Chicken Breasts Fry While American Burns

Has the shooting war started?

A couple of days back, volunteer medic and guard Kyle Rittenhouse defended himself from a murderous armed mob and shot a rapist who was trying to take his rifle, a criminal who was approaching him with a pistol in his hand, and a rioter and documented repeat offender who attacked him with a skateboard. The left says he’s a murderer, he has been charged with first-degree murder, and the man who charged him with a pistol (and who says he regrets not emptying a magazine into him) has not even been detained.

Last night, Trump supporters drove through Portland to show their support for the president. Of course, this is their legal right. They were attacked many times. After things quieted down, a white terrorist walked up to a Trump supporter, shot him twice, and left. There is no indication that the Trump supporter did anything wrong. The shooting is on video. There was no struggle. So far, it looks like an execution.

Leftists in Portland and across America claimed a Trump supporter had murdered someone. Then the truth started leaking out, and they celebrated because a Trump supporter had been killed.

So what happens now?

It may be that a few fringe conservatives will become aggressive, but it’s very unlikely that the right will start emulating the unprovoked, wanton violence of the left to any significant degree. If we were that kind of people, we would be BLMtifa rioters.

Based on my knowledge of human nature, I think the left, not the right, will become significantly more aggressive. I think that when conservative violence becomes widespread, it will be defensive violence. If we hang back and refuse to take the bait, leftists will bring the bait to us. They’re not looking for change or peace. Their goal is to hurt, kill, and steal, and if we don’t engage, they will come to us and force the issue. They are already rioting in residential neighborhoods. Sooner or later, non-leftists will have to react with violence just to keep insane home invaders out of their living rooms. Bodies won’t pile up in public squares and city streets. They’ll pile up in the yards of whites, Asians, and Jews.

You’ve got my prediction.

Maybe people will say it was aggressive for Trump supporters to drive to Portland. Of course, that’s idiocy. I have the right to drive through any city in America, and no one has the right to block my car, throw things at me, or attack me personally. Anyone who blames non-leftists for “provocative” actions like driving through cities or guarding properties ought to be slapped. It’s gaslighting.

I feel very sad. There is a very ominous, serious feeling in the air, like the feeling I had during my dream of the rapture. It really looks like the end is here. You can say it’s not that big a deal because only a relatively small number of people are participating in the violence, but that’s wrong. They have huge popular support. There are tens of millions of leftists who are behind them completely, and they would be rioting, too, if it were convenient for them.

There is a limit to what God expects us to endure here. The Bible calls him the Lord of hosts, and a host is an army. He is the Lord of armies. Like any supreme commander, he will withdraw his forces when continued fighting becomes pointless. The left’s love of lies makes them impervious to correction and help, so our ability to bring them into the fold is dropping off quickly.

Last night I saw a police interview. A sergeant from the Portland PD answered questions. He was in one of the government buildings that was attacked. He said they hid from view in hopes of avoiding escalation. The leftists tore down plywood in order to restore contact. He said they threw bottles, rocks, and other things. He said they said terrible things to the female officers. They called them whores and said they provided sexual services for all the cops. One of them said he was going to take an officer’s baton and shove it up her vagina. Don’t think he didn’t mean it. Things like that have happened in wars.

The sergeant said he had never witnessed such hate.

God sees these things happen, and he makes decisions. He decides whether it’s still worth it to keep a presence on earth to try to help people.

I am ready to go. I wish I could do something for God before I leave, but my history is what it is, and the apocalypse can’t be postponed just so I can earn some more credits.

It looks more and more like Trump will win the election. People are afraid to support him in public, but they’ll show their true colors in voting booths. Leftist terror is having an effect on public opinion, and we have two Democrat candidates who insist terrorists are protestors. Harris actually said they have to keep it up. Biden issued a weak statement about violence, but that’s it. He is gutless and utterly without principle. He is hoping to stay under cover and avoid alienating anyone until November 3rd.

It’s bizarre that terrorists don’t understand that terror makes people look for help. There are three choices: join the terror, appease the terrorists, or resist. The terrorists are operating under the assumption that they can scare the entire country into voting for Biden and bending the knee (literally). They don’t seem to understand that people are free to vote for a man who will use force to restrain them.

I feel a little anger, but mostly I feel dread and sadness. I’m watching America steam toward an iceberg, and no one will listen.

The only answers are prayer and repentance, but almost no one is calling for these things. When Nineveh was threatened, the king forced the entire city to fast for 40 days, and God spared it. That can’t happen in America. Leftists hate Christianity, and most of the rest of us are just barely Christians. We don’t really believe God is powerful or responds to our actions. We have much more faith in politicians and ourselves.

I truly do not want to be here after the elect leave the earth. I don’t like being stuck here with terrorists right now. I can’t imagine what it will be like when all the good people are gone and the curses on the earth are unrestrained.

I hope Trump wins, but I think that if he does, we will live in atmosphere of hate and violence in spite of his efforts to combat terror. The USA will look like Israel or El Salvador. We’ll have to deal with the constant threat of shootings, bombings, kidnappings, rape, and arson. We’ll be fighting on our own soil, and our enemies will be cowardly guerrillas who live on our blocks and in our apartment buildings. They’ll never go away. That’s my best guess.

If Biden wins, these things will still be true, but the executive branch will be against us.

Leftists have no idea what they’re stepping into. They are much more likely to start violence, but we are much, much better at killing. If they want to compete, they’ll have to come up with new methods. Maybe chemical and biological weapons. Making WWI-style gas is not hard, and it would work great on civilian gatherings.

The left isn’t offering a solution. They’re not trying to get us to do something, with the intention of leaving us alone if we comply. They hate us for existing. Something we can’t stop doing. We’re like Jews in Nazi Germany. If we breathe, it’s violence against the left.

It’s interesting, if you think about it. In a way, we share a goal. They want us gone. God will eventually want us gone, because he will take us. Many of us want to be gone.

In other news, I fried chicken again today. I can’t stop. I bought whole chicken breasts because I realized drumsticks and wings were overrated. I cut the bones out and turned the breasts into smaller pieces. I saved the skin because without it, fried chicken is useless. I can’t buy boneless breasts with skin. Wish I could.

I still need more seasoning. I increased it a lot today, and it wasn’t enough. I’m going to jack up the white pepper, and I’m going to use a lot more ginger. I’m also going to throw in some sage.

It seems like 325 is the best frying temperature. Anything higher, and you get black marks on your breading.

I figure I’ll fry again on Tuesday. I’ll make smaller pieces, and I’ll increase the seasoning. I have high hopes.

MORE

Forgot to add this. I have not been happy with the time it takes biscuits to brown, so today I tried 475°, and it worked very well. After 12 minutes (not the usual 14), the biscuits were unusually tall, and they browned well. They really blew up.

I have to explore the insides of a couple to make sure, but it looks like high heat is the way to go. Women are usually the ones who make biscuits, and women are afraid to use high heat, so maybe I should not be surprised if most people are using the wrong temperature.

I decided to try frying chicken again. After the dubious results I got a couple of days back, I had to do it for my honor’s sake.

Today I bought a new thermometer so I could keep the fat at the right temperature, and I found a small chicken at Walmart. It was a 4-pounder, and I paid $3.03. Not sure how they can afford to sell them.

I got good results, except that the smaller parts of the chicken were a little too juicy. I brined it in orange juice and salt for about 45 minutes, and it looks like the chicken was already so juicy it didn’t need it.

It looks like 325 is the right temperature for chicken. I fried the first three pieces at 330-370 on one side, and the breading was too dark. I think the people all over the web who recommend 350 are just plain wrong. I kept the temperature between 305 and 330 later on, and the breading looked much better.

I don’t know how my grandmother did this over and over for years and never got it wrong. I don’t think she owned a frying thermometer.

I found other small chickens at a local Publix. Publix is the big Florida supermarket chain. In the future, I’ll use Publix chickens. A lot of Walmart products are great, but others are iffy.

I’m learning more about heroic high school senior and armed volunteer Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot three rioter/terrorists in Kenosha. Okay, he shot two dead terrorists and one man who is alive and appears, to me, to be a terrorist.

I’ve been watching Tim Pool a lot. He’s a Youtube commentator. He’s very big in the reaction business. If you can’t produce your own content, you can put up a video of yourself reacting to someone else’s copyrighted material. The idea is that you can invoke the fair use exception to the copyright laws. I don’t know how sound the theory is, but reaction videos are huge now. I’m thinking of putting up reaction videos where I react to my own videos. That might be a little mean, however.

Pool keeps saying he’s a moderate leftist. He’s fantasizing. He’s a conservative who can’t accept what he is. He’s horrified by the wave of leftist terror, and he promotes Trump as hard as he can. Anyway, Pool says someone alerted him to a Wisconsin law that allows minors to carry long guns. The law was probably passed in order to protect hunters.

This could be very bad news for the pro-crucifixion leftists. Rittenhouse is unquestionably innocent with regard to the second and third shootings, and he will probably turn out to be innocent in connection with the first. The man he killed was an extraordinary idiot. There is no other word for it. He was a tiny, angry man with a long rap sheet and his own page on the Wisconsin sexual predator site, which says he was not in compliance when he died. He called the armed volunteers in Kenosha “niggers” and commanded them to shoot him.

We don’t know what happened right before this man was shot because there is no good video. The deceased wrapped his shirt around his head and scampered as fast as he could toward Rittenhouse, who was far from those filming the scene.

Selling him to a jury as an innocent victim will not be easy, especially if witnesses say he was trying to harm Rittenhouse when he was shot. This will probably turn out to be the case. Rittenhouse had no reason to shoot someone who was minding his own business, and when Rittenhouse began shooting the second time, on camera, he chose his targets perfectly and only fired as many rounds as needed. He was impressive. If he were a leftist, someone would already be creating a video game based on him.

Barring the empaneling of a BLM jury which uses crack and PCP during deliberations, Rittenhouse only has one shooting charge to be concerned with, and it will probably collapse in court or even earlier. That leaves leftists with the gun charge. If that goes poof, Rittenhouse goes home and gets his AR-15 back.

Felony murder has been mentioned as a complication. Felony murder is a charge enhancement. If you’re committing a dangerous felony, and someone dies in the process, you may be charged with murder even though you didn’t personally hurt anyone. Example: you and your BLMtifa buddies start looting a building, and the 80-year old owner comes in and objects, and your pal Marquise Love smashes his skull with a two-by-four. You may go up for murder even though you didn’t kill anyone.

The theory with regard to Rittenhouse is that he was committing a crime by carrying a rifle, so the deaths of his terrorist assailants, though the result of self-defense, would be felony murders.

Wikipedia and I are here to save the day. Wikipedia says Wisconsin’s felony murder statute lists a limited number of qualifying crimes:

* Battery, including that to an unborn child
* Sexual assault of the first degree, or second degree if it is by use or threat of force or violence
* False imprisonment
* Kidnapping
* Arson of buildings or damage of property by explosives (heads up, rioters)
* Burglary with a dangerous weapon, explosives, or burglary of any inhabited dwelling
* Carjacking
* Robbery with a dangerous weapon, or even with an object that leads someone to believe there is a dangerous weapon

As you can see, carrying a firearm illegally is not on the list.

Here’s another wrinkle: in at least some jurisdictions, you lose the right to defend yourself if you’re committing a serious crime while you kill. Example: terrorist and known criminal Anthony Huber tries to bludgeon an innocent young man with a skateboard. The young man points an AR-15 at him, so Huber takes a lucky swing and fractures his skull, killing him. The law does not recognize Huber’s action as self-defense.

Problem with this theory: Rittenhouse was not committing a violent crime when he chose to defend himself. He was trying to get to the police to turn himself in. He was carrying a weapon, but he was not trying to harm anyone with it.

Maybe there is a legitimate legal theory that can put Rittenhouse on death row, but I don’t know what it is. I’m not a criminal attorney, and I don’t know a lot about Wisconsin. I know nobody has produced a sound theory as of this afternoon.

Here’s a great question: why hasn’t Gaige Grosskreutz been charged? This is the man who was shot in the arm. There are photos of him carrying a pistol openly at the riot. Why hasn’t the black man who stomped on Rittenhouse been charged or even named?

These are questions for Democrat prosecutor Michael Graveley. My bet: they will never be addressed. I think Graveley is completely in the tank for BLMtifa and has no intention of prosecuting these two criminals.

I’m still wondering about Rittenhouse’s ethnicity. I thought he was Hispanic when I saw him for the first time, and I still think we may get interesting news about his ancestry. Rittenhouse isn’t a Spanish name, but then neither is Zimmerman. Rittenhouse has black hair and what looks like olive skin. If I were identifying him to the cops, I would tell them to look for a Hispanic.

I ordered more magazines today. I hope that if the rapture comes and Christians who missed it need shelter and weapons, they’ll find what I left and keep themselves alive until they can square things with God. I can’t foresee using any of this stuff myself, except to have fun in the pasture with my targets. Maybe a black family will move in. That would be be a real poke in the eye to tribulation leftists still pushing the race canard.

If I find a way to send money to Kyle Rittenhouse, I’ll definitely pitch in. I hope conservatives make him rich.

The Railroading Begins

The Kyle Rittenhouse story seems to be fleshing out, and things don’t look good for his accusers. It’s funny how news stories almost invariably look worse and worse for leftists as investigations proceed.

I’ll run down the list of my conclusions.

1. Fatal shooting of Joseph Rosenbaum, the bald rioter/terrorist who chased Rittenhouse down and became the first casualty: insufficient evidence to make a determination. Rosenbaum, a registered sex offender, was seen trying to get at armed citizens at a gas station they were trying to protect. He had to be restrained by other rioter/terrorists. At least twice, he told the armed citizens to shoot him, calling one of them “nigger” in the process. Moments later, he ran to Rittenhouse, who was a long way off, and he was shot. We don’t know what happened. If he wrestled with Rittenhouse or grabbed the gun, or if he threw dangerous things at Rittenhouse, then the shooting was justified. No two ways about it. If he merely continued ranting, Rittenhouse is guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter.

2. Fatal shooting of Anthony Huber, the rioter/terrorist/habitual violent criminal who ran up to Rittenhouse and attacked him with a skateboard: Rittenhouse is innocent. Rittenhouse was on the ground, after falling while running to escape the mob and turn himself into nearby police, and Huber put his skateboard in contact with Rittenhouse’s head. It’s not clear whether he was trying to hit him with it, because Huber dropped it in the process, but skateboards are commonly used as weapons in riots, and it’s not reasonable to expect a person being attacked by a mob to make a decision the rest of us can’t make with the benefit of replayable video and hindsight. Pressing a skateboard onto a person’s head is a crime. It’s not okay. Also, if habitual criminal Huber had succeeded in restraining him, the other assailants might have killed him. It was reasonable for Rittenhouse to think he was in danger of serious harm or death, so the shooting was justified.

3. Nonfatal shooting of Gaige Grosskreutz, the seeming rioter/terrorist who was shot in the arm: 100% innocent. No conceivable justification for prosecution. Grosskreutz was carrying a pistol openly at the scene, and he ran up to Rittenhouse, who was already fending off multiple attackers, with no legal justification. Got what he deserved.

4. Carrying a weapon openly while below the minimum legal age. Guilty. No way to dispute it. Rittenhouse is 17, and the minimum legal age in Wisconsin, according to admittedly shaky Internet sources, is 18. The only way Rittenhouse can beat this rap is to prove he’s over 18 or that the age requirement is 17 or lower. Ordinarily, for a minor with no other arrests, this would be pleaded down to a misdemeanor, and adjudication would likely be withheld in order to give him a chance to reform.

That’s my scorecard. Two innocents, a much less significant guilty, and a likely-innocent. It’s very unlikely that Rittenhouse shot Rosenbaum without justification, and Rosenbaum was clearly the less mature and responsible of the two.

I have to say that it’s disappointing, but not surprising, that our pro-terror press chose to release the name of an accused minor.

People on the web are claiming Rosenbaum threw a Molotov cocktail at Rittenhouse. Others are merely saying he threw bottles. If he threw bottles at Rittenhouse, then Rittenhouse is innocent. A strike from a thrown bottle can do very serious harm. You don’t have to let people throw bottles at you just because the alternative is to shoot.

One of the sad aspects to this story is that a 17-year-old was out on the streets, offering his life and liberty to protect others, while grown men were notably absent. Most notably: the National Guard and federal officers. Who is to blame? Wisconsin governor Tony Evers. As has happened in other jurisdictions, President Trump asked to be allowed to help, and his offer was rejected. Something for former business owners who now own heaps of ashes to think about in November.

The men of Kenosha are also accountable. In other towns, large numbers of better men have mustered themselves and discouraged terrorists. The men of Kenosha generally stayed home. The population of the city is 100,000. They could have done a lot better.

Kyle Rittenhouse is going to be the new George Zimmerman. He may as well move to Wyoming or Tennessee if he’s acquitted. He will only be safe in a solid-red state. His family is also likely to have to move.

For what it’s worth, he’s a bad guy to mess with. If he isn’t convicted, terrorists should abandon their hopes of lynching him. He shot three assailants in a very short time while under physical attack. He shot two from the ground after receiving a full-weight kick to the upper body and a skateboard blow to the head. He kept his cool, did only what was necessary, and stopped. He proved he can deliver in a crisis. If he can do it once at the tender age of 17, he can do it again as a grown man.

It’s strange that no one in the leftist pro-terrorist press is talking about the shots that were fired by other people. Well, it’s not strange. It’s to be expected.

Another thing they’re not mentioning: Jacob Blake had a knife in his car, close to the door he was reaching into when he was shot. And he was the reason for the police call. He was trespassing at an ex-girlfriend’s house, and they called the police to make him leave. Also, he’s a criminal with a history of gun crime, and he had at least one felony warrant when the police arrived.

Shooting him appears to have been the correct thing to do. The only question is whether it was necessary to shoot at him 7 times. Given the officer’s poor marksmanship (only a few rounds hit Blake), it looks like he did what he had to do. He shot until Blake was incapacitated, and then he stopped. A better shot would have killed him with one or two rounds, so maybe Blake should be glad things went as well as they did.

I thought the officer had shot Blake 7 times, because that was what I had read. Now we’re being told he was only hit 4 times. That’s not excessive under the circumstances. When someone is about to turn around and cut you with a knife, you don’t shoot once, wait for results, shoot again, and so on. You don’t have time. You shoot until the threat is gone.

As for shooting him in the back, well, Blake was facing away from the officer while he reached for a knife to cut him up. That was Blake’s choice. If Blake had chosen to face him, he would have been shot in the front, and I suppose somehow that would be better.

One paralyzed criminal with a permanent colostomy is a better outcome than one or more innocent cops carved up while trying to defend a family from a violent criminal. And we don’t know that Blake would have stopped with the police. He was clearly not happy with his ex-girlfriend.

Of course, the facts don’t matter. Only the party line matters, and the party line says Jacob Blake was a peaceful unarmed dad who showed up at the scene of a quarrel to make peace, like a therapist/superhero, and was shot in the back for opening a car door.

They’re talking about “unsurvivable” storm surge in the wake of Hurricane Laura. They should be talking about the unsurvivable storm surge of delusion which is inundating America. People can’t perceive the truth, and they don’t care about it. They just want to hurt whites, men, heterosexuals, Christians, Asians, Jews, the police, and successful people. The terrorism is about hate and sadism, injustice.

If justice matters to you, you don’t attack innocent people or burn their vehicles and businesses. The terrorists are harming many innocent people, and many of the innocent are liberals.

It’s astounding that we’re tolerating this. Look at the contrast between different areas. Democrat cities burn unrestrained, as though rioting and terrorism were normal, acceptable events, like block parties. In places where people have a backbone, protests are peaceful and brief, because terrorists know they face consequences. None of the prolonged riots have been unavoidable. Democrats chose to let them continue. In what significant way does this differ from psychosis? It’s as though these cities were neurotic girls who decided to start cutting themselves.

There is still no nationwide call for prayer and repentance. God is conspicuously absent from the news. He’s our only hope. His anger is the reason for the chaos. It’s the reason for coronavirus, too. Yet we’re ignoring him. If we turned to him, things would clear up. Doesn’t look like it will happen.

I wonder what will happen where I live. The nearest city is three times the size of Kenosha, so it could support riots. Of course, the police here would react very differently, as would the governor, as would the citizens. Extending terror to rural areas is one of BLMtifa’s priorities now. Is the highway by my house already on a list?

I’ve been thinking about buying more rifle magazines. I don’t expect to use them, though. I just feel I should have them. I asked God why I should get them, and the feeling I have is that they’re not for me. They’re for people who will take over this house after the rapture. They will need them.

I bought an AR-15 for target shooting and hunting, and I put a 14x scope on it. This scope is inappropriate for self-defense. Suddenly I’m considering picking up a red dot, just in case.

Maybe I should leave notes for people who miss the rapture. “These cartridges are for this gun.” “Here is a list of the best self-defense cartridges I have.” “There are hundreds of ear plugs in the workshop.” Maybe I should buy cases of canned tuna and hundreds of pounds of rice. My hope is that I’ll be at the wedding of Christ, dining somewhat better.

Obviously, I should leave Bibles.

I really pity people who live in cities. I pity people who live in the areas that are the most affected. Life must be extremely unpleasant, and watching a big percentage of Americans support politicians who back the terrorists has to be very discouraging and frightening.

What happened to George Zimmerman is happening to huge swaths of the country. People are being turned on by the authorities they rely on to protect them.

Maybe an explosion of riots, affecting places like Bel Air and the Upper East Side, is what America needs. Maybe fake hobby leftists would be knocked off their seemingly safe perches and driven to vote for what they really believe in.

I don’t know why I even mention politics. Turning to God is the only solution.

Bottles of Urine no Match for Rifles

Yesterday it suddenly occurred to me that the town my cousin lives in might be close to Kenosha. I texted her to find out. She says the closest part of Kenosha is 15 minutes away. Her son’s girlfriend lives in Kenosha.

I asked how things were going. She told me over 600 cars from Minnesota had arrived. Terrorists or protestors? It appears that the answer to that question, in many cases, depends on the local response. If the police and citizens show up in a display of force, visitors protest relatively peacefully and then leave. If not, terrorist rioting is likely. Her bedroom community has a population of around 20,000, so the arrival of several thousand potential rioters is a serious threat.

Illinois is in bad shape. It’s way off to the left. It’s so bad, the state imposes an unconstitutional requirement on firearms owners. They have to be cleared before they can own, and they have to have Firearms Owners [sic] Identification cards, or “FOID’s.” Imagine having to pay for a card and a background check in order to exercise your other civil rights. If Florida went that route, would have to have a card in order to blog, vote, or go to church.

I wonder how many people in my cousin’s town have gone through the aggravation of getting a card and preparing for the worst.

As for Kenosha, it’s starting to look like the BLMtifa terrorist movement is turning into a shooting war. Last night, a man with a rifle shot several people, killing two. I saw a video showing a young man with a grotesque arm injury. In the movies, when a person gets shot in the arm, he wraps a handkerchief around it, and everything is fine. In the real world, guns can tear large chunks out of limbs, and sometimes they tear limbs completely off.

There is video of the shooter. He is sitting on the ground, and a witness says his rifle was being jerked around. These facts suggest he was attacked, and if so, he very likely had a reasonable fear of death or serious harm. Witnesses claim the police saw him walking around with a rifle and did nothing. It’s impossible to say right now, but it looks like he was a local resident trying to protect life and/or property. He’s getting unfavorable, biased coverage, so it seems the liberal press is betting he’s conservative.

If you’re carrying a gun legally in order to prevent arson, aggravated battery, murder, and so on, and a group of rioters grab it and try to take it, you’re entitled to shoot to kill. End of story. No room for debate. It’s different if you were carrying illegally or if you performed a violent act to provoke the aggression. Depending on the facts and the party the local prosecutor jumps for, there is a very good chance the shooter will not be charged. That would go over great with leftists who think self-defense is a crime.

If he’s not with the rioters, there is zero likelihood the left will excuse him. Journalists certainly won’t. These are the people who still call Nick Sandmann things like “snot nose entitled kid” for being illegally accosted and menaced by rude leftists protestors.

Should the shooter have been where he was? Impossible to say. It’s generally legal to be present and defend people and property in a riot, and the use of guns is legal in many situations. It appears it was legal for him to be where he was, because witnesses say the police were not interested in him at first, and because other armed individuals are roaming Kenosha without consequences.

The story doesn’t fit a mass-shooter narrative. Mass shooters show up and shoot for no reason, and they empty their magazines. The video suggests this man shot a few times and then stopped, and the witness account about the rifle being jerked around suggests it was a response to a lethal threat. It looks like a measured response to grave danger.

It’s legal to carry openly in Kenosha. It’s not legal to riot or grab a person’s firearm. That’s what lawyers call strongarm robbery and battery. If the shooter was minding his own business, and terrorists tried to disarm him, they are probably guilty of felonies.

What’s in store for the next couple of weeks? Will we see opposing factions shooting at each other from cover, in scenes reminiscent of post-apocalyptic movies? It would be catastrophic for violent BLMtifers.

Leftists generally don’t own rifles, and many don’t even have handguns. The type of leftist who is most likely to engage in shootouts in riots is a street criminal armed with a semiautomatic pistol he doesn’t know how to use properly, along with poorly chosen ammunition. It doesn’t take much skill to stick up unarmed pedestrians or shoot out of car windows during drive-bys. It doesn’t take good equipment. Conservatives, on the other hand, are much more likely to own military-style rifles with large magazines and optics made for short-range battles. Conservatives are more likely to know which types of pistol and rifle ammunition work best. They are much more likely to shoot well. They are more likely to own protective equipment. If leftists try to turn the current wave of terror into a shooting war, in all likelihood, the leftist body count will be at least several times higher than the conservative and centrist count. It will be the mother of all mistakes.

Does that mean they won’t try? Well, have they made any intelligent choices yet?

Right now, many leftist terrorists are probably texting and Zooming about the need to buy guns and teach the rest of us a lesson. Others–white female hobby terrorists, for example–are probably feeling red-pilled and trying to discourage the use of guns. Who will prevail?

It seems safe to say that non-leftists will come out on top, by a wide margin, in a nationwide conflict. What happens after that, though? If leftists are enraged and eager to commit violence now, what will they be like after they’ve buried hundreds of dead terrorists and been forced back to their own communities? It won’t be a boon to race and class relations, and even if non-leftists shut the terrorism down, we will still have to live alongside the people we defeated. They will never admit their dead and wounded brought it on themselves.

Ammunition for popular calibers is extremely expensive now. I don’t like it, because I hate gouging, but maybe it’s a good thing. Non-leftists had large stockpiles before the gouging started, and violent leftists have no business with ammunition. Before the rioting started, it was easy to get 9mm ammunition–the most popular large pistol caliber–for 10 dollars a box. Earlier this year, I paid $7.35. Now, garbage FMJ is running $35. Jobless terrorists will have a hard time paying that much. Meanwhile, non-leftists have safes full of expanding rifle and pistol ammo, and many of us can make ammunition from scratch. All over the country, there are enthusiasts who make bullets from scrap lead.

What advantages do leftists have? Let’s see. They control cities, right? I’m not so sure. There are a lot of poor terrorists living in and around cities, and they cause a lot of problems, but the people with real power are affluent fake leftists who are likely to turn on the terrorists when push comes to shove. Leftists control the Internet. That’s true, but tech companies have stockholders, and again, many of the people in charge are affluent fake leftists who will change uniforms the first time someone spray-paints their Bentleys. Leftists run our banks, and they have a lot of money. Again, though…fake leftists abound, and greed often outweighs principle.

If fake leftists with money start coming around, we could end up with more of a class war than a race war. If that happens, the lower classes will be crushed. They’re just not very capable.

Non-leftists control the farmland and the natural resources. We control the oil-producing areas. We control much of the coasts, the border with Mexico, and the border with Canada. We have disproportionate numbers among the military and police. Many of us are spread out in rural areas where leftists don’t stand a chance in a conflict; it would be like Napoleon invading Russia.

Things look better for non-leftists than leftists, unless you consider the supernatural. The terrorists and their supporters are insane because of supernatural influences. They don’t know the Holy Spirit, and he’s the only source of good guidance. They’re under the influence of fallen angels and demons, so they are able to believe anything, no matter how preposterous. Right now, the insanity only affects maybe a third of Americans. Without the Holy Spirit, who’s to say that figure won’t double or triple?

The big divide isn’t left/everyone else. It’s children of the Antichrist/children of God. Most people are children of the Antichrist. They don’t have the Holy Spirit to correct them, so other spirits dominate their thinking and feelings.

Sooner or later, the Antichrist has to win. Prophecy makes that clear. Maybe it will happen when Trump is reelected, leftists go completely crazy, and non-leftists sink to their level on a national scale. The fact that you’re not a Marxist doesn’t mean you’re on God’s side. Carnal conservatives serve Satan, just like BLMtifers. If half of the nation starts acting like the Proud Boys, Satan will have his army regardless of what uniforms people wear.

I don’t want to be here for the civil war. I want to be in heaven at the marriage of Christ. I don’t want people coming to my house telling me it’s my duty to shoot terrorists. I certainly don’t want terrorists coming to my house. I hope my sense that the rapture is imminent is correct. I am ready to go.

If you want to get closer to God so you can prepare, get baptized with the Holy Spirit, repent, speak in tongues every day, fast, seek internal improvement, and try to serve God. Start speaking powerful things into existence. Here’s a strange thing that has turned out to be very powerful for me: start proclaiming holiness. Say, “Jesus is holy.” “I am holy.” “My body is holy.” “Everything I own is holy.” “Holy” means “belonging to God.” Proclaiming holiness releases supernatural power. If you look at the Bible, you’ll see that heavenly beings say God is holy, over and over. There’s a reason for that. It’s not pointless toadying. The Psalms say we should bless God with our words all the time.

Man, I hope I get to go when the horn blows. This place is getting too filthy to stand.

MORE

Fox has published two photos of the Kenosha shooter. In both, he is sitting on the pavement. For some inexplicable reason, Fox does not identify him as the shooter in the second photo.

In the first photo, he is holding a rifle that looks a lot like an AR-15, and a nearby rioter is supposedly reacting to being shot, although the rifle is pointed away from him. In the second, a man is in the air above the shooter, with a foot about to come down on the shooter’s upper chest or face. If he was attacked like that before he shot, then there is little hope he will be convicted of anything.

I think the second photo was taken before the first, because we know the shooter got away. If he had been attacked successfully before firing, he would have been disarmed and beaten.

If he wasn’t doing anything illegal, and he was attacked by morons willing to go up against a rifleman, then his attackers got what they asked for, and I’m glad he’s okay. We don’t know much now, though, so it’s impossible to say who broke the law and who didn’t.

Biscuit Victory Marred by Chicken FAIL

Has the civil war started? The news says a man in Pennsylvania walked out of his house and fired shots at demonstrators, hitting one in the face and inflicting a non-life-threatening wound.

The coverage is predictable. The stories say little is known about the incident, yet some outlets are proclaiming the protestors “peaceful” nonetheless. “We don’t know what happened. We don’t know the facts. And the protestors were peaceful.” Looks like cognitive dissonance to me. Or course, I don’t know what happened, and I don’t know the facts, so I may be wrong.

America is doing exactly what countries are supposed to do when they abandon God. It’s sliding into chaos because we do what we think is right instead of what God tells us is right. We cut ourselves off from our father, so we are living the lives of fatherless punks. Fatherless punks don’t know how to behave, and they get no inheritance.

Oh, well. How about another topic? I choose biscuits.

I’ve learned a few things about flour over the last few weeks. First of all, you don’t need bread flour to make bread. Some kinds of bread need high-gluten flour, but others don’t. The type of bread that surprised me is the baguette. You would think a crusty, airy loaf of bread would have to be made with bread flour, but it’s not true. Baguettes should be made with flour that is lower in gluten. That’s not my opinion. It’s the opinion of people unlike me who make prizewinning baguettes.

Today I learned that biscuit flour is the wrong flour for biscuits.

Yesterday I decided to fry chicken. I cut up a bird and put it in the fridge in a mixture of orange juice, salt, garlic, and tarragon. This morning I fried it in peanut oil and lard. Before I did this, I went online and got expert advice. I did what they said to do, and the chicken was not very good.

I think the single most important thing to do when you fry chicken is to find a small bird. I couldn’t find one smaller than about 6 pounds. That’s way too big. By the time the inside is done, the outside is too brown.

My dad represented Holly Farms, the chicken company. They sold chickens to KFC. One of the managers told him KFC required very small birds. My dad thought the purpose was to cheat customers by selling small chickens by the piece. This was probably true, but they also cook up better.

I don’t know where I’m supposed to find small chickens. Maybe it’s not possible. People in this area are not overly sophisticated, and they seem to be inclined to eat things that come out of boxes and bags. Maybe there is no market for fryers here.

I guess I can kill squirrels and forget chickens. Squirrels are actually better.

I could not fry chicken without making biscuits. When I looked at my flour supply, I was dismayed to see that I was nearly out of biscuit flour. I decided to use bread flour. How bad could it be? I also decided to give up on putting butter in my dough. I usually mix butter and bacon grease, half and half, but butter ruins the texture.

I flopped the dough onto the counter and folded it 4 or 5 times with my hands to put layers into it. They say working biscuit dough too much makes biscuits tough. I have never had a tough biscuit in my life, so that information appears to be wrong. I cut the biscuits out, greased and salted the tops, and baked them at 450°. They were very good. The texture was perfect. I’m going to quit using biscuit flour. I think it’s a mistake.

Now it looks like I’m in a position where I need bread flour so I can make biscuits, and I need biscuit flour so I can make bread. Go figure.

I know the biscuits were good because I could not quit eating them. It’s easy to lie to yourself about things you cook, but the dishes you can push away are bad, and the ones you absolutely have to finish are good. You can count on that.

I still have like 4 pounds of very mediocre fried chicken. Maybe it will be better cold. I can pull it off the bone and make chicken salad. The birds will enjoy the chicken as it is. This morning they each got a small piece, along with a biscuit fragment and gravy.

That’s the news from Free Trumpistan. Enjoy your day.

The End of Days Is no Excuse for Bad Cooking or Poor Shooting

I dare anyone to say I don’t make great use of my time.

Today two wonderful things happened. I got over the local-pizza-ingredient hump, and I put a new scope on my Thompson Center Venture rifle.

I probably should not be thinking about pizza, but the pandemic and the mythical food shortages associated with it shift one’s thoughts in the direction of shopping and cooking, and I am a casualty. Early in the crisis, flour disappeared from shelves, and when it reappeared, bread flour lagged by at least two months. I bought some wheat gluten before everyone else thought of it, and I started fooling around with it. I tried to make baguettes, for example.

Pizza is a mysterious food. It only has three major ingredients, and preparation is extremely simple, but it’s one of the hardest things to figure out how to make. I figured it out when I lived in Miami. It turned out ingredients were extremely critical. I had to use certain things, or it didn’t work. Then I moved north, and I was no longer able to get those things.

You can use just about any flour to make a great Sicilian pizza, but for some reason, thin pizza doesn’t work that way. Most of the flour at your local grocery just won’t cut it. The texture or the flavor or both will be off. Bread flour works well, and some bread flours are better than others. Some people insist on Caputo 00 flour from Italy. It’s a low-ash flour without much gluten. I tried it, and I didn’t think much of it.

A local store started stocking King Arthur bread flour a couple of weeks back, so naturally, I have been making pizza. The flour gave me good results, but I was not completely happy.

I researched, and I decided I should try diastatic malt powder. This is a dough conditioner. You add a small amount to your flour, and it makes the product blow up better and brown better in the oven. I couldn’t find it around here, but Amazon sells it. Today I put a little bit in my flour, and the result was very good. The dough browned earlier, it blew up better, and it wasn’t as chewy as it had been in previous efforts. It rose fast, and the flavor was good.

I knew something good was happening when I rolled the proofed dough out and started tossing it. It had a silky feel to it, and it opened up beautifully. It didn’t even try to tear. Tossing a 10″ pie took less than a minute. It was a snap. I don’t know how malt works, but it worked great today, and I plan to keep using it.

I also tried a new tomato product. Nearly all of the tomato products stores sell are useless for pizza. The manufacturers use unripe tomatoes or the wrong varieties. It’s easy to get or make a sauce that looks red and tasty, but when you take a bite of a slice, you will know you’ve been had.

My go-to sauce is Saporito, from the Stanislaus company. It’s tomato paste, basil, and citric acid. It’s very sweet and fruity. I doctor it up with a few things, and it’s excellent. But I can’t get it around here.

I’ve been trying various items from local stores. Today I decided to try Muir Glen “organic” paste. I put “organic” in quotation marks because “organic” is an empty Pavlovian stimulus which motivates people to spend three times as much for food that isn’t any better. There are no real standards for organic food production, except that you have to put “organic” on the label.

The can says Muir Glen is made in Central California, and the Muir Glen website shows big Roma tomatoes, just like the ones Stanislaus uses. Stanislaus is a California company.

I combined some paste with garlic powder, oil, salt, oregano, and a couple of other things, and I put it on a crust made with diastatic malt. I used sliced Sargento mozzarella and sliced Boar’s Head fontina. I sprinkled oregano and salt on top of the cheese, and I baked at 500° on a preheated stone. I can’t do better than 500° with my oven.

The pizza was very nice. I used too much cheese and not enough sauce, but it was a lot better than pies I had made earlier in the week. I feel like my suffering is over. Not that I plan to make a lot of pizza. I was just frustrated because I couldn’t figure out how to do it with things I could buy here.

I really want to make garlic rolls with malt, but I have to maintain some self-control.

I can supply the ingredient list, if you want to try it.

INGREDIENTS

125 grams King Arthur bread flour
80 grams warm water
2 tsp. instant yeast
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. diastatic malt

You can add oil to make it softer. My understanding is that you should knead, add oil, and knead again. Some food reason I no longer recall.

I gave it a pretty decent “kneading” in the food processor, going for at least 30 seconds after it formed a ball. I prepared the pizza on a square of non-stick foil, which I removed from the stone after two minutes. You just pull it out from under the pizza. If you use this method, you won’t have to try to shove a sticky raw pizza off a peel. You put it on the foil, and the foil slides off, taking the pizza with it. After two minutes of cooking on the foil, the crust is strong enough to tolerate having the foil yanked out.

As for the rifle, some Seekins scope rings arrived today, and I was able to mount a Vortex Viper PST 6-24×50 on it. This is a discontinued scope I bought accidentally. I was going to return it, but I decided it would be more than adequate for .204 Ruger, which is only useful at or below 400 yards. I think I did a good job of mounting it. I used a torque wrench and all that. I changed the trigger spring two days ago, so now I have a killer varmint rig with a very light touch. I still have my ATN night scope, so I have the Vortex for daytime, and if I ever decided to try shooting coons at night, I’ll have the ATN ready to go.

Very nice. It’s wonderful when you get a firearm working correctly. I can’t wait to zero the scope and see what the gun can do. Based on earlier results with a scope which is hard to use, I have high hopes of being able to put 10 rounds in a 1″ circle at 100 yards.

People call the Venture a cheap gun. Maybe so. I have never shot an expensive bolt rifle, so I don’t know what I’m missing. I think the most expensive bolt guns I’ve shot were a 6mm and a 30.06, probably Remington, when I was a kid. With the Venture, I have what appears to be a phenomenal trigger and a highly accurate gun, so what’s not to love? The bolt has been very sticky, and that led me to blow a hole in the pasture while trying to close it, but I have been running it back and forth in order to loosen it up, and it seems to be working. I should be able to make it nice and slick with some effort. After that, it will be really hard to see what an additional thousand dollars would have bought me.

On Wednesday, the scope base for my .17 HMR should arrive, unless it’s in the mailbox already. Then I can put an Athlon scope on my Savage 93R, and I’ll be all set for inexpensive, nearly recoil-free 100-yard practice.

Scoped rifles have been a source of frustration for me, and a lot of it has been equipment-related. By the end of the week, I should have 3 rifles set up well with MRAD scopes, and I may even have my AR-15 set up correctly. After that, I should be able to focus on learning to shoot instead of subduing uncooperative weapons.

I’m not shooting today because I don’t want to make my neighbors miserable. Any sane person should be satisfied with three sessions a week.

That’s what I’m telling myself at the moment.

I’m blessed to have a few readers who give me good advice and save me from myself. Jim from the now-defunct Smoke on the Water pops in from time to time to cut through the BS I’ve read and heard. Recently, he provided some tips on leveling scopes, which is a BS-intensive topic from one end to the other. I believe I will only need such information for my Ruger Precision Rifle and LR-308, because nothing else I have will shoot far enough to make leveling matter. Anyway, his comment will be there when I need it.

I still want to get a Tikka T3x in 6.5 Creedmoor. I do not hunt at all, apart from small annoying creatures of the sort taxidermists hide in their back rooms, but I have dreams of getting out there and trying, and I need at least one rifle for large game. The hunting picture is not rosy for me. There is nothing worth shooting (legally) on this property, and I feel funny about wandering around on public land wearing day-glo overalls, surrounded by beer-drunk weekend warriers with itchy trigger fingers and cataracts. Even if I did get out there and try, I don’t know what to do with a whole deer, and I can’t make myself shoot a bird smaller than a turkey. That’s what owning parrots will do to you. It’s really too bad pigs don’t come to visit.

I could pay for a guide and shoot some pigs on a hunting property, but that’s a little bit like going outside and shooting one of the cattle. I hope they would at least let me get out of the truck.

I shouldn’t joke. I remember shooting a rabbit from my grandfather’s Buick Riviera. He was a great grandfather.

My 6.5 Creedmoor dies arrived. I’m waiting for a case trimmer. I think I ordered bullets and powder. Yes, I remember it now. Primers are on their way to the nearest Bass Pro. Once my rifles are functioning, I’ll be able to think about making my first rifle rounds.

That’s all that’s happening here, apart from the apocalypse. Hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am.

There are Little Raptures Everywhere

As days go, this one has been pretty good. I helped my friends Alonzo and Teri move into their first non-rented house.

Alonzo and I were armorbearers at Miami’s Trinity Church, under the authority of the fine family of pastors that made public-nudity enthusiast Kim Kardashian one of America’s best-known Christians. The armorbearers used to meet for breakfast at a Denny’s on Hallandale Beach Boulevard, and I used to talk about the importance of speaking in tongues and getting free of iniquities and demons. Alonzo was always quiet. I thought he was just waiting for me to shut up. In reality, he was taking it all in.

He and his family lived in a pretty bad situation. They had part of a house in Liberty City, which is about like South Central L.A. He hated his job. Things weren’t going all that well.

Over time, he and Teri moved closer to God, and he blessed them. They moved to a place farther north, away from their relatives. Then they moved to Orlando. This was a step up from South Florida, which is a very dark and corrupt place, but it could have been better. After Orlando, they moved to Sanford, and now they’re between Sanford and Ocala in a very rural setting. They own the house they’re moving into. It has 5 bedrooms. It’s in a quiet, peaceful area packed with conservative Christians.

If you know this blog, you know I had a young friend named Travis Quinn. He was also an armorbearer. He was a lawless ghetto kid. He started listening to me. He tried the things I was doing. God changed him a great deal. He found himself living in Coral Gables, as my house sitter, going to the University of Miami on a music scholarship.

Unfortunately, he was shot accidentally in April. We were told his injuries weren’t a big deal. Then his condition worsened, and he died. During his last month, he wasn’t able to communicate with anyone except his family.

I had assumed Travis would be my big success story, but it looks like Alonzo and Teri got what I thought he would get. They have 5 wonderful kids. Their marriage keeps getting better. Now Alonzo says God is talking to him. He says God told him that if he fasted, God would do things for him, with no effort from Alonzo, that would amaze him. Alonzo fasted, and suddenly Alonzo found himself able to move into his house ahead of schedule. He didn’t have to pay his last month’s rent. He didn’t have to pay a power bill he thought was coming due.

The place where he used to live was better than the places where he lived before, but it wasn’t perfect. People smoked dope where his kids could smell it. The neighbors weren’t great. Now he’s in a thinly populated area where life is very, very easy.

His kids will be two miles from school. There is a big grocery store so close he can walk to it. There is a great pizza place a mile and a half away. Three of the kids now have their own bedrooms. It’s wonderful.

He and Teri have had the same coronavirus experience I’ve had: peace and plenty. They both have jobs. No one they know has gotten sick. It’s as though God has wrapped them in a blanket.

Moving was a breeze. It’s July in Florida, and it should be about 95 degrees outside. It was very comfortable today. I joked because I felt a drop of sweat at one point and had to run for shade. Ordinarily, my clothes would have been sticking to me after 20 minutes. I don’t even need a shower.

He took me to lunch today, and the pizza place we found was excellent. It was surgically clean, the staff was great, and the food was wonderful.

We talked about the time we live in. As former Miami residents, we agreed that it feels like the day before a hurricane. If you haven’t experienced a hurricane, you won’t understand, but things are extremely quiet the day before one arrives. The sensation is peaceful, but ominous. Many people are saying the rapture is nearly here. As Christians know, the rapture will be followed by the storm of God’s wrath.

I keep feeling the rapture will take place in December. For a while, it seemed like the 24th was the day. Then it seemed like the 11th was correct. I don’t know the answer, but I have a strong sense that I will not be on earth in 2021. I hope the rapture is coming, because the coronavirus, #MeToo, Antifa, and BLM curses we’re enduring seem to be part of a larger pattern of destruction which is going to get worse, not better. I have no desire to be here to see fools and brothers to apes rule us without God’s opposition.

I have been invited to Thanksgiving dinner. Alonzo says he wants to have a real Thanksgiving dinner at his own house. That will be great. It’s less than an hour away, so it will be very convenient to drive down and then transport myself back so I can lie on my back and recover.

They live fairly close to a 900-yard gun range, so that will give me more reason to visit their area.

I still know people who are mired in South Florida. Alonzo and I think God moves people to better places as they get closer to him. There are areas where nice Christian people are concentrated. It seems that God wants to preserve these places as though he were weeding gardens. I don’t think he wants to move too many backward people there. The same principle can be seen in the Bible. When the Jews behaved badly, their land spat them out. They only lived there and did well when they were obedient. The modern era is exceptional, because God moved them back while most of them were still atheists and leftists, but many have come around.

I think God let me fester in Miami because I belonged there. I would hate to go back. Today I saw “Miami” on road signs, and it made my insides tense up.

I think I’m as happy about Alonzo’s move as he is. It’s wonderful to see someone get in gear and catch God’s blessings.

We Think he Will Make his Move Soon

I made an important decision today. I decided to buy hundreds of rounds of Sellier & Bellot 6.5 Creedmoor FMJ ammo for rifle practice.

The ammo problem is pretty bad right now. You can still get nearly anything you want, if you’re willing to pay maybe 1.75 times what it’s worth. Personally, I am not willing to do that, and I do not understand people who are.

I don’t buy ammunition in person, because you have to be a chump to do that. You drive around to the few stores in your area, and then you find out they don’t have what you want or they do have it and the price is insane. A lot of people still do this, and it must be a good thing from where I sit, because I use the Internet, and if they were using it, too, there would be no good deals left for me.

Some people buy in person, and others go to ripoff websites and pay their insane prices. I know this, because the sites run out. It amazes me that people would rather be milked than spend a few minutes searching the web.

I just spent about an hour looking for what I wanted at a good price. I could have spent well over a dollar per round and given up after 10 minutes. I knew someone out there had to be selling for between 60 and 70 cents, so I persevered, and I got what I needed.

Why did I buy Sellier & Bellot? I’ve already mentioned it. This stuff is phenomenal. If you look around, you can find a site showing 2″ groups fired from 300 yards. This is about 2/3 MOA. The guy who tested it got a velocity spread of 7 fps.

Is it the best 6.5 Creedmoor ammo available? I’m sure it’s not, but I will be very surprised if, during the next year, I get so good I can shoot 2/3-MOA/300-yard groups with anything. This ammunition will shoot better than I can, and I don’t see that changing any time soon, so it seems to me it’s a tremendous bargain.

Any ammo that will hit a rat reliably 900 feet away is good ammo.

I should try their soft-point ammo. Maybe it’s just as good, and it would work if I needed to shoot for food.

Some people look down on Sellier & Bellot. It tends to be cheap. Thing is, they have an impressive modern factory. You can see a video tour on Youtube. In comparison, CCI’s .22 factory looks like a converted garage. That is not much of an exaggeration. Sellier & Bellot is a serious company. If their ammo is cheap, so much the better. Cost and quality are not always closely related.

I could not shoot today. Of course, it rained. It rains every day. I have no idea when it will stop. I’m going to have to start shooting before noon. It’s nearly always dry then.

I am cornering the .17 HMR market, and if I can ever get outside to shoot, I’ll be using my Savage 93R to work on my prone shooting. It’s cheaper to shoot than most pistols, and if the wind is still, it will shoot into an inch at 100 yards. Hard to imagine a better cheap training round. If the wind isn’t still, that will be fine, because I’ve had some training in dealing with wind, and I need to put it to use.

I’m going to try an Athlon scope on the 93R. I already have a Burris scope, but having trained to use mil-dot optics, I see no point in continuing to fool with different technology. I like the idea of learning to use the Burris correctly, but after that, there seems to be no reason to continue.

With the Burris, you shoot at various ranges and take note of where your shots land, and then you use the information later to help you make use of the holdover marks on the reticle. With my training and equipment, I’m supposed to test the ammo with a chronograph, enter data into my ballistic calculator, determine the range to targets, and aim where the calculator tells me to. It’s supposed to enable me to hit things on the first shot at any distance. I didn’t pay a load of money to take a class to learn all this so I could forget about it and go back to Elmer Fudd technology.

In order to get an Athlon, I had to go for crazy magnification. I had to choose between 8 and 25, and 8 was not going to fly. I think 25 is a lot for .17 HMR, but on the other hand, if I hunt with it, I might be hunting tiny critters with kill zones the size of ping pong balls. It seems like the best choice for the money.

The Vortex company made a name for itself using Asian-made scopes to compete with expensive Caucasian optics. Primary Arms came along and did the same thing to Vortex, undercutting their prices. Now Athlon is undercutting both of them, and the scope I’m getting is supposed to be as good as, or better than, the thousand-dollar Vortex I own. It costs $400. How can I not try that?

What if it turns out to be better than the Vortex? I’ll feel pretty stupid. I paid over $800 for it.

I still need to make a few ammo purchases to get me into the security zone. Once I feel like I have a few years’ supply, I’ll put my ammo away and start buying fresh ammo to shoot. That’s the plan.

Thank God I’m not doing this with food. Today someone sent me an ad for dried disaster rations. On sale, they wanted about $120 for 25,000 calories. So 12 dollars per day for 10 days, and then you starve. I think I can beat that at the grocery store. I fail to see the bargain. Ordinary stores carry a lot of things that will last a decade or more in a pantry.

If starvation becomes a widespread problem, I would rather just die and leave. How much should I be willing to fight to stay in this world, when I’m a heartbeat away from a place where no one is hungry and they never need air conditioning? Eating rehydrated desperation food from a 5-gallon pail is not my idea of living.

Now that the RPR is working, I should go visit the long distance range. Wednesday would be a good day for that. My farm is fine for a hundred yards, but the range offers 900, and there are no cattle walking between shooters and targets.

I’m not far from completing my basic armory and ammo dump. Once I’m done, the credit card companies may send people to see if I’m okay. When I stop spending money, they may assume I’m dead.

The Party is Over; Back to Hermiting

My weekend guests are gone, and I can breathe again.

I was scheduled to have two families show up. A third jumped in, and one of the original families bailed, thinking the increased population density jacked the coronavirus risk up too much. Then the third family bailed because of coronavirus. Then the second family decided to come after all.

Complicated.

I thought there would be 16 people here, so I bought 6 pounds of hamburger, a pack of hot dogs, a couple of smoked sausages, two boxes of Fat Boy ice cream sandwiches, and brownie ingredients. The actual load was 8 people, so let’s just say I have a lot of leftovers. I sent about half of the brownies home with some friends from Pompano, and I think I still have 6 left. I have 3 pounds of ground chuck that absolutely have to be turned into patties and frozen today.

We had a great time. The kids managed to swim a certain amount, between thunder peals. The adults sat in the shade and criticized. There were fireworks. I got one kid to eat his first chili dog.

Last night, three of us had a wonderful prayer session. We prayed in tongues for nearly half an hour first. If I were married, I would be doing this every day. With another person, I mean.

Today I’ve been working on firearms. I can finally say that for once in my life, I’ve set a gun up correctly. Nearly. My AR-15 has a LaRue trigger, a Magpul bipod, a pretty decent quick detach scope mount, and a Primary Arms mildot scope with an illuminated reticle and a sun shade.

Why do I say it’s nearly set up? I have not lapped the scope rings. This is an interesting topic.

Okay. It’s interesting to ME.

Rifle scopes are held in place by rings that are tightened onto scope tubes with screws. This sounds simple, but of course, it is not.

Most people will buy a scope, put the rings on the rifle, put the scope in the rings, get it more or less level, get the eye relief more or less right, and tighten the rings. I’ve done this a number of times. It turns out it’s not the right way to do it.

First, scope rings tend to be machined pretty badly on the insides. They can have all sorts of high spots and low spots, so when you tighten them on tubes, they may not have much area touching the optics. This leads to gouging, and it also makes for a scope that can come loose under heavy recoil. Also, the rings may not be aligned perfectly, even if they’re machined out of a single base. This makes the contact problem worse. I suppose it can also put a bending torque on a tube.

For anything more precise than a $75 scope on a .22 rifle, you need to check your rings to make sure they’re aligned, and you need to see if the insides should be lapped. Lapping means grinding irregularities off with an abrasive compound. You can lap a scope yourself. You get a kit with a bar the size of a scope tube, you put abrasive on the bar, you mount it as though it were a scope, and you work it until the abrasive cleans up the rings. A kit for one size tube runs around $45, and you can get a kit for 30mm and 1″ tubes for $65. I was going to make my own bar, but when you add it all up, it’s not worth the trouble. If you think about it, the most you could save if your homemade tube were free is $65. You would have to pay maybe $20 for steel. Then you would have to machine it. Then you would have to pay almost $20 for lapping compound. It’s a waste of time.

Second, your scope’s rings need to be tightened carefully Too tight, and you can dent your tube and even screw up mechanical stuff inside it. Too loose, and well…too loose. You need a tiny torque wrench to do it right.

I’ve written about this before, but I’ll repeat it anyway because I can make it easier to understand. In fact, I may repeat a lot of things in this post.

Gunsmithing companies make torque screwdrivers, and they’re cheap. Problem: they fall apart. A real torque screwdriver is a $400 tool. Solution: use a real torque wrench instead of a screwdriver. You can buy a 1/4″-drive inch-pound torque wrench for $40 or so. I bought one, and I spent another $3 on a 1/4″-drive 1/4″ socket with a magnet in it. You put whatever 1/4″ hex-drive bit you want in the socket, and you have a gunsmithing torque wrench that will work forever. And there are no batteries.

I got high-end rings for my Viper scope, which I plan to attach to my Ruger Precision Rifle when it arrives. For my AR-15, which is a less snobby weapon, I got a $280 14x scope, not a fancy Vortex. I bought a quick-detach cantilever mount for it. This is a one-piece mount that has two rings cut into it. Presumably, they should line up pretty well, because they were cut by the same tool in one operation.

“Cantilever” means the forward ring is out on a sort of stalk, hanging over the gun’s handguard. Why not just put a ring on the handguard, which has a picatinny rail? This is what the people who sold me the gun did with the first scope I put on it.

Here is what I’m told: the rail on top of an AR-15 has two sections. One is on the upper receiver, and the other is on the handguard. Between the two sections of rail, there is a joint. The handguard hangs out in space, attached to this joint at only one point. If the handguard bends at all, the forward ring moves in relation to the rear ring. Does this actually matter? I don’t know, but a cantilever lets you connect both rings to the part of the rail which is on top of the upper receiver. No joint.

The people who sold me the gun didn’t tell me any of this, and I know why. It doesn’t matter when you’re a doofus who wants to get lit up on cheap beer and shoot golf balls in the national forest. It doesn’t matter when you’re shooting hogs from 50 yards or when you’re shooting junk ammo at the range. It only matters when you know what you’re doing and you’re shooting accurately from long distances. I would guess that 99% of the seller’s customers just want to fool around. For all he knew, I was part of the 99%.

In truth, at the time, I was part of the 99%, and I pretty much told him that. I said I didn’t know anything about the AR-15, and I needed to buy one–even the wrong one–just to have a place to start. What he gave me was completely appropriate at the time, but things changed very quickly.

I have no idea what to do with the scope he sold me. It’s useless for target shooting. I guess you could shoot deer with it.

When I attached the new scope, I didn’t know whether I should lap the rings on the cantilever mount. I didn’t have enough steel to make a bar to use to measure the contact areas inside the rings. I tried making something quick and dirty from wood, but it didn’t work. I decided to mount the scope, order a lapping kit, and worry about it later. After all, it’s just an AR-15 with a factory barrel. I’m not going to use it to shoot Osama bin Laden’s cousins from 2000 meters.

Did I buy a fancy tool to level the scope on the rifle? Uh…no. I’ve been reading a book by a prominent shooter named Ryan Cleckner, and he pointed something out. You can level a scope on a picatinny rail by jamming a flat piece of metal between the scope and rail and making sure it touches both. This will get me within a fraction of a degree. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me and my non-precision gas gun.

I may want a different bipod eventually, but then again, I may not. I may want a high-end barrel eventually, but then again, I may not. I don’t have any problems with the no-name adjustable buttstock, which seems to give a great cheek weld at just the right height. The handguard is very nice. The rifle is ready to go, as it is right now.

I now have most of my precision rifle setup. The gun is not here, but I have the scope, some ammo, and a nice rifle bag. The rings should be here before the gun, along with the shooting mat. I still need a backpack. When I was taking my shooting class, I was surrounded by guys with suitable backpacks, and it did’t occur to me to ask for a recommendation. I don’t know what to do. I’m not sure how much volume I need. I guess I should go look at backpacks at Bass Pro, check the volume figures, and figure out how much more or less I need.

Long-range shooting can involve a lot of stairs, so the rolling Stanley toolbox I tried to use during the class is a nonstarter. It has to be a backpack.

I’ve learned some great things about 6.5 Creedmoor ammo. The best thing: you can use extremely cheap ammo up to at least 656 yards. How do I know this? There is a guy on Youtube shooting a small gong at 656 yards, over and over, using Sellier & Bellot FMJ. It’s less than 50% more expensive than Fiocchi .223. It’s a wonder to behold.

Most good shooters can’t shoot 1 MOA at 100 yards 95% of the time. Give them 100 rounds, and excluding flyers, they’ll shoot a mess covering 3 MOA. At 656 yards, 1 MOA is something like 7″, and shooting 1 MOA gets harder with distance because of wind and other problems. The guy shooting the cheap ammo was doing 0.6 MOA over a third of a mile away. For practice fodder, that’s unreal. It means he can shoot people in the head economically at a distance of 5 blocks. If he wanted to shoot coyotes, he wouldn’t even have to leave his house. He could just open an upstairs window and scan his area with a telescope.

I kid. He may live in a crowded suburb.

This ammo may not be as accurate as Hornady at 1000 yards, but I won’t always be shooting at that distance. It would be very useful most of the time.

I got some Hornady match ammo, but I also bought a little Sellier & Bellot. With the Kestrel ballistic calculator I bought, it should be no problem shooting Sellier & Bellot up close and then switching to Hornady once I get farther out. I’m limited to 900 yards in this area. Maybe S&B will work fine for everything I’ll be dealing with.

In retrospect, maybe it was an error to get match ammo. Hornady makes a hunting round which is nearly as accurate, and it would be useful if I ever actually got out of the house and located a coyote.

I’m not really sure what my LR-308 is good for. I can pop anything smaller than a deer with the AR-15, and there is no reason why I can’t use the RPR to shoot bigger animals. It’s heavy, but it will work.

I’m still thinking about a second AR-15 in 6mm ARC. If this new cartridge turns out to have legs, I may want to try it. It would be easier to carry while hunting, and it would be better than .223 for just about everything.

I used to think people who hunted with AR-type guns were just trying to make a point. Maybe they were, back then. Anyhow, these days, I can see why a person would use one. They’re handy, they have lots of aftermarket support, the .223 cartridge is great for all sorts of game, and you can take it home and use it to defend your house, unless you want something more reliable.

Maybe I’ll get out and pop off a few rounds today. It will be nice to see a plan come together.

Wistful Thoughts From a Sinking Ship

If you want a testimony to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, look no further. You only have to see how I behave in the morning.

I have three friends staying in my house; a couple and their teenage son. All are younger than I am. Yesterday, we went to the grocery. They couldn’t believe I didn’t have coffee in the house. They didn’t buy any, however.

This morning I woke up at 7:00 and started praying. Walked into the kitchen two hours later, and I saw two zombies peering into the refrigerator. My friend and his wife were squinting at the food through tiny slits. Their shoulders were hunched. They looked like someone had just rolled them out of bed at three a.m.

They were not happy about the lack of coffee, even though it was their choice.

I must have been annoying. I was bouncing around like a high school kid, feeding my birds and getting food ready for lunch. I kept trying not to talk too loud.

They managed to get themselves some eggs and bacon. Watching them eat was like watching a seating in the cafeteria at an assisted living facility. Thankfully, no one passed out in the food.

I felt great even though I strained my back yesterday. I was eager to get the day started. It has been almost two hours, and they are still trying to get into the shower.

When I was younger, I detested mornings. I was perfectly happy to sleep until noon. I hated getting up. When I was practicing law in downtown Miami, I used to drink an entire colada before getting started. A colada is a small container of espresso intended for several people.

I don’t want caffeine in the house now. I’m not a drug user. Why would I want to take drugs every morning?

When I used caffeine, I ground my teeth at night. I had to have some work done on some teeth that were worn. I don’t do that now. If I drank a cup of tea today, I would probably have to take benadryl in order to get to sleep tonight. The Holy Spirit doesn’t need help from drugs.

If you can’t get it together in the morning, there is a kink in the hose between you and God. You weren’t created to dread life.

By the time I’m ready for lunch, they should be dressed.

The husband is Nicaraguan, and his wife is Puerto Rican. They’re charismatic Christians. Yesterday, we talked a lot about the insanity (literal) of modern leftists. They support Trump a hundred percent, as does their son. How do their relatives feel? They’re not happy. They think all Hispanics should support illegal immigration instead of supporting the generous country they swear allegiance to in order to be allowed to stay. They have had fights with friends.

Blessed foreigners move to this country and then join our persecutors. How about that? Says a lot about human depravity.

Why are my friends on the right side of history? It’s the Holy Spirit at work. We look different, and we come from different places, but the Holy Spirit protects serious charismatics from the delusions of the Beast’s socialist, white-hating children, so my friends and I have harmony. I stand against white nuts who don’t know the Holy Spirit, and they stand against brown nuts.

My friends say there is a movement to destroy the statue in the Lincoln Memorial. I guess freeing the slaves was a racist move. Anyway, they are not pleased with what is happening.

I always feel a certain amount of gratitude on the Fourth of July, but this year, it’s different. We didn’t just get independence, which wasn’t actually that great a blessing. We got over 200 years of relative freedom from persecution. Now that’s over. Christians in the US are going to be like Christians in China, and after that, we’ll be like Christians in Iran or Indonesia.

Yesterday we watched a video by Zev Porat, the Israeli Messianic rabbi. He told how his family had tormented him after his acceptance of Yeshua. His grandfather, who is also a rabbi, threw dishes at his head and cut him so badly he needed stitches. His sister asked a religious court for a restraining order. He has never seen his nephews. He was physically thrown out of his grandfather’s funeral, by hired goons. He was fired from his job and ended up living in a tent. His multimillion-dollar inheritance was taken away because he refused to sign a paper saying he renounced Yeshua. He was punched and beaten by a mob. Seven rabbis barged into his tent, tried to bribe him to quit, and spat on him when he refused.

I have never had to deal with that kind of thing, which is very typical among religious Jews. I’ve been completely rejected by crooked pastors and most people who went to the churches I attended. I have stopped communicating with many aquaintances with whom I no longer have much in common. That’s the extent of my persecution and separation. No one spits on me, although I know a few people who would like to.

In Muslim countries, Christians are crucified and beheaded. Some have had their arms cut off. Their churches are burned. The news doesn’t tell us, because Satan controls the press, but you can look it up. Socialist countries have killed innumerable Christians. They have tortured and imprisoned them. They have forced them to do slave labor.

America has been a beautiful haven. Many people have to fight their way into Christian-dominated cultures. I was born into one. I didn’t have to earn a thing. What a blessing.

It was wonderful while it lasted, and whatever protection God will give me in my remaining time will be a magnificent gift. I wish I had always understood what a treasure I had.

Today I Lived the Dream

This afternoon I did something some would consider unthinkable.

Long, long ago, in a country far, far away, which was known as the United States, where Bruce Jenner was male and it was okay to throw illegal immigrants out of your country for reasons everyone understood, I had my first chili slaw dog. I believe I ordered it at Uni’s, a small ice cream shack in the town of Cashiers, North Carolina. I recall being stunned that such things existed. I had to try one.

It blew my mind. The combination of cheap buns, hot dogs that were probably mostly saw dust and rat hairs, and chili which may well have been made from stray cats, was excellent. It was more than excellent; it was right.

Since then, I have often joked about eating something even more awe-inspiring: the chili-CHEESE-slaw dog. But I can’t recall actually having one. Maybe I did. At my age, a person has done many, many things. I can’t remember everything. I’m amazed I remembered Uni’s.

Today I decided it was time for my body to cash the check my mouth had written. Behold:

That’s two Ball Park dogs, homemade slaw, colby/jack cheese, and the worst chili you can buy without going to a store brand: Hormel No Beans. I think they generate this stuff from the meat residue too gross even for sausage-making.

I make what may well be the most astonishing chili on earth, so why the can of, for all I know, ground lungs and nipples? Couple of reasons. First, this was just a test run. Second, I’m not sure good chili would work in a chili dog. It’s trash cuisine to begin with, so using good ingredients could well ruin it.

I boiled the dogs in plain old water because I did not want to waste Sierra Nevada ale, and before I added the slaw, I melted the cheese with a Black & Decker heat gun. It went hot dog => chili => cheese => slaw.

Let’s state the obvious: they were magnificent. But there were issues, and I found room for improvement.

First: the slaw went absolutely everywhere. There was no way to contain it. I had to eat directly over the plate, and when I was done, I still needed a broom. In the future, I need to cut the slaw much finer. I used bagged slaw with my own sauce because grating your own cabbage doesn’t make slaw any better. The slaw was way too coarse to be managed easily.

Second: better chili would help. I was eating bland hot dogs, so the bland chili sort of blended into them in my senses.

Third: better hot dogs would help. I think a Hillshire Farms smoked beef sausage would be perfect. I’m not sure why anyone buys the unseasoned Slim Jims that pass for hot dogs in 2020 America.

Fourth: hot dog buns just don’t work. They don’t work for normal hot dogs, let alone beef sausages buried in chili and slaw. I think the best thing is to look for some kind of loaf that has a bun-like texture and cut it up to suit the geometry of the contents.

Fifth: more cheese. What food is there that doesn’t need more cheese? I would go with extra-sharp cheddar next time.

Sixth: onions. This sandwich needs chopped onions between the chili and cheese.

The slaw was pretty simple. Slaw mix, mayo, salt, sugar, celery seed, and cider vinegar. I have made slaw with Miracle Whip, but it doesn’t really work even though it seems like it should.

I recommend trying a couple of these when no one is around. You won’t be sorry.

I feel like listening to the Kentucky Headhunters.

The New Crazies Make me Miss the Old Crazies

Today I had fun mowing my yard in a T-shirt and a shoulder holster. And pants. Then I came indoors, made hot dogs, turned on Youtube, and found out Seattle had been taken over by leftists with AR15’s.

Okay.

By the way, something seems to have gone wrong with hot dogs. I am not a big hot dog eater, so I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure they used to be a lot bigger. I picked some up at the store the other day, and no matter which brand I looked at, they all resembled pink noodles. I grilled a couple of Ball Park bun-length hot dogs yesterday, and when I added the requisite ketchup, mustard, relish, and onions, the meat disappeared. I can only guess how awful it would have been had I gone to a full-throttle chili-cheese-slaw dog.

Let me digress from my digression. Smoked sausages are the best hot dogs. Unless maybe bratwurst counts. A Hillshire Farms smoked mystery meat cylinder is actually a lot thicker than hot dogs used to be, and it tastes a lot better, too.

To digress even further…”bun-length” hot dogs??? Isn’t this a blatant admission that most hot dogs are too short? It looks like they shrunk the dogs lengthwise even before they went after girth. Now they’re selling length back to us, like they’re doing us a favor.

This tyranny has to end.

Slob cooking tip: when grilling hot dogs for one, nuke them first. Then they’ll be nice and hot in the middle, and you can grill them a lot faster. Just burn the outsides a little, and you’re off to the races.

So. The exact thing I predicted has happened, except that the rioters are white, not black, and the authorities are in favor of it.

The other day I pointed out that there was a huge danger BLMtifa nuts would realize they could take over cities, and when that happened, we would be in big trouble. Not “we,” really, because I live on a farm surrounded by wonderful people and zero targets of leftist interest. But still.

I figured black rioters would be the culprits, because they have gigantic support from huge ghettos. It didn’t occur to me that white lesbians and man-bun-sporting baristas would beat them to it.

Seattle is a very white city. Less than 10% of the population is black. Compare New York with 25%. Even with the huge white and black exodus and Latin influx, Miami is almost 20% black. Chicago checks in at around 30%. Black people like cities. They just do. But they don’t like Seattle. Maybe it’s the rain.

The takeover includes City Hall, and one of the rioters’ demands is that the mayor, who looks like someone on the editorial staff at Cosmopolitan, resign, immediately. Not one to take this lying down, the mayor says…wait, she agrees completely. I think. In any case, she is on the news forcefully defending the people who put her in the street.

She may not have a good answer to the problem of displaced people and illegally seized property, but she has pinpointed the true source of all of Seattle’s ills. Of course, I refer to Donald Trump. Obvious?

Why do I call these people rioters, given that they don’t seem to be very violent at the moment? Look, if you take over a city using semiautomatic rifles, it’s a riot. It may be a nice, polite, Caucasian-heavy riot, but it’s a riot.

It’s a wonder to behold. I knew white liberals were suicidal, but it’s still amazing to see them self-actualize.

There are a lot of weird things about the takeover. When did leftists decide it was okay to carry AR15’s openly? When did they even decide it was okay for AR15’s to exist?

Part of me wants to cheer them on for buying rifles, because it will be hard for leftists to keep throttling our civil rights if they’re also carrying guns. But capturing cities is not really consistent with the intent of the non-trans cis men who wrote the Second Amendment.

Here’s something weird: leftist crazies can legally carry rifles in Seattle, which is insanely off to the left, but I can’t do it here in Florida, where we are constantly under attack for our “loose” firearm laws. How did that happen?

I’m allowed to carry openly in two places: my home and my business, which, sadly, is my home. It’s really one place. That’s all I get. And I can’t permit you to carry openly on my property, in case you’re wondering. Of course, I would let you do it, if you’re a friend, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be committing a felony.

I saw a fascinating video by a guy in North Dakota. He calls himself Tiborasaurus Rex, if I spelled it right. Weird guy. I thought he was just another grumpy dad bod with various beefs he wanted to air, but I looked at some of his old videos, and I saw a young military-looking guy teaching viewers how to be snipers. Is it really the same guy? It’s terrible what a few years and some kids can do to you.

I’m kidding. You can’t spend your whole life living on the edge and looking like a recruiting poster. Sooner or later, you will probably find yourself wearing Crocs and driving a minivan.

This is why they always kill the girl before James Bond marries her.

Anyway, he apparently lives near a town called Dickson, which is across the state from–you guessed it–Minnesota. BLMtifa terrorists decided to send rioters to various small towns in North Dakota, perhaps because they thought they were good places to commit violent crimes and take selfies. Soft targets, they must have thought.

Oh, you didn’t hear about this on the news? Amazing!

The folks in Dickson knew they were coming, so they got out their guns and invited some bikers. When the BLMtifers showed up, they were greeted with a wall of barrels, more or less. The local mall was completely blanketed in parked Harleys. The people of Dickson must have realized that stealing TV’s was always high on the BLMtifa agenda. You can’t protest from the heart when you don’t have Ultra 4K on the wall in your mom’s basement.

According to Mr. Rex, the BLMtifers packed up and went home without damaging anything. Total buzzkill.

He says he sat at a table in a local restaurant and listened to BLMtifers planning violent crimes and thefts. He said they even planned rapes. He says they were intercepted outside a bank they intended to knock over. For the cause. Hey, lattes and American Apparel shirts aren’t free.

What he said was highly disturbing. It shows how dangerous and cruel these people are. They’re no joke. Well. They ARE a joke, but they’re still very dangerous.

What would have happened had Mr. Rex and his friends lived somewhere else? Exactly what happened somewhere else. There would have been looting, beatings, and fires. Fortunately, he and his friends had the full cooperation of the police, and with their help, they not only kept their town safe; they made a name for it so BLMtifa will be very afraid to return.

Seattle, now…that’s another story. It’s BLMtifa paradise. But it’s relatively safe because the population is mostly whites and Asians who don’t want police records to prevent them from getting jobs at the Genius Bar.

I’ll tell you what I wonder. How are small-town Floridians supposed to be safe if we get arrested when we show up to deter BLMtifa with rifles? How can we help the police if open carry is a crime? It’s illegal to carry a rifle openly, and a concealed weapons permit doesn’t cover rifles, so it’s also illegal to carry openly.

What have we learned?

1. BLMtifa now knows it can take over cities.
2. Leftists may respond to BLMtifa aggression by apologizing and asking what they can do to assist in their own destruction. This feeds back into observation 1.
3. Open carry is the immediate answer to BLMtifa threats in small towns.
4. Open carry won’t be possible in Florida unless the cops issue statements waiving arrest in exchange for help.

One city has fallen. How long will it take for the next one to surrender? Of course, you could say places like Compton, Overtown, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Chicago’s south side already exist in a state of perennial surrender. I grant you that. But when will we see blatant, Seattle-style takeovers spread, with more violence?

I would love to be a fly on the wall, watching girls in short haircuts waving rifles telling Seattle…ites? What to do. They’ve declared their area to be a “cop-free zone.” Okay, so that means you can do anything you want there, right? Probably not, because people would be going in and taking their property back. So if the short-haired ladies are not permitting that…wait for it…aren’t they…the POLICE?

What if someone resists them? Will they shoot? Will they get out the cable ties and pepper spray? How do you restrain suspects–people accused of eating meat or whatever–without force? What if they kick you or punch you? What if they grab you by your blue mohawk, pull your head down, and rain blows on your skull? Do you just walk away? Do you knock them down and kneel on them for 9 minutes? One wonders.

There is a musical called Pippin. It’s about Charlemagne’s son. It’s not all that historically accurate, because Charlemagne’s father was named Pepin the Short, and while he did have a son named Pepin, the son who succeeded him was named Louis. But let’s go with it.

In the play, Pippin gets all soyed up and woke, and he finds his father’s harsh treatment of his subjects reprehensible. He murders him and takes over, eager to show how nice life is under an enlightened king who loves chick flicks and walks on the beach. Of course, he finds he has to be tough in order to prevent everyone from taking advantage of him. Things come to a head when he tells the leader of a besieging army he wants to begin a new day of peace, joy, hot yoga, and pointless sham recycling. The leader sends word that he agrees wholeheartedly and will depart. As soon as Pippin sends him his severed genitals.

At this point, he pulls the knife out of Charlemagne, who magically comes back to life to say, “I told you so.”

In a truly dark country with heartless, despotic rulers, change may be a good thing, but here in the US, every insurgent who gets anywhere will eventually have a Pippin moment. It’s like the first time you open your mouth and, to your horror, hear yourself say something your dad used to say.

Maybe I shouldn’t take such a lighthearted tone, but what else can I do?

Since I appear to be predicting the future successfully, appling a mystical gift known as the ability to perceive the obvious, I’ll say we should expect more takeovers with a more violent, race-tinged (i.e. hostile to whites, Jews, and Asians) flavor. If it doesn’t happen during the current wave of insanity, it will happen during the next one. I’m not sure the current one will end, though. It may be of of them “new normal” deals.

I foresee people using cyberspace to rule through mobs. We are not quite at the point where that would be a slam dunk. Maybe the bread needs to rise a little longer. Maybe America will succeed in getting the current crop of babies to take their pacifiers and nap for a bit, and we’ll see them return with more power when Skynet gets its fingers into all of us sufficiently deeply.

I could totally see Google and Facebook working to make that happen. I’m sure there are Google kids talking about it already. If I’m smart enough to see true technocracy on the horizon, people who actually work for social giants must have seen it years ago.

They saw it if they read my blog.

If you don’t know the Holy Spirit, you better introduce yourself. You’re already way late for boot camp. You can’t save yourself, and the government will either be unwilling or unable to help. You need to know someone who can surround you with favor and tell you where to move and what to do.

Learn from my Bad Example

God changes lives with supernatural revelation, and he has been very generous with me lately. He gave me a compound revelation this month involving my attitude.

He showed me that I need to be much more reluctant to complain. I’ve had a lot of bad experiences in cultures where people were pressured to bury their heads in the sand, and I have come to love exposing the truth, but I haven’t done a good job of separating exposure from pointless bellyaching or from reviling or ridiculing. Revealing the truth is very important, and it’s very important to do it in situations where it will destroy your popularity, but you can’t let yourself obsess on what is wrong or let it become an excuse for giving up too early.

It’s good to say, “I hear a noise coming from my front end, so I need to have my bearings checked.” It’s bad to say, “I hate this car. It’s always letting me down. Why can’t I ever have a car that works right? Other people have good cars. I can’t believe this is happening again. I’m so sick of this thing.”

You have to appreciate what you have and what happens to you.

Here is what God has shown me: you have to have what I call an immigrant/orphan/warrior attitude.

Consider immigrants who move the USA. I know many of them are curses to us. Many come filled with hostility toward us. Some perform acts of terrorism. Some expect us to mold ourselves to their toxic, backward cultures, which they themselves fled, instead of adapting themselves to our superior culture. Many come here out of pure selfishness. All those things are true, but I’m not suggesting we be like them in those ways. I’m suggesting we be like them in our appreciation of what we have.

I read an anecdote about a visitor from Russia. This person kept telling her hosts how wonderful the USSR was and how inferior America was. She could not shut up. Then there was a trip to an American supermarket in the winter. The critic looked around at the packed shelves and the fresh fruit and vegetables and started to cry.

That individual appreciated a blessing I have enjoyed every single day I’ve spent in America. I, on the other hand, feel deprived when my local store doesn’t have the exact cut of choice beef I want to buy or the right brand and variety of tomatoes for pizza.

Consider orphans. Many are hard to place, so they get stuck in orphanages for years, or they go from one foster family to another. They dream of having their own homes, with siblings and parents. The rest of us don’t feel much gratitude for situations older orphans pray for every night.

My family did me a lot of harm, but at least I had a family. My bills were paid, and we never had to live in a shelter or even an apartment. My mother was wonderful. I knew my grandparents. I knew my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Both of my parents left me inheritances. My family damaged me more than most white American families, but it also did me a great deal of good.

Think about warriors. When a warrior in a superior force goes into battle, and enemy soldiers start shooting at his position, he doesn’t say, “I am cursed. These people should have given up as soon as they saw us, but they’re trying to kill us anyway, and now I have to go through a miserable battle.” A warrior expects conflict. It’s what he trains for. He sees it as a normal obstacle he has to pass in order to get to victory.

The other day I bought a new stove. My old primitive stove was very hard to clean, and it only had 4 burners. I was reluctant to cook because it was so difficult to get the stove back in order afterward. I found a great induction cooktop at Home Depot for something like 45% off. I measured the existing stove, and while I couldn’t get at the cutout in the stone counter to measure it, I made a reasonable assumption: because appliances are standardized, a 36″ induction cooktop would fit in a cutout made for a 36″ conventional cooktop.

I got the old cooktop out, and I found that the cutout was 3/8″ too short. I had expected the switch to take about 30 minutes. Now I was looking at hiring someone or buying unfamiliar tools, making the new cuts myself, and enduring a long, messy job. I also learned that the manufacturer had not included some brackets for supporting the new stove in a stone counter. I’m talking about two small pieces of steel plus a tube of glue. Should cost about 10 bucks. In fact, these things should be included in the package with a stove that retails for $1800. I looked online, and the price for the “kit” was about $135.

I felt defeated, and that’s ridiculous. I knew it was ridiculous. I apologized to God even while I was feeling defeated. I rejected the feeling.

I said I knew the stove was going to fit. Victory was already mine. No doubt about it. I wasn’t experiencing defeat. I was just having a setback. I was blessed with an $1800 stove for which I paid about $1000, I didn’t have to use cash to get it, I got free delivery, I didn’t need help removing the old stove, I was sufficiently handy to know I was going to be able to get the cutout enlarged, I was putting it in a beautiful kitchen in a magnificent house in an extremely pleasant county in the United States of America…what possible excuse was there for feeling cursed and defeated?

I didn’t have a warrior attitude. I had a snowflake attitude. An Antifa/BLM attitude. I knew it. I hated it. I refused to continue in it. I asked God to help me.

I knew that on the other side of the work and the mess, a fantastic new stove was waiting. The new stove has a top which is a continuous sheet of glass. Cleaning it after a messy cooking session takes less than 5 minutes. It has 5 burners, one of which is gigantic, which is a nice feature. It’s much, much faster than gas, conventional, or radiant cooking. It won’t work with certain cookware, but I can get new things, and I have additional portable burners anyway. When I’m not cooking, the surface functions as temporary counter space.

God was blessing me like crazy. Feeling defeated and wronged was not just incorrect; it was offensive.

I made a terrible mess when I installed the cooktop, but a tradesman would have made the exact same mess. Instead of getting a new stove for $1800 plus maybe $500 in installation costs, I got it for $1000, no cash left my bank account, and I learned a lot.

Along the way, I found out I didn’t need the expensive tube of glue and sheet metal brackets.

The Bible promises us victory over and over. It doesn’t say we’ll never have to fight or that things will go exactly the way we want. Victory is not the same thing as lack of conflict. When we win wars decisively, we still have to fight, and we still lose people. No one with any common sense says that makes us losers.

Sometimes God has shown me what it’s like to deal with me and my bad attitude. I have been in situations where I’ve been in charge of people who were doing various things. If you have employees, or if you have hired people temporarily, you’ve been there. I have dealt with people who whined and complained. I have dealt with people who stood around conversing instead of working, while I, the one who was paying them, worked. I’ve dealt with people who were so slow and lazy, they were literally much slower than I would have been had I done things alone. I’ve experienced resentment from people I was paying. I felt I was being punished for giving them money.

When I was slaving away as an armorbearer at Miami’s Trinity Church, I worked a couple of Richie Wilkerson’s Rendezvous meetings at the Fillmore Theater on Miami Beach. People volunteered to help the armorbearers. We were there mostly to manage crowds. I had a lot of experience, and I was in a position of authority. A young black man was part of my team.

I set things up the way they were supposed to be, in cooperation with the other armorbearers. Then this young man decided he was in charge. He started moving cordons and changing the way traffic flowed. He started telling me how things were going to be set up, as though I had volunteered to work for him!

His ideas were inept and would have caused problems. I immediately moved things back, and I told him I was running the team. I said if he wanted to help us, he had to follow orders.

He got so mad, he walked off and quit. He could not understand that he we were not equals on the team. It was impossible to explain this concept, which 98% of human beings chosen at random would have understood without being told. No one on the team could figure him out.

I never interacted with him after that. I forgot his face. I don’t know what happened to him. Another young man from the same area had also volunteered, and he could not have been more helpful. He kept making sure he was doing what the team wanted him to do. He never complained. After the conference was over, we would always wave at each other in church and converse a little.

I’ve dealt with a lot of people who could not submit, honor, or appreciate. I have often shown similar attitudes toward God.

If someone is willing to pay you and advise you when he has other options, and you make him miserable, he’s going to limit what he does for you. It’s just not worth it when you have to be treated like you’re imposing. On the other hand, when people have a good attitude, it makes you grateful. It makes you want to do more for them and to be more closely involved with them.

Surely we punish God when we aren’t grateful and respectful, and surely he responds by holding back our blessings. Surely he must increase our blessings when we have better attitudes. I believe there are things I wanted which God kept from me, and now I believe he will provide those things because I will reward him instead of making him wish he had a better son to work with.

Here is something Jesus said:

A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.

Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?

And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it:

And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.

When you’re push-starting a car, you don’t push forever. If it doesn’t start to run eventually, you quit pushing.

Every day, I need to see my blessings as though they were new. When I get in my car, I should feel as though I were driving a new car off a dealer’s lot. When I sit in my air-conditioned house, I should feel as though I had been living in a tent in insufferable heat all my life. When I eat and drink, I should feel as though I had just been rescued from a month in a lifeboat. I live in a world where billions of people don’t have the good things I have. I could easily be replaced with someone more grateful.

That’s what happened to the Jews. I’m not talking about replacement theology. They are still God’s chosen. But if you read the Bible, you will see that they got in trouble over and over for taking God’s blessings for granted, and in the end, most didn’t appreciate the greatest blessing of all: their messiah. So most of what he offered went to Gentiles. Now, of course, most Christians take God and his blessings for granted, so we’re in the same boat.

I believe this revelation is extremely powerful and that it will bring me things I couldn’t get before. I pray, and I have faith, but faith isn’t everything. How effective can faith for a result be if God knows you’re going to make him wish he had never granted your request?

I’m astounded when I look back and think of all the blessings I’ve spat on and ruined. My education is an example. I barely did anything in high school, but one of the world’s best universities sent me a letter, asking me to apply. When I was accepted and my parents paid my tuition and expenses without hesitation, I didn’t appreciate it at all. I behaved like a character from the movie Animal House. I thought the administration was my enemy. I thought drunkenness was cool. I made trouble.

I wish I could go through high school again. I went to the best school in Florida. I could have focused on math and science. I could have gone to MIT or Caltech. Even Columbia, the school that accepted me, was a top-notch STEM school.

I know I couldn’t have done much better as things were. I didn’t know God, and I truly was cursed. My family was a constant source of discouragement and pain. Things didn’t go well even when I did things right. But if I had known God and had a better attitude, I would have excelled.

I know people who were thrilled to be able to go to community college. I know people who were thrilled to go to state universities. I know people who have student loans. I had a full ride at one of the best Ivy League schools, and I resented it!

I can’t complain about mowing the yard. Most people don’t have a yard. I can’t complain about doing bookkeeping and taxes. Most people have no money to manage. It’s amazing to me that I ever complained about cleaning up after my pets. Who chose to buy them? How many people are there who would love to have two beautiful exotic birds who love them?

I have to remember that regardless of what happens while I’m here on Earth, I have victory. Under the worst circumstances imaginable, which are nothing like my actual circumstances, I would still be saved when I died. The rejection and problems I face here are like the heckling and reviling Cubans used to experience when they chose to move to America. People would spit on them and call them worms. The speed bumps I deal with are temporary and unimportant, and they precede blessings that will make me forget them.

I think my new outlook will improve my life tremendously, so I want to tell other people who make the same mistakes I did. I hope someone else can make the change earlier and have a better life than the one I’ve had.

Psalm 37:19

Today I talked to my friend Tina about a dream she had.

She found herself at a beautiful house. Outside, the sky was richly colored in shades of blue and pink that resembled cotton candy. The house was situated in an a mountainous area. She didn’t need a key to get inside the house. Once she entered, she saw beautiful furniture, just as she would have wanted it.

She said she hadn’t earned any of it. Someone had prepared it for her as a gift.

This weekend, a couple of friends I call Abe and Sarah on my blog visited with their family, and they told me how wonderful the coronavirus weeks had been to them. They were able to work and make money the whole time. They got stimulus money. They paid off their vehicles. They gained weight. They had peace. They lacked nothing.

Tina told me her experience had been very similar. She lost her job at the beginning of the lockdown, and she had to take a job that paid less. Things worked out so she did better financially with the new job. All her bills were paid on time. She was able to save money. She felt peace. She felt God was looking out for her.

My friends and I have been sheltered and pampered while many other people have contended with lack and fear.

How does the dream connect with the protection and provision God gave Tina?

She thought it might be a vision of heaven. I suppose that could be true. It may mean something else, though. It may be God’s way of showing her he will keep protecting and providing, in excellent style.

It may mean God will move her physically to protect her from the turmoil that’s coming to areas where the ungodly live in large numbers or are able to visit without much effort.

I believe hills and mountains usually represent barriers in the Bible. Strongholds. Maybe the hills in the dream are God’s barriers to Tina’s enemies.

We talked about our mutual friend Travis who died on Mother’s Day. We speculated on why he had not been healed.

Today is Travis’s 30th birthday.

I’m beginning to think God was not willing to leave him here for the George Floyd riots. Travis had some problems with anger in the area of race relations, and as of the time he was shot, he had not been able to let it go completely. He thought Colin Kaepernick was a hero, and sometimes he sounded off on social media for the benefit of his Facebook friends. To be completely honest, it was a little bit hypocritical. The Facebook Travis and the private Travis were different. He hadn’t gotten over his desire to be accepted and admired as a champion of the black race.

Privately, Travis Quinn supported Donald Trump very strongly. He once texted me out of the blue to say, “Trump must be reelected.” He always felt he had to qualify things he said about Trump. He would lay out his criticisms and then say, “but…”

It may well be that had Travis lived, he would have been drawn into the hatred we are seeing from rioters all across the country. Satan attacks people through the doors they haven’t closed yet, and Travis was vulnerable in the area of race.

We don’t know how things are going to pan out. It may be that events black and far-left activists will find infuriating are just over the horizon. Maybe things will happen that will motivate people who are presently calm to become radicalized. Maybe Travis would not have been able to resist this temptation, and maybe he would have cut me off.

I suppose a major provocation has to happen eventually. We know the Beast’s hordes will be more murderous than they are now, and in order for that to happen, there have to be excuses. Things have to happen to set them off.

Maybe President Trump will do something that will flood their emotions.

Some Jews believe Enoch never sinned and that God removed him from the earth because he knew that he would sin if he stayed longer.

If Travis is gone because of his weakness for identifying with an earthly race instead of the family of God, it doesn’t answer the biggest question I have about his death. I still don’t know why I thought God said he would be healed. I will have to wait for the answer.

You have to be a hundred percent behind God. Jesus said you can’t wait because you have to bury your father or because you want to say goodbye to your family. You have to get up and go, without looking back. This racial mess is going to cause a lot of weak people to take their hands off the plow.

Satan Can’t Take Away as Much as God can Give

If things went according to plan, my friend Travis Quinn was buried yesterday. I am told the funeral was set for two p.m. I was not there. Instead, I spent the weekend here at the house, hosting a family that knew Travis.

I don’t know if they want their names on the Internet. I will call them Abe and Sarah. I met Abe when I was an armorbearer at Trinity Church in Miami. He was also on the team. We used to have breakfast meetings at the Denny’s on Hallandale Boulevard. Sometimes I said a few things about the importance of prayer in tongues and the need to be freed from iniquities. Abe was very quiet. I didn’t think he was paying attention. Later, I found out he was absorbing everything. We became very close.

Abe and I got tired of the way Trinity Church used people and taught lies in order to get money. Things came to a head when his son was burned in the church nursery. He had a large blister on his face, covering a substantial area. We thought he might be scarred for life.

When Abe and Sarah asked for answers, no one in the church would talk. The head pastor, Rich Wilkerson, ran away, which was S.O.P. for him. My impression was that a lawyer told him to keep quiet. When Abe and Sarah took their son to the E.R., they became the focus of attention. They were asked a lot of questions. The obvious reason: the doctors and nurses wanted to get them charged with child abuse. Had someone at the church called and admitted fault, everything would have been cleared up. That didn’t happen.

When someone associated with Trinity has a problem, Trinity discards that person, like a tire which has had a blowout. They put on a new tire and keep moving. They know new tires will keep coming in the door. They adhere to the teachings of P.T. Barnum.

Abe and Sarah left Trinity before I did, and we ended up at the same new church, where the head pastor showed an inordinate interest in their young daughter and was later imprisoned for having a sexual relationship with a little girl.

We have been through a lot together. I watched them move from home to home, generally upgrading. They moved to Orlando while I was still stuck in Miami. Now they’re in Sanford. They don’t go to a prosperity church. Things keep getting better for them.

Abe once noted that his financial situation seemed to improve during times when he didn’t give Trinity his tithes.

Abe’s dad was not around when he was a kid, and he was raised by his grandmother. Somehow, he came out of that with an extraordinary determination to be a perfect father. He watches over his family like a sheepdog watching a flock. No one makes a move he doesn’t notice. Sarah is right there with him, presenting a unified front so the kids will have stability.

Abe was like a patient older brother to Travis. Sometimes he needled him a little. He didn’t let Travis pull anything over on him. He caught things I let Travis get away with. I held Travis accountable on many occasions, but Abe had a lot of experience in the area of correcting young people early, so Travis never got away with anything around him.

There are 5 kids in the family. The youngest, Gabby, is my goddaughter. She turned out to be a real firecracker. Always saying or doing something unexpected. She used to run up to people with no warning and wrap her arms around them as tightly as possible. At one point, she became obsessed with a line from the movie The Incredibles. She would put her hands on her hips and announce, “NO CAPES!” for no apparent reason.

Abe and I have often discussed the many sorry individuals Travis associated with, as well as his sorry hometown. Travis was from Miami Gardens, and Abe was from Liberty City. Both are ghetto areas. Abe got his family out of South Florida early, and, like me, he hated the area so much he was highly disturbed when he had to make occasional visits. He wanted South Florida behind him and his family, period. No looking back. Travis wanted out, but he felt trapped by his father’s problems, and he hated to leave people behind. He had many, many music students, and he wanted them to escape Miami’s ghettos. Travis didn’t move quickly enough. Abe and I both believe this is why he died.

Travis spent his last month alone in a hospital room, with few visits and no communication with friends. I asked to be put on the contact list, but it didn’t happen. I was part of a small group of people who tried to look after his interests. We felt helpless because we were shut out. We still can’t understand why it was so hard to get things done. There are things people automatically do for you when you go to intensive care, unless you’re a serial killer or a pedophile. Those things didn’t seem to happen for Travis, and there is no excuse for anyone who should have been involved.

Abe called me a few days before the viewing. He had been planning to go, even though he hates Miami. Sarah had advised him against it. I could tell his heart was no longer in the trip. We discussed the ways in which we felt Travis had been let down, and Abe said he had decided not to go.

People say you go to wakes and funerals for the dead, not the people they leave behind. That’s not necessarily true. The dead have no idea who goes to their funerals, and they have other things on their minds. They don’t make lists and tape them to their refrigerators so they can think about the people who really loved them. We go to wakes and funerals for ourselves and for others. We need to see the bodies so we can feel the reality of what has happened. We need to grieve with people we care about. We want to support other people who need help.

In Travis’s case, there wasn’t much point in attending. We knew he was really dead. We wouldn’t have been surrounded by people who shared our feelings or who would have looked to us for comfort. We wouldn’t have been able to help anyone.

The viewing was set up so only 10 people could go in at a time, with masks. The funeral was closed to everyone except his family. It wouldn’t have been anything like a typical set of death rituals. When my grandfather died, people came from all over three counties and brought food to my grandmother’s house. Guests were everywhere. Many people attended the funeral. There was a big lunch right afterward, at the church. We were inundated with food. My dad had a fifth of Gentleman Jack in the car trunk, and we socialized over that. Afterward, the same night, the socializing continued. People told funny stories. Old relationships were rekindled, if briefly.

The events following my grandfather’s death were curative and uplifting. If we had gone to Miami for Travis, it would have been different. We would have been reminded why we left. We would have experienced much of the rejection all over again.

It would have been like a date with an ex-girlfriend. All the reasons for the breakup would have flooded back to the forefront.

Travis should have had a cortege. He should have had a band made up of his students and people he knew from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. There should have been a meal afterward. There should have been conversation. Abe and I knew those things were not going to happen. Part of it was due to the epidemic, and part was due to other people’s choices.

With Travis gone, neither of us has any social connection to Miami.

We didn’t want to have to sit and listen to hypocrites who talked about how they loved Travis even though they were never around when he needed help.

I know who Travis went to when he needed a hand moving. I know who he went to when he needed a place to live. I know who didn’t show up when it was time to carry furniture. No one can lie to me.

Not long before he died, Travis did an interview in which he talked about the importance of giving people flowers while they’re alive instead of waiting for their funerals. That says it all. The people who were good to him while he was alive didn’t have anything to prove after he died.

Abe and his family rolled in yesterday afternoon. I cleaned up the house and gave them the second floor. I went grocery shopping, and they arrived while I was gone. I forgot to leave a key. When I got back home, 4 kids were playing in the pool. The fifth starts a new job tomorrow, and she couldn’t make it.

We fired up the grill and made a tremendous amount of food. Burgers. Hot dogs. Smoked sausages. Grilled chicken. Before we ate, we prayed and thanked God for Travis and for the people who fill the hole he left behind. Abe’s kids made water balloons and took him on in a balloon war. Sarah and I sat in the shade and talked.

A lot of my conversation with Abe and Sarah was about coronavirus. I told them how I had noticed that the epidemic was completely different in godly and ungodly areas. I said I had lacked for nothing. I said that apart from what had happened to Travis, it had been a peaceful and plesant time. I said my biggest problem had been weight gain.

Abe and Sarah corroborated what I saw. There is very little disease where they live. They were able to continue working through the entire lockdown. They paid off their vehicles. They gained weight. They were approved for a home loan. They surprised me by telling me they were moving to Leesburg, much closer to me. It’s a definite step up. They’ll be farther from dangerous Orlando when persecution gets worse.

I always pray for God to move my friends away from the Beast’s hordes. I ask him to put them in houses in Christian areas. I even ask him to make other people pay for the houses.

While we were here having fun, my young friend Tina texted me. She said she had had a dream. She wasn’t sure what it meant. Either it was a vision of heaven or an indication that God was going to give her a big house. She said there was a house in the dream, and she could see hills from it. I told her it sounded like my actual life. I haven’t heard the details yet, but I will get them.

I learned some amazing things while my friends were here. They said Gabby had been very excited about visiting. She said she kept saying, “I’m going to see my god-daddy!” That was wonderful to hear. I don’t get to see the family often, so I always wonder if the kids really know who I am. I guess they do.

After swimming, Gabby and Zoey came out in matching outfits. I’ll have to post a photo. I don’t know where kids come up with these things. They wore multi-colored swim coverups and big clear glasses rimmed with rhinestones. So funny. Gabby is the one on the right.

The kids wanted to see the pasture, so they got in my utility cart, and I took them. The last time they were here, I didn’t have cattle. I told them to expect a lot of manure. They couldn’t stop talking. While I was driving, I kept hearing their comments. “Poop!” “Poop!” “Poop!” “Poop!”

The cattle are curious, so they started moving toward the cart. All the girls started yelling. The cattle scared them. They shouted for me to get away from the cattle. After we opened some distance, Gabby said, “Cows are my worst enemy!” Where do kids come up with this stuff? She also said, “Cows are disgusting.”

I kept reminding them they were full of cows at that very moment.

City kids.

The original plan was to leave them in the pasture and go get their parents. Sarah was excited about the pistol targets I had built, and she wanted to see them. Junior was the only kid willing to stay. The others thought the cattle would eat them. I dropped them all by the house and took Abe and Sarah for a tour.

In the meantime, homemade brownies were cooling in the kitchen.

Back at the house, I made whipped cream, and we had warm brownies with Haagen-Dazs vanilla, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce. Gabby insisted on having real maple syrup instead.

Abe and Sarah and I talked more about the polarization of America and the way God’s people are being sifted out.

The kids did something amazing. They cleaned up the house. They asked for brooms. They did the dishes. Before too long, I saw them mopping. Gabby, Zoey, and Cheyenne handled the kitchen. Junior took care of the trash. It was wonderful. They didn’t have to be asked. I couldn’t stop them.

They even swept up around the bird cages. They did a pretty good job of making friends with Marvin and Maynard.

By the time everyone was ready to go to bed, there was not much for me to do.

This morning, I made biscuits, gravy, and fried eggs. The cleaning continued. Gabby came over to me and hugged me and said she wanted to stay and keep cleaning.

They didn’t complain. They kept thanking me. I kept thanking them back. Abe and Sarah said they raised them to be functional kids, and they were going to be functional adults.

Sometimes having guests is hard. Having this crew is actually helpful. I will think about it the next time I’m a guest.

I took a photo of the ladies working in my somewhat cluttery kitchen. You can see Cheyenne in there to the right of her mom.

I’ve been told I have to have Thanksgiving dinner in their new home, and that I’m not allowed to do anything. I can’t imagine what that would be like.

I could have been in Miami, in a very different environment. I would have seen some people I like. On the other hand, I would have seen some people who don’t like me at all. I would also have been around racists. Some of Travis’s friends don’t like white people. Some have criticized me on the Internet in comments tinged with racism. Apparently, I can’t understand Travis because I’m white. These people weren’t around when Travis was being helped by whites and Hispanics. I guess they were busy being oppressed.

Travis passed on Mother’s Day. I suppose that will color that day in the future for some he knew. The day of his funeral, which should have been a down day for me, was a day of love and celebration. It was a day of very good news for me and others. From now on, when I think of the day of his funeral, I will think of redemption and comfort.

I thought about Job yesterday. He had 10 children, and they all died in one day. Then when his tribulation was over, God gave him 10 more. It didn’t erase what had happened to his first 10, but after the new children arrived, how much room could there have been for grief? The human consciousness is limited. You can’t entertain unlimited grief and unlimited joy simultaneously. Surely sufficient joy will displace grief.

I lost Travis for the time being, but yesterday I had 6 people here doing what he used to do, and I had Tina’s text. I also heard from another young lady I met at Trinity. She’s planning to visit along with her sister and my other godchild.

Part of me wants to say, “This is all wonderful, but I still don’t have Travis back.” It’s a very small part of me. It’s hard to hear it over the rest of me.

I hope Abe and Sarah move soon. Their visits give me life, and my floors will always need mopping.