and we saw the two biggest pyramids up close. We felt we should not visit without going inside one, so we paid for an upgrade.

At the base of the biggest pyramid, accurately named the Great Pyramid, we found a sort of shed and some Arabs. One tore our tickets, and we were shown the angled tunnel that led into the King’s Chamber, deep inside the rock.

For reasons unknown to me, the rectangular tunnel is about one meter high, and it penetrates the pyramid at a steep downward angle. There are no stairs; just a wooden floor with slats running across it every foot or so to keep people from sliding.

An Egyptian volunteered to go with us. I didn’t particularly enjoy climbing down into the hole while hunched over and holding a heavy backpack I was not willing to leave with strangers. Rhodah was unburdened, so she was able to walk into the pyramid quickly.

After a certain distance, we reached a small chamber with more headroom, and then we had to exit the chamber on the other side, into another cramped tunnel angled upward. At the end, we came out in the King’s Chamber, which was just a room with a big, empty sarcophagus.

The man who came with us persuaded me to pose for pictures, but Rhodah wanted none of it. She had barely entered when she said she was leaving. I posed for a couple of shots and then followed her. Of course, I had to tip the Egyptian even though he had not made a deal with me.

Rhodah seemed uncomfortable as we made our way to the next attraction, which was a camel ride (her idea). We drove to an area where a bunch of tired-looking camels were lying in the sand waiting for tourists. By this time, the air was very hot, and there was a strong, constant wind. The wind picked up the powerful smell of camel poop and urine, not to mention the pungent odor of whatever the drivers were eating. It was not a smell one would strive to reproduce in one’s home for purposes of nostalgia.

The camel drivers had a tent set up, and Rhodah asked if she could sit in the shade for a bit. The drivers were very courteous and invited us both to sit and have tea. I declined, but she sat down. After a minute or so, she asked to walk back to the car. She was not feeling good, so she wanted to skip the ride. I, of course, had no excuse for not riding a camel, so they put me on one, and up it went.

You board a camel from the left, using a single stirrup to give you purchase. You hold onto a saddle horn once you’re seated. They tell you to lean back. Why? Because the camel’s rear goes up first, and if you lean back, you’re less likely to fall off toward the front. Just when you’re used to struggling not to fall forward, the camel’s front end comes up, and you have to hang on so you don’t fall off the back.

When the camel is standing, your behind is probably 7 feet off the ground. When it walks, it sways violently. I had to hang onto the horn very firmly, and I also squeezed the camel’s body with my legs. I wondered how anyone could sit one of these things in a race.

We made our way to the car, and somehow I managed to resist offers for more camel time.

This was my second time, being offered a ride on a camel. The first came in 1984. I was in Jerusalem, traveling with a Dutch girl, and for five dollars, they let her pose for photos on a camel. When my turn came, I told her and the driver to forget it. I have never had any desire at all to ride a camel, and I have only ridden horses, which smell a great deal less foul, under tremendous social pressure.

When Rhodah said she wanted to ride camels, I agreed to it because I wanted her to enjoy the trip, but my camel enthusiasm was still where it had been 37 years earlier. I should have refused to get on, since there was no point in doing it alone, but the guides had gone to the trouble to set it up, and the drivers needed money, so I took one for the team.

This was my last animal-riding event. I will never get on another camel, horse, donkey, mule, or elephant (don’t ask) again. People get offended when you say you don’t want to ride horses. It’s almost always women who get upset. They seem to be hardwired for horse riding, and they don’t seem to understand people who don’t have the gene. They seem to think you, too, secretly crave horse rides, and they appear to believe you will have a breakthrough and experience ecstasy once you’re up there plodding around.

I guess it’s like dancing. Women always think men will love dancing if they just do it enough. Not true. Love of dancing requires certain wiring which is almost always present in the female nervous system and generally absent in heterosexual males. I don’t love dancing any more than I love doing deep-knee bends or jumping jacks. I never think, “It would be great to get up and dance right now,” and I never have, even when extremely drunk. Doesn’t matter whether I’m in a crowd or alone. I just don’t feel the desire.

A famous song says, “Dance like nobody’s watching.” When nobody’s watching, I generally sit in a recliner.

The only times I’ve enjoyed dancing, I’ve enjoyed it because it let me share moments with women, or because I was deliberately making a fool of myself after drinking enough liquor to make me throw up later. Sometimes I make a small celebratory movement when a really good pizza comes out of the oven, but that’s about it.

To get back to riding horses, it’s just not for me. You’re too far off the ground, you’re on something which is nearly useless for carrying anything but a rider, it has no roof and no air conditioning, the only speed choices are way too slow and dangerously fast, and if you opt for fast, you’re pretty much asking for paralysis or a fractured skull if anything goes wrong. And sometimes horses don’t like their riders. My utility cart has never gotten angry at me or tried to bite me. I can put two people and a bunch of cargo in the cart, I can ride in comfort, and I don’t have to worry about breaking my pelvis if I hit an armadillo hole.

The whole horse-versus-machine debate was resolved for good when the Polish cavalry went up against German tanks. In 2021, a horse is a luxury, not a useful tool, and a luxury isn’t a luxury unless you like it.

Rhodah has no interest in dancing, which is one more reason why we suit each other. I don’t think she cares for riding camels, either. She just wanted to be able to say she had done it.

It’s a relief to know I have a woman who will never become bitter because I never dance with her. Some women seem to need dancing, the way a dog needs to be walked. Rhodah doesn’t even want to dance at our wedding. Tell me that isn’t a sign from heaven.

It’s wonderful, not having a bridezilla. There will be no “destination wedding,” requiring the guests and ourselves to spend six figures in order to create an event that looks good on Instagram and then ages poorly as the marriage quickly deteriorates. We will not be flying her relations over from Africa at 10 grand a pop so they can watch a one-hour event. There will be no hot air balloons or orchestras. We will not pay Jennifer Lopez to do a set.

In our hearts, we feel as though we’ve been married for years, so the purpose of a wedding will be to get legal and religous sanction for expanding our activities into all areas of matrimonial business. The wedding won’t be intended to make other people feel poor or to focus an unhealthy level of fleeting attention on the bride. While planning, we won’t find ourselves saying things like, “It has to be perfect.” We won’t get matching tattoos in Chinese. There will be no viral video of groomsmen and bridesmaids doing a dance routine. We’re just going to say, “Thank God that’s over. Now we can really live like man and wife.”

We have joked that two minutes after exchanging vows, we’ll shout, “Thank you for coming. GET OUT!”

Weddings are unimportant. Marriages are what matter.

You will put your heart into the one that really matters to you.

So, back to the camels. When my camel and I got to the car, Rhodah was saying she wanted to cancel the rest of the day.

We started talking, and I learned that something had happened to her in the tomb. She had felt that something wanted to kill her. She felt she couldn’t get air, so she ran back out. Even outside, she felt there wasn’t enough air. She wondered if she needed to go to a hospital, but she didn’t tell me that right away.

I wondered if she was experiencing claustrophobia. Before going into the pyramid, I wondered if I would become claustrophobic, myself. She said she didn’t have claustrophobia. She felt as if something were trying to take her air.

I said it sounded like a demonic attack, and she agreed. Something in the tomb didn’t like her.

The attack endangered the remainder of the trip. We had booked a Nile cruise, and the guides told us the weather in the cruise area was considerably hotter than it was in Cairo. We were headed for a place where highs were hitting 114°, and Rhodah didn’t know if she would feel she could breathe.

Our response was to have a prayer session and cast things out. Afterward, everything was fine, and the cruise was back on like Donkey Kong. It was a big relief, because I didn’t want to sit in a hotel in Giza for 9 days.

After this, we made a point of battling any spirits associated with the Satanic ruins we visited. We had no more problems, and Rhodah enjoyed visiting several more holes formerly occupied by pharaohs. We canceled the second half of our activities on the day she was attacked, but other than that, we were fine.

The next day, we visited the Egyptian Museum and Old Cairo, including a bazaar.

The museum was wonderful. King Tut’s stuff was there, and we saw a lot of other artifacts related to other prominent Egyptians. Our guide explained things to us. As we made our way around, we saw that ideas found in the Old Testament were not exclusive to Judaism.

We saw a throne belonging to Tutankhamen. It wasn’t for his use in life. It was to be included in his death goods, to be used in the afterlife. Pretty sad. A person who rejected Yahweh thought he would still have a throne and a bunch of golden treasures after his death.

There was a box in front of the throne, maybe four inches high and as deep and wide as a welcome mat. It was blue, with gold figures of men on it. The figures represented Tut’s enemies. This shows that the ancient Jews were not alone in believing their God would make their enemies their footstool. The box in front of the throne was for Tut’s feet.

I’ve also seen this concept expressed in modern times. Saddam Hussein created a mural of Bush I’s face, set into the floor of a hotel. The idea was that people’s shoes would touch his face all day. In the Muslim world, having someone show you the bottom of their shoe or throw a shoe at you is a great insult. It’s clearly related to the idea of using enemies as footstools.

We saw works depicting judgment. The ancient Egyptians believed their hearts would be weighed before their supreme “god,” Osiris. If their hearts were too heavy, they would be eaten by an evil baboon “god.” If not, they went on to become Osiris himself.

In Christianity, we become part of God if we receive salvation, and God says he looks on the heart. What ruins a man’s heart? The flesh. Our flesh is a lot like a baboon. Humans who remain undeveloped are just like monkeys, and monkeys are violent and selfish. Figuratively, you could say that if you let your flesh corrupt you and prevent you from being saved, a monkey has eaten your heart.

The cruise was very pleasant. We flew south from Cairo to Aswan, and that’s where we boarded the ship. Big Nile cruise ships are all about the same. They have several decks. The staterooms have twin beds and individual bathrooms with showers and tubs. Every ship has a big cafeteria where meals are served buffet-style, three times a day. Food is included in the cost of tickets. The cruise companies move from Aswan toward Luxor, dropping people periodically for excursions.

Knowing we had restraint, we used a single room with two beds. It was very comfortable, and everything was clean. The cleaning staff was funny. When they replaced the towels, they turned them into sculptures. One day you might get a towel crocodile, and the next, it might be a towel elephant with a rider.

The food was very good. Not phenomenal, but fine for our purposes. Every day, the dishes changed. They had a salad and dessert table, a row of entrees and sides, a large display of breads, and a daily soup. Beverages cost extra, but they were not expensive. The buffet was a good way to get familiar with a large number of dishes.

Early on, we learned we had enemies. There were people who would attack the desserts early, taking all the best stuff. I told Rhodah there were a bunch of fat German women, whom I never actually saw, going in commando-style. I said something she still keeps quoting: “Buffets bring out the worst in people.”

We resolved to be on time for meals from then on. I also decided we would collect food for all three courses at once, instead of waiting until we ate the previous courses. This way, we were nailing the good desserts while our enemies were still cramming entrees down quickly in hopes of finishing them in time for a sneak dessert attack.

We had no more problems. We cackled about our defeated foes.

The fruit and vegetables were excellent in Egypt. Unlike Americans, they don’t pick everything, and expect you to eat it, green. The tomatoes were better than anything I’ve had in America since my grandmother died. Her tomatoes were perfect.

I think our worst choice was the decision to visit Abu Simbel. This is a temple complex that was moved when the Aswan Dam was built. The Dam created Lake Naser, which rose and covered a lot of ancient sites. Abu Simbel, along with some other sites, was cut up and moved to higher ground.

The problem with Abu Simbel is that the drive to see it was three hours long, through open desert with no cell signals. It just isn’t worth it. We could have spent six hours, plus the time we spent at the complex, enjoying each other’s company. Instead we were crammed into a Hyundai Elantra, and I was behind a driver who kept his seat pushed back nearly all the way.

We spent four days on the cruise, and we had the same guide, Ahmed, the whole time. Ahmed is a young man with a master’s in archaeology. Like the other people in the area around Aswan, he’s a Nubian. That mean’s he’s mostly black. He informed us he was the King of the Nubians, so that’s how I referred to him from then on.

We saw a number of American black women while we were in Nubia. Ghetto “scholars” have convinced a lot of American blacks ancient Egyptians were black geniuses, so American blacks visit Egypt to see their accomplishments. Sadly, what they believe is not true. The Egyptians who did all the important things were olive-skinned caucasians, and later on, Greeks took over. Cleopatra was a Greek. She wasn’t Egyptian at all.

I read about DNA analysis involving Egypt, and it appears the modern Egyptians in the Cairo area are about 20% black, and that percentage comes from recent centuries. In the past, they were whiter.

Another thing critical race theorists may not like: the Egyptian temples tourists go to see were built by white Greeks. They are reconstructions and reproductions. We saw almost no temples built by Egyptians.

When the Greeks ruled Egypt, they wanted the locals on their side, so they built temples honoring Isis and all the others. The reason the temples look so good is that Greeks created them. I guess it’s probably also why they all look alike.

Egypt is full of people trying to sell souvenirs and cheap clothes. In Nubia, they have learned how to sell things to black women. They call them “cousin.” They approach, saying, “Sister! Sister!” They did this to Rhodah over and over. They thought she was an American.

Apparently, black American women are known for certain behaviors in Egypt. Our guide took pictures of us, and he seemed to be encouraging Rhodah to pose in certain ways that emphasized her rear end. Later, he admitted black American women do that kind of thing all the time. He was not happy about it, but he was willing to go along with it in order to make more money.

Nubians have a reputation for friendliness and gentleness. I found this to be well-deserved. As nice as the Egyptians in Cairo were, the Nubians had them beat.

Exploring Nubia was a little tough for me because I was sick. My nose started running a day or two after I got to Egypt. I thought I might have the kung flu, in spite of my vaccination. I never got very ill, but I felt feverish and dehydrated. Naturally, during this time, I had to do a tremendous amount of walking in the burning sun, in strong dry winds, with temperatures over 110°.

Rhodah and I fought the illness supernaturally, but she caught a little of it, too.

I felt differently depending on where I was. In the Cairo area, I felt weighed down. I thought it was a supernatural thing. I always feel heavy in Miami, which is a cursed city full of people who provoke God. In Nubia, I felt a lot lighter, but I still had to drink a lot of water and put up with feeling hot inside.

At some point during all this, I proposed. The proposal suited our natures. In Egypt, you can’t have a fancy proposal. You can’t dress up and go to a nice restaurant. You can’t hire mariachis or a skywriter. You pretty much have to spit it out and move on. One evening, I waited for a quiet moment, told Rhodah how I felt about her, which she already knew, and asked if she would marry me. Of course, she said she would. We knew what we were going to do, months ago.

For various practical reasons, I gave her one of my mother’s rings, which neither of us likes. She knew this was coming; we had a plan. Now that I’m in the States, I can go ahead and get a better ring I already chose.

I also gave her the matching watch, heavy and made from solid gold. Of course, it doesn’t fit. We plan to have it melted down and turned into something else.

During our last two days of rest at our Giza hotel, we got PCR tests. I had a feeling we were going to test positive. I was okay with it. Staying in Egypt with Rhodah until we tested negative sounded great to me. We both passed, though. I wondered whether the Egyptians were delivering false negatives just to keep tourism booming.

Rhodah’s plane landed in Zambia a couple of hours ago, so now we’re about to get to work on her American visa. We hope it comes through reasonably quickly. If not, we will just have to meet overseas a few more times.

Greece, Israel, and Italy are opening up. We’re going to start getting visas for Rhoda. I don’t need one because I’m American.

I expect things to go well. This relationship was put together while we were submitting to God, and besides, we’re crazy about each other.

As for Egypt, I can say a few things.

1. It’s not a beautiful country, although people think it is. It’s sand and rocks. Some deserts have natural beauty. Not the one in Egypt.

2. Egypt has a lot of potential. They just need to change their culture. There is too much emotion, and they don’t put much emphasis on rules and order. They work hard, but they don’t have focus, and they don’t seem to plan. They need to clean up their cities. They need to stop leaving garbage everywhere. They need to get rid of the piles of construction debris.

3. The summer weather is abominable. A guide told us to go after October. It won’t rain, but it won’t be 114°, either.

4. Private guides are the way to go. They don’t cost all that much, and you will have a very hard time without them. For one thing, you’ll have to get through a lot of security checkpoints.

5. Street crime is not bad, and they don’t hate Americans, so don’t assume everything you have will be stolen or that you will be beaten up.

6. Absolutely everyone in Egypt expects a tip. I actually met the president of Egypt briefly, and I had to give him 10 Egyptian pounds for running the country so well. Unless I’m kidding. Anyway, you will want to have tons of small notes (50 pounds or less) for tipping, and you can forget about using a public toilet if you can’t come up with 5 pounds. You don’t have to tip during a cruise, but when it’s over, they will expect the equivalent of $32 in an envelope, to be shared by employees. That’s for a short cruise.

7. Cairo’s airport is useless. There is nothing to do while you wait. Also, you can’t check your bag and then go back out to the terminal to eat. Once your bag is checked, you have to stay in the area where the gates are. There are lounges, but they are not good.

8. The restaurants stink. I don’t think this is universally true. I think the problem is that guides take people to bad restaurants where they get kickbacks. If you complain, you can get them to take you to better places. The food is similar to Arab food in other places, but it seems like other Arabs cook somewhat better than Egyptians. Egypt has a unique dish called koshary, and you should try it. It’s pasta and rice, covered with a bunch of other stuff. You add vinegar and hot sauce to it. Very nice.

9. You will be mobbed all day by people wanting to sell you things. They’re like biting flies. Smile a lot, say complimentary things, and keep walking. Do not let them hand you anything. If they manage to drape something over you, take it off gently and set it down somewhere.

10. Haggling is everywhere, and it gets tiresome. Asking prices are insanely high. Don’t be surprised if a 700-pound item goes down to 100. Personally, I was okay with being overcharged somewhat, because these people are starving due to the coronavirus hysteria. Rhodah and I practically had Egypt to ourselves.

We bought a certain amount of junk, but we avoided all the stuff with ancient religious symbols on it. We told the guides and merchants over and over: Christians don’t put idols in their houses. Of course, nominal Christian merchants insisted we were wrong, and we really offended a lot of people, but that’s their problem.

11. Don’t go into the Great Pyramid. It’s very unpleasant, and there is nothing to see. Tut’s tomb is also pretty weak, but at least there are murals. Tut died young, and they didn’t have a big tomb ready. His tomb is like a one-car garage.

That’s it. Maybe I will write more later.

Plus Praise Report

Today (May 26) during our first daily prayer session, “Rebecca” and I talked about cooking.

The subject came up while we were discussing Derek Prince, the English evangelist. We both enjoy his teaching videos and books. We have been watching his videos on marriage.

I watched a video about the duties of a wife. A lot of what he said seemed right, but I noticed a couple of things. He didn’t have much to say about sex and attraction, and he seemed to be buffaloed concerning the topic of submission.

No teacher is perfect. I recommend Prince to people all the time, but I have one reservation about him. Although he married twice, he seems feminine.

What this makes me wonder is whether he is a good judge of a woman’s duties in marriage.

Like many Christians, he seems skittish about the subject of female submission. He refers to the scripture in Ephesians that says Christians should submit to each other, without reference to sex.

Here it is:

And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;

Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;

Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;

Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,

That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

As you can see, the part about submitting to each other is a general admonition aimed at Christians as a whole. The part about wives is specifically directed to them, and it is followed by, “the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.”

Is Jesus supposed to submit to us? Do I even have to answer that?

We only know of one example of Jesus submitting to another believer. He allowed John the Baptist to baptize him, and John, knowing Jesus was in authority over him, questioned it.

Here is the exchange:

But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?

And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him.

After the baptism, John lost followers to Jesus, and John was glad. He knew Jesus was his head.

Here is what Peter said:

Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;

While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.

Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;

But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.

For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands:

Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.

Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.

Obviously, wives are supposed to submit to husbands, and the reverse is not true.

Some people think female submission is a curse, but that’s wrong. Eve’s status as a helper, created “for the man,” was established BEFORE God cursed the earth.

When the curse was pronounced, God said, “thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Does this mean having the husband rule was a curse? No. Adam already had rule over Eve, and he failed to meet his obligation.

“Thy desire shall be to thy husband” means, “You will want to rule your husband.” You can look that up. God told Cain sin’s desire was to him, using the same idiom. When God added, “he shall rule over thee,” he was completing the curse: “You will be ruled over by one you want to rule.” Being ruled by a husband is not a curse unless you think you should be ruling him. If you love and trust your husband, being ruled over him is a blessing.

It works the same way with God. We are used to authorities who are corrupt, stupid, weak, and toxic, so it’s hard to accept the idea of being an unquestioning slave to God. If we had never known useless authorities, the idea of slavery to God would be just fine with us, and we would pursue it out of self-interest.

Eve, a drug-abusing feminist witch, brought her punishment on herself. She wanted to be greater than Adam and God. God was the perfect protector and provider, but she chose her own path, which was a path of forced subordination to someone she could not fully trust.

I mentioned Prince’s erroneous teaching to Rebecca, and she didn’t like it one bit. She said, “A creature with two heads is a monster.” That sums it up.

Modern men are terrified of feminists, so male Christians duck and dodge when it comes to submission. No wonder men are so effeminate and inclined to homosexuality now. We would rather please girlfriends and wives than God, so we become like them, not him.

There is a huge problem with femininity among black men in America. People think they’re the most masculine men, but there is actually an epidemic of black male femininity. Many only look masculine.

Women run many black households. Men are pursued and prized, like princesses in fairy tales. Black men tend to dress more like women than whites and Asians. They wear bright colors and daring outfits. They are more likely to wear colorful shoes and gobs of jewelry. They have a higher rate of homosexuality; the concept of “being on the down low” is well-known among blacks, but most white people don’t even know what it is. The majority of black American men impregnate women and then leave them to be de facto fathers of their children. Black women are providers and protectors in America.

Black women are well aware of the problem of effeminacy among black men. You can go to Youtube and watch them analyze it with extraordinary insight. It’s the reason some black women are turning to white men. They are tired of feeling they are not allowed to be feminine.

You may not believe black men are more likely to be homosexual, but it’s true. Consider the AIDS rate, which is higher among black men. It’s nearly impossible for a man to get AIDS from sex with a woman; look it up. And not enough black men are using intravenous drugs to explain the disparity.

White men are headed the same way. Whenever a bad idea takes over among black Americans, white Americans latch onto it and make it their own.

Black Americans already have feminism, in that they have female-dominated families and women who are much more successful and educated than men, as well as passive men who depend on them for income. They also have a sky-high abortion rate, an extremely low marriage rate, and an epidemic of attractive, successful, childless spinsters. Look at the future of white Americans who love feminism.

Jewish and Latin households also have major problems with matriarchy. It’s common for Jewish men to be terrified of their wives and mothers.

Derek Prince was born in 1915, and he was still intimidated by feminism. Makes you wonder what chance the rest of us have. The answer is that we need the Holy Spirit. One of his prime purposes is to negate the power of peer pressure. Peer pressure is the main tool of the Spirit of Antichrist.

We were talking about this today, and I noted that men have a way of taking over female pursuits. Men make better hairdressers, interior decorators, wedding planners, and clothing designers than women. Now castrated men are also turning out to be better “female” athletes. Rebecca added cooking to the conversation.

That got me thinking. I cook, and men are unquestionably more talented in the kitchen. Maybe it’s a bad idea for me to cook. I have to cook because I live alone, but should I continue when I’m married?

I thought about cooking in the Bible. I knew Sarah cooked for Abraham, on demand. I knew Rebecca (Isaac’s wife, not my Rebecca) cooked for Jacob, to get Esau’s blessing for him. Mary and Martha served food, and Lazarus did not. On the other hand, a pharaoh released a butler from prison but executed a baker.

I looked at the Bible a little later, and I saw that Gideon and Jacob both cooked. I haven’t seen any indication that God disapproved. What should I conclude?

Maybe the best thing is to turn the kitchen over to Rebecca in the future. I can show her what I know and take my hands off. Maybe I’ll just cook on special occasions.

I don’t have any other feminine pursuits. I can’t sew or knit. I hate musicals. I don’t have a lot of interest in furnishing a house. Kenny G. gives me indigestion.

I suppose if Rebecca rules the kitchen, it will make our lives go more smoothly. She is horrified by my ideas about kitchen decoration (none) and equipment (institutional). To me, the perfect kitchen is a room with stainless steel walls and a tile floor with a drain. I would have a garden hose hanging on one wall if I could. Not homey, but man, would it produce.

A kitchen is a kind of workshop, so I think of it as a place that should be practical and filled with good tools. It’s hard to reconcile that with female notions of domesticity.

Rebecca is not a hotshot cook right now, but I can turn her into one, fast.

If she has to trust me, I suppose I have to trust her as well.

In other news, I have a praise report.

When Rebecca and I pray, I pray for God to give us favor with people. The word says that when a man’s ways please God, God will make even his enemies to be at peace with him. In a time of increasing persecution, I want government employees and everyone else who seems to have power over us to be blind to anything that could cause friction with us, and I want God to move them to help us instead. We are going to be working on immigration, among other things, and we will need God’s help to get Satan’s children on our side.

Yesterday, my food processor stopped working. It made a horrible noise while I was making pizza. Somehow, I got the wrong idea. I thought it had gears in it.

I opened it up with difficulty, and I saw that everything inside was fine. Then it occurred to me to check the blade. It was damaged, so it was letting the processor’s shaft spin inside the hub.

I had destroyed four caps that covered screws in the top of the machine, and I had also damaged the plastic cover on the shaft.

I should add that before I got into the machine, I got so discouraged I started shopping for a new machine. It looks like all the new ones except Robot Coupe (very expensive) have issues. I nearly blew $230 on a machine recommended by America’s Test Kitchen.

I ordered the cheapest used blade I could find, and it came in at around $20. I saw that a shaft cover cost around the same amount. Then I noticed that someone on the web said he had gotten a new shaft cover (“sheath”) for a few dollars from Cuisinart. It wasn’t listed on their website.

After 9 p.m., I called Cuisinart, expecting to hear that they weren’t open for business. I got a very nice lady who didn’t seem to understand the mechanics of the processor. I explained things patiently, and finally, she found the part. She said she would complete the order and send it. I said I needed to know the price. She said she would send it for nothing!

I decided to see what a new blade cost. She said she wasn’t sure. She thought it was around $8.50. She could check and put it on the same order.

After a few minutes, she told me it was on the way. I asked about payment information. She said there was no charge!

On the web, new ones cost at least $40.

I damaged two parts of the machine, and she covered it for nothing. I canceled the Ebay sheath order.

How about that? Total favor, and the lady could not have been nicer. Told me to have a great week and so on. I saved at least $35.

As for the caps on top of the machine, I filled the holes with silicone caulk. Done.

When the new stuff arrives, I’ll pound the new sheath onto the shaft, and I’ll be in business again. Until then, if I need to make dough, I can do it by hand or use one of my stand mixers.

The old sheath still works. It’s just chewed up from me working on it. I could probably restore the blade by pouring epoxy into the hub. Anyway, I have a different blade for dough if I really need it. I don’t know if it will work for small batches, but it might.

That’s about it for today. Sufficient unto the day are the blessings thereof.

Another Institution Crumbles Under the Weight of its Own Wokeness

It’s interesting how the Antichrist’s children are poking their noses into every aspect of life.

In case you didn’t know, Epicurious no longer helps people with beef. You can’t post a new beef recipe, for example. Why? Cows are just too flatulent. Their rearward outbursts are an existential threat to mankind because they supposedly cause global warming. That means no prime rib for you.

It’s bad enough that Amazon recommends horrible victimhood-mentality movies and books I would never read even at the point of a gun. It’s bad enough that Yelp encourages people to accuse restaurateurs of racism. Now I’m a bad person because I like cheeseburgers.

When did it become appropriate to inject leftism into everything we do? When did it become a great idea for businesses to insult, falsely accuse, shame, and offend half of their customers?

Here’s a crazy idea: if you have a business website, how about concentrating on making your customers happy and fulfilling their desires instead of preaching to them? Am I out of line here? Let’s say I want to buy a pair of shoes online. Is it okay if a shoe website is only about shoes, or do I have to read about my imaginary privilege and be told I’m the source of all the world’s problems?

Am I really supposed to base my principles on things millennial marketing majors scribble on retail sites? These kids can’t do anything but Facebook and text. They know nothing about the world. I might as well go outside and seek advice from squirrels.

The Antichrist offers a filthy alternative righteousness. Remember, “anti” doesn’t just mean “against”; it means “instead of.” Satan wants his son to be the new Jesus. What did Jesus’ father do? He set up a temple which was basically a barbecue facility. All day, animals went in to be cooked. Their throats were cut. Their hides and hooves were removed. Blood went everywhere. Then the priests cooked them over flames. The smell in the temple’s neighborhood must have been wonderful.

Satan saw an opportunity. He could out-righteous Yahweh. Killing is mean, right? Fantastic. The blood shed and meat consumption at the temple left the door open for Satan to introduce the worship of animals and even plants. “We’re nicer than God, so we’re better!”

Now we’re being pushed to accept the false notion that killing animals for food is evil. This, not global warming, is why Epicurious went off the rails. Spirits are pushing a sick vegan agenda, and cattle are easy targets because raising them takes a lot of resources.

Jesus himself ate meat, he helped people net fish which later suffocated, and he ordered Peter to catch a fish with a hook. He also wrote the Jewish law, prior to his incarnation. He ordered the Jews to kill and eat animals. A vegetarian Jew was an apostate, under the laws Jesus himself wrote. Eating the Passover lamb was mandatory. Sacrifices were mandatory. Writing Torah scrolls on animal hide was mandatory. Wearing tefillin was mandatory. Judaism was always an animal-killing, meat-eating religion. Abraham made his covenant with God by killing several animals and laying their dressed bodies on the ground.

Cain behaved like a vegetarian, refusing to slaughter animals for God, and he was vile. He was the first murderer. Just like the Antichrist’s children, he had a victim complex and an alternative version of righteousness.

People think they know better than God now, when it comes to meat. Western women are among the biggest offenders. In the past, we rightly dismissed self-righteous vegetarians as fringe eccentrics. As their power grows, they are becoming more and more controlling.

It’s amazing how nuts and once-powerless groups are putting sane people to flight these days. Favor is gone from groups that used to be protected by God. They’re like Samson without his hair.

People need to get as close to God as possible. He still offers favor and protection to people who are close to him, but nominal Christians are wide open to attack. On the other side, Satan is giving all sorts of favor to his servants.

Epicurious was doing poorly anyway. In the past, I found it a valuable resource, because it stood out in a sea of websites full of recipes written by hacks. I have found it unreliable in recent years, so I suppose it wasn’t going to be helpful with beef regardless of whether it posted recipes. Still, the notion of “canceling” beef is repugnant. Milk products are also in the crosshairs. Imagine the things we could lose. Steaks. Roasts. Burgers. Cheese. Ice cream. Butter. Yoghurt. Buttermilk biscuits.

I guess we’ll have to sit around eating salads. Raw plant foods are major vectors for food-borne infections, so we have that to look forward to.

It seems like America’s Test Kitchen is also deteriorating. When I saw them fry chicken with overcooked areas on both sides, I knew something was badly wrong. A friend thinks ATK jumped the shark when Christopher Kimball was forced out. I am going to look at his new project to see if he has maintained his standards.

Is Bon Appetit any good? I wonder.

In related news, I had a huge breakthrough with garlic rolls.

Not long ago, I decided to make dough using a poolish (“poo-LEESH”). The word is French, and it means “Polish.” Somehow the Poles were connected with the use of pre-ferments in dough. A pre-ferment (usually spelled without the hyphen) is a mix of flour, water, and microorganisms. You can make a preferment by mixing water and flour one-to-one and leaving them on your counter overnight to fester.

I found that poolishes made my dough better, but to use one, you have to start at least 6 hours before you want to toss your pizza crust or form your loaf.

A day or two back, I had an idea. Part of the reason a poolish works is that the water really gets into the flour, changing the texture of the bread. What if I made dough using boiling water?

When you mix starches with really hot water, they become gelatinized. You can see this in sauces made with corn starch. You can also see it in the texture of boiled oatmeal. I thought partially gelatinized flour might make better dough.

I measured out flour, water, salt, and diastatic malt extract as though making a poolish. Then I boiled the water in the microwave and stirred it into the mixture. I threw it in the food processor, let it cool enough so it wouldn’t kill the yeast, and processed it with additional ingredients to make dough.

It was excellent. The pizza and rolls had a ton of flavor. The texture was beautiful. The only issue I noticed was that the dough rose slowly, but that may have been because I left my yeast out of the fridge a couple of nights. Maybe it got tired.

Today I made 6 garlic rolls, and they seemed to come from heaven itself. Magnificent. I ate them for lunch while video-chatting with the Zambian yam. I must have annoyed her tremendously. I kept groaning with pleasure. I kept it up for at least half an hour after the last roll was gone.

I made the garlic sauce or topping or whatever by blending several big cloves of garlic in olive oil and then nuking the mixture to cook it. I added a little butter. When I ate the rolls, I untied them and dipped the strands in the sauce. I also added cheap parmesan cheese from a jar. Wonderful. Of course, fresh cheese would have been even better.

Instead of adding boiling water to about half the flour, I used it for nearly all of it.

When I tied the rolls, I rolled the dough into sticks and twisted them first so they looked like screws. This improved the shape and appearance of the rolls. I dipped the sticks in oil before tying them to make sure the strands wouldn’t stick to each other. A real garlic knot can be untied. If you can’t untie it, it’s inferior.

You can do other things. You can use three thin sticks instead of one big one.

I’m still feeling the afterglow.

It wasn’t beef, but man, it was good.

Yukon Keep These Potatoes

Things are still going great with my Zambian sweetheart, “Rebecca.” We are still struggling with the question of whether she should continue studying for the Zambian bar exam. We keep getting what seem to be indications that it’s not God’s will. Prayers for his guidance would be appreciated.

There are only two reasons for her to continue. First, there is the possibility that we won’t work out, which seems highly unlikely, and second, it’s generally not a good idea to quit big projects you’ve started. If she quits and something miraculous happens that splits us up, I can easily fund a return trip to Zambia and a new period of study, but she would lose some time.

In other news, I bought a deep fryer. I’m not sure it was a good idea. I am tired of having problems frying things. My chicken has been performing poorly.

In the old days, the portable fryer market was gloomy. They had things like the Fry Baby, and not much more. The Fry Baby is a small electrified bucket that holds oil. They now make a Fry Pappy. It’s bigger, and the reviews are not good. One problem: you have to fry everything at 375 degrees.

Now you can get a machine that will sit on your countertop and fry 2.5 pounds of food per batch. You can get models that have preset modes for various foods. One model, made by Breville, has a special two-part mode for twice-fried fries. Do you trust a stranger to tell your fryer how to make fries? I don’t. My Instant Pot does a great job with rice, however.

The Breville gets a lot of bad reviews because of build quality, so I don’t want it.

I decided to try a T-Fal. Their machine comes apart so you can put various pieces in the dishwasher. It has a big basket which is easy to handle. It also has a filtering mode. After you fry, it filters the fat and stores it in a container which is part of the fryer.

Today I watched some videos about fryers, and I also caught an America’s Test Kitchen video about frying chicken “like the pros.” I thought they did a surprisingly bad job. They used a Dutch oven with a clip-on thermometer, and they fried the chicken right on the bottom of the pot. It came out with dark areas in the areas that hit bottom. I don’t need a fancy kitchen and a staff of professionals to tell me how to burn chicken.

Usually, the people at ATK give great advice. Not sure what happened this time.

T-Fal’s machine looked good on Youtube, and the ATK video made me despair of frying chicken well in a plain old pot. That’s why I ordered the T-Fal. Now I’m not so sure. Since placing the order, I’ve learned some things.

I decided to make fries to see if I could do better than ATK. I looked for recipes online. I wanted to fry twice, the way you’re supposed to. Okay, technically, I wanted to blanch once and fry once. I kept seeing recipes calling for Yukon gold potatoes, which were all I had. I sliced some thin and blanched them in a pot with a thermometer, and then I chilled them.

For some reason, I have a stainless basket which can be used for frying. It has little bumps on the bottom to lift it off the bottom of the pot. I used it for blanching, and it worked very well.

It wasn’t much trouble at all, and I didn’t have to take a fancy machine apart for cleaning. Also, because I now have a dedicated grease-filtering storage canister, handling the oil was easy.

Sadly, the fries were not good. They tasted great, but Yukon Golds are not frying potatoes. Not as far as I can tell, anyway. The fries looked perfect, but they were limp, probably because they were low on starch compared to russets.

It looks like I got snookered by the Internet again. It’s full of recipes written by people who can’t cook at all.

I have made wonderful fries in the past. I always used russet potatoes. I have never had good results frying red potatoes or Yukons. I should have known better than to try Yukons today.

Sources on the web say the Russet Burbank is the top fry potato. I don’t know if the russets I can buy are Russet Burbanks, but I’m sure they will beat Yukon Golds.

To get back to equipment, I’m wondering why I should keep the fryer when I have a pretty good solution on hand already.

ATK’s chicken video got me thinking about Dutch ovens. Le Creuset makes the best, if reviewers are to be believed, but boy, are they expensive. Like $380 expensive for a big one. I’ve been resisting getting one. Today I learned they’re on sale for $250. It’s a manufacturer’s promotion. The big model is over $100 cheaper than the next size down.

I tried finding used Dutch ovens a while back, but it was a waste of time. If you want a Le Creuset cheap, you pretty much have to find it at a thrift shop or inherit it.

I just told Amazon to cancel the fryer, as I was writing this. There is no point in spending $120 on something you may not need. Making my bad fries gave me confidence in my frying ability, even if the potatoes let me down. Had I had russets, I would have had excellent fries, and the basket would have made them very easy to handle.

I think I should buy a Dutch oven and invest in some russet potatoes. I don’t actually need a Dutch oven for potatoes, but it will be useful for other things, and I don’t expect Le Creuset to keep the sale going forever.

Not too much is going on, apart from the above. Still waiting for the side effects from my Johnson & Johnson vaccine. I almost had a headache last night, and I felt sleepy, but then I had eaten a big bowl of garlic rolls, so what was I supposed to expect? I feel a little sleepy right now, but I just ate too many fries.

Great things are happening in my relationship with God, but I can’t talk about them here. I am willing to say I am being much more critical of (i.e. “realistic about”) about myself these days, and I am really trying to dedicate myself to God and get his blessings, starting with transformation, to flow. I still think the apocalypse is about to dawn. This is no time to be lukewarm or proud, and I have been both.

Nuptial Decisions Prove to be Above my Pay Grade

Day 26 of my online courtship has gone well. I made some excellent homemade bread. That’s unrelated to the courtship. It’s just one reason why the day has gone well.

INGREDIENTS

520 g bread flour
1.5 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. bread machine yeast
3 tbsp. sugar
4 tbsp. butter
310 g warm water

Throw the dry stuff in your food processor and blend until mixed. Add the water and blend until you get a coherent ball. After 10 minutes, blend the butter in. Add some salt to melted butter and grease a bread pan. Shape the dough into a loaf. Put the loaf in a pan and butter it. Allow to rise until it looks like a loaf should. Bake at 450 until the internal temperature hits about 195.

I also had a very good time interceding via video chat with my Zambian sweetheart. I have learned that intercession carries an unexpected benefit. You really need to tell people after you intercede, so they can agree with you and look for God’s answer. Because of this, intercession keeps you in touch with people.

We prayed for our relationship, and while I was speaking, I made a misstep. She suggested I pray for our children, and I was kind of stuck. It seems highly presumptuous for me to pray for our children as though they were definitely coming, because it’s like I’m assuming she will say yes if I propose. Also, I think a man is supposed to try to protect a woman from hasty decisions. Or at least he should pretend to.

Anyway, she was not all that happy with the disclaimers I inserted in my prayers, so I had to smooth all that over. She thought I sounded like I didn’t want to marry her or have children when, in fact, I was simply trying not to be an idiot.

Four weeks ago, I was completely prepared to get old and die with my tools and my smoker. Now I find myself plunged into a courtship process I know almost nothing about, so it’s not a huge surprise if there are occasional bumps in the road.

My feeling was that you shouldn’t play around with a woman by talking about marriage as though it were a done deal, prior to handing over the ring or at least proposing. Evidently, I was totally wrong about this, as men often are about nearly everything. Evidently the best course is to talk as though the church were already rented.

I don’t know how this works. It’s all trial and error.

I have written about my friends Diamond and Silk; two young Haitian ladies I got to know back when I was attending Trinity Church. I had a long conversation with Diamond today, and she provided a lot of helpful information concerning decisions she had made. A) I am, in fact, going to marry Rebecca. B) Diamond and Silk will be bridesmaids. C) They will wear pink dresses. D) Diamond’s daughter Carat will be the flower girl, at the age of three.

Thank goodness I don’t have to make any of those tough decisions. I’m not qualified.

I told Diamond to let me know the date of the ceremony so I could arrange to be there. Until then, all I have to do is hand over a grocery bag full of cash.

In case people still think I’m kidding about buying my wife, I will provide a link to Wikipedia’s article on the subject: LINK.

Here’s the annoying thing about the article: there is nothing in it about consumer protection. In the US, under the Uniform Commercial Code, goods sold typically carry an implied warranty of fitness for their purpose. It looks like I’m not getting one of those. What if Rebecca fails to serve her purpose? I don’t even get a partial refund.

I don’t get free repairs, either. She already had to have a cavity fixed. Shouldn’t I be able to bill that to the family?

Seems to me that Africa is behind the times. Here in America, every tool at Harbor Freight can be returned up to 90 days after purchase, but if my wife suffers some kind of mechanical failure, I will be left holding the bag. My understanding is that the price I pay for her will be consumed in riotous living in a matter of days, so even if the family wanted to compensate me, they would have nothing to offer except maybe some celebratory selfies.

I guess I’ll just have to bear the risk. Unless there is a Zambian firm that offers aftermarket wife warranties.

This is where it stands right now. It’s a touching story. Part true love. Part human trafficking.

I can’t wait to get her over here. I want to secure her within our borders before the next wave of coronavirus insanity reduces us all to traveling on foot.

I’ll be back with updates as Diamond provides them.

Dubai??

Today, having finished exploring the topic of whether I would have to use cattle to pay for my African bride, I did more travel research and tentatively concluded we would have to have our first date in Dubai.

As I told a friend earlier, I don’t know why I haven’t been offered a reality show.

Oh, wait. There is one reason. I believe in God and traditional morals. I don’t think the History Channel’s guilty, virtue-displaying white executives would want to give a show to a guy who says Sports Illustrated is wrong for trying to make normal (i.e. heterosexual) men lust after other men in women’s swimsuits.

I thought we could meet in Israel, but Israel is out of the office at the moment. I thought Sweden would work, because the Swedes didn’t lose their grip on reality when covid hit, but I am now seeing signs that Sweden is closed, too. The various websites contradict each other.

Dubai is not my idea of a great tourist destination. My understanding is that there are hot deserts there, rimmed by artificial land created via dredging, and that all you get to see there are skyscrapers, restaurants, and beaches. And my Zambian lady can’t swim.

It occurred to me today that it’s like Vegas without casinos.

Still, it should be interesting and very comfortable, and it’s not expensive. The food and hotels are supposed to be very good. She says KFC is much better in Dubai than Zambia. Zambians go there and then hit social media to talk about how good KFC is.

She says I can go to Zambia. They have a 14-day quarantine, but she says it’s not enforced. The reason? Zambia.

I still can’t believe Sports Illustrated is doing that. They’re trying to convince millions of men (actually, with current circulation figures, hundreds) that homosexuality is normal because some of them become aroused by photographs of men who have been surgically altered and Photoshopped to look like women. Sorry, leftists. It does not work that way. If a man is only attracted to other men when they look nearly exactly like women, he’s not a homosexual, and that becomes obvious when he finds out the truth and loses his lunch.

If you want to prove it’s normal for men to lust after other men in bathing suits, put Lebron James in the swimsuit issue. See how that goes.

The guys who see no problem with drag models, and who lecture the rest of us, are simply men who don’t realize they’re gay. If you know your partner is a man, and you can see the signs, and you’re fine with it, you’re a homosexual. Don’t tell the rest of us what we want.

My passport application is filed. No idea how long that will take. I have read that I can have Washington speed it up once I have tickets.

My lady has bar exams coming up, and she needs to buckle down in May in order to do well. That means if we miss an April launch window, we’re in trouble. If God wants us to get together, it will happen. I hope he does, because video chat is a very poor substitute for meeting in person.

I am not optimistic about the world’s immediate future, so I wonder if we should be waiting around. If travel becomes impossible after our date, how will we seal the deal? I think the apocalypse is starting, and if it is, then we will see more plagues, including plagues of war and lack, not just disease. Travel could become a real problem.

It’s not my job to fight the battles directly, though, so I won’t worry. I will maintain a good prayer life and expect help from above.

We still pray together every day, for a long time. We’re doing intercession, not just praying for ourselves. A friend of mine thinks spirits are infecting his house, so we are fighting for him. I’m sure he’s right. It’s tremendous, having a powerful partner to work with.

I made Miss Zambia’s picture my phone’s wallpaper. It keeps startling me. I’m used to seeing a photo of a horse, but now it’s an unusually beautiful woman, and I actually know her. I didn’t download a picture of Tyra Banks. Who would not look quite as good, to be honest.

I don’t know how things could get any stranger, but 2020 taught me not to rule anything out.