Jim Beam and Corn Starch Trial #1

Our nation is hurtling downward toward chaos, BLM is trying to kill cops in Philadelphia, Christians are predicting a 2020 rapture, and what am I doing? I’m smoking ribs.

I’ve been eating cheeseburgers for lunch. There is nothing wrong with that, but I don’t want to eat a big cheeseburger every day from now on. When I got my new smoker, one of my hopes was that I would be able to increase my protein and fat consumption in style, while–I told myself–reducing refined carbs. Ribs and many other smoked meats aren’t served with buns.

I’m going to try to smoke once a week. That will cover me for three dinners.

Yesterday, I went to Walmart to buy motor oil. You should know about Walmart’s oil prices. Advance Auto Parts had a sale on oil, and it would have cost me about $40 to do one change, with a dubious filter included. I bought 6 quarts of synthetic oil at Walmart yesterday for about $16, and I bought a Fram Titanium filter at Advance. My total cost will be around $28. Not bad.

Anyway, Walmart’s price for St. Louis ribs was pretty good, so I picked some up. They’re smoking right now.

I wanted to marinate them, but I don’t like wasting marinade. I like to use liquor, so a pint costs a lot. Today I tried a new strategy.

Ribs come in shrink wrap. I have giant cattle hypodermics. I made a mixture of Jim Beam, sugar, and salt, and I shot it into the rib package through a tiny hole. I tried to cover the hole with tape, but it wouldn’t stick. I should have tried a waterproof bandage. Anyhow, it was not a problem. The plastic confined the marinade close to the ribs, and none spilled. I was able to rotate the package and distribute the marinade, and I put the package on the counter, meat side down, for half an hour.

It worked really well.

I used around half a cup of liquor. I can’t think of a better use for it. I wish it wasn’t a brand promoted by Mila Kunis, a well-known proponent of the murder of unborn babies, but it will do the job.

Last year, Jim Beam (part of a Japanese company) suffered a huge warehouse fire and lost 45,000 barrels of liquor. They told the press the lost whiskey was “young.” Eerie.

Smoking meat with a rub is not hard at all. I make my rub, put the meat on a towel, apply the rub, put the meat in the smoker, shake the towel out in the yard, and put the towel in the laundry. No mess to speak of.

As for my carb intentions, things are not going as well. The other day, I was starving after a long fabricating session, and I decided to throw some old stuff together and make macaroni and cheese. I got to thinking about it, and I wondered if putting flour in the sauce was a good idea. Flour doesn’t convert completely into a gel. Even in gravy or a roux, it’s slightly gritty. It occurred to me that starch might work better.

I Googled around, and sure enough, people do use starch. I’m going to try it today. I’m also going to use a block of cheese instead of shredded, because shredded cheese has tiny cellulose fibers in it.

The trick to making ribs part of a healthy diet is to stop thinking of them as special-occasion food. Ordinarily, when I eat ribs, it’s a big deal, so I want Texas toast, beans, mac and cheese, and dessert. The key is to think of ribs as just another protein.

Clearly, I have not met that goal yet.

The Smokin-It smoker is a joy to use. Highly recommended.

Project Revived by Dose of Plasma

I got myself some more metal today, and I went back to work on the welding cart project.

This project should take a day, plus time for paint to dry. I had problems locating bolts, however, and then I decided to make the job harder than it had to be. I could have made a very simple top bracket for the bottles, but I’m making a fairly nice one that will hold TIG wire.

I had to make a plate with round recesses for the tanks. I didn’t HAVE to; I could have put something simple together from flat bar, or I could have made square or V-shaped recesses. But I wanted round recesses. That meant cutting steel.

I decided to use plasma. That meant I would need something to guide the torch. I thought a lot, and then I remembered I had several large cans of pizza sauce. They’re just the right size. If you press a torch against one and go around it, you get a cut just right for a 7″ bottle.

I won’t go into the complicated workholding solution needed to make this work, but I found a way to fasten the metal down, and I made the cuts. I left a little steel uncut to hold the plate together. Then I cut out the unnecessary steel and used the flap wheel to clean everything up.

Here is the result.

Should be perfect. I just need to weld brackets to it to attach it to the cart. I also have to drill the TIG-wire holds.

It should take half an hour to weld brackets on it, and if I don’t blow it, cutting the holes should be another 15 minutes. Then I have to add chain attachments and paint.

It’s basically done. Not hard at all.

Some carts like this have widened wheelbases under the bottles. I don’t see a need for that. You could knock it over with a car if you tried, but then you could also do that if it were 6″ wider. Short of a vehicle collision, nothing is going to topple it.

If I decide I’m wrong, adding a little steel and moving casters will be easy.

I can’t wait to get finished. The more I work on this thing, the more I realize I need it. There is clutter all over my welding table. I can barely see it. Most of that junk would be inside the tool chest if it were operational.

As soon as this thing comes together, I plan to fill it up and move one empty cart outdoors. Then I plan to get another tool chest and do the job over again, for my other MIG and my plasma cutter. Then I can sweep about 50 pounds of chips, steel filings, and grit off the workshop floor.

After that, I may actually buy a real welding table.

I’m in a frustrating position. The shop is a mess because I’m doing a project, but the finished project is needed to conquer the mess.

The pizza sauce can was not harmed. Thank God for that. That stuff is gold.

I Have a Panic HOUSE

Today I am having my roof fixed. I’m paying $1000 for something I could probably do myself, but I am not interested in rolling off the roof and becoming a permanent yard ornament. I’m also not excited about having my ceiling fall because I didn’t know how to do roofing correctly.

I wanted to put blinds in my former dining room before the roofers showed up. Why? Because it’s a workshop/gun room now. I have a lot of ammunition in that room, and anyone looking into a window would know what it was. These days, ammunition is like gold. You can buy it, but if it’s a popular caliber, you’re likely to shell out three times what it cost last year.

Roofing companies are a top resource for released prison inmates. If you can’t get a job anywhere else, a roofer will probably take a chance on you. Good information to have, if you’re a homeowner or, perhaps more importantly, a homeowner’s wife or daughter. The thought of an electrician or plumber seeing my stuff doesn’t concern me all that much. Roofers are different.

Sadly, I signed a contract before buying blinds, and I didn’t think I had time to get them installed before the roofers showed up, so I didn’t do anything.

Today the roofers showed up without warning, so moving my ammunition out of sight, one container at a time, was not an option. Someone was looking out for me, however, because I had my ammunition loaded on a wheeled shelf unit. I rolled it into a hallway, and I was all set.

I should have bought these shelves a lot sooner. I cheaped out at first. I bought plastic shelves from Home Depot. I wrote about this a couple of days ago. They run $40 each, and when you overload them, they bend. Mine bent. The shelves I have now are fancy chromed Seville Classics jobs from Amazon. I have two units. One is mostly dedicated to ammunition. The other is for reloading components and other items. I have hundreds of pounds on the first one, and it’s not sagging at all. Wish I could say the same of myself.

I moved one of my plastic shelves to the laundry room, where it has become my paranoia storage area.

I went to Walmart yesterday for dishwashing powder and salt, and I bought a big, heavy bag of jasmine rice. I also picked up 4 pounds of great northern beans, canned salmon, two large jars of Skippy, and 6 pounds of pasta. This is a lot of food. One person could probably go a month on it. I also have 6 gallon cans of Stanislaus pizza sauce.

You would think a long-term food supply would take up a lot of room and cost a lot of money, but you would be wrong. My shelf unit is maybe 25% full. My total bill at Walmart was around $80, and I bought a lot of things unrelated to preparation.

I plan to add more rice and maybe some different beans. I have 48 cans of tuna on the way. I want to dry apples. When you’re from Appalachia, not having dried apples is uncivilized. Ordinarily, drying apples is a pain because of bugs, but I have a screened-in pool, so no flies.

I checked into generators. Not a great option, unfortunately. I would have to spend close to $20,000 to get a whole-house rig that would cost me $5 per hour to run. That’s about $3600 per month for electricity, assuming diesel would even be available, and the price would go way up in a crisis. Unless you have your own natural gas well or hydroelectric plant, I think you can pretty well expect to do without power in a hard core prepper scenario. Maybe you can run your laptop off solar panels.

I wonder if people are buying manual pumps for their wells.

There is zero fresh water near me, unless you count swampy ponds.

I suppose I’ll have to hope we still have power during the civil war.

The Internet says my power company uses a mix of coal, uranium, “biomass,” and natural gas. What is “biomass”? Chicken manure, maybe? Is there anything chicken manure can’t do?

Let’s see. Coal comes from the South, so that may still be available after the North turns on us. Natural gas comes from the South. I would guess that biomass comes from the South. Would we still have nuclear power? The plants are in-state, but would we be able to get uranium? Maybe the Chinese would sell it to us on Alibaba or Banggood.

There is a lot of oil in Jesus-friendly areas, and there are also many refineries. That’s good.

If you would like to dry your own apples, I have the ultimate tip. Spend $25 on an apple peeler. They really work. You can core, peel, and slice an apple in 5 seconds. I should go get apples today. You can dry them by setting them on a window screen.

I don’t like factory dried apples, because they put a chemical on them to keep them white. It kills the flavor. To get the real flavor of dried apples, you need to avoid that stuff. Real dried apples taste like apple butter. Factory apples taste like air.

The future is uncertain. Are we looking at a few weeks of pro-Biden terrorist riots followed by a crackdown and resumed calm, will we have a full-blown civil war complete with drawn borders, or will we simply move into an Israel-type situation in which terrorism is a normal part of daily life? Actually, we’re already in that situation, except that the acts of terrorism committed here haven’t been as serious as the ones Israelis face.

A full-blown civil war with new borders would be a catastrophe, because leftists would freeze or simply steal the bank and security accounts of conservatives and centrists, and they would also cut off our access to phones, the Internet, and credit. Leftists would probably be massacred routinely due to their inferior capacity for violence. They’re pretty good at throwing bottles of pee, but they would do poorly while trying to familiarize themselves with firearms, camouflage, tactics, and so on. Jesus people have been shooting, hunting, and serving in the military for centuries.

My hat is off to people who think they can do well after a total breakdown of society. It would be very hard to prepare sufficiently well to guarantee that. I figure it’s realistic to prepare for a bad month or two, tops, and I see no hope of providing my own electricity over long periods. I will have to bank on a future in which companies in my area adapt and continue producing power.

Should I cut some firewood? Arrgh. Anything but that.

In my area, I would probably need wood for maybe 45 days. That’s a lot of wood. To prepare it, I would need to create huge snake-infested piles which would eventually attract termites and rot.

I have a lot of downed wood already. Maybe I should just wait and see what happens. I can cut it into firewood if I have to. I was going to burn it, but maybe it has value.

In any case, there is no possibility my ammunition will get the roofers excited today.

Trump Milkshake: Existential Threat to Mankind

Two huge stories are in the news today. It’s hard to decide which one to write about.

For a long time, I felt God was telling me to avoid looking at the news. That was pleasant. Now I feel he is telling me I have to look at it. What’s the difference? I believe the difference is in me. It used to be harder for me to look at the news without being provoked or discouraged. Now, with better supernatural tools, I am more stable, so the news is not as dangerous to me.

“Dangerous”? I must be a Bible-thumping climate-change-denying mask hater! How can information be dangerous? Actually, it can. The informative value can be exceeded by the damage it does to your heart. This is one reason why God tells us to be separated from the world. Merely witnessing what happens around us can tempt us in ways that can be destructive. You have to limit your exposure to the cursed, God-rejecting world in order to avoid being overwhelmed.

Here are the big stories: President Trump has proven his unfitness for his job by ordering a milkshake, and Pat Robertson has “prophesied” regarding the near future of America.

I know it’s hard to believe that a grown man with responsibilities would order a milkshake, but Trump did it. He was in a security briefing, and he called a waiter into the room and offered everyone a malt. We can’t say for sure, but there is no proof he didn’t tell the waiter to hold the nuclear button while he tweeted. There is no proof it didn’t happen, so we can assume it did. When will this man be stopped?

“Journalists” are enraged. They are offended, so they must be right. The theory is that our elected and appointed officials would continue spewing dangerous information while a waiter was in the room, because, well, THERE IS NO PROOF THEY DIDN’T. There is also no proof they or the waiter renounced white supremacy.

I guess I’m a feckless optimist, but I can’t help thinking top officials would stop blurting out sensitive intelligence while ordering milkshakes from a person with a low security clearance.

If hackers take out our missile silos as a result of Trump’s milkshake gaffe, it will just be more proof Trump isn’t groovy. Bush II wasn’t groovy, and now we have another non-groovy chief executive, and I just can’t stand it one more second.

I should rejoin Tiktok just so I can get in the car and do a meltdown video.

As for Pat Robertson, he says he “thinks” Trump will be reelected. Prophets don’t “think” things will happen. God tells them things will happen. God will never tell you he “thinks” this or that, because God knows. There are no opinions in heaven. There are only facts no one there questions.

Anyway, Robertson says there will be post-election bloodshed followed by a 5-year period of peace in which people will serve God and pray together and so on. He says God will resolve people’s disputes. Then there will be a big war, and I believe he said the second coming would come after that.

Can’t buy it. It doesn’t seem to line up with the Bible or the dreams and impressions charismatics have been having this year. I have not seen a reference to a 5-year Messianic age in which the world gets straightened out. The Bible says there will be a millennium of peace, not 5 years. I don’t know where Robertson got his timeline.

I keep saying I have a very strong impression that the rapture will be this year. I don’t call it a prophecy. I haven’t found any ways in which the impression conflicts with the Bible, and it makes sense in too many ways to list. But I make mistakes, and God didn’t hand me a scroll with a detailed prediction on it.

I “think” I’m right. I’m just about sure Robertson is wrong.

He claims to receive information from God about people’s problems, and viewers have called in and said they’ve been healed while watching him. They idea is that God told Robertson these things but did not attach names to them, and when Robertson says “someone” has this or that problem, people who are watching realize he’s talking about them. There is considerable evidence that this actually happens, and I don’t get supernatural information about strangers’ medical issues, so who is more likely to be right about the future?

Just putting it out there.

I’ve decided to buy a little food. You never know. I ordered 48 cans of tuna at a great price, and I’m going to load up on dried beans and rice. I plan to lay in some canned salmon. Canned fish lasts forever, and beans and rice are good for at least a couple of years. Maybe I should get a big jar of compensational multivitamins, too. For maybe $150, I can set myself up with food for several months. I’m not very excited about it. I don’t want to be here to eat it! I heard someone is throwing a big party in heaven, and the food there should be a lot better.

I should dehydrate apples. Imagine life on beans and rice without anything to help push them through the colon. Apples could save my life.

My ammunition situation is good. Example: a couple of days ago I found 1000 rounds of 9mm bullets I had forgotten I had. I need to put them in cartridges.

I bought lead semiwadcutters and started loading them, but I found the overall lengths were not consistent. People said it might be that compressed air in the cases was pushing the bullets back up. The recommended answer: coated bullets. I bought more semiwadcutters coated with plastic. I don’t recall how plastic solves the problem, but I’ll try it. I believe the coated bullets have less grease on them. The uncoated ones left lube all over my dies, to the point where I was afraid it interfered with reloading.

I have no desire to be part of the upcoming civil war, but I like to shoot, and I don’t want to be deprived. And maybe someone who is part of the war will need my ammo.

I want to be ready for whatever happens. These days, I battle demons, literally. I evict them from my presence several times a week. I tell them I will not host them. It’s a very strange thing. After going after a few spirits–let’s say murder, the spirit of antichrist, and laziness–I’ll start to fall asleep. It happens over and over. I think this is because hostile spirits speak into your mind all the time. When you drive them out, you get some quiet.

It’s a very real thing. Everyone has demons. Jesus had Satan himself and had to drive him off more than once. It’s strange that Christians think they can’t have demons, but Jesus could have Satan. Are we better than Jesus?

I now pray for God to bring the rapture ASAP. The more I think about it, the more I realize humanity has had ample chances. The Bible says stripes are for the fool’s back. Some people can’t take gentle hints. Maybe the tribulation will bring a bigger harvest than the rapture. Maybe billions of scoffers will yield once they’ve suffered enough. God has been kind, and things have gotten worse, so maybe it’s time to put away the carrot and bring out the stick.

The thought of being in the lifeboat and encouraging the captain to paddle away from people floating in the water is a little scary, but look at what the world has become.

I don’t want to be here when I can be fined or jailed for refusing to call a man a woman. I don’t want to live to see wealth taxes and “reparations”-based land confiscations. I don’t want to see Christian and Jewish families massacred and raped. I’m very content with the evil I’ve already seen. It will suffice.

When the Tiktok car-meltdown people are in charge, it’s time to be somewhere else. Ask a Cuban or a white South African.

Today I plan to work on my new welding cart. I have to do something while the world burns, and I can’t play the fiddle.

Pork, Guns, and God

I barely survived the weekend.

Two friends of mine drove up on Saturday morning, and they left yesterday. I’ll call them Diamond and Silk. They’re sisters. Diamond is a nurse, and Silk is a newly-minted prosecutor for a Florida county. They’re Haitian. I met them when I was going to Trinity Church in Miami.

We made a deal. I would fix ribs, and they would do all the cleaning up.

I bought two racks of spare ribs, which were twice what we needed. I found a Youtube video on turning spare ribs into St. Louis ribs, and I followed the directions.

Spare ribs have little ribby bits on one side, and the other side is a large piece of boneless meat. When you cut that piece off, you get a piece of meat you can smoke, along with a rack of ribs that are somewhat like baby backs, only fattier and more delicious.

I didn’t really know what was inside spare ribs. I never bothered to figure out where the bones stopped. I was afraid I would need a saw to make St. Louis ribs. Not so. You just cut where the ribs join the cartilage which connects to the sternum. I’ll post a very helpful video.

I think this is a great move. It gives you small ribs that are easy to handle, plus a large piece of meat which is good in its own right.

I smoked the ribs with 2.5 ounces of hickory and my own rub, after hosing them down with Jim Beam. They were spectacular. It should have been illegal to put sauce on them. But we did.

I also made Texas toast. I made a loaf of sweet white bread with butter and sugar in the dough, and then I dipped slices in strained garlic butter (no garlic pieces) and browned them in a skillet. Unbelievable.

I also prepared a blueberry cheesecake. I’m glad I don’t have any of it left, because this stuff is just too good to not eat.

We also had corn on the cob and barbecue beans with smoked sausage bits.

I think I can safely say that no one in Florida ate better than we did this weekend.

We talked a lot about the rapture and the tribulation. Diamond is taking it seriously. She has bags of rice and beans. She had a dream about moving to Tennessee, even though it’s not what you would call her natural habitat. Silk is not all that aware, so she is still a Democrat. She’s baptized with the Holy Spirit, though, and I have confidence she’ll come around if she speaks in tongues as much as she should. Nothing turns people conservative like prayer in tongues.

We got to shoot a little. I have two arrays of steel targets, welded together by yours truly. Diamond has a Ruger EC9, which is a plastic compact 9mm, and Silk has a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard in .380. Unfortunately, they are not integrated tightly into the 2A cult, so they were not ready for the ammo shortage. Diamond had one 50-round bag of ammo, and Silk had nothing.

Luckily for them, they know a guy who was watching the wind. I have .22 ammo to burn, so I used some of it to teach them to shoot. We used an SW22 and a Colt Woodsman. At first, they were shooting all over the place, but by the end of the day, they were hitting the steel most of the time at 7 yards. I also let them shoot my bright stainless Colt 1911 in .38 Super.

Now maybe there is a chance they’ll be able to defend themselves instead of pulling a Pulp Fiction scene and filling walls with wasted lead.

Watching over Diamond and Silk is like looking after 6 hyperactive kids in a mall, so I was pretty worn out when they left.

Today, I got back to my routine.

I had ordered 5 pounds of smokeless powder, and Fedex failed to show up when they promised. To take delivery, I had to sign in person, so I had to either sit at the house and wait or go to the Fedex hub and pick up the package. I was afraid they would send the powder back, and in these times, you can’t afford to lose any powder. Today I went to the hub and picked up the box.

I also went to get my new .22 pistol. It’s a Browning Challenger I, made in Belgium. I think I already wrote about it. I found it on Gunbroker. It looked very good, an excellent specimen is worth $700, and no one was making reasonable bids. All told, including a transfer fee and shipping, I paid about $477.

This is a marvelous pistol. The trigger is magnificent, the bluing is in very good shape, and it shoots beautifully. A real addition to my collection.

I thought it was in near-mint condition from the pictures, but that isn’t true. I can see it has been fired a lot, and the bluing on the forward side of the grip has thin places where two fingers rested on it, but still…$477.

I hope nothing goes wrong with it, because Browning is not good about supporting the model. They aren’t working very hard to make parts for middle-aged pistols.

Yesterday, once I was alone, I assembled some new shelves for the gun room. When I moved my stuff in there, I bought two $40 plastic shelf units from Home Depot and loaded them up. Sadly, they were not up to the weight of ammunition and reloading components. They bowed. I ended up with boxes all over the floor, because I had nowhere to put them. I broke down and ordered two Seville Classics (really Shanghai Classics) rolling steel units. I got them for $150 each. For some reason, the price fluctuates during the day, and I caught them on a dip. They were $168 when I first put them in my cart.

These shelves can hold 4000 pounds if you put feet on them. If you use wheels, the capacity drops to 500 pounds. I guess the spindles on the wheels bend. Anyway, it’s pretty obvious the shelves are not the weak points, so it’s okay to put a great deal of weight on a couple of shelves per unit, as long as you don’t overload the remaining shelves. I filled the lower shelves with ammo and brass. Then I put other junk on the other shelves. No problems. They roll around just find, and nothing is bent.

I was able to keep one Home Depot unit for light objects, so now I have a lot of storage, and I can see the floor. I can actually find things now.

I’m going to get back to work on my tool chest welding cart conversion. I should go ahead and buy a second tool chest.

The year 2020 keeps getting better. I hope it’s a trend that continues through the rapture.

I Love to Work at Nothing all Day

I’ve had a somewhat arduous couple of days. I bought another gun, and there were problems. On top of that, my car’s air conditioning went out, and I became obsessed with fixing it. Finally, I have two guests coming for the weekend, so I’ve been cooking and trying to make the house presentable.

Why did I buy another gun? Because I could, mainly. Also, I had no deer rifle. I had a couple of Eastern-bloc guns that could be used for deer, and I also had an LR-308, a PSL, a Saiga-12, a Ruger Precision Rifle, and a K31. I didn’t have anything a normal human being would use.

Well. I did have a 16-gauge FUDD shotgun, but that’s an unusual choice.

I went with 6.5 Creedmoor. In my opinion, it’s the new .30-06. If someone tells you to get in the truck and go hunting in North America, and all you know is that the prey is over 50 pounds, the 6.5 Creedmoor will kill it. The .30-06 and its short-action copy, the .308, are pretty much obsolete because the 6.5 Creedmoor does everything they do, better. The 6.5 is very, very popular, and the simple reason is that it made a number of older calibers unnecessary. It’s a great hunting round, and because it’s popular, there are a ton of different factory loads for it. If you don’t like factory loads, there is a world of load data available. It’s the Glock of rifle calibers. It’s common, and it works well.

I decided to splurge this time. I love Savages because they’re very accurate and not expensive, but this time I moved a few links up the food chain and bought a Tikka T3x Superlite. Tikka is a Finnish company, and they do very good work. I believe Tikka is really Sako now, and it’s also Beretta. I’m not sure. Gun companies gobble each other up like crazy; Remington/Marlin is now Ruger, for example, and Thompson/Center is Smith & Wesson. Anyway, the name still exists, and they still make the guns in Finland, so the quality has been maintained. So I’m told.

The Superlite is a real hunter’s gun. It’s very light, as you might deduce from the name. The whole thing weighs 6 pounds. It has a fluted stainless barrel and a fancy plastic stock covered with a camo pattern. It only holds three rounds in the box, so it will be one of the last guns President Harris confiscates, assuming people follow through on their insane threats to vote for Biden.

It still amazes me that people take him seriously. It’s not surprising that he became Vice President, because that’s a position typically occupied by certified cretins, but putting him in the Oval Office and actually letting him sit behind the desk is about like putting an unelected third-rate lawyer in charge of a nation’s healthcare simply because her husband won the presidency.

When I was a kid, sometimes my dad would let me sit on his lap and steer the car, but he never got out and told me to go pick up some bread.

I ordered the Superlite from Bass Pro’s website. I had been looking for a Superlite in a color I could stand, and when I saw it at Bass Pro, I couldn’t resist. The picture on the site showed a nice right-handed bolt gun. When I ordered it, I got an email that showed the same picture. When I looked my order up on the site later…same picture.

You can see where this is going.

I went to pick the gun up, and the girl at the counter asked if she should insert the bolt for me while I was inspecting it, and I told her not to bother. Then I got home, inserted the bolt, and noticed it was on the wrong side of the gun.

I had a $1000 non-returnable left-handed rifle.

I called the local Bass Pro immediately, and they told me not to fire it. They said to wait, and they would call me back. I also called the website’s number, and I got an Indian guy with no authority. All he could do was repeat their no-return policy.

At least I think that’s what he was repeating.

I said I knew there was someone there who could make a return happen, and I asked to talk to that person. That person was not even a little helpful. She refused to even discuss a return, and she said I might get somewhere talking to the local people.

Gun shops do not like to take guns back. The rationale is that once a gun goes through a background check, it’s used. Do you buy that? I don’t work at a gun store, but it’s hard for me to believe the government has people who go around to places like Dick’s and Cabela’s, checking serial numbers to see if they’re selling NICS-processed guns as new. I don’t believe that happens. I think gun stores are just worried about idiots who shoot 100 rounds, get buyer’s remorse, and try to bring back dirty guns.

Change my mind.

I’ve probably returned 25 new items in their original packaging to retailers over the last year, and never once did anyone tell me they would have to be sold as used goods. Not until yesterday, when it really mattered.

Anyway, the local people called back, and they said they would be more than happy to take a return. And they had the right-handed version of the gun at the store, for $50 less. They tried to do the second background check without charging me, but the system would not let them. They accidentally refunded me over $9 for something I hadn’t paid for, and when they caught it, they told me not to worry about it.

God bless them. I think I could actually have made a profit reselling the gun on Gunbroker, but I might also have taken a $300 loss, and I did not want the hassle.

I made 4 45-mile trips between my house and Bass Pro, and I had to wait for two background checks in one day. That killed Thursday for me.

Next time I buy a new gun, I will examine it like an MSNBC grunt trying to find racism in a video of Trump eating a bologna sandwich.

Have I actually hunted for deer? Well, no. But I am determined to get around to it.

On the third trip, I noticed the car’s air conditioning was blowing warm. Great. I also had a problem with the car overheating at low speeds. I believe this is because the water bottle I jammed between the idiotic louvers on the radiator has flattened out.

Many cars now have shutters on their radiators. They make cars slightly more aerodynamic at high speed, and this gets you…get this…a 1% increase in gas mileage. Look it up. These shutters break down all the time, and replacing them is a giant job. Mine failed, and when I realized how worthless they were, I decided the best thing was to prop them open. I plan to put a screw in the frame to keep them open permanently. There is no down side to keeping them open, apart from that gigantic mileage decrease.

This is where leftism, which is behind the radiator shutters, gets us. It gives you a $300 part that saves you $5 per year for three years and then fails.

Wonder where the energy to make the part and ship it comes from. Fairy flatulence, I guess.

I’ve learned a great deal about air conditioning since last night. First of all, my car’s compressor isn’t turning on. The electromagnetic clutch won’t engage., There are a bunch of possible reasons. There is a fuse. There is a relay that turns the compressor on. If the system is low on refrigerant, it refuses to engage the clutch. There is a refrigerant pressure switch, and if it goes bad, the system thinks the gas has leaked out, and the compressor doesn’t turn.

Today I spent a great deal of time fooling with the car. I replaced the relay with a horn relay that was next to it. No joy. I checked the fuse. It was fine. I bypassed the relay, and the compressor turned, causing the air to blow cold. I tried to shoot some refrigerant into the system, because I figured that would tell me whether lack of refrigerant was the problem. It didn’t help.

I’m down to two likely possibilities. Either I failed to get enough refrigerant into it to make it catch, or the pressure switch is bad. In any case, the only way I can get cold air is to jam a paper clip into two holes the relay used to fill. That won’t get it done.

I forced myself to give up on the car. I had to clean up the house. I’m way behind. I also had to make a cheesecake for my guests. Right now, I’m writing to kill time while it bakes (instead of doing more cleaning).

Tomorrow, I’m going to make smoked spare ribs, barbecue beans, Texas toast, corn on the cob, and macaroni and cheese. And yes, I plan to make my guests clean up the kitchen. Because I expect to be recovering on the floor.

I should have bought smoked sausage to go in the beans. Didn’t occur to me. I bought bacon instead. Still, it should be one of the best meals served in the state tomorrow, barring a mishap.

The cheesecake is now cooling. You are dismissed.

Giving Atrocious Beer a Purpose

I used to smoke chickens occasionally, and they were delicious. Now I have a new smoker, and I can’t recall my old tricks. I’m trying to get back on top of my game.

Today I got me a chicken, and I use a cattle needle to shoot it full of Jim Beam, brown sugar, salt, Sweet Baby Ray’s, and garlic. Then I applied bacon grease. Then I put my rib rub on it. I bought one of those little chicken chairs to hold it up.

The bird is smoking at around 235°, and I put a can of Busch in there with it to add flavor.

Hoping for the best.

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I took the chicken out when the internal thermometer read 165. It looks like 165 won’t get it done. The meat was done, but it wasn’t really tender. At least not all the way to the bone. I had to use a knife to separate a wing and thigh.

It was very juicy, and the flavor was good, but next time, I need to use more salt and make sure I inject a lot of stuff into the bird.

This recipe will work just fine. Just a matter of fine-tuning.

Ribs Don’t Barbecue Themselves

I’m back on the barbecue warpath.

I fixed myself a bunch of leg quarters day before yesterday, and the main thing I learned was that I had forgotten how to smoke chicken. The skin drew up and hardened so the meat was exposed, and the meat wasn’t as juicy as it should have been. I started thinking about my old practices. One thing I remembered was that I didn’t use a rub for chicken. I used an injector.

I dug out my remaining horse syringe. I don’t know where the needles went, so I ordered a bunch of 1-1/2″ 14-gauge needles on the web. I also ordered a few more 60ml hypos. The vendors must think Keith Richards is stocking up.

I plan to do chicken again in two days. By then, I should be able to do it right. I think I’ll try leg quarters again. I’ll grease them so the skin doesn’t dry up. Bacon grease sounds right; it has worked in the past. I’ll shoot them full of a preparation containing diluted BBQ sauce, salt, garlic juice, hot sauce, and Jim Beam.

I’m going to get a new chicken chair. That’s what I call the little supports they make for beer butt chicken. They hold a chicken upright for smoking. I don’t think I’ll put a beer can inside the chicken. It slows cooking. When I smoke whole chickens, I’ll probably put trays of cheap beer under them instead.

I don’t use good beer for smoking. Cheap beer works much better. It’s disgusting to drink, but the green apple flavor of low-grade beer yeast is perfect for smoking.

Today I made a big error. I bought St. Louis-style ribs. These are made by cutting the big ends off spare ribs, I assume. I paid $4 per pound. I could have bought spare ribs for $2.49, cut the big ends off, and smoked St. Louis-style ribs as well as the big trimmed-off part, and I’ll bet it would have cost about what I’m paying for the little ribs by themselves.

I love whole spare ribs, but little ribs are handier and a little less trouble to eat.

I needed bourbon for flavoring chicken, so I went into the liquor store while I was at Winn-Dixie. I have always used Jack Daniel’s in the past. I consider it an inferior bourbon because it’s not smooth at all, but it has a ton of flavor, and it seems to me that the strong flavor is an advantage for barbecue. Today, though I decided to try Jim Beam. It was two dollars cheaper, and for all I knew, it was better.

I put it on the ribs. I applied it before the rub. Can’t hurt. I tried a little before applying it, and I was surprised. I hadn’t had Jim Beam since high school. I didn’t realize it was so much better than Jack Daniel’s. The flavor is not as strong, but it’s much smoother and more civilized. Maybe it won’t work as well for smoking, but I can make bourbon balls with it if I have Christmas guests. You really need smooth whiskey for bourbon balls.

If this doesn’t work, I’ll just keep smoking until I get results. Restaurant barbecue is not an option.

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The ribs are done. I had to give them 5 hours to make them tender. At 4 hours, I took one out to see how they were doing.

They are phenomenal. Best ribs I’ve ever had. I finally got it right. They’re juicy and loaded with flavor. Absolutely perfect. I’ll post a photo.

I’m all set for lunch for the next three days.

I may never be able to enjoy restaurant barbecue again.

New Smoker Beats the Pros

My smoker has smoked.

Yesterday, my new Smokin-It #2 smoker arrived, and I put it together. The manufacturer includes some wood with smokers, and you’re supposed to do a break-in run with wood but no meat. I tried to do this, and the smoker tripped my GFI outlet. I didn’t know about this until long after it happened, so I was not ready to smoke meat until about 6:30. I decided to do it. I had to see whether the smoker worked.

I made my usual rub, except I used cayenne pepper instead of chipotle powder. I didn’t have what I needed. I used three 1-1/2″ cubes of hickory. I smoked the meat until 10:30, and then I gave it half an hour in the oven at 300°.

Here’s the result.

I had forgotten how to apply a rub, so I put way too much on the meat. I didn’t know how much wood this smoker needed, so I used too much wood. The seasoning was heavy, and the ribs were dark because of the excess wood. The cayenne made the ribs a little spicier than I wanted. I think I may add more salt next time, but I can’t say these ribs were under-salted.

Yesterday, I thought my rub recipe was wrong, because it took two batches to cover one rack. Now I see what the problem was.

So I failed, right? Not exactly. With all their flaws, these ribs were much, much better than anything I’ve bought from local (or any) restaurants. They were juicy, tender, and loaded with flavor. My plan was to try a couple of ribs and go to bed, but I ate half a rack. I didn’t eat breakfast today. I didn’t need it.

I don’t know why restaurants can’t produce really good ribs. They have great equipment, and barbecue is extremely easy.

My verdict on the Smokin-It #2 is highly positive, apart from the circuit breaker problem. I assume the manufacturer will respond to my email and tell me what to do. Maybe the element is faulty, or maybe there is a fault in the wiring.

Because it was so late when I finished up, I have not cleaned the smoker yet. I’m not worried. It’s all stainless, and I have a steam cleaner. I assume I won’t need to do much apart from throwing the loose parts in the dishwasher, but steam is there if I need it.

This would be a wonderful machine for roasting turkey, smoke or no smoke. You could cook at 200°, use your oven for other things, and throw the turkey in the oven at the end to make the skin crisp and brown. A smoked, boneless, stuffed turkey would be wonderful for Thanksgiving.

I miss the Hoginator, but I don’t miss the extra work and fuss. This box should last the rest of my life, it will hold more meat than I will ever need for one event, and it won’t require much work.

I think the expense of moving up from bottom-tier electrics is worth it. They rust and break. By the time you’re on your second cheap smoker, you’ve paid almost as much as a Smokin-It costs.

More photos as work progresses.

Ribs in Progress

Call me immature, but I am smoking ribs even though they won’t be done until 10:30.

I ordered myself a Smokin-It #2 electric smoker, and it arrived today. It comes with instructions saying to run a load of wood through it without meat before trying to cook. I tried to obey, but after a couple of hours, I went to the smoker, and I saw that it had tripped a poolside GIF breaker. I had to move it to a real breaker. That put me hours behind schedule. I was going to forget about it until tomorrow, but it nagged at me.

I’m pleased with the smoker. It’s light enough to put in a vehicle. It doesn’t take up much room. The manufacturer says it will do 31 pounds of meat. Not sure why they think it’s 31 and not 30. Anyway, even if it only does 20 pounds, it’s ample for my use. If I had friends over for ribs, I would expect to be under 15 pounds every time.

I don’t expect to get heavily into cooking again, but a smoker is a good thing for any man to have.

I now have a rack of spare ribs going. I put my signature rub on it. By “signature,” I mean the rub I made up a few years ago in a couple of minutes. Is it the best? I have no way of knowing. Probably not. But it’s excellent, and it’s a known factor.

There was a mistake in the recipe. It said it was enough for two racks, but I wasn’t able to cover one with it. I made two batches.

All I did was cut the rack in half so it would fit and bury it in the rub. I don’t remove the membrane from my ribs. I think that would be like cutting the crust off a peanut butter sandwich to make a precious little snowflake happy. I like every edible part of the rib.

The smoker looks very nice. It should last forever. It’s a double-walled stainless box with insulation between the walls. It has casters, so I don’t have to slide it around.

The temperature control is way off. I set it at 250°, and it went to 341°. That’s a plus as far as I’m concerned. It means I can go higher than expected. I can always turn it down for proper barbecue temperatures. I’m using an additional remote thermometer anyway. I never planned to rely on a knob.

I emailed the Smokin-It company to see if they knew why it tripped my breaker. Hope they have useful input.

My old smoker, the Hoginator, was wonderful, but it was not handy. It had electric heat in the meat area, but I had to burn wood in a separate box for smoke. It used a great deal of electricity. Each heating element was like an electric hair dryer. The new smoker is very simple to run. I’m hoping for the best.

I haven’t seen any black smoke. The smoke is light-colored, and that’s a good sign.

This looks like a nice trouble-free way to get excellent barbecue. I won’t know until later tonight.

Getting too Southern for my Own Good

My oldest friend is a guy named Mike. Just to show you what a rotten friend he is, I will post a photo he sent me recently.

This represents part of his output for one week. He bought a Masterbuilt smoker, and he has smoked his weight in pork and chicken.

These days, I stifle my interest in cooking. It’s not good to be a lover of pleasure, and gluttony is an invitation to inhabitation by demons. I rarely cook anything impressive. But here is Mike, telling me one more rack of ribs won’t hurt.

I live in an area where even the worst barbecue is pretty good. It’s not like Miami, where Cubans and yankees think only of money when they prepare food. Still, the obvious truth is that I make barbecue better than any restaurant I’ve been to. Also, it’s much cheaper, and if I barbecue at home, I won’t have to go to restaurants, which are considered prime coronavirus transmission hubs.

These are the thoughts I had as I pitted Mike against mere reason.

Of course, Mike won. I ordered a smoker.

Years ago, I built my own smoker: the Hoginator. I took a big Char-Broil grill and cut holes in it so I could mount to electric heating elements. I cut another hole so I could feed smoke into it. I fabricated a steel smoke box that sat behind the smoker, and it had a hinged door in it so I could shove wood into it. I smoked with flaming wood, the way you’re supposed to, but the smoke box was over a foot away from the smoker, so not much of the heat got into the smoker. I was able to maintain a nice low temperature.

This time, I thought about building another smoker. For about three minutes. Yes, I think men who buy things they can fabricate are really women, but you have to choose your battles. In order to make a really good smoker, I would have to bend and weld a lot of stainless sheet, and I would have to make it double-walled so I could put insulation in it. Forget that. I already paid my dues with the Hoginator. This time, I’m going to let someone else do the metalworking.

Digression: yesterday I finished straightening the mounting tabs on my middle buster and welding gussets in to keep them from bending again. Metal still bends the knee to me.

I ordered a Smokin-It smoker. They’re made in Michigan, hopefully by Southern immigrants. They have double-walled stainless cabinets. People swear by them. I ordered the second-smallest model. I wanted to be able to jam a turkey into it, and the little one did not look promising. Also, when you buy the cheapest model of anything, you’re usually asking for a bunch of after-purchase Band-Aid modifications and add-ons that take the fun out of it. This smoker will come with everything it needs, including wheels.

I believe it’s a little smaller than a waist-high fridge. We shall see.

While I was trying to figure out what to buy, I learned some things.

First, people say Masterbuilts fall apart in a few years. I didn’t want to take a chance. There are competitors such as Pit Boss and Cuisinart, but they look to be of similar quality. I don’t want to drop $250 on a new smoker every three years until I die. The box I bought should last for eternity.

Here’s another thing: propane smokers are hard to use. The temperature fluctuates. Forget it; not interested.

I learned that electric smokers don’t produce smoke rings in meat. A smoke ring is a layer of reddish meat just under the surface. I was upset to read that I wouldn’t be getting one, until I learned that barbecue judges all agree that a smoke ring doesn’t improve the flavor of the food.

Smokin-It has a close competitor called Smokin’ Tex. Smokin-It gives you a lot more for the money, so that’s why I chose their product.

The smoker will be here Thursday, God willing. That means barbecue on Friday. I need to get some ribs.

I don’t do baby backs. I don’t get them at all. I think they’re for suckers. Spare ribs are much cheaper. They’re bigger. They have more fat and flavor. They’re not dry like baby backs. I plan to pick up a rack of spare ribs.

I’m about to dig up my rub recipe. I’m considering adding a little black cardamom.

I would post my rub recipe, but in all honesty, they’re all about the same. Sugar, salt, mustard, pepper, cumin, garlic…it’s not rocket science.

Actually, I shouldn’t say that. A barbecue celebrity named Myron Mixon opened a joint in Miami, and his rub was disgusting. Very litte salt. No flavor. This was after he talked a lot of smack, belittling the competition. His place went bankrupt, even after a lot of Miami people who knew nothing about barbecue posted ridiculous positive Internet reviews.

I prayed before ordering the smoker, and my impression was that God likes it when I entertain friends and that he was in favor of me buying it so I could barbecue for them and still have time to talk about Christianity. I hope my friends don’t read that.

The Hoginator was a lot of work to use. The new smoker should be much less bother.

I should be able to barbecue for 30 people with this thing, so the small gatherings I am likely to draw should be no problem.

Here’s a neat hint for applying a rub: use a bath towel. Drop your ribs on the towel, add the rub, and use the towel to contain the mess while you press the rub onto the meat. When you’re done, roll the towel up with the excess spices in it and put it in the laundry. It won’t stain. This is my original idea, so make sure you send me royalties when you use it.

What about sauce? Here is my conclusion. Store barbecue sauce is so good now, there is not much point in making your own. Yeah, I said it. Stubbs, Sweet Baby Ray’s, Cattleman’s…you name it. There are lots of good ones. Buy four brands every time you barbecue, and make notes on the ones you like.

I will post pork photos eventually.

Bullets and Barbecue

Do I need an intervention? Be honest. As long as you tell me what I already want to hear. Yesterday, I was fooling around in the workshop, and I found a thousand rounds of AK-47 ammo. It had been there for three years. I had no idea I had it.

When a thousand rounds of ammunition mean so little to you, you forget where they are, is it, maybe, time to ask yourself if you buy too much gun stuff?

NO! NO! IT ISN’T! I’M NOT THE ONE WITH THE PROBLEM! YOU’RE THE ONE WITH THE PROBLEM!

I guess I shouldn’t be afraid to take some target practice with the AK. I now have so much AK ammo, I need a handtruck to move it.

In related news, I visited the nearest long-range shooting range today. It’s down around Leesburg. Their website says they go out to 900 yards, but the lady who talked to me at the range said it was 850. Okay, whatever. It’s far enough to help me learn how to shoot.

To qualify to use the 850-yard range, I have to shoot at 400 and let them grade me. That means I have to get the Ruger Precision Rifle working. My plan is to shoot it this weekend and then go to the range when it reopens on Wednesday. Should be fun. I’m not sure why there is cow manure all over the parking lot, but you take what you can get.

The range reminds me of the pickle leftists are in if they seriously try to start an internal war. While I was there, I saw the other customers. They are not leftists, and they were happily plugging away at targets off in the distance. Ignorant urban terrorists who hold their guns sideways would do very poorly against them.

There is a hilarious Youtube channel called Tactical Rifleman, and the host is a guy named Karl Erickson. He’s a retired Green Beret. Wonderful channel. He says something really funny about pistols. He says that when you’re in a gunfight, you should bring “an adult gun.” He makes a very convincing case for semiauto rifles in home defense, which is good, because that’s my conclusion, too. Anyway, there are tens of millions of conservative men who already know how to use adult guns, and they’ll be fighting “men” who haven’t figured out how to pull their pants up.

When I got home, I went and got me a haircut at the Chamber of Excessive Testosterone, better known as the barber shop. I barely had time to get into my book on long-range marksmanship before it was my turn. When I entered, I had my Biden face diaper in place, not knowing what the current mask policy was. I saw that no one else was wearing one, so I took it off. There was a big discussion of everyone’s hatred of face diapers.

I don’t quite get the conservative hatred of masks. I hate them. Sure. But I hate them mostly because they’re uncomfortable and because people think they do things they don’t really do. I’m not that agitated about the political aspect.

Many conservatives get really mad when they have to wear them, and it seems to be because they think it’s part of a big conspiracy. There is definitely a conspiracy to exaggerate the danger of coronavirus and the effectiveness of face diapers, and it’s true that Satan is using masks to train people to serve the Antichrist, but I think my mask gives other people a small amount of protection (assuming I have the bug and don’t know it), so I am willing to wear it.

My understanding is that it does virtually nothing to protect me. If I go into a place where people aren’t wearing masks, I’m going to get their germs regardless of what I wear, but I can reduce the germs they get from me by wearing the diaper. That’s according to the last expert advice I read, which may be totally obsolete this week.

Anyway, I love the barber shop. It’s full of fishing tackle and dive paraphernalia, and the magazines are about guns and fishing. I haven’t seen a hipster beard or a fruity millennial hairstyle there yet.

I got something else done today. I have been thinking of building a steak cooker from a propane weed torch. The idea is to project an incredible amount of heat down onto the meat, giving it a somewhat blackened surface. I tried it today, holding the weed torch in my hand.

I prepared an inch-thick rib eye. It took very little time to go from raw to medium-rare. It was also nice and hot inside, in spite of not being overcooked. It had a good burnt flavor, as a steak should, and it was a little different from a fried steak’s flavor.

Still, fried steak is better. No doubt about it. I’m thinking I may continue to fry steaks while using a hand-held torch to add flavor.

I’m contemplating getting an electric smoker. I built one years ago, and it was great, but I threw it out when I left Miami. My friend Mike just got a Masterbuilt, and he sent pictures of the meat. It looked wonderful. It wasn’t black, so the smoke wasn’t full of creosote, but he said there was a deep smoke ring, so it wasn’t just roasted.

I don’t have much interest in pigging out or getting back into cooking in a serious way, but it would be nice to be able to get some decent barbecue. Yes, the barbecue around here is very good by restaurant standards, but I can beat it easily without leaving the house or putting on a face diaper. I can pretty well founder myself for 10 bucks.

I stopped typing and wandered off, but I’m back. I have a smoker on the way. I went for a nice stainless job. It’s electric. I read that electric smokers don’t give you a smoke ring, but people who judge contests claim the flavor is exactly the same, so good enough.

When it arrives, I’ll toss some ribs in it. Maybe I’ll low-carb for a blissful week. That would be nice.

One Less Thing to to Worry About

I’m having a Sierra Nevada Torpedo and reveling in my latest triumphs.

Today I had to go to the local Social Security office about some business, and I dreaded sitting in a dirty government chair, staring at Amazon Kindle for half an hour. When I arrived, the door was locked. Coronavirus! They had a number on the door. I called it, and wonder of wonders, they agreed to send me what I needed by mail. No hassle. No waiting. No demanding 52 forms of unavailable documentation. No videotaped colonoscopy like last time. Wonderful.

As blessing would have it, the office is not far from Harbor Freight. I shot over there and picked up two solid wheels for my new propane outfit cart. The air-filled tires it came with are garbage. For $9 each, I got wheels that will never go flat. I also bought a Bremen vise grip I didn’t need, just because I felt like it. People say they’re just as good as Irwin, and they’re a lot cheaper.

When I tried putting the wheels on my cart, I found they didn’t fit perfectly. The old wheels had a longer offset, so the new ones were too close to the center of the cart. If only I knew someone with a lathe, to make spacers.

Oh, wait.

I found a piece of steel on a shelf, bored it out, and cut two spacers from it. I slid them on the cart’s axle, and I was ready to go. Beautiful.

While I was at it, I washed my welding hoses with Or-Pine, a congealed pine oil cleaner made for yachts. It’s very strong, and it has a powerful odor. The welding hoses stank of gangrenous mouse sphincters because unwell mice had made a nest in the box they came in.

Before I washed the hoses, the stink came off on my hands every time I touched them. I don’t know what kind of bacteria those mice had, but they were the real deal. They must have had diseases that would turn heads even in San Francisco.

I don’t know what to do with the old pneumatic wheels. They’re worthless. I hate to throw out new wheels, but I see no point in keeping them. Maybe I’ll remove the tubes and save them for pool toys.

I straightened the workshop out a little before I called it a day. Things are going great. I’ve been working a lot. The yard looks better. My roof problem is scheduled to be fixed; the roof guys came today and put a temporary patch on the problem area. The weather is suddenly tolerable. On top of all this, I keep feeling God is telling me the rapture is coming this year.

I’m thinking of a new project. I bought a propane weed torch, and it shoots a mighty flame. I am tempted to make a bent tube for it so I can attach it to a propane fryer base, aimed downward. The idea is to put steaks and burgers under it and roast them from above. If it worked, it would be magnificent. The big steakhouses cook their steaks this way. They use powerful electric burners called salamanders, and they project heat downward onto the meat.

All I need is a way to bend a tube. I know I can figure it out. Maybe I can find some stainless braided hose.

Time to finish my beer and relax. I hope tomorrow will be at least half as good as today.

Next: I Cut Down the Mightiest Tree in the Yard With a Herring

It’s time for me to pat myself on the back again. I made my own hummus today, and then I installed some new shrubbery beside my house.

I’ve made my own hummus many times. Recently, I started making it again, because I eat it for breakfast nearly every day, and the store kind costs over 4 bucks. The price of the ingredients is around a dollar, so it irks me to get ripped off like that.

I found some recipes online. I wanted to see if I could do better than I had in the past. I learned something. The reason your hummus is coarse is that you’re not peeling your garbanzo beans.

Arabs remove the skins from their garbanzo beans, and it makes hummus very smooth. I guess it also removes most of the fiber, but I don’t care about that.

Removing the skin is a royal pain. You have to heat the beans with baking soda and then rinse them with cold water. This is supposed to make the skins “float off,” but it doesn’t. It only loosens them. Then you have to get in there with your hands and rub them off. It took me maybe 20 minutes. Maybe there’s a better way.

When I was done, I had very smooth hummus, so I would have to say that removing the skins is important.

As for my hedge, I killed the old one because it looked bad, and I had to put something in its place. You would not believe how many choices there were. Over a hundred. I decided to let the lady at the nursery tell me what to get. She gave me 4 choices, and I picked the one I disliked least. I came home yesterday with 6 Indian hawthorn plants, or, as we snowflakes call them, First Nations Oppressed Little Brown People hawthorn plants.

Today I learned that the name of this plant has no “E” at the end. Exciting.

You know what? There are no native Americans. Little fact there for you. Neither science nor the Bible says human beings are native to the Americas. And white people were never illegal aliens. The Indians didn’t have real borders or immigration laws, and many of them were fine with Europeans living here. I’m not saying white people turned out to be great neighbors, but then many legal immigrants end up causing problems, so nothing new there.

Yesterday, I used my Root Slayer shovel to rip out the old hedge, and today I went over the dirt. I hit it with my electric edger to sever any roots the shovel left behind, I torched it for a while, and I added a pre-emergent herbicide to keep weeds from coming back. I put down 4 cubic feet of expensive dirt, shoved the plants in, and covered the works with melaleuca mulch. I hope it works out.

I plan to poison the ground pretty heavily with imidacloprid, so that should also help.

I came in and had a burger, and I saw some news. Louisville malcontents are rioting over the Breonna Taylor shooting. Is this a surprise? No. I guarantee you, BLM terrorists have been going to places like Best Buy and the Timberland store, picking out things to steal during the inevitable riots. I am sure they do that. If you’re a thief, and you know your in competition with at least hundreds of other thieves, you’re going to do your best to get to the good stuff first.

Terrorists are out and about because the grand jury’s announcement came out. No homicide charges. Unfortunately, news sources are saying things like, “No charges in Breonna Taylor death.” To low-information, riot-prone people, this looks like, “Cops did everything right in Taylor case, and no one will be held accountable.” That’s not what happened. One cop apparently sprayed the place with bullets without thinking, he got fired, and he has been charged with a crime. He didn’t hit Taylor, and the cop who did shoot her obeyed the law, so that’s why there is no homicide charge.

Interesting fact: the cops identified themselves more than once. Everyone is having conniptions, claiming the people in the apartment didn’t know who the police were. Not true. They knew perfectly well, and one of them shot at the cops anyway. This is what caused Taylor’s death.

Yes, they had a no-knock warrant, but they announced themselves anyway. But news outlets are not making much effort to point this out, and some are still saying the cops didn’t identify themselves.

It doesn’t matter, because thieves and terrorists were going to riot and loot no matter what, but the rest of us might as well understand the facts.

No-knock warrants seem pretty risky to me. If cops broke my door down at 3 a.m. and didn’t identify themselves, I would do my best to kill as many of them as possible, and I’m a law-abiding citizen. You don’t lie in bed next to an unused rifle and hope the people breaking down your door turn out to be the police. It doesn’t work that way.

So now that opportunists are out in the streets looking for free stuff and a chance to do racist violence, what are they protesting? That’s not clear. Are they protesting no-knock warrants? The no-knock warrant had no effect on Breonna Taylor, and reforms are underway, so I would say there is no legitimate reason to protest. Are they protesting the racism of the police? That seems foolish. The police always shoot back when people fire guns at them, regardless of race. Are they protesting the grand jury’s racism? That would be a bit odd. Grand jurors are random citizens who have zero affiliation with the police, prosecutors, or the judiciary. They don’t belong to a secret organization that meets to burn crosses. For all we know, they were all black.

I’ll just pull back the curtain and tell you how juries are selected. Lawyers pretend it’s all above board, but the truth is that you try to get the most prejudiced people you can find. You want people who already think your client is right, without hearing the evidence. The procedure by which they find this out is called “voir dire,” which comes from an old phrase meaning “speak the truth.” It’s not the same as “voir” and “dire” in modern French. Attorneys ask a bunch of questions, jurors answer them, and then the attorneys try to eliminate anyone who might not see things their way.

Grand juries are different. Voir dire is basically about your ability to serve. They don’t ask you dog whistle questions to try to find out what your biases are.

The people who didn’t hand down a homicide charge in the Breonna Taylor case were not chosen for their unwillingness to indict. They were chosen at random.

I suppose the prosecutors may have steered things this way or that, but in the current atmosphere, and given the way unethical hack prosecutors railroaded George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse, I would not bet on anti-black prosecutor bias in this case.

Of course, it doesn’t matter. Free TV’s, and a chance to curse the police out and throw things at them without having your head slammed on the trunk of a cruiser…that’s what matters.

I’ll bet looters get into violent confrontations over who got the best stuff. You know they do.

Today I was praying about the rapture, and I asked God again if it was coming this year. I felt an overpowering surge, telling me the answer was yes. Can it really be true? It would be so beautiful to leave this place behind. It’s getting extremely filthy and violent. I would love to live somewhere where I belonged. I would love to stop seeing people who hate the truth, marching in our streets and tormenting the innocent with the consent of the leftist half of the population. I would love to know I would never have to see that type of person again. And what will the 7-year marriage of Christ be like? Best vacation ever.

Please, let it happen. I am ready TODAY. NOW. I intercede for people all the time, and I try to tell people helpful things, but there doesn’t seem to be much more I can do for God while the world is sliding into insanity. I don’t think there is a lot I can still accomplish.

Looks Like Time is Short

Fascinating stuff is happening.

First of all, I’m making great biscuits. Using bread flour made a huge difference, and it goes against everything the pros say. Here is today’s breakfast:

Second, it looks like we know who killed the Portland shooting victim.

It’s amazing how he was identified. There is a sick website called 4chan. It’s full of people who don’t have usernames. Posts appear under the name “Anonymous,” and they call each other “anons.” Some are true white supremacists. Some are pedophiles. They say whatever they feel like saying, because they assume they can’t be identified. They call each other “nigger” and “faggot.”

These people appear to have no lives outside of the web, and they joke about being autistic because they don’t socialize well. Here’s a meme one of them put up.

They found video footage, social media posts, and photos, and they showed that the person in the video looked like Michael Forest Reinoehl, a snowboarding instructor and roofer. Not to pick on roofers, but it’s a field known for filling up with criminals. When you have to take a roofing job, it may mean there is a reason why other employers won’t have you.

Reinoehl’s family also helped. They saw the coverage on the web, and maybe they saw the 4chan stuff. I don’t know. Anyway, they turned him in. He has a very distinctive appearance, and they knew him when they saw him.

Here’s something which isn’t surprising: they say he is irrational and estranged from his family.

Reinoehl is white, and he has a large black power tattoo on his neck. You can see it a mile away. He wasn’t smart enough to cover it or give up his bizarre everyday wardrobe, so he was not hard to identify.

A man who was with the victim confirms that it was an assassination. Terrorists approached them and identified them as Trump supporters. Then Reinoehl shot the victim.

Is there any possibility it was self-defense? It certainly doesn’t look like self-defense, but you can’t close any doors until you know everything. People say Reinoehl was pepper-sprayed before shooting. Ordinarily, the use of pepper spray can’t justify a response with lethal force. Lethal force can be used to prevent serious injury, but pepper spray doesn’t injure. On the other hand, a smart lawyer could say the victim pulled something out, and Reinoehl thought it was a gun.

Reinoehl ran away. He behaved nothing like Kyle Rittenhouse, who helped the first shooting victim and called 911 and then ran to turn himself in to the police.

Two very predictable things happened after the killing. First, liberals in Portland blamed Trump and conservatives, and they said a conservative had killed a leftist. Then when they found out a leftist had killed a conservative, they celebrated and danced. A lady with a bullhorn said they had “taken out the trash” by killing a “Nazi.”

It’s astounding that people say conservatives are just as bad as leftists. Conservatives don’t riot, although they do respond when attacked by rioters. There is no such thing as a conservatives-only riot. They don’t loot. They don’t burn buildings down. They don’t send caravans of rioters to burn distant towns. The difference is impossible for a sane person to miss. You won’t see large groups of conservatives celebrate a murder.

Unorthodox journalist Tim Pool says leftists are using the murder as a fundraising tool to buy bulletproof gear.

Will conservatives retaliate? As a whole, of course not. But there are always fringe nuts. The Boogalo Bois come to mind.

The Revelation mentions three hostile spirits that look like horsemen. They represent murder, lack, and disease. We’re seeing the lite versions already. God seems to be saying, “Here’s a little dose of what’s coming. Do you really want this?” The terrorists are losing their humanity because they reject the Holy Spirit and meld with demons. Many are so supernaturally blind nothing will bring them out of their delusion, but maybe a significant number can be reached.

We need to pray for God to open the eyes and ears of as many of these people as possible. Arguing with them is a waste of time. The Holy Spirit has to prepare the ground. We’re still showing we prefer futile carnal tools to the only weapons that work.

Terrorists are doing very bad things in America, and they deserve to suffer. They deserve hell. But so do the rest of us. Everyone deserves hell. Regardless of what these people are doing, who really wants them to burn for eternity? Their suffering will be beyond human comprehension, but the suffering they cause on earth is not.

I’m going to make a special effort to pray for them and for everyone else. Eyes and ears need to be opened.

Things are looking better and better for Trump. At least we have that going for us. I expect leftists to ramp up their terrorism to the point where a Biden win becomes impossible. I want Trump to win, but it shouldn’t be necessary for terrorists to put us all in fear to get us to vote for the right person.

I think we are in a short transition period between the age of the gentiles (age of the church) and the tribulation. I think this time has characteristics of both. Fortunately the tribulation characteristics are not very severe as of today.

I hope a lot of people come around. God’s patience is limited, and the consequences for stubbornness are terrible.