“A Trip Through a Sewer in a Glass-Bottomed Boat”

Ordinarily, I don’t watch secular entertainment, but the other day, I felt an urge to watch the movie Le Mans. This is a 1971 film starring Steve McQueen. He plays a race driver participating in the yearly 24-hour race. I could not rent this movie on Youtube, so first, I rented Grand Prix, a 1966 movie featuring James Garner. It’s about drivers going through a series on the famous Formula One circuit. The next day, I found Le Mans on Amazon Prime, so I watched it, too.

Last night, I started to watch The Front Page. This is a movie based on a play written by a couple of leftists. One, Ben Hecht, was a newspaperman before he wrote the play. The movie has been remade several times. I watched the 1931 version which is now in the public domain.

I felt it was okay with God for me to watch this stuff. I removed Amazon Prime from my TV afterward.

James Garner was a folksy, self-deprecating, appealing actor. On the other hand, he was also a fierce leftist who smoked dope all the time. He was also very litigious, and he got into a road rage fight in which a former Army Captain and Green Beret named Aubrey Williams put him in the hospital. Steve McQueen seems to have been less politically involved, but he smoked dope a lot, too, and he treated women very, very badly.

Garner’s fight may not have been his fault, but the stories don’t smell good, and his own accounts vary. The man who beat him up was a veteran with no criminal record, and he provided a pretty credible story. He said he walked up to Garner’s car after they got into a dispute while driving, and Garner grabbed his necklace and jerked it down, banging his head against the roof of Garner’s trademark Firebird and putting him in a bad position.

This is exactly the kind of dirty trick a smart aggressor might pull, and it’s not one I have heard of elsewhere, so I am skeptical of claims Williams made it up. If it were me, and I were inclined to lie, I would just say he opened his door into me, jumped out, and started swinging.

In one of his varying accounts, Garner admitted he pulled the necklace trick, so you have to wonder what to believe. He claimed he did it in self-defense.

Williams had his sister with him, she jumped in, and they put Garner on the ground and broke his tailbone. Later, Williams was convicted of a crime. Of course, juries are known to be gullible, and who would convict Jim Rockford in California?

Maybe Garner told the truth, but it sounds fishy. Williams was also accused of stealing gold chains from Garner, so that diminishes his own credibility.

Williams is black, so that may have factored into his conviction and the acceptance of Garner’s dubious account. Afterward, he kept it classy, believe it or not. He said, “I used to really like him. I didn’t even recognize him during this encounter. I didn’t realize he was involved until I read about it the next day.”

In 1964, Garner, an ardent environmentalist, approached and threatened a 65-year-old politician who was three inches shorter than he was. The disagreement was about a property that was going to be developed. Garner was about 44, and he was 6’3″ tall. The police had to step in and prevent a fight, or more likely, a one-sided beating. Nice people don’t beat up old men.

Today, at least in Florida, doing what Garner did is a felony.

There is something about Garner I just don’t like. I feel like something is not right. I don’t trust his reputation.

McQueen would probably win a poll for coolest actor of all time. He was the highest-paid actor of his day. Female co-stars practically begged him to have sex with them, and he often agreed. He had the ability to do some of the impressive things his characters did on screen. He was so good with a motorcycle, he did stunts for The Great Escape. They could have used stuntmen, but it was too hard to find people as skilled as he was. He actually had to be filmed on two motorcycles, as Army Air Forces pilot Hilts and as a Nazi, chasing himself. He was also a skilled car racer. He was a fairly serious martial artist. When he wore things, other men bought them. Men are still paying huge sums to have old Ford Mustangs fixed up to look like the one he drove in Bullitt. He wore a big ugly Tag Heuer Monaco watch in Grand Prix, and they were still using him in ads long after he died.

McQueen and his teammate came in second at Sebring in 1970, so he was a legitimate pro racer, like Paul Newman. He’s not a duffer like Tom Cruise, who has raced without much success.

McQueen was a heavy smoker and drug user. He killed Ali McGraw’s career by forcing her to quit working at her peak so she could be a housewife. He beat his first wife and also put a gun to her head to make her confess an affair.

Garner was similar in some ways, but he had a real marriage and didn’t achieve the heights McQueen did. He had a brown belt in karate. He could have been a pro golfer had he chosen. When he trained for Grand Prix, his teacher discovered he had extraordinary talent, and he claimed he could have been better than most of the top F1 drivers. Garner went on to race cars in his spare time.

Grand Prix was not a great movie. Pete Aron, Garner’s character, was involved in an incident involving a teammate. The teammate wanted to pass Aron in Monaco, and Aron resisted, which was a faux pas. Eventually, Aron let him pass, but the teammate’s car hit his rear wheel, and both cars were wrecked. The teammate ended up with serious injuries, and he struggled to get back to work before the end of the season. He blamed Aron for his injuries.

The teammate’s wife hated racing because she feared her husband would die. She left him after the accident, and she then began having sex with Aron, making things much worse.

That about sums it up. Various racers had sex with various women. The teammate came back to work. An older racer died in a wreck.

The teammate’s wife asked a great question. She asked Aron why men risked their lives for something unimportant. Aron told her it was very important to them. His explanation was that he was only alive when he was racing. The rest of the time, he was just waiting.

Le Mans had even less depth. Steve McQueen played Michael Delaney, a Porsche driver. He had a rivalry with a Ferrari driver named Stahler. The previous year, Delaney had been involved in an accident in which a woman’s husband died. The woman returned the next year to see Delaney and the others drive.

Delaney wrecked again, ruining his car. He and the widow had some boring conversations and ended up in his trailer. His team’s manager came in and told Delaney he had to drive another team member’s car because he was the only hope of a Porsche victory. Delaney left the trailer, drove hard, and came in second. He and the widow never made it into bed.

So why write about two bad movies?

I got a message: people do stupid things with their lives. We strive for earthly glory. We sacrifice important things, including our bodies themselves, for what amounts to garbage in the long view.

Who won the Formula One championship in 2005? No one cares. How much good did it do other people? Was anyone saved from damnation? Did anyone get a miraculous healing? Were any addicts delivered? Were the poor fed? Did unwanted kids get families?

Some guy who drove a car got a little richer. Some endorsements were sold. Some big, fat companies that sold trivial things got more publicity. Then the next season came along, and the champion was not the champion any more. He had to compete again.

People are like monkeys, and Satan is the monkey trainer. He waves shiny prizes that have no lasting value, and we cut each other’s throats to get them. In the process, we give up our relationships with God, along with Spirit-driven accomplishments that would have stayed with us for eternity. We give up the chance to accumulate new brothers and sisters to take with us to heaven. We give up the chance to end suffering and set people free.

These movies reminded me of my dislike of professional sports. Ignorant people do not know that pro sports and God have been at odds since before Jesus. There are actually Christians who think football teaches people to be closer to God, which is the opposite of correct. Football teaches aggression, violence, pride, cheating, greed, lust, and obsession with fleeting things.

The Greeks conquered Israel, and they instituted nude athletic competitions. Social-climbing Jews joined in, defying Yahweh and the priests, and they even tried to undo their circumcisions. Look up “Hellenism” and find out about it. It was a very big problem. Athletes have been distracting people and teaching children destructive values for millennia, not decades.

The characters in these movies treated themselves like garbage. They made themselves disposable. They served a vain purpose for a few years, helping on one except themselves.

As for The Front Page, it disturbed me because it made me realize I did not hate leftism enough. After I watched, I apologized to God for this. God really hates leftism. Satan was the first leftist, and all leftists are his children.

Let me tell you about Sacco and Vanzetti, whose story was one of the motivations behind The Front Page.

Believe it or not, Italian immigrants were a big problem a hundred years ago. I used to think Italians formed social groups to defend the reputation of their ethnicity because of the mob, but there is more to it than that. Italy sent us a large number of terrorists who, instead of kissing the ground of the country that saved them, and instead of working to be good citizens, murdered a lot of American citizens and tried to destroy the government.

For some reason, anarchism developed a following in Italy. Anarchism is the ultimate leftistm. Anarchists believe there is no such thing as a legitimate government.

I’ll be blunt. You have to be an utter imbecile to be an anarchist.

Am I saying you’re an imbecile because you don’t like the government? No. I don’t like the government, either. I’m saying you’re an imbecile because you think it’s possible for human beings to exist without government.

If you put 10 strangers in a locked compound, a month later, they will form a government. We will always form governments. People want to control each other. They want to protect themselves from other people. They naturally form gangs and generate leaders in order to achieve these goals.

A government is just a gang with a flag.

Anarchists believe they can get rid of the government and then live government-free lives. That is beyond asinine. Kill every government employee in the United States today, and new governments will start to spring up in under 24 hours. And they will make you miss the government you eliminated, because they will be incompetent and much more cruel and amoral than an established government that has been honed over centuries.

It’s not just people. Put chickens or dogs together, and they form hierarchies.

The true choice isn’t between government and no government. It’s between different governments.

Only true idiots can be anarchists. It is incomprehensible that anyone can be that stupid.

Sacco and Vanzetti were part of a faction that killed all sorts of people. They set off a lot of bombs.

They were convicted of murder. Sacco shot someone, and Vanzetti was his partner. They were guilty as hell. Ballistics tests and witnesses prove it.

Still, their convictions and executions are controversial. There were supposedly improprieties in their trials. I don’t know the details. I am willing to stipulate that they may have been tried unfairly. The fact remains: they were worthless, despicable, dangerous human beings, and their kind needed to be sent a message. They deserved execution, and their executions probably did America a lot of good.

You can wrong a murderer by trying him unfairly and executing him. Doing such things is wrong, and we have to fight corruption in the justice system, but unfair trials don’t make murderers innocent. Oswald was lynched by Jack Ruby, but he was still guilty.

Leftists have been whining about Sacco and Vanzetti for decades. They have turned them into martyrs and heroes. Michael Dukakis, the inept former governor of Massachusetts went so far as to proclaim a day in their honor without consulting or according any courtesy to the families of the victims.

The Front Page is about Earl Williams, a leftist who is about to be executed for murdering a policeman. Williams is portrayed as a sweet, impressionable little man. A cuddly, vulnerable murderer you naturally want to hug. Most of the action takes place in a room at the penitentiary set aside for journalists.

The journalists are extremely vile. They’re supposed to be funny, but they’re disgusting. As they call their papers to send in stories, they lie without the slightest hesitation. They make sick jokes about the upcoming hanging. A prostitute who tried to help Williams shows up to criticize them for their callousness, and they ridicule her until she jumps out of a window. A paid shrink shows up to analyze Williams, and Williams shoots him. They joke about that while he’s in the operating room.

The interesting thing is that Ben Hecht knew the subject matter. He was writing about journalists as he had known them. I assume he exaggerated their faults to some extent, but he must have based their personalities on his real life experiences. Watching the movie will make you wish they were the ones being hanged.

They remind me of comedians. Comedians tend to be disgusting people.

I quit watching after a while. The characters were off-putting, and the movie was poorly done compared to the Cary Grant version.

Afterward, I read up on Sacco and Vanzetti, and I thought about Ben Hecht and the way he had portrayed his former colleagues.

It made me hate leftism more than ever. I certainly understand why people would be upset over an unfair trial, regardless of who the defendant was. But lionizing a couple of dangerous, vicious criminals who were also ungrateful and toxic immigrants? How can anyone do that?

I didn’t like the idea of writing a movie that made terrorists look good, and I didn’t like the godless, hellbound journalists. I hated their cynicism and the pleasure they took in the suffering, injuries, and deaths of others.

The word “leftism” comes from the French Revolution, but the concept is far older. It’s just rebellion. Any hierarchy that doesn’t have God at the apex is leftist.

When Satan tempted Eve, it was an act of leftism. Adam and Eve were leftists. They rebelled against their only legitimate authority.

The best government is a face-to-face relationship with God. After that comes submission to prophets and priests who obey God. After that comes submission to kings who honor God. After that comes rule by godly assemblies. After that come various forms of democracy, which is a degenerate and evil institution.

Adam was under the best government. Since then, things have gotten worse and worse. The Jews had prophets and priests, and that wasn’t bad, but they stupidly demanded a king. When the time of kings ended on Earth, the world descended into backward systems which put nations at the mercy of every moron who could pull a handle and cast a vote.

Moses was chosen directly by God. David was anointed by a prophet. Hitler was elected. Something to think about.

It’s astounding, where leftism and hatred of God’s authority has taken us. In places of power, we now have spectacular degenerates whose very nature we could not have conceived in the near past.

Have you seen the amazing specimen Biden appointed to be his deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy? You have probably been reading about him. His name is Sam Brinton.

Brinton has disclaimed his proper gender, calling himself nonbinary. It is impossible to figure out what he is trying to be. I will post a photo. It’s fair use.

What exactly is this?

As you may know, he has been fired for stealing luggage repeatedly. Gay men like luxury goods. I don’t know if the bags were Vuitton or what, but it makes sense that a person like this would want luxury bags.

Brinton claims to have “survived” brutal conversion therapy, but a person who interviewed him says his story does not check out.

He’s involved with our children. This freakish person. He helped create official policy enabling schools to hide children’s sexual confusion from their parents. Fox says he:

played a key role in developing a model school policy adopted in multiple states that instructs school districts to keep “unaffirming” parents in the dark about a potentially suicidal child’s gender identity or sexual orientation.

Look at him. And if you live in a place where his recommendations have been adopted, he has power over your relationship with your children. YOUR children. Not the states.

We paid him to do this. We voted for the people who gave him the power.

I live in a country where we paid this creature to give government the power to hide and nurture sexual perversion–abomination–in our children. It is inconceivable to me that anyone could be anything but shocked and distressed to know this happened.

It’s going to get much worse. If Jesus tarries, we will see creatures like this in the Oval Office. There is no limit to the oddities and abominations we can come up with and empower with Satan’s help.

Yesterday and today Rhodah and I were talking about the rapture. I told her I felt bad because I ate a lot of ice cream, but I said part of me doesn’t care, because I feel like the world is ending, so what difference does it make what I eat?

Today we tried to think of the things we would eat if we heard the rapture trumpet blow. I said I would rush to the freezer and open the ice cream. Or I’d be lifted to heaven with a slice of pizza in each hand. Of course, we were kidding, and we had some laughs, but the rapture will come, and most of the things people do in the weeks leading up to it won’t matter. They will be preparing, well or counterproductively, for a future that will not come.

If you quit working out right before the rapture, no big deal. You won’t be here long enough to go flabby and feel bad about it. If you spend your retirement money, no big deal. Stop mowing your yard? No big deal.

Stop touching up your roots. The rapture is coming. Don’t plant your crops. The rapture is coming. Don’t show up for jury duty. Speed. Quit your job. Throw out your contraceptives.

I’m not suggesting these things. Just thinking about actions that will stop mattering at some point.

People will be pulled out of jail cells, defendants’ chairs, operating rooms, and even wombs. More abortions will take place on that day than on any other day in the history of the world. God will have to remove the innocent from the wombs of degenerate women.

We also tried to think of things we would buy if we had all the money in the world. I had a hard time coming up with anything. Finally, I blurted it out. “I’ll start flying business class!” Not even first class. The extra money doesn’t seem to buy you much.

I thought of business class because I take a lot of long flights, and I really hate flying coach, but paying $5000 or more for one seat is more than I am willing to consider at the moment. Put a billion in my account, and I’ll spring for it.

I said I would also get Rhodah more rubies, but not really big ones, because ostentation is wrong.

I would make sure my home was in top shape, and I would probably try to move to Tennessee

That’s about it. No Lamborghinis. No gold Rolexes. No more Zegna suits.

To get back to the rapture, I really do not want to be here when the cabinet consists of a bunch of smirking, effeminate bald men with bro staches and tacky prom dresses.

I care less and less to be involved with this world, and I am having a hard time motivating myself to do anything but pray, eat, and work to bring my wife home. I assume this will pass and the rapture will come much later than I hope, because this is how things have worked so far, but my feelings are real.

I can’t wait for the day when it finally happens.

Expected Giant; Received Midget

The hurricane news today is generally good. If you live where I do. In Fort Myers, it’s a colossal disaster. It’s hitting the Fort Myers area right now. It will not be great for Tampa or Orlando, either. Assuming the predictions aren’t hype.

The NHC thought the storm would weaken before hitting the coast and come in at Category 2 or so, but the official measurement looks more like Category 4 or 5, so the pessimists are winning that battle. At least it’s not hitting Tampa, a large city, directly.

For me, the good news is that they are predicting maximum sustained winds of 29 mph where I live, and the winds will be from directions that are not favorable to a lot of property damage. If the predictions pan out, I probably won’t even lose my electricity. That would mean I could continue bathing. With hot water. Not pool water.

The storm is nearly as close to Tampa as it will ever get to me, give or take, and the winds in Tampa are not terrible: 44 mph. When the storm makes its closest approach to me, it will be a lot weaker, so the winds SHOULD be lower. But as the storm’s history shows, hurricanes like to change directions.

One source says 44 mph. Another says 9 with 14 mph gusts. How can that be?

It’s hard to tell what’s really happening. Cape Coral is about as close to the eye of Ian as Florida gets, and they are reporting 31 mph winds with gusts to 43. Can that be right? I would have expected something like 140 based on the maps. Cape Coral is well within the NHC’s hurricane-force band, meaning Cape Coral is inside the hurricane, so the sustained winds should be no lower than 75 mph.

I haven’t been able to find the Weather Channel’s usual hysterical, dishonest coverage. I have been trying to find videos of raincoated reporters pretending to have a hard time standing up in light winds, or reporters standing on their knees in 6 inches of water to make it look deeper, but I haven’t seen them yet. Maybe you have to have cable to get that kind of helpful informational edutainment.

It should be possible to get good, solid information instantly using the web, but it’s not.

I just checked the Weather Channel’s site, and they have privately-hosted videos. One features a guy named Mike Seidel, broadcasting live from Fort Myers. Supposedly the eye wall is coming ashore, and the storm has maximum winds of 155 mph. The little meter in the corner of the screen says 31 mph with gusts to 58. What?

When I saw his name, it rang a bell, so I Googled “‘mike seidel’ fake news.” Yes, I remembered him for a reason. He got caught lying during another hurricane, pretending to struggle to stand. I’ll embed a video.

He didn’t lie verbally. He lied with his body. As my friend Mike points out, he leaned the wrong way. He leaned to leeward. That’s not how it works.

Today Seidel, who still, incredibly, has a job, is standing and walking normally. I guess he learned something.

Here’s another classic:

I can’t stand it:

The Anderson Cooper video reminds me of Baghdad Bob. Remember him? “There are no enemy tanks in Baghdad, and our victorious army of Islamic holy warriors [boom] @*$^@(*@^$#!!! ALLAH SAVE ME!!!”

I have been praying for God to keep the storm from harming Christians and their property, and I am still okay with it leveling Walt Disney World.

Things are looking very good for me and most of the state, but now I have a giant stockpile of junk food to deal with, and I may no longer have an excuse to eat it. This morning I ate a big bowl of Sugar Smacks (now called Honey Smacks, which is no better) with milk and cream, and then I followed it up with Cape Cod potato chips and onion dip. And three Pepperidge Farm cookies. Lunch will be more like actual food. I’m planning to have a delicious half-pound cheeseburger.

I am seriously wondering if local charities take pretzels and chips.

Ordinarily, I would have had a normal breakfast, but you know how it is when you’ve been fasting.

There is really nothing to do here except wait for NHC updates and think about food. And, of course, pray.

The storm still poses a hazard for me. It will probably cause a mosquito explosion. The water it leaves behind may be here for a couple of weeks.

Time to make sure all my portable power banks are charged, just in case. I need to have cell power so I can talk to my wife.

More: 2:23 P.M.

Things still look pretty good here. The projected path of the storm has moved slightly to the north, but it’s still favorable for my county.

Here is the weird thing: the Internet says the wind speed here, right now, is 26 mph. When I look outside, I see a pleasant breeze. The trees are moving a little. Doesn’t look like 26 mph to me. I would guess it’s between 10 and 15.

Hope it continues this way. The forecast says we are looking at another 7 mph, tops.

Sitrep: 6:15 P.M.

I always tell people you can often predict hurricane behavior better than the pros if you look at the rawest data you can get. This has turned out to be true with Ian. Of course, prayer is the main reason every good thing has happened.

At around 3:25, I found a radar loop and checked it out. It showed that the eye of the storm was moving more to the east than the official reports were saying. I thought that was good news, because it was likely to move the whole cone of future misery eastward later.

Lo and behold, the cone has obliged me. The 5 p.m. cone indicated that the storm was projected to veer eastward from the previous cone. This increases the length of time it will have before it makes its closest approach to the compound, and it also makes that approach farther off. Time will weaken the storm, and distance is obviously helpful, as people in Wyoming and Australia could tell you right now.

The storm has moved so far eastward, it’s actually slightly to the east of me. The center is about 120 miles south of me, which is close by hurricane standards, the maximum sustained winds are at around 130 mph, and virtually nothing is happening here. The center is forecast to get within maybe 60 miles of me, but that will be after the storm passes over a lot of real estate very slowly, so it should be much weaker. NOAA says it will be at about 65 mph at that time, so people 60 miles away shouldn’t get much wind.

Tampa is way closer than I will ever be (twice as close as I am now), and it’s getting the best Ian has to offer. Its current wind figure is 32 mph. I talked to a potential tenant today, and he said his relatives in Tampa were saying not a lot was happening. Tampa was supposed to get a good beating.

Of course, if a storm can move east, it can move west, too, but the experts and models say that won’t happen. They have a consensus, and as we all know, when it comes to science, a consensus is always right.

What a burden off my mind.

The wife and I will keep praying for others. I hope you will, too. No prayers for Disney World, though. It ought to be obliterated. I don’t want to see homes or businesses that don’t promote evil harmed, but if Ian wiped Disney World and Universal out without harming anyone around them, I would be content.

Ten O’Clock Update: Ian Now Weak Category 2

Hurricane Ian continues to puzzle me. The Weather Channel says the wind here is moving at 38 mph, but when I go outside, I don’t see it. The trees are bouncing around a little, but it’s not unpleasant.

Tampa is in a much worse location, but the Weather Channel says its winds will top out shortly at a mere 52 mph. After that, Tampa is expected to wind down. For Tampa, Ian is at its peak right now.

I am still trying to understand what’s happening. I had to dig to find information on Irma, which made a mess here. I relearned a few things.

Irma was Category 3 when it landed in Florida. It came ashore on Marco Island. This is nearly the same place where Ian landed today. Marco supposedly had 155 mph winds when it landed, and Irma’s winds were clocked at 120, so much lower.

Irma was huge, though. People are calling Ian big storm, but Irma was about twice as wide, so being 100 miles from the center of Irma, at a given maximum sustained wind speed, would be like being 50 miles from the center of Ian. In other words, Ian has to be twice as close to give you the same wind speed. That means Ian is much less dangerous to me than a storm like Irma.

Irma moved about 1.5 times as fast as Ian, however, so it spent less time wherever it went. A fast-moving storm does less damage in any one area. So Ian’s strong winds will hit less of Florida, but they will spend more time in every location than they would were Ian traveling at Irma’s speed. On the other hand, the smaller diameter of Ian reduces the destructive impact of its lower speed. It’s not a simple picture. The destructive power of storms depends on a number of variables.

Irma traveled a long way before it dropped to tropical storm speed. When it knocked my trees over, it was close to where it crossed the threshold. And the center was close to me. Probably 30 miles away.

Ian is now dropping 5-10 mph of wind speed per hour, and it will be maybe 10 hours before it gets close to its nearest approach to the compound. I don’t know if it will keep dropping speed as fast as it is now, but it will probably be a tropical storm in 10 hours. Weather Underground thinks it will be Category 1 in less than 4.

Category 1 runs from 75 to 95 mph, and Ian is now at 100, so it should cross the line quickly.

So, weak storm. Twice as far away as Irma. Half as wide as Irma, so it will be as though it were 4 times as far away.

Irma also rained like crazy, and Ian may not match it. Rain helps trees fall over because it loosens the roots. They are predicting 4″-6″, but my feeling, based on observation, is that it will be less.

Irma didn’t do all that much damage here. The house was untouched. So was the workshop. I lost trees in the woods, but no one cares about those. I wasted a lot of time cutting them, but I should have let them rot on their own.

I believe I had two trees that landed on fences between me and the neighbors, and only one tree was large. I had one large tree land on my own fence between my house and pasture. I had another big tree land on a fence between my parcels. I would not want to go through Irma again, and Irma caused me a lot of work, but it was no Andrew.

I think very little will happen here. A much worse storm than Ian wasn’t all that bad.

Hope I don’t seem self-obsessed because I am not writing much about the problems in Southwest Florida and Cuba. I am well aware that many other people are suffering very badly. I can’t do anything to help them except pray, and I have done that, so I am studying the storm for my own benefit.

As Bad as Your Life may be, at Least You’re not Joe Biden

Before I say anything else, here: they are saying food shortages have arrived, so if you haven’t prepared, you might want to visit Wal-Mart. I am considering loading up on pasta, Velveeta, and protein powder. I already have a lot of beans and rice, as well as canned fish. My jerky supply is poor, as is my dried apple supply. I’ll have to see what I can do.

I talked to Rhodah in Zambia. She was in a grocery store at the time. Lots of food. No price increases. So now America is the third world, and Zambia is the promised land. They had rows of Black Forest cakes in a display case, ready to go. I can’t find that here without driving to, maybe, Orlando.

I am still not quite well. My symptoms come and go in waves. They are always very faint, but they are still annoying. The worst thing is having days when I lack energy. That is not like me. I want to get out and walk the farm every day. Ordinarily, I can’t wait to get out there, but on low-energy days, I’m a different person.

On normal days, I tromp around for about 45 minutes with a .22 on my shoulder and a pistol in my pocket. Just so I can enjoy not being Australian. Or European. Or Chinese. Or a yankee.

Boy, those Australians turned out to be sissies, didn’t they? Remember Paul Hogan? What a tired fraud. “That’s not a knife. THIS is a knife!” Yeah, uh, except you’re not allowed to carry a knife in Australia.

If I were, admittedly amazingly, attacked by crocodiles on one of my walks, even at the bank, where the rifle wouldn’t be allowed, I could realistically hope to kill 11 before changing magazines, and I would be prepared to skin them on the spot for anybody who had a family to feed. And I’m a huge creampuff by rural American standards. Even in his prime, in Australia, Paul Hogan would have had to lock himself in the toilet.

My advice to Australian men is this: if you’re going to be docile, dependent sheep, be docile, dependent sheep. Don’t pretend you’re the kind of man they produce in places like Tennessee and Wyoming. Macho talk and too much Foster’s don’t make you Marcus Luttrell, girls.

I wonder what the Australian men of a century ago would think of their descendants.

I read that they now think bad dental hygiene makes coronavirus hang on longer. I won’t make the obvious jokes about England. I think there was a link from The Drudge Report, also known as the Trump Hate Report. What happened to Matt Drudge? Bet he got a vegan girlfriend.

The theory is that viruses live in the crud in your mouth, so it acts like pus in an abscess, reinfecting you over and over. This proposition disturbed me at first, because I have had several nights when I simply flopped into bed without brushing my teeth. After I got over it, I felt encouraged, because it seemed like this new knowledge might be helpful not just for covid sufferers but for anyone with an infection involving areas connected to the mouth.

The person pushing this theory says you can improve your lot by using mouthwash, which kills viruses.

It sounds a little weird, because we are always told there is no way to kill a virus. Antibiotics supposedly have no effect, and doctors never tell us to gargle to kill them. Antiseptics do kill viruses, however, as we now know after America’s great cleanliness revival. Alcohol, bleach, benzalkonium chloride, and other chemicals destroy coronaviruses on surfaces. It stands to reason that they would also kill them in our mouths and throats. Whether it does us any good, I can’t say.

If it works for covid, wouldn’t it also work for other viruses and strep? One would think so.

My grandmother’s best friend used to tell me to gargle with ST-37 every time I got sick. I don’t know if they make this product any more. It seems like they quit making it. It’s probably full of dioxin and thalidomide. Anyway, I took her advice, and it seemed to help. Maybe she was ahead of her time. Sometimes ignorance can put you a step ahead of doctors.

I plan to start flossing twice a day instead of once, and I will use mouthwash. I had read that mouthwash might have adverse health effects, but I don’t know it to be true, and killing microbes seems like a good idea.

I feel good today, and my energy is flowing, but I woke up with swollen nasal passages, and I can feel something going on in my head. I know I’m not completely over this.

My big project today, now that I’ve fixed my Cold Steel Swift knife in CTS-XHP so it actually opens as designed, is to get more food. I’ll be going to Wal-Mart shortly.

I have looked over my existing supplies, and I should be able to go a couple of months without suffering much. One thing that concerned me: Velveeta. I checked, and it looks like my cheese expired 9 months ago.

Am I worried? No. A Youtube prepper has a video in which she made Velveeta shells and cheese using a package that got its burn notice two years earlier. Her advice? If it looks okay and doesn’t stink, eat it. I’m going to buy more Velveeta anyway. If times get hard, I’ll try the old stuff first, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll still have the new stuff.

Is this the end? Will human beings be at each other’s throats, fighting over Chiclets and old cans of Libby’s pumpkin puree in three months? I wish I knew.

I had a wonderful, comforting thought today. I have had concerns about becoming poor, starving, and having to shoot urban visitors, and I am not all that happy about watching other people starve and murder each other even if I’m safe and fat. Here’s something that occurred to me, however: the tribulation is supposed to last 7 years, during which time, the elect will be in heaven at the wedding supper of Jesus. That means 7 easy years. If we return, as the Bible seems to say we will, we will have a thousand more easy years on Earth, because Satan and every other evil spirit will be bound, Jesus will rule in person, and the world will be blessed. If not, we’ll still be in heaven.

Either way, things brighten up for good once the rapture comes. If it’s imminent, as it seems to be, then so is the end of my problems. Forever. That makes the whole process look much less intimidating.

When we say the end is near, maybe we should be thinking of the end of our suffering, not the end of God’s patience and protection. What the apocalypse brings you depends entirely on which side you’re on.

Things aren’t looking good from a secular point of view. Biden’s poll numbers are sub-Trump, and it looks like he’s not even pretending he wants to get along with us. He just hosted a press conference about his dismal job numbers, and when it was over, he turned his back on his fawning press wet nurses and shuffled away without responding to questions.

Have you heard about, “Let’s go, Brandon!”? A NASCAR driver named Brandon something or other won a race, and an MSM meat puppet interviewed him at the track. While they were talking, the crowd was screaming, “F__ JOE BIDEN!”, very clearly. The meat puppet told a lie rivaling the famous Villaraigosa convention voice-vote lie. She said they were yelling, “Let’s go, Brandon!” Now, thanks to her dishonesty, “Let’s go, Brandon!” is one of the right’s new slogans. You can’t chant the other thing wherever you go, but you can send your nine-year-old to school in a shirt that says, “Let’s go, Brandon!”, and no one there will be able to do a thing about it, even though the teachers will know exactly what it means.

Public discourse hits a new low every week.

God is punishing us for electing Biden. No doubt about it. His precious presidency is dissolving. Biden has been paying people to stay home, and because they’re staying home and eating taxes, taxes will go up, and products and services are in short supply. Wages have gone up a great deal because no one wants to get off the couch. Gas prices are crazy because Biden killed American oil production, the Chinese stupidly banned Australian coal, and God personally strangled the wind farms in England. Inflation is killing our savings, and the stock market and real estate markets are in dangerous bubbles. It’s bad, bad, bad. Unless God is with you.

All we need now is an epsilon variant that laughs at vaccines and kills the healthy, and the picture will be rounded out.

Here’s hoping Jesus comes soon and takes as many people with him as possible. Once I’m gone, you can help yourself to my Velveeta and ammunition. If I’m sufficiently blessed to be taken, I won’t want it any more.

Make Sure You Wear Your Mosque

I am getting comments from concerned readers. I better tell you what happened.

As some of you have guessed, I poisoned myself while ingesting the dangerous horse medicine ivermectin, washed down with entire six-packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I became quite ill and rushed to the hospital, where they were unable to treat me or even get to me. They couldn’t climb over the dunes of dead, maskless, red-hatted bodies that cluttered the grounds.

I had brought my My Pillow with me for comfort, and I rested my head on it in the parking lot and used a Confederate flag for a blanket. I was so sick, it was all I could do to raise my head every fifteen minutes or so to shout racial slurs, vaccine misinformation, and baseless claims of election fraud.

After several hours, I died, but not before giving a blockbuster, amazingly unwitnessed interview with Bob Woodward, who has an uncanny knack of showing up unnoticed at the deathbeds of conservative figures who can’t stand him yet call on him to come hear them refute everything they have ever said and stab everyone they know in the back.

Sobbing, I told him how much I regretted refusing vaccines and encouraging everyone else to do the same, based on my belief that the vaccines were created by Louis Farrakhan in an effort to make white men impotent. I said I regretted these things even though I hadn’t actually done either of them, and I also let him know I had personally shot video of underage Russian prostitutes relieving themselves on mattresses as Donald Trump and Alan Dershowitz looked on while sucking on crack pipes.

Before dying for good, I coded briefly, visited heaven, returned, and gave confirmation to Woodward: God had assured me that all he really cared about was social justice and environmental extremism, and he said everyone who didn’t support Antifa, BLM, and sexual perversion was going to hell. He also said no one would be allowed into heaven without a mask, a vaccine passport, and carbon credits.

This could all be true, or maybe I just spent a couple of weeks in Turkey on my honeymoon.

Rhodah and I stayed in the Sultanahmet area of Istanbul, and we also visited othe seaside city of Kusadasi, which we used as a base for a guided day trip to Ephesus. We enjoyed Turkey a great deal. The Turks turned out to be charming, friendly, helpful people, even when they were not trying to sell us things, which was not much of the time. The food was pretty good, the exchange rate was excellent, the hotel where we spent most of our time started to feel like our home, and by the time we left, we had made a whole bunch of quasi-friends from among the neighborhood entrepreneurs who accosted us regularly.

I’m too sleep-deprived to write much. I left my hotel at 4 a.m. Eastern time on the 24th, and I got to my house at 3 a.m. on the 25th. Since then, I have slept 4 hours.

I also have some sort of respiratory illness. Covid? Who knows? About 5 days ago, I started feeling nausea, and then things progressed to diarrhea and a sore throat. Eventually, I had bone aches, a slight headache, and a stuffy nose. The final insult was the production of large quantities of disgusting substances inside my nose, which had to be harvested several times a day. I am still not completely done with that.

I also had a low fever, but I will never know the temperature, because I could not find my thermometer to pack it. I know I had a fever because I stopped sweating, and then one night I woke up and saw I had started again. That meant the fever had broken.

Of course, I wonder if coronavirus is the problem. I’m having nearly the same symptoms I had early in 2020 after meeting with a bunch of maskless, pre-vaccine, hands-laying Europeans at a religious event. I feel better this time, and I have been spared vomiting, conjunctivitis, and bottomless watery nasal discharge, but other than that, it’s very similar.

Trying to diagnose myself on the web, I can’t find any other diseases that fit the symptoms. Colds, the flu, and strep throat are out.

Just like last time, the digestive problems only lasted a few hours and submitted right away to loperamide pills. Thank goodness for that. Nothing is worse than using public toilets in foreign countries.

Well, actually, that’s probably wrong. America has some of the filthiest toilets on Earth. Georgia and New York, in particular, stand out in my experience. I’ll bet Toilet Duck doesn’t even have brand reps in those states. It would be like paying people to promote pork in Mecca.

In order to reinfiltrate the US, I had to take a PCR test about 3 days back. I was concerned that I might get stuck in Turkey, but I passed. Suspicious, I Googled. I read that for tests performed during the first few days of infections, the false-negative rate is about 2/3. Information like this helps explain why I believe so little of what our overlords and THE SCIENCE tell us. How can tests be useful when they are USUALLY wrong, in the most harmful way possible, when administered during the time when most patients choose to take them?

Incidentally, a PCR test costs $19 in Turkey, and they come to your hotel. Try getting one that cheap in America.

It’s amazing, the transparent idiocy they shovel at us. Here’s another example: we need to wear masks on planes. Ignoring the fact that masks do virtually nothing as worn by the majority of real human beings, why do mask Nazis never mention the constant replacement of airline cabin air? Every time I get on a plane, I am told it’s nearly impossible to get coronavirus while flying. They say all of the air in a plane is replaced every three minutes, so the viruses get shot out into the sky. If that is true (which I doubt), how can an uncomfortable, irritating mask provide an increase in safety which is worth the misery it causes?

United Airlines says the likelihood of getting covid on a plane is something like 0.003%. Or maybe it’s 0.0003%. I forget. Anyway, it’s basically zero, according to them. THE SCIENCE says a real-world mask worn by a typical person may reduce transmission by something like 15 percentage points, meaning the mask reduction is barely perceptible statistical noise compared to the ventilation reduction.

Imagine this. The government says air bags reduce critical accident injuries by–wild guess–75%. Then some scientist finds out placing live scorpions in your underpants raises the protection to 75.02%. Would you pass a law forcing people to use the scorpions?

We have a couple of problems. First, the data THE SCIENCE provides is clearly bogus a lot of the time. For example, a person who falls off a cliff while sick with covid may get put in the “coronavirus death” tally. Second, the policy makers who use THE SCIENCE to tell us what to do are too stupid to understand and make good use of data, even when it isn’t bogus, and they’re also too biased and dishonest to make intelligent rules even when they understand things correctly.

I really hate wearing a mask on a plane. The mask starts to stink before two hours are up, hot air roasts my face, and more hot air shoots upward under my reading glasses, which makes my eyes hurt. The hot air also fogs my glasses, making reading difficult. On a flight that lasts over 10 hours, it’s like one of those loophole torture methods countries use to abuse prisoners of war without violating the Geneva Conventions.

I have learned how to cope. I buy the flimsiest, least effective masks available. I keep an eye on stewardesses, and as soon as they turn their backs, I pull my mask down below my nose. When I see them coming my way, I pull it back up. I think they know I’m doing it, but after dealing with people like me all day for months, they don’t want to get into it with me. When they offer food and drinks, I put them on my tray table and eat and drink unbelievably slowly with no mask. Sometimes I’ll go half an hour, lifting a cup of warm ginger ale to my lips and pretending to sip while my mouth is closed. When that gets dull, I may get up and go stand in the bathroom for 5 minutes with my mask in my pocket.

I learned the slow-eating tip from my friend Mike, who flies more often than I do. Genius.

Another helpful move: taking that darned mask off and fiddling with it for several minutes because it’s just so hard to adjust so it fits the way Papa Joe wants it to.

When all else fails, there’s always, “Mask? Oh, sorry!” Like you didn’t realize it was under your chin. Pull it back up and then wait for your next opportunity to grab more air.

Only amateurs fight with stewardesses. A real master doesn’t resist. It’s like aikido. You look at the natural motions of your attacker and use them against her, to your benefit. You yield and pretend to comply, and by the end of your flight, your face, or at least your nostrils, has been tasting that sweet cabin air at least half of the time.

If you resist, some snippy steward who has a makeup channel on Youtube will smirk and prance while the police drag you down the aisle at his command. You don’t want to go out like that. Remember Ferris Bueller. What would Abe Froman do?

Am I a bad guy for cheating? Well, not according to THE SCIENCE.

A) Everyone on the plane has been tested very recently, assuring that very few infected people are aboard. I am probably not capable of spreading viruses.

B) Everyone on the plane has either been vaccinated or has recovered from coronavirus, and either type of person has a low probability of being infected anew, MULTIPLIED by a sub-1% chance of having severe symptoms.

C) The airlines claim the chance of being infected regardless of immunity and masking is so low it’s essentially zero.

D) Everyone on the plane risks infection every single day, and all of them risked it getting to the airport and breathing the airport’s filthy air and touching its nasty surfaces. Sitting near a vaccinated, tested person with no symptoms should, if THE SCIENCE is to be believed, be one of the least-risky things a traveler will do during his day of flying.

I would also add:

E) General principles, et cetera, et cetera.

All this being said, I do take the disease seriously. I got the Johnson shot. I got a flu shot because I read it was associated with milder covid symptoms, and I tried to get a pneumonia shot for the same reason. I wash my hands all the time. I try not to do anything stupid. I’m not against intelligent precautions. It’s the other kind that get my goat.

Today I got another PCR test. I don’t trust the test I took in Turkey, and if I’ve been infected, the knowledge could be useful. Proof of surviving covid gives you added social credit which might be helpful in some situations. Israel supposedly gives survivors better treatment than vaccine recipients.

Finding out I’m positive would be better than finding out I’m negative. It would tell me I beat covid, and that would make me feel better about possible future bouts.

I just found out antibody tests are available. If I can get one, and if it won’t be skewed by my status as a vaccine recipient, I plan to take one. If there is any possibility I have had covid, I want to know.

Incidentally, I intended to take ivermectin in Turkey, but I didn’t do it. I told Rhodah to bring some pills for me, but she misunderstood, so she left them at home. Because I thought she was bringing them, I didn’t bring my horse medicine. I really missed it when I started getting sick.

Last night, before going to bed at 4 a.m., I took a dose. When I woke up 4 hours later, I felt much, much better. It was remarkable. I was surprised. Was it the ivermectin? Did God heal me? Was it my body overcoming a disease that wasn’t that tough to begin with? I don’t know, but there is a ton of evidence suggesting ivermectin has helped many people, so maybe it helped me, and I plan to keep using it.

Although I’ve been ill, I haven’t felt very bad. I have felt tremendous enthusiasm for getting out and walking. I felt a strong drive to get out and walk several miles a day in Istanbul. I preferred it to taking trains. I felt sleep-deprived because the sore throat interfered with sleep, and I felt a little worn-out on the nights of high-mileage days, but I didn’t feel fatigued during the day, except when watching my wife try on shoes. I’ve felt lots of physical strength. My worst problem was joint pain that popped up after a day or two. When I walked, I felt like I had mild arthritis. Every time a foot struck the ground, I felt a little pain.

I’m afraid I overworked Rhodah. She was happy to get exercise, but there were times when she wanted to sit down and rest. Even though I was sick, I was usually the one who wanted to keep going. She got short of breath a few times, but I didn’t.

I lost weight while eating baklava and cake. I went down a belt notch. If Rhodah had been as gung-ho as I was, I would have walked more and lost more. I don’t think she was ready for what I kept telling her was “old man strength.”

I hope she starts to have the same feeling. It would be very helpful to her to develop an urge to walk. Apart from the health benefits, it’s a very beneficial urge for a traveler to have, and Rhodah likes travel.

I thought I didn’t feel like writing, but I’ve written a lot.

I plan to go buy Mucinex and soak in a tub of hot water. Hopefully I can expel some of the horrible stuff that is coming loose inside me. Maybe tomorrow I’ll write a little about Turkey.

Getting too Southern for my Own Good

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

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

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

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

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

Of course, Mike won. I ordered a smoker.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will post pork photos eventually.

Fluffy Herald of Relief Appears

I have earth-shaking news. Real American toilet paper is available from Amazon. I don’t mean weird Chinese paper which is somehow puffed up so it takes three rolls to do the job of one real roll. I mean actual American toilet paper. I saw Angel Soft in the listings, and it’s in stock. Other brands must be on the way.

Surely the clouds have parted.

I thought this would happen two weeks ago. It did happen, though, and that’s the main thing. America’s garages and spare rooms can only hold so much toilet paper. People couldn’t keep buying huge quantities forever. Eventually, we had to see a change.

Now what are the hoarders going to do with their house-choking stashes? Check Craigslist next month.

I have a cousin in the Chicago area, and she says she’s down to two rolls. Apparently, the good-natured midwestern folk of Chicago have treated each other very badly during the last month or two. She says they cleaned stores out. Things many Americans were able to buy easily were not available there.

I’ve heard people say Chicagoans are wonderful, friendly, helpful people. Nothing like New Yorkers.

Whatever. The proof is in the pudding.

The other day I heard a quote about hard times. I can’t find it. Paraphrasal: hard times don’t change a man; they reveal him. That’s what I have to say about Chicago’s hoarders, as well as all other hoarders. There is no point in virtue-signaling after you’ve been exposed. Makes you look worse.

The hoarders here are completely nuts. If you go to one store, you’ll find it completely stripped of one type of item, but if you go to another, you’ll see that item for sale, along with things you couldn’t find at the first store. Example: my local Winn-Dixie had a run on potatoes, but a Publix a few miles away had plenty. Two days ago, the only dish powder I could find at Publix cost $14 for 37 loads, so about 38 cents per load. It was that weird encapsulated kind. Anyone who buys that is begging for poverty. I drove a mile to Walmart and found I could get almost whatever I wanted. I bought two boxes of the store brand, which is very cheap and works just as well as Cascade. Paid about half what the fancy stuff cost. I would guess you use half an ounce per load, so 300 loads at 2.58 cents per load. What drives a person to buy pods? It’s madness.

Walmart had paper towels, too. I bought two rolls, just for the thrill. The beef had been raided (unlike Publix and Winn-Dixie), but they had a magnificent, highly marbled cowboy rib eye for a good price, so I jumped on that. It was excellent.

If there were any sense to the hoarding, every store would lack the same things. And no, it’s not a supply thing. It’s not like Publix has a secret potato farm surrounded by guard towers. Hoarder obsessions vary depending on location.

I do not read newspapers, but several times a week, I try to go to the local paper’s website to see if I’m under martial law or anything. I check the COVID-19 numbers. It’s really creeping here. The known total for the county is 121, or about one in 2500. We’re never going to get a major epidemic among the general population. That’s my prediction, anyway. It may find its way into senior facilities, but if we’re at 1/2500 as of April 19, I don’t see us ever ending up like New York.

Speaking of New York, there are a lot of Northerners who live here during the winter, and they’re gone, presumably reducing the travel between here and the north. We had a high percentage of travel-related cases. If you think about it, epidemics can only spread to new areas through travel-related cases.

The median age of the cases here is 50, and it’s probably close to the average, too. Is the virus hitting older people more often? Could be, but it may also be that because most cases are mild or asymptomatic, the people who are reporting their illness are generally those who don’t do as well as the average victim. That would lead to over-reporting of old people, smokers, diabetics, and fat people.

This is not a healthy county. Smoking is everywhere, and the people eat garbage. Obesity almost seems fashionable. Add these factors to the large number of seniors here, and you have a bomb waiting to go off. But it hasn’t and probably won’t.

I have to hand it to the people who run the ALF’s. I know these places are not as clean as typical homes, but someone here must be doing something right. We don’t have a single ALF death cluster, but Massachusetts is jam-packed with them, to the point where they overwhelm statistics for everyone else. Massachusetts has had a bona fide ALF catastrophe. They must be doing very little to protect the elderly.

I would have expected worse performance here.

Apart from having a low population density, I don’t know why we’re doing well. Traffic here is just about normal. It’s not like we’re imprisoned, the way people are in other places. There is still a lot of mingling. I’m considering looking into a haircut next week. The ponytail look is not for me. The Seventies are over, and we should do all we can to put a stake in their heart.

The Johns Hopkins USA graph was still on a plateau last night, which is the last time it was updated. The graph was turning downward again. A plateau is good. We can’t have a true disaster if the transmission rate is sufficiently low.

I wonder how my Ebay bench grinder poverty index is doing. Last time I looked, there were 44 items listed under “Baldor bench grinder.” Let’s see.

It’s down to 41! We’ll see what it looks like after a week or so. Still higher than it was before the epidemic.

Still not ONE major celebrity death.

I suppose I should talk about the supernatural approach to epidemics, since it’s the most important approach.

We got here by neglecting the supernatural, and we should focus on the supernatural to get out.

Disease comes from sin and poor relationships with God. Idolatry, including atheism, is a major cause. Epidemics come to countries where not enough people are repenting and praying. They’re not random things that happen to “good people.” Calling yourself good is actually a great way to invite disaster. The word says God is near to them that are of a broken heart and saves such as be of a contrite spirit, and it says he fights the proud.

The word also says God will heal a country if his people will pray. It doesn’t say, “if everyone in the country will pray.” It says “my people.” God was willing to spare Sodom for 10 righteous people, but he couldn’t find that many.

We should be attacking the epidemic with prayer and repentance. Those of us who are already trying to live God’s way should be praying for revival and repentance, not just an end to the epidemic. Of course, we will be attacked for saying sin is in any way involved in epidemics, even though everyone knows how VD works. Sin even contributes to non-infectious diseases like cirrhosis, lung cancer, COPD, and obesity-related illnesses. The connection between sin and disease should be obvious even to atheists.

Most Christians don’t bless or curse. I guess they don’t know they can. You can speak defeat to problems. You can speak help to people. Isaac did it. Balaam did it. Peter did it. Jesus did it. We should be doing these things.

We should be saying, “I speak defeat to the spirits and people contributing the panic and selfishness.” “I speak defeat to the spirits that spread the disease.” “I speak defeat to the hoarders and the spirits they serve.” “I speak defeat to Satan in his effort to use this disease to turn people into servants of the Beast.” “I speak victory to God’s servants and those who speak the truth about the epidemic.”

Even jihadis know curses and blessings matter. They gather in groups and curse the USA and Israel. Somehow, we don’t think our words have power.

I pray for the epidemic to end, and I also pray for God to defeat the spirits and people who are using it to train people for Satan. I ask God to destroy this plan, and I ask him to spread revival and repentance. I ask him to free people from crooked pastors and dependence on churches, and I ask him to spread true Christianity like a disease, outside of church, from person to person, so people will know him personally, as they are supposed to. I ask him to take Satan’s training exercise away and make it his own.

The Bible mentions several epidemics. Were any NOT caused by sin?

Let’s see.

The Egyptian plagues were caused by sin, and two were bodily afflictions. The hemorrhoid plague in Gaza was caused by sin. The Revelation plagues will be caused by sin. A plague killed 185,000 Assyrians in one night, and it was because they were against God. A plague struck Israel because of David’s sin.

It’s strange that so many Christians think an epidemic is an unjust attack on an innocent society. Where, exactly, is this innocent society? Is it America, which has killed at least 60,000,000 unborn babies since Roe v. Wade? Is it Israel, which has generally rejected Jesus? Is it China, which leads the world in abortion and infanticide?

What does the Bible say about protection from plagues? It says that if you dwell in the secret place of the most high, you shall not fear for the pestilence that walks in darkness. It says that if you make God your refuge, no plague shall come near your dwelling. It says the Hebrews were spared the plague on the firstborn because they obeyed God.

Sometimes famines are epidemics. They can be caused by crop diseases. The Bible says famine comes from curses related to disobedience.

It sure seems like plagues are connected to our attitudes toward God.

If the pandemic is an end-time thing, it will happen again. It may not come as a coronavirus epidemic, but some other global disaster will hit, and it will be followed by others, because the end will be a series of birth pangs. They will precede the emergence of the Antichrist and the return of Jesus Christ. Labor pains get more frequent and more intense, so if you don’t like COVID-19, you will really hate what comes later. It’s time to come inside.

Plus Ham Info

I am trying to avoid getting back into cooking, because the love of pleasure is a bad thing, and I have been gluttonous in the past. Nonetheless, I keep getting ideas whether I want them or not, and I’m glad I’ve developed a collection of my own recipes.

Today I decided to make a few biscuits. I was out of bread because of the trip, and I didn’t want to drive to McDonald’s for breakfast. I found a recipe I created a few years back, and I decided to try it.

The biscuits were very good. They’re certainly better than any homemade biscuits anyone else has made for me. I think they can be better, though. Let’s face it; McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A make really good biscuits, and the rest of us should be up to their standard. Here’s the recipe, as it stands after today:

INGREDIENTS

1 3/4 cups biscuit flour (not self-rising)
1/4 cup starch
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar
4 tsp. baking powder (not soda)
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 tbsp. bacon grease
2 tbsp. butter

A little starch makes the biscuits less rubbery; biscuits shouldn’t feel like bread. The sugar isn’t there to make them sweet. It’s just enough to round out the flavor. Chick-fil-A uses a great deal of sugar in its biscuits. Too much.

The important thing is to burn and chill the butter. You can put it in the microwave in a Pyrex cup and burn it a little. You don’t need the junk that settles out. Combine 2 tablespoons of lightly burned butter with 2 tablespoons of bacon grease and chill it until it’s solid. Burning the butter a little gives it a lot of flavor. Bacon grease makes the biscuits flaky.

It’s a lot of trouble, but you have to ask yourself whether you want good biscuits or amazing biscuits.

You mix the dry ingredients and then cut the fat in until you have crumbs. Mix the buttermilk in, roll the biscuits out, and bake them at 450 for around 13 minutes.

The only thing I’m not thrilled about is the texture of the tops of the biscuits. I think I know what to do. McDonald’s brushes biscuits with melted butter. I think that’s the answer. I don’t know when I’ll make biscuits again, but when I do, this is what I’ll do.

My grandmother used to put a small amount of grease on top of her biscuits before baking. I’ve tried this, and the fat disappears into the biscuit. Sorry, Granny.

Baking at 450 seems to be important. I used to bake biscuits at 400, but it’s a mistake.

You may not need to use all of the buttermilk, because the actual amount of flour and starch you measure may vary. Truthfully, flour should always be weighed, not measured in cups. When you use a cup, you will get inconsistent results because the flour may be compacted to different degrees. You won’t know how much flour you’re getting. Weighing is the way to go. Use a gram scale. They’re cheap. I need to correct this recipe and turn the flour and buttermilk measurements into weights. It would also be helpful for the hard fat, because it’s not easy to get hard fat into a cup.

You can’t throw up your hands at grams and weighing, just because your great aunt measured everything with a coffee cup with a broken handle. Tradition is great, but being stupid is never a good thing. Your great aunt may also have used a stove heated by burning wood, and you don’t do that. I hope.

This recipe is a work in progress. I don’t know when I’ll be completely satisfied.

I’ve been Googling around, and it appears it’s possible to cure a country ham at home. You have to have a fridge where it can stay for a few months, but after that, the cure keeps it preserved, so you can hang it anywhere. I may try it, if I can get my grandmother’s recipe. There are two kinds of hams available commercially: expensive ones, and bad ones. The real thing at a decent price would be better.

She used to keep saltpeter in her kitchen, so I think that’s what she used instead of pink salt. We used to think she bought it to put in my grandfather’s food, but maybe that wasn’t the case.

Things are going very well today. I have already been used to help two people for God, and it’s not even 11 a.m. Can’t complain about that.

Yesterday a wonderful thing happened. I felt tempted to do something stupid, and God helped me. I was getting close to home on the drive south, and I kept feeling temptation. I used my supernatural tools, and it seemed like I wasn’t winning. Eventually, I spoke God’s help and victory to me, and I spoke his opposition to the people and spirits that were against me.

It was raining very hard when I approached the house. I turned into my driveway, and I pushed the button on the gate remote. Nothing happened. At the same time, I got a message from my phone, saying the power at the house was out. No power, no gate. There was no way I was getting out to climb the fence in the rain.

I reported the outage by phone, and when I checked, the online map only showed one tiny outage in the whole county.

After a while, a pickup showed up, and a man from the power company approached my car. He said he had looked at all the lines near my house, and he couldn’t see anything wrong. He said he was going to turn the power back on in a few minutes.

After another 10 minutes or so, my phone told me the power was on, and I went in. The temptation was gone, and I was fine.

This experience was neat in more than one way. First, it showed that God was really there. He came through for me, fast. Second, it showed that speaking things into existence works, when you do it in accordance with God’s will. It’s a very powerful thing. Third, God did everything for me. He was glorified. I would have failed without him.

This is the kind of Christianity I want. I don’t mind failing and having God take over and give me victory. It’s how things are supposed to be. We’re told to glorify Jesus all the time. That only makes sense if we’re glorifying him for things he does. He would not ask us to glorify him for things we do using willpower. It would be stealing.

When you say, “Glory to Jesus,” you’re really saying, “This is not my job. Jesus will have to do it, and he gets the credit.” Churches have taught us to be tough little soldiers who lift themselves by their own bootstraps, but that’s what the Jews who rejected Jesus taught. It’s pride, and God hates pride. The Bible says God will fight you if you’re proud.

I feel much closer to God today. I feel his reality more intensely, and it’s paying off.

I’m also much less stressed than I was while my dad was alive. Back then, I knew Christians were supposed to have peace, but I couldn’t hold onto it. I was in an unequal yoking I had chosen years before. I chose physics and law and my dad’s company over God, so I had to spend years being pulled out of that mess. I sleep better now. I don’t feel the worry I had to fight last month. I can’t tell you how great it is.

When you get into something God doesn’t want you to be part of, he may not deliver you quickly. You may get a sentence of many years. This is especially true when you marry or reproduce outside of God’s will. I’m lucky it was a parent who didn’t have long to live. What if I had a crazy wife with 40 more years left on her clock?

My dad was transformed at the end, and he became a wonderful father, but that amounted to about a month and a half. Before that, there was always tension.

A real Christian doesn’t get puffed up and tell everyone what he does for God and how “sold out” he is. A real Christian is like a 35-year-old man who lives by taking money from his mother’s purse. God gives us charity, not wages. We are the reason he was crucified. We haven’t earned anything good. If our work pays off, it’s only because God chose to allow it. Many people work hard and fail.

God taught me to say I’m “pleased,” not “proud.” After he taught me that, I thought of the baptism of Jesus. God spoke, and he didn’t say he was proud of Jesus. He said he was “well pleased.”

We have been taught to be self-reliant because our ancestors could not get God’s help and could not teach us how to get it, either.

I think worry will continue to wither.

I don’t know if I’ll go ahead with the ham project or not. Something to think about. I sent an email to a local grocery company to see if they sell uncured hams. If I follow through, I will write about it here.

Love of Food Still Suppressed

I don’t know if my spam filters are deleting legitimate comments. It’s hard to tell, because I don’t see the same things readers do. When I want to find out what’s happening, I have to log out and make comments. The system seems to be working. If it’s killing your comments, you can email me and let me know.

I’m blogging today about my baptism experience. I went to Clearwater to have my water baptism redone correctly, and it produced clear results. The problem with receiving supernatural help from God, though, is that it doesn’t always last. We are ignorant about things like miracles, healings, and deliverance, so we aren’t good about holding onto the changes God makes in us. People get healed and then relapse. Addicts get delivered and then fall back into addiction. You have to be careful not to be too quick to assume you have a lasting result.

On the day of the baptism, before I even went to the tank, I got re-delivered from the love of food. It happened before lunch, and the baptism took place later in the afternoon. My eating habits changed. I felt as though an inner voice was rising up in me to counter the drive to obtain and consume food and drink.

As of today, it’s still working. In fact, I have something interesting to report: I seem to be in danger of eating too little.

Yesterday I had breakfast and lunch, and I figured I was pretty well set for the day. Later on, though, I started to feel like lunch had not been big enough. I felt like my blood sugar was on the low side. It seemed that I needed to eat something more. I had a nearly empty container of ice cream in the freezer, so I took it out and finished it off. After that, I was fine.

I’m very happy about it. A person who had to be reminded to eat is very blessed.

Skinny people love to call fat people undisciplined, but the truth is that nearly all of them weigh less because they don’t like food as much. We all know skinny people who are irresponsible and weak. If people like that really liked food, they would be as big as houses.

Think of all the thin celebrity drug addicts and alcoholics. Here are a few: Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, Robert Downey, Whitney Houston, Keith Richards, Jim Carrey, Shia Laboeuf, James Taylor, and Jackson Browne. Not models of self-control. If these people had loved food, they would have been morbidly obese.

We know of drug addicts who also became obese. Think of David Crosby, Robin Williams, John Belushi, Jim Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, James Gandolfini, Chris Farley, Elvis Presley, and Artie Lange. John Belushi used to go to restaurants and order entire fried chickens, somewhat like his character in The Blues Brothers.

Many people simply don’t care that much for food. It’s a great thing. It’s completely positive. It doesn’t lead to starvation, because even though they don’t care much for food, their bodies drive them to take in what they need. It just keeps them healthier, more fit, and better-looking than the rest of us.

I love the idea of not loving food. It will bring me a lot of things I want. Who doesn’t want their clothes to fit better? Who doesn’t want to avoid having two sets of clothing: the fat clothes and the “real” clothes? Who doesn’t want to be able to go up a set of stairs without breathing hard afterward?

I’ve never been huge, but I don’t want to be fat at all.

Here’s something interesting: the Bible is very hard on lovers of pleasure. Take a look at this:

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!

Paul criticized lovers of pleasures in the same sentence with blasphemers. Wow.

The kind of pleasure he is talking about is the selfish pleasure of the flesh, not pleasures like the good feeling you get from being in God’s presence or doing good.

Let’s check the Greek.

It comes from the same root as “hedonism,” and here is what Strong’s says about the pleasure involved: “pleasure, a pleasure, especially sensuous pleasure; a strong desire, passion.”

It’s not what you feel after a good prayer session or a miraculous healing.

These days, I find that I sometimes try not to cook as well as I can. I’ll be working on a dish, and I’ll think it’s important to get the very best ingredient or use the best method, and then I’ll correct myself. Food doesn’t have to be sublime. Good is sufficient. Why should I make food that intoxicates me? I don’t need that, and it usually takes more work. I don’t need to be my own drug pusher. The food I make is so good, I may be able to overcome my deliverance if I tempt myself too much.

All the things I’m writing apply to temptations like sex, covetousness, and provocation to anger, too. In modern America, we yield to temptation as a matter of course, but we should be toning it down. You don’t need the best sex possible. You don’t need the nicest car made. You don’t need to be around people who provoke you; it’s not really necessary to have a Twitter account.

Food isn’t the only thing I resist better now.

So far, the baptism seems to have been a big success. Our ignorance about baptism may explain why Christians are so much like other people. We divorce just as much. We look at porn. Many of us are as fat as pigs; we even follow obese preachers who are clearly controlled by their flesh. The Bible says we’re not supposed to be slaves to sin, and it wouldn’t say that if God hadn’t given us the tools to get free.

In order to stay free from an addiction, I believe you have to refrain from tempting yourself with occasional plunges into self-indulgence. I believe you also have to go easy on other people with the same problem, because if you’re self-righteous about it, God may let you fall back into your old habit.

I’m about two and a half weeks into it. I can’t tell you where I’ll be a year from now. I feel very hopeful.

The outfit that baptized me is called The Last Reformation, and I found them on Youtube. I had a habit of looking up street healers and watching their videos. Here’s something strange: I found a number of healers before I found TLR, and now I’m seeing Youtube comments that indicate that they know the TLR people. Some of them have attended TLR events, and some are just friends of TLR veterans.

I think God is knitting people together outside of churches, just as I have been predicting for years. I believe God told me it would happen.

I will never join TLR. I’ve said that before. I’m all done following men and movements. I won’t join a church, either. I know TLR will eventually fall into corruption unless Jesus comes soon, and I’m sure they’re not correct about everything. I don’t want to be part of the mess if they fall. Nonetheless, they seem to be part of a very solid quasi-denomination that has arisen without much human planning.

Once you put a name on a movement and name officials, things start to go south. I suppose it defines a target for Satan and gives him a choke point to attack. It’s normal, and it should be expected. It has never failed. I don’t want to be permanently identified with anything that is likely to fail, but TLR does very good work for the time being.

I will keep reporting on my status. If you want help with your own compulsions, consider getting yourself baptized properly.

There Go my Whole Frame, Outlook, Way of Life, and Everything

I had a fascinating online conversation today. I communicated with a cousin I have only seen a few times in my life.

I do not have a Facebook account, and I count myself blessed for that. My dad didn’t cancel his account after he became demented, and I thought it might be handy to preserve it, so when I got rid of his Twitter account, I left Facebook alone. On occasion, people he knows say things on his timeline. He had a birthday not long ago, and he got messages from a high school friend, a former partner, and a niece. I will say her name is Martha.

I blew off the messages from the school friend and the former partner. I didn’t see the point in encouraging them. I decided I should acknowledge Martha’s post, however. I sent a Facebook message explaining that I didn’t post things publicly, and I thanked her and so on. She messaged me back, and we started talking.

Her mother–my Aunt Norma–was my dad’s older sister. She died at age 82, in 2014. Like my dad, she had vascular dementia. I drove my dad to the funeral in Tennessee. Actually, we flew to Atlanta and drove from there to Oak Ridge. At the funeral, I talked to Martha. My dad was not diagnosed until 2015, but I knew his memory was fading. I wanted to learn about Norma’s illness, in case my dad turned out to have the same thing.

Norma died pretty quickly. You would expect a woman to outlast her brother, but Norma was even fatter than my dad. She may not have had the same grade of health care, either.

Norma’s history is complicated. Her first husband was a man from the town in Kentucky where she and my dad grew up. They had a daughter I will call Lulu. Norma got a divorce, and she married my uncle, a man I will call Melvin. Martha is his daughter from an earlier marriage. He also had several sons. In the end, the household was made up of Melvin, Norma, Lulu, the sons (I’m not sure of their names even though they’re my first cousins), and Martha. After Martha was an adult, Norma and Melvin had their first child together. I will call her Dagmar.

Martha was the last child from Melvin’s first marriage. She never knew her mother. I don’t know if she died in childbirth or what. Maybe she just ran off.

You can tell I’m not close to these people. I don’t know much about them. I’m not sure it’s right to call Martha my cousin. We are not related by blood.

After my mother had her first child, she was surprised that her husband’s mother and sisters didn’t come to help her out. Eventually, one of the sisters let her know that they were distant because they were so glad they didn’t have to deal with my dad any more. I have had very little contact with my dad’s relatives.

I barely know Martha, but on the few times we have communicated, we have had a special rapport. I remember a family picnic back in the Sixties; we went off by ourselves, away from the hard voices and quick hands, and talked. She is a gentle person with a kind heart. That means she’s not much like Norma or Melvin. Norma was a lot like my dad, meaning she was abusive, and Melvin is a spoiled Ahab figure who treated his kids like pack mules.

I was not interested in trying to get to know Martha when I sent her the message, but she isn’t like me, so she responded quickly and started engaging me. We had a long messaging session, and I learned a lot of fascinating things.

First of all, the rest of my dad’s family didn’t know we had a domestic violence problem. I guess when I was a kid I assumed the whole world knew. Martha had to ask me about it, so I told her some horror stories. She surprised me by letting me know Norma (her real first name) used to beat her black and blue.

I never would have guessed. I knew Norma was mean to her kids, but I had never heard anything about physical abuse. I have seen Norma rap her kids on the head with her knuckles, and that’s not an acceptable method of corporal punishment, but I didn’t know she beat Martha.

Norma hated Martha for some reason. She was mean to all the kids, but she really laid it on Martha. In addition to the beatings, she showered her with verbal abuse and humiliated her.

After Martha grew up, Norma told her something amazing. At one point during Martha’s childhood, Norma tried to murder Martha. When she told the story to the adult Martha, she said Lulu persuaded her to stop. Lulu said that if Norma killed Martha, Norma would go to prison, and Lulu would be alone in the world. That stopped Norma. When Norma told Martha this, in her house with Martha’s four kids, she didn’t apologize or show remorse.

This is not a story about a white trash family that sold meth out of a stolen camper. Norma was a respected schoolteacher, and Melvin was a professor of radiation embryology. The problem wasn’t caused by a lack of education or sophistication. It sounds like Norma was a true sociopath who had a hard time understanding right and wrong.

Long ago, my sister told me a strange story about Norma and Lulu. She said Norma used to buy Lulu candy and have her eat it in front of Melvin’s kids.

Melvin was not a great dad. He made his kids pay for their own clothes. He and Norma made them do all the housework. He refused to let Martha go to the doctor when she was sick, forcing her to go to school instead. He didn’t protect her from Norma.

His kids grew up to be independent and hardworking but also full of unnecessary pain.

While I was conversing with Martha, I learned some things about my dad’s father, who died in 1942.

There is a fable about my grandfather (it feels strange to call him that). It goes like this: He died from pneumonia or food poisoning. Later on, the pastor of the church his kids attended told Norma to stand up and tell the congregation her dad died from drinking bad liquor. The pastor was wrong.

I always thought the fable was true, and I thought it explained my dad’s hatred of Christianity. I believed something other than liquor killed my grandfather.

Here is what Martha told me: my grandfather used to get drunk and beat my grandmother. My aunts and my grandmother told Martha about it. He died from uremia caused by drinking bad moonshine.

Moonshine can contain chemicals that injure or destroy kidneys, so uremia could be explained by bad moonshine. Uremia just means your blood is full of urine ingredients. If your kidneys quit working, you get uremia.

The pastor was right about the cause of death. He wasn’t a slanderer. He was just an enormous clod.

Melvin is a Mormon, and Norma joined up, but she was really an atheist. My dad was an atheist for nearly all of his life, and although he asked for salvation in September, I don’t think he really believes at this moment. I wonder if sociopathy is the main reason for their problems with God. Sociopaths think everything they do is right. How can you want or ask for forgiveness if you don’t believe you’ve sinned?

It sounds like my grandfather may have been a sociopath. I wonder. He was not stupid. He educated himself as well as he could, and he went into politics and provided well for his family. It’s not like he grew up in a shack with a chicken tied to the kitchen table. His father had a lot of property, and almost all of his mother’s children went to college. He knew better than to beat his wife.

I also learned that my dad’s remaining sister has Parkinson’s and dementia. She looks better than my dad, but then women dye their hair and wear wigs and makeup.

I’m very glad I talked to Martha. My only other sources of information on the family are my dad, who is demented and in denial, and my sister, who is a compulsive liar.

My dad thinks his father was a saintly man everyone admired. At least that’s what he pretends to believe.

Tonight I told my dad I had talked to Martha. He had no idea who she was. He took a minute to remember her dad, whom he has known since 1962, and he could not recall his last name.

I told him his remaining sister has Parkinson’s and dementia. My feeling is that he needs to hear things like this so he can come to grips with his mortality and secure his salvation. It may sound cruel, but my dad is not the kind of person who would feel alarm over a sister’s dementia. He didn’t start crying and talking about how he loved her. He wasn’t upset when Norma died. The only thing that really bothers him about his sister’s predicament is that it reminds him of his own situation.

I did not tell him I found out his dad died from drinking moonshine, and I didn’t say I knew he beat my grandmother. I may mention it one of these days, just to see if it gets a reaction. It may offend him, but I don’t care about that. When a truth is important, you say it, and you don’t accept responsibility for the way other people receive it. Besides, he would probably forget about it later the same day.

Sociopaths feel little or no remorse, and they apologize rarely, if at all. My feeling is that Norma and my sister are in the category of hard core sociopaths, and my dad is on a slightly lower level. Maybe if he hears a little bit about the bad things his dad and his sister did, it might jar something loose and make him consider his own sins.

As a Christian, I assume there must be a demonic component to sociopathy. Either it indicates demonic control, or demons are attracted to young sociopaths and set up house in them. Serial killers, the best-known sociopaths apart from building contractors and telemarketers, often say they felt foreign presences driving them.

Can you fix a sociopath by casting a demon out? I don’t know. I believe a person who enjoys being evil and approves of it will continue to do evil regardless of whether a demon is present.

A person who wrote a convincing account of a visit to hell said there were people there who, in spite of the flames and torture, still hated God and refused to accept responsibility; they were basically sociopaths. They could not connect their suffering with their moral failings.

They were not full of demons. In hell, demons aren’t invisible beings that live in you and influence you in sneaky ways. They’re visible there, because people in hell are spirits, just like demons. Spirits can see each other. In hell, demons live outside of you; they don’t hide inside you and whisper all day. Presumably, whatever personality you have in hell is 100% you.

Martha has four successful married kids and 13 grandchildren, so it looks like she overcame her background. She says Melvin has a bad attitude toward her family and complains that she praises them too much. He says he still puts her down. She thinks he has always resented her for not being male. I told her it looked like she had a fine legacy and did not need his approval.

Martha is a very nice person. She is also a serious Mormon. When everyone got together for Norma’s funeral, I overheard Martha talking about the Lamanites. This is the Morman term for American Indians. They think Indians are descended from the Hebrews, which is pretty incompatible with modern DNA data. You can’t believe the preposterous Lamanite story without being a very sincere Mormon.

It’s terrible that she is caught up in the cult. I prayed for her, but I don’t see how I can talk to her about Mormonism.

Melvin raised his daughter as a Mormon, but he doesn’t buy into it, himself. A long time ago, he and Norma went to their high priest or whatever Mormons call their clergymen, and they told him they didn’t believe. The high priest told them to stick around for the social life. It’s too bad the pitch that didn’t work on Melvin and Norma succeeded with Martha. One more thing they did to mess up her life.

Now I know my grandfather died from drinking bad moonshine, and I know the abuse problem in my family is even worse than I believed. I won’t whine about it. It’s good information to have.

You Need a Shepherd to Guard You

I feel like commenting on my continuing experiences as a person who has been re-baptized by what, I hope, are proper New Testament standards.

I have already reported that I have had an easier time resisting temptation. If I were a reader of this blog, here is the question I would ask: after almost two weeks, is it still working?

Yes. It is still working. It has gotten better.

Let’s look at love of food, since it’s a particularly irksome problem that runs in my family. Along with drinking, it cost my dad and my aunt their minds. It killed my aunt, it is going to kill my dad, and my sister is obese. I have had problems, too, although I never got over about 213.

I don’t like being fat at all, so if it bothers you to see someone complain about weighing 213 pounds, tough. That’s not far from 50 pounds above what I believe to be a good healthy weight for me. By my standards, it’s disastrous.

Some people are happy if they can shoehorn themselves behind a car wheel. Some people think a person isn’t fat as long as he can buy clothes at normal stores. I don’t see it that way. If you’re uncomfortable and you look like a cherub in a Renaissance painting, you’re fat, even if you’re only “a few” pounds overweight.

Take a look at a 10-pound bag of sugar some time. Fat is lighter than sugar. That means 20 pounds of fat take up more room than two bags of sugar. It’s a lot of material. And you carry it everywhere! That’s something any intelligent person would want to fix.

There are many people out there who think being 50 or 80 pounds overweight is not a real problem. If that’s you, you have two problems: love of food, and supernatural blindness.

For a long time, I’ve known that demons make people overeat. If you have a hard time losing weight, you’re an addict, and addiction is demonic. When I’ve been out of God’s will regarding food, I’ve felt as though something behind me were pushing me, telling me to eat one more bite. I wasn’t imagining it. There really was something there. It was probably with me at birth, and I cooperated with it and cemented its power over me.

It’s unusual to hear a spirit speak in a voice you can hear the way you hear other people’s voices, but everyone hears spirits speak. Sometimes you’ll just feel an urge, but you may actually hear words form in your mind, in your own voice. If you haven’t been purged of evil spirits, you are hearing from them all the time, and they direct a lot of the behavior you think you choose on your own.

Based on my experience, spirits can speak to you in four different ways. I think there is a fifth way, but I’ll focus on the four I have experienced or witnessed firsthand.

First, they can stand outside you and tempt you, before you really have a problem. This is a fairly weak method of control. Say you’re 19 years old, and your best friend wants you to shoot heroin with him. You’re not addicted, and the idea is scary and off-putting, but something inside you wants to be included. This is the first way spirits speak to us, and it’s not that hard to resist. Because resisting is not hard, your guilt is very strong if you give in. You can’t say you were coerced.

The second way spirits can speak to you works like this: you’re in the grocery store, and you pass a display. Twinkies are on sale, two boxes for the price of one. You’re not addicted, but you’ve had Twinkies before, and you like them. Something inside you says, “It’s okay if I buy those, because I’ve been good all week,” and maybe you start to steer your cart over toward them. It’s harder to resist than something you’ve never tried, but you should still be able to break away.

The third way spirits speak to you is from the inside. You see the Twinkies, a spirit you have welcomed, fed, and praised for years says, “We’re buying those Twinkies, plus some chocolate sauce and root beer,” and instead of resisting, you say, “Of course we are,” and you buy the Twinkies and eat them until you can’t push one more bite in. You’re an addict, but it hasn’t ruined your life, and you can restrain yourself for short periods when you’re highly motivated.

On the fourth level, you crave things so badly you will steal from your mother’s purse in order to get them. You will break into people’s houses to get things you can sell. You will rob people on the street with a gun. You will loot your child’s college fund to please your demons. I have not been there yet, but my sister has.

It happens commonly with drugs, but it also happens with gambling, and I have seen it happen with food. America is full of people who ride electric carts because they’re fat. They literally gave up the use of their legs (and paid high social and economic costs) so they could stuff themselves.

I assume the fifth level is possession. I don’t know much about it, but my understanding is that when a person is truly possessed, it’s as though their own personality is strapped down while demons run the body.

I used to live on the third level with regard to some things. There were activities I didn’t see as sinful, so I didn’t try to restrain myself. Also, I was a washing-machine Christian. I figured I could do what I wanted, and God would forgive me later, washing me clean. I thought some things were only a little sinful, so I would sin and then ask for forgiveness. When I tried to break free of these things, I kept going back to them, because while I sincerely wanted freedom, I still had the demons.

To put it plainly, I was full of voices that were not mine. I didn’t hear what Christians call “audible voices,” but I heard them just the same. Even though the voices were not very strong, they still won regularly, because they could not be fatigued. They never gave up. Demons don’t have to rest. No matter how well I fought them with my own will, I eventually gave in. Human beings tire out.

Third-level demons are why dieters have cheat days. If you don’t have a demon, you don’t need to give yourself special holidays when you can sin. If your demon is still with you, you may be able to strike an unstable truce by setting aside days during which you pack yourself with food. I used to do it, and it worked fairly well for a long time. These days were like religious holidays, and the food was like offerings.

Before the new baptism, I heard the voices of my flesh, evil spirits, and other people very clearly, but when I was tempted, the Holy Spirit was not as loud. Now things are different. Let’s say the temptation is food. I’ll be in the kitchen, and something will say, “Go ahead and have a Coke. You behave so well these days, it’s okay.” Then I’ll hear something else, saying, “Or you could forget about it.” Then I’ll stop in my tracks and think about what just happened. Then I’ll drop the idea of having the Coke, and I will be conscious of great gratitude. I’ll feel like something inside me is pushing desire out of my stomach. At times like these, I know I’ve been saved by someone else.

If you have behaviors or thoughts you can’t control, maybe you can understand what a great thing it is to get victory over them. Some Christians have been delivered from drug addiction instantly. They are probably among the most grateful people alive.

People can’t change themselves very well. We struggle to change, we get temporary control, we hang on as long as we can, and then we fall back into our demonic habits. You can’t suppress them forever, because, again, demons do not get tired. Sooner or later, you will falter, and they’ll be as fresh as ever.

Fat people give up and get bariatric surgery because demons don’t get tired. Doctors prescribe drugs to neutralize or replace other drugs, because demons don’t get tired. Smokers who quit either start up again or get fat, because demons don’t get tired. When God delivers you, it’s different. The demons leave. If they stick around, outside of you, trying to catch you at a weak moment, the Holy Spirit rises up and responds, enabling you to resist or at least repent quickly.

Jesus said this:

Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.

This essay tells you where I am today. I’m not promising anyone things will continue to go well. This is just documentation. I have ruined deliverance before. I am reluctant to prognosticate. Still, when I blew it in the past, I had not been baptized correctly. I had not made the proper agreement with God. My hope is that the repairs I have made to my foundation will help me stand permanently.

In the Bible, sand represents ideas that don’t come from God. Rock represents ideas that come from the Holy Spirit. Water represents voices and words. Jesus said that if you build your house on sand, it will wash away in the rain. The constant bombardment of demonic words is as persistent and hard to fend off as rain.

When you try to change yourself using strategies that come from men, you build your house on sand. When you let the Holy Spirit do the building, you build on rock.

Unless the Lord builds the house,
They labor in vain who build it;
Unless the Lord guards the city,
The watchman stays awake in vain.

I think Torben Sondergaard and The Last Reformation are right to believe that a proper water baptism is mandatory and powerful. That’s what I conclude from what has happened so far. It looks like true success without it is impossible.

Healer’s Wife has the Claws Out for Him

The other day I wrote about the problems women cause when they do inappropriate things to get attention in church. It was a revelation to me, so I shared it. I mentioned it to two friends, and they agreed wholeheartedly; they took the topic and ran. I touched a nerve.

Today I was watching a healing video in which evangelist John Mellor healed a man who had been injured in an industrial accident. The healing was wonderful, but the video was marred by a female voice. A woman who could not be seen kept yapping at Mellor and the other men at the front of the church. She gave orders they didn’t need to hear. She interrupted. When the man got healed, she made Mellor put the man’s wife on stage, and of course, that took the attention off the healing and put it on another woman.

She was very rude.

It looks like the stage mother was Mellor’s wife. She had an Australian accent (he’s Australian), and she called him by his first name. I could be wrong, though, because she acted like she was his mom.

It was really something. There were five men at the front of the church, and I doubt any of them were under 60. They didn’t need a woman to tell them what to do. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to run a healing.

At one point, she squawked, “You’re ruining the testimony!” Can you imagine trying to preach with someone like that humiliating you in front of the church?

Unbelievable.

Instead of stepping aside and putting her in her place, Mellor obeyed a lot of her orders. He skipped around like a poodle taking orders from a trainer in a carnival act. “Sit up!” “Do a somersault!” As soon as he turned to move one way, she yapped, and he turned and went another way.

It was very ugly to watch. He seemed completely intimidated. At times he seemed to resist her in a passive-aggressive way, while smiling and joking to simulate the retention of dignity.

I can’t respect him while he allows this to go on. What a poor example he is setting. It would be off-putting to see an unbelieving couple act this way, but it’s worse when they’re Christians teaching other people.

The Holy Spirit speaks to husbands, and husbands are supposed to pass the information on to wives and children. This is the system God has ordained. There is no other. There has never been a women’s liberation movement in heaven. When families get out of order, it causes problems.

It’s very hard to be a father and husband. You are held responsible for everything. If your family lacks, no one will hold your wife responsible, even if it’s because she lost her job. You will be blamed for being a bad provider. If your wife and kids are out of control, everyone will blame you, but if you’re out of control…everyone will blame YOU. You have to make hard decisions, and if your family rebels, you have to fight them as well as the difficulties the decisions present.

Imagine what would have happened had Paul been married to a dominating harpy.

“The Holy Spirit says we have to go to Ephesus.”

“Well, your precious friend the Holy Spirit will just have to settle for Tarsus. There are plenty of people he can save right here. I just made it into the ladies’ auxiliary, and if the Holy Spirit thinks I’m pulling up and starting over in Ephesus, he has another thing coming!”

The other day I saw a preacher talking about hard decisions he had made. He and his wife bought a house and started fixing it up, and they got into debt, which meant he had become a slave to the house. He had to keep his job and stay where he was, in order to pay bills. He felt God wanted him to be free, so they sold the house and moved into an apartment in an undesirable neighborhood. After a while, God told him to move to another town, when he and his wife had no money to make the move. Imagine what he would have gone through, with a woman who wanted to pull in another direction. He would still be in the house, helping her put up pink wallpaper.

Things can be even worse when a wife gets jealous and decides the Holy Spirit is giving orders through her instead of the husband. That’s not how God works. He won’t give you a system and then tell you to corrupt it. He won’t tell you to do something and then tell your wife to tell him to do something else. On the other hand, he MAY tell you to tell your wife to shut up.

God cursed the human race with female rebellion in Genesis 3. He told Adam his wife would desire to rule him. Look it up. It’s not a blessing.

Christians are supposed to form what is called “the body of Christ” or “the bride of Christ.” We are supposed to submit to God as a wife submits to a husband. When a man marries a spoiled hellcat, he finds out how we make God feel every day. We insist that God help us with our own bad plans.

While I was at the TLR event in Dunedin, Torben Sondergaard criticized what he called “the American gospel.” It says this: “God will help you do whatever you choose to do with your life.” Do you want to be a famous singer? God will make it happen. Do you want to be a rich businessman? God will make it happen. Torben reminded us that this is not what the Bible teaches. We are supposed to give up our plans and let God decide what we do.

Pushing God to actualize your dumb plans is manipulation, and God can’t be manipulated. He hates it. It’s like witchcraft.

Christianity is what happens after God wrecks your precious plans.

I’ve seen a terrible problem among Christians. I know people who married the wrong individuals and then turned to God and received the Holy Spirit. Because they were already chained to people who did not listen to God, they suffered a lot.

The world made them suffer, and their spouses made them suffer.

Their spouses made them suffer more than the world did.

What a curse. God told me it’s more important to get the wrong people out of your life than to put the right people in it, and how right he was. I always say cancer is better than marrying the wrong woman, and I have never had reason to backpedal. Cancer kills in a few years. A poisonous spouse does it over half a century, and he or she will also hurt your kids and grandchildren.

Cancer can only kill you once. A nasty wife will kill you 20 times a day.

Here is what Proverbs 21:9 says:

Better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman.

Here’s Proverbs 25:24:

It is better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman.

Yes, they’re virtually identical. God felt it was so important, he had to tell us twice.

I wouldn’t trade places with John Mellor for all the money in the world. I don’t care what his wife looks like. I don’t care how much she does for him (service and fawning can be the most powerful forms of control). The world supplies plenty of humiliation and emasculation; I don’t need a wife who will do her best to supplement it.

Speaking of burdens, I have decided I don’t like Christmas any more. I loved it when I was a kid, when other people did all the work and paid all the bills, but I’m fed up with it now. Yes, I said it. The whole holiday needs to be remodeled.

I like doing things for friends and relatives. I like having meals with them. I like buying them things. I do not like doing it all on command, as part of a secular lemming flash mob.

I’m having friends over for dinner tonight, and I look forward to it, but I’m only making four things: rib roast, potatoes, Caesar salad, and Texas trash. You can’t enjoy getting together with people if you’re working like a galley slave.

My feeling is that Christmas works best when you keep the materialism very subdued and you don’t stuff yourself. A lot of people are going to wake up on December 26 several pounds fatter and a few thousand dollars deeper in debt. That’s not merry at all. I’m pretty sure I’m spending less than three hundred dollars on gifts, I don’t plan to jam myself full of food, and I refuse to have cookies and cakes lying around all week. They’re fine to have around while we’re celebrating; after that, they go in the trash.

Christmas is like a bridezilla wedding. We get all worked up over it, trying to make it perfect. We act like it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to us. Then the day after Christmas comes, and BANG, it’s over. Life is just like it used to be, except you have a big mess to clean up.

Jesus is insignificant at Christmas. We barely mention him. I gave someone a gift card from Amazon, and I tried to find a “religious” card. They had ONE religious card. On CHRISTMAS. It was a ridiculous nativity scene with some text that seemed to come from a bored intern at Hallmark. The rest of the cards…snowmen and candy canes.

Thank goodness all those snowmen went to the peppermint cross for us.

Let’s see…Jesus allowed himself to be tortured to death so we could be healed of our diseases, freed from stress, saved from hell, and taken to heaven. Isn’t that more important than a new video game box?
We act like saying “Jesus” is the same thing as dancing and singing in blackface. He’s God! He’s the only God there is! Who cares if his name bothers people? They’re not in charge of the universe. They’re a bunch of deluded mortals we were left here to teach.

I think we pump holidays up in order to comfort ourselves because of the emptiness we feel the rest of the year. If you serve God, you should have ample opportunities to share love all year round.

You know a holiday has gotten out of hand when you look forward to getting it over with.

My roast has been in the oven since 8:30, and now I have to clean up the house and feed my dad. I hope he likes his gifts, and I hope we have no caregiver catastrophes to spoil the day. I expect this to be his last Christmas or birthday at home, so I would like things to go smoothly.

You Need an Edge

Since I spent a grand on being re-baptized (or baptized for the first time, if the original effort doesn’t count), I feel I should follow up here and write about what has happened since.

Before I got baptized, I hoped demons would leave me during the process, ridding me of compulsions and unwanted thoughts. I’m not saying I have institution-grade compulsions or that I hear voices, but like everyone reading this post, I have had drives I could not control, and I have had thoughts I didn’t like.

If you don’t think you have compulsions, ask yourself two questions. 1. Am I fat? 2. Do I want to be fat? If the answers are “yes” and “no,” you have a compulsion. Do you smoke? Do you bite your nails? Do you snap at people even though you try not to? If you look at yourself honestly, you will find your compulsions.

If you don’t find them, then you have a problem with lying.

I know a woman who brought a lot of ridicule on herself by saying, “I don’t have any bad habits.” Everyone who heard it knew how absurd it was, and they were still talking about it years later, laughing at her. You may have denied your bad habits. You may not have been perceptive enough to see your bad habits. You have still had them. I don’t care who you are.

You don’t have to be a serial killer, a junkie, or an anorexic to have bad habits. If your bad habits haven’t ruined your life, it just means you’re high-functioning.

When I was in the tank, I felt things moving around in me, but then I’m a charismatic Christian who prays in tongues for hours every day, so that was normal for me. I feel supernatural things all the time. While they were baptizing me, I couldn’t say I felt an abrupt change. I didn’t see goblins fly off through the air. I didn’t scream or start tossing the people who were helping me.

Honestly, it would have been neat had things like that happened. I’m like everyone else. I love a good supernatural experience.

As I have written previously, I did not feel good at all after the baptism. I felt oppressed, and I had a nightmare later. I woke up many times during the night. I still felt that I had done the right thing, and I knew that unpleasant experiences did not always add up to error. I knew Satan was petty, and I knew he liked to torment people who got breakthroughs, hoping to convince them nothing had changed.

Think about boxers. Sometimes when a boxer lands a nice-looking shot, his opponent will shake his head, trying to say it didn’t hurt. Like my dad once told me, that’s just a way of saying, “You hurt me.” It’s a bluff. Satan is the same way. When you score a goal, he may deny it in hopes you lose faith and give up the progress you’ve made.

I didn’t get an instantaneous improvement from baptism, but I hoped things would improve in the days that followed. That’s exactly what has happened.

I got delivered from the love of food in 2009, and for a long time, I didn’t eat much, and I lost weight. Then I screwed it up by going to an all-you-can-eat rib place, and since then, it has been on and off. The day I was baptized, I found I wanted to avoid food. This happened at lunch, which was before the baptism. I can’t explain that.

I have been very good since then, and it hasn’t taken much effort. Mainly, I have to remember how important it is to hold onto this. I have to value it. I can’t let myself sink into thoughts of cooking and good food. Sooner or later, something bad would happen. If I don’t appreciate what I have, I will lose it again.

I’m also much less angry, and I want to stay away from anger. I was looking forward to watching The Equalizer 2, which is basically an orgy of cruel revenge. I don’t want to go near it now. I don’t want to hear about other people’s suffering. Morbid curiosity, which is actually vicarious cruelty, is leaving me.

I am less worried than I was before. I woke up last night and started worrying about some things, but I shut it off quickly and went back to sleep.

I’m doing better with responsibility than I was last week. I’m very glad of that, because the weight of dealing with my dad has driven me to escape responsibility a lot, and it has caused problems. Much of the anxiety we feel in life is the consequence of letting responsibilities go.

When I think about the difference between being ruled by iniquity–by unhealthy, carnal compulsions–and being ruled by the Holy Spirit, I think about casinos. To run a successful casino, you don’t need to rig the games so people always lose. All you need is a slight edge which is permanent. People think casinos are honest, but that depends on what “honest” means to you. They will tell you the truth about the odds, but the games are all set up so they aren’t quite fair, and this is legal, because it would be impossible to run a casino that didn’t win more often than its customers.

A tiny advantage in the odds of a game adds up to millions over time. The Internet says casinos only have a 52-56% chance of winning at blackjack, for example, but blackjack makes them a great deal of money.

To overcome iniquity and avoid sin, you don’t need to be completely free from carnal desires. You just need to be a little bit less inclined to sin than to do the right thing. Without the Holy Spirit, when temptation comes, you will fight until something tips you over the edge, just barely, and then you sin. When the Holy Spirit helps you, you may get close to the edge, but you don’t go over. That’s good enough. It describes what is happening to me now, most of the time.

Is what is happening to me real? Yes. I can tell you that for a fact. I don’t have the willpower to control myself without help from God. If I did, I would not concern myself so much with things like baptism and casting out demons.

You can’t manufacture willpower. Sometimes people develop it suddenly in response to traumatic experiences. A person who has an extremely unpleasant experience after doing something stupid may be able to give it up afterward out of fear, but an average person can’t choose to become self-disciplined and do it without help. Even if there were a program to help you do it, you would need willpower to make the program work.

Is what is happening to me permanent? I don’t know the answer, since I haven’t lived my whole life yet.

If what is happening to me is related to baptism, why did it start at lunch, before I was baptized? I don’t know. Maybe a spirit that was compelling me saw that it was about to be put out of business, and it gave up. I don’t think demons always wait until they’re cast out to react. A demoniac approached Jesus, yelling and so on, because the demons were upset by Jesus’ presence, and Jesus had not yet done anything to them.

Is there anything disappointing about my post-baptism life? Yes. I want to be free of compulsions and spirits, but I know God wants to give us more than freedom. He wants to fill us with love and peace. I don’t have that yet. Sometimes God’s love flows through me for a while, but it’s not constant. I hope I get there, because the presence of love inside a person is like a healing medicine and a vaccine. It doesn’t just make you nice; it repairs you and protects you. Besides, it’s very pleasant. Much more pleasant than anger and resentment, which go hand-in-hand with fear and worry, not to mention illness.

God himself is love, so if I don’t have love flowing through me all the time, I must not have the full presence of God.

Day after tomorrow, I have to cook Christmas Eve dinner. It’s a concern, because I cook amazing food which is hard to turn down. I’m being conservative. I’m making a rib roast, potatoes, and Caesar salad with anchovies and homemade croutons. My friend Amanda is bringing a dessert; I don’t even care what it is, because I want to avoid pushing for perfection. When I suggested she bring dessert, I didn’t try to think of the best-tasting choice possible.

In addition to this simple meal, I might conceivably make Texas trash. That’s all. I thought about making cheesecake, but my cheesecake is the best I have ever had, and I think I would be pushing my luck. I don’t need that level of temptation.

Today I went to the store, and rib roasts were on sale for $4.99 per pound. Is that God blessing me or Satan tempting me?

I bought a big one and cut it off the bones. I salted it heavily, put it back together, and wrapped it in a clean towel. Tomorrow I’ll coat it with garlic butter. The garlic will sink in while it sits in the fridge. Should be great.

Breakfast today and yesterday: two slices of buttered toast and decaf. Today at lunch, I had tuna salad on a baguette, with water. Later I ate some grape tomatoes. I kept feeling I needed to stay away from the Coke and Powerade.

I don’t know what will happen in the future. I’m not going to claim baptism has changed my life permanently, until I have some evidence that this is the case. I’m just telling you what’s going on right now. If it all falls apart, I will say so.

Rethinking Holiday Gorging

I’m sitting here with Marv while he enjoys his time out of the cage. I’ve been watching Youtube, looking for videos that will be helpful in my efforts to be sanctified and corrected.

I started looking at a Derek Prince video about laziness, but since I am currently caught up in a holiday which has become a celebration of overeating, and because I am not completely happy about it, I changed my mind and started looking for material on gluttony.

I got completely delivered from gluttony in 2009. Then one day I went to Sonny’s Barbecue with my friend Mike, and we had the all-you-can-eat ribs. It seems like ever since then, the victory has been tempered.

Before my deliverance, I used to stuff myself routinely. It’s pretty unusual for me to do that now, but I do eat more than I should. When I moved to this farm, I worked outside a lot, and I lost weight no matter what I ate. Then the work slowed down, and I was in the habit of eating more than I had before, so I picked up some pounds.

I have been thinking about my strange talent for cooking, and I have been considering its negative effects. I can cook a lot of things I really enjoy eating, and that presents a problem. Because I have a long list of recipes, I can always cook something I haven’t had in a long time and tell myself it’s okay to eat it because it’s a rare treat. That might be okay if you can only cook 4 things, but when you can cook dozens, you can have a rare treat several times a week. Every dish is “special.”

I thought about that, and then I asked myself what I’m trying to do when I eat something “special.” There had to be a root iniquity that paved the way for gluttony. I realized I was trying to reward myself. “I worked all day with the chainsaw and tractor, so now it’s okay to have a pint of ice cream.” “I spent 5 hours dealing with a mess my dad made, so now it’s okay to have a big bowl of pasta.”

Why would I do that? Why would I feel like I needed a reward? The answer is self-pity. I allow myself to overeat sometimes because I’ve convinced myself I’m a victim. I feel that I’m owed.

I don’t think of myself as a self-pitying person. When I have a problem, I don’t ask God why it hit such a wonderful person. I assume I’m doing something wrong. I ask for correction. I try to attack the problem. I don’t like self-pity. Nonetheless, it looks like I have it. I may have a flavor that’s different from the ones I recognize, but it’s still self-pity.

Here’s another strange question I asked myself: I can’t do anything sinful to reward myself…so what do I do? Other people get drunk or high on Saturday night. They indulge in sexual sin. They gluttonize. I can’t think of anything I can do, as a Christian.

I don’t know if people are supposed to be able to reward themselves, but we do. Tonight I’m thinking about that, so it’s only natural that I would wonder if there are any rewards I can give myself.

I can turn off the phone and read a good book. I can go for a walk in the woods. I can watch a movie I like. Those things aren’t all that rewarding, though. Not like a pint of ice cream, a line of coke, or a night of fornication. No one ever says, “I’m going to go crazy and spoil myself tonight with a nice walk.”

This is really weird. Maybe we’re not supposed to give ourselves rewards. If not, what are we supposed to do when we’re tired or upset? Do we just take the hit and walk it off? Maybe that’s the actual answer.

It’s not a pleasant prospect. I don’t want to go through life sucking it up and enduring. It would be sort of like going through life holding your breath. Eventually you want to exhale.

Unpleasant things happen to us all the time. Life on earth is like being outdoors in a hailstorm that never stops. You keep getting whacked. One would think God would occasionally provide pleasant experiences to counterbalance the whacks. Surely there must be something.

I’ll have to ask God for the answer. Whatever the situation is, I want to know and accept it.

When you’re a worldly person, you don’t expect to deprive your flesh all the time. You look for cheat days and so on. Christianity doesn’t work like that. You never get a free day to sin. There are no vacations.

I’m always glad to find out I have a character problem, because the information is an open door to freedom. Character problems cause failure and suffering, so when you find out you have a character problem, you suddenly have a way to improve your life. Fix your character, and you will definitely be freed from certain things.

I am not a victim. I like to say that to myself. It’s a little bit like taking a bad-tasting medicine, but it’s a good thing to say. It’s true. People and spirits have done terrible things to me, but that doesn’t mean I’m a victim. My sins and iniquities more than justify every bad thing that has happened. If I admit I’m part of the problem, I claim that in the past, I’ve changed my life for the worse. If I can change it for the worse, I can also make it better. God told me that when I deny an excuse, I take my power back.

I used to drive my sister crazy by saying, “You’re not a victim.” I was angry when I said it, so maybe I should have refrained. It made her furious. It enraged her to be told she wasn’t a victim. False victimhood was a treasure to her; she built her life around it. She truly loved it. She used it as justification to treat people horribly, and she didn’t want it taken away.

I don’t get furious when I say it to myself, but it’s sobering.

When I was young, I was sure I was a victim. I was raised in a house of hatred and abuse. All sorts of misfortune came to me, for no apparent reason. People mistreated me. Maybe I had a point when I was very young, but once I became an adult, I should have knocked off the victim nonsense and taken responsibility.

Interesting stuff.

I really don’t want to stuff myself on holidays any more, and I hate the effort of cooking elaborate meals. Maybe I’ll blow off Christmas dinner entirely. I’m souring on the whole concept of feasts.

What kind of holiday is it if you have to eat yourself sick in order to feel like you celebrated?

New Info on Stone Prevention

I wonder if I should have written about Trump yesterday. I don’t want to write about politics too much. I know government is a false god, and I know Satan wastes our time (our lives) by getting us to scrap in the political arena instead of focusing on prayer and repentance. Nonetheless, I also know God put Trump in office as a favor to his children, and I know the ridiculous attacks on his administration constitute a mass tantrum on the part of Satan’s offspring.

I believe Christians should support Trump and pray for the defeat of his enemies. I speak defeat to Mueller and the rest all the time, in the name of Jesus.

When I write about Trump, there is generally a supernatural angle to it. With that said, here I go, on an almost completely secular tangent.

Maybe 10 years ago, I noticed that my right side hurt. I thought it was a muscle pull. It turned out to be my gallbladder. Over the years, it has caused me some annoyance, including a few attacks I would go so far as to describe as painful. I have spent a lot of time researching gallbladder problems, trying to find out what I had done to cause my issues and what I could do to fix them.

I learned that doctors had ZERO INTEREST IN PREVENTING AND FIXING GALLBLADDER PROBLEMS. This is almost literally true. Here in America, we have a grand total of one gallbladder medicine that works. It’s made from bear bile, and it’s too expensive for people to take regularly. Doctors don’t prescribe it. Instead, they cut people’s gallbladders out, as if God made a mistake by installing them in the first place.

When a doctor removes your gallbladder, he performs a low-risk surgery which pays well for the time spent. It’s much easier than trying to fix the problem, and it’s profitable. Doctors have very little incentive to change their approach, so they don’t. They feel that surgery IS the answer.

Problem: it’s not the answer. You need your gallbladder. It aids in the digestion of food. Your body will adapt to its absence, but it’s not as good as having a functioning gallbladder. Another thing to consider: REMOVING YOUR GALLBLADDER WILL NOT NECESSARILY GET RID OF YOUR GALLSTONES OR PAIN.

How about that? You can have gallstones and pain without a gallbladder! It’s not even rare. It happens a lot. The stuff that turns into gallstones comes from the liver, not the gallbladder, which is just a receptacle. The stones can form in places other than the gallbladder.

Imagine how stupid you would feel, having your gallbladder removed and putting up with diarrhea and so on, and they having a gallstone attack.

In Europe, they use a supplement called Rowachol to get rid of gallstones. It’s basically olive oil, menthol, and some other aromatic substance. I forget. You can make your own Rowachol if you buy the ingredients. People say Rowachol works. I tried it, and it seemed to work for me.

If my understanding of the situation is correct, European doctors consider gallstones treatable, and American doctors don’t even try. Perhaps I’m wrong, but it sure looks that way.

I got the idea that my own problems might be the result of my personality problems, and that means my spiritual problems. I read that some doctors think eating when you’re angry can cause gallstones. I have had a problem with my dad provoking me over and over during meals, so I worked on that, and I asked God for help with the way I responded to provocation. I also thought Miami might be to blame, because to live in Miami is to be provoked nearly continuously. It’s that kind of place.

Here is what I think about provocation and anger. If we are indwelt and led by the Holy Spirit, we should be very hard to provoke, but it’s still a bad idea to be around irritating people and situations, and there is nothing wrong with ridding yourself of annoying people. Even Jesus avoided contact with his persecutors.

That’s my spiritual take on the matter. To get back to the physical, this week I learned something new. I can’t believe I didn’t find out earlier. I read that gallstones (and possibly cancer) may be caused by “slow intestinal transit.” In plain English, that means you’re not pooping soon enough. It means you delay your trips to the can.

Gallstones are made largely from cholesterol synthesized by the liver. When you put off a deuce mission, substances in your intestines pass through the walls and into your blood. Some researchers believe these substances stimulate your liver to make more cholesterol, so you get gallstones.

How about that?

It kind of makes sense. Doctors say many gallstone victims are fat, female, forty, and fertile. Women are more likely to have constipation issues than men. They’re embarrassed about defecation and related matters, to the point where it sometimes amounts to denial, so I suppose they are more likely to procrastinate.

I knew a woman who was unable to use the toilet if anyone except herself and her husband was in the house. Her husband and I knew, or at least assumed, that she had bowel movements like the rest of humanity, and presumably she knew this, but when I was present, everything locked up.

As for fat, well, fat people have a lot more stuff in their intestines, and they probably eat more junk that stops them up.

Forty? My guess is that it’s a factor because older people eat more and move less.

When I was a kid, I was taught that people have to control and train their bodies. You don’t go to the john when your body tells you to; you do it when it’s most convenient. You don’t leave class or whatever. You definitely don’t ask your dad to pull over when he’s determined to set a land speed record while driving you to see relatives; he will make you go in a shoebox. You grit your teeth and overcome. Apparently, that was really bad advice.

The whole topic is pretty gross, but if the researchers are right, it could save people needless pain and surgery.

Without going into specifics, I’m making an effort to change my habits. I am listening to my body. I don’t have gallbladder pain, but I can tell my digestion is not perfect. Might as well do what I can.

Maybe the researchers are wrong, but their theory sounds more plausible to me than the far-fetched explanations I have heard in the past.

With Christian Brothers Like These, who Needs Pagans?

It is Sunday morning, and I am not at church. Praise the Lord.

I suppose I sound cynical. In reality, I would like to attend church. I’ve been looking around online. I say, “Praise the Lord,” because I’ve been part of two cults in a row, and I’m glad I’m not currently being mistreated and milked by any preachers.

Marion County is filled with churches. It seems like everyone I meet is a Christian. That’s the reason the people here are so nice. I’m surrounded by churches, which is good, but I still have to be careful. I can’t just flop down in a chair in the first church I see, because I run the risk of being pumped full of greed-based Joel Osteen/T.D. Jakes/Benny Hinn/Paula White nonsense. Did I mention enough preachers by name? I want to offend as many people as I can.

I look at websites. I rule out all the websites that say, “We believe every individual is filled with the Holy Spirit at the moment he accepts Jesus.” That’s code for, “We can’t get the baptism with the Holy Spirit, so we pretend it doesn’t exist.” I rule out the “Jesus is cool” churches. If I wanted to go to church with confused non-black kids who dress and act like rappers, I’d go back to Miami. And tattoo preachers…no. If you got tattoos before you were saved, and now you can’t afford to remove them, fine, but if you seriously believe God wants you to look like the funny papers, you are way out of God’s will, and if I get around you, I will expect to be taught lies and possibly chastised for not “sanctioning your buffoonery” (to steal a line from Tommy Lee Jones).

I reject all churches that say members have to tithe. Tithing is for Jews, not Christians. Any church that gets excited about tithing is run by a pastor who is a) afraid God will let him go broke, or b) obsessed with money.

I saw a church with a site that advertised the importance of keeping the Sabbath. Not for me. The Sabbath is Saturday, not Sunday, and Gentiles have never been required to observe it. It’s a Jewish thing. It’s great to set aside a day for God, but pretending it’s the Sabbath, or claiming we are required to do it, is legalism and possibly replacement theology.

My plan, as I have said before, is to sit in the back, give just enough money to pull my weight, and be quiet. No volunteering. No church office for me. I want to meet Christians, but I don’t want to get into any more squabbles with carnal preachers and their spoiled wives or kids. I never want to feel that I can’t go home at a moment’s notice, or that I have to refrain from speaking the truth in order to avoid offending a preacher who is driven by greed or pride.

I saw a place that doesn’t look too bad, but they had a video of a lady screaming and waving her arms because…Holy Spirit. That’s not how it works. God doesn’t take away your self-control. The devil does. Self-control is listed in the Bible as a fruit of the Spirit. If you’ve ever been “slain in the Spirit” and rolled on the floor at church, you need to know that God didn’t make you do it.

I just had a thought. Imagine visiting heaven. Suppose God takes you up and shows you what happens there. You look out over the host of angels and the saved human beings…and they’re all screaming like monkeys, waving their arms and legs, and rolling on the ground.

Really?

Is heaven a mental ward?

If you wave your arms and scream in church, it’s not God. You’re just that kind of person.

Prayer in tongues sounds silly, and it’s normal to react to God’s presence with some odd facial expressions and semi-involuntary sounds. That ought to suffice. You don’t need to do the gator.

In all likelihood, I will not find a church that doesn’t have significant problems. I do hope God leads me to one that isn’t completely nuts.

Things are going well between God and me here at home. God keeps showing me things. And he does some impressive deeds. Remember how I burned myself and then had the blister disappear? It appears to be happening again. I keep finding new ways to burn myself on chainsaws. Yesterday I learned that you can burn yourself on the chain. I started a saw and ran it a little bit to warm it up, and then I tried to sharpen it. I grabbed the chain to move it forward, and a searing, inexplicable pain shot up my thumb. I let go and looked. My thumb was burned. Dang it. How do you prevent injuries when you don’t know they can happen in the first place? I didn’t know saw chains could get hot.

I work very hard to protect myself. I study tool safety. I read up on poison ivy. I wear pretty decent protective clothing and gear. When I cut trees, I do my best to figure out which way they’ll go after they’re severed, and I prepare. Then I burn myself on a saw chain. Come on. Is that even fair?

Anyhow, I kept working, and I prayed and commanded my flesh to be healed and so on. I kept thanking God. Over the day, the pain decreased. By the time I went to bed, the burned area seemed flatter and less messed up. I checked it just now, and I had to look for it. I am hoping the healing continues.

I am not satisfied to leave it as it is. Should I grovel and drool and stop praying? Should I say I’m so grateful for what I have, I should be ashamed to ask for more? In short, no. If I did that, the primary reasons would be laziness and lack of faith. I don’t want to spend the day praying and thanking and so on, because I’m lazy, and I’m afraid God won’t finish the job, because I lack faith. The thing to do is to keep going forward and see that God gets as much glory as possible, even if I’m perfectly content with what has already happened.

Jesus didn’t do any half-healings.

Interesting thing…I told my friend Amanda about the other blister that healed, and not long after that, she burned herself. She fought it supernaturally, and it went away. No mark. No blister. How about that?

My character is still disappointing. That’s to be expected. I made self-corruption my special project for half a century, and I did a great job. God has definitely improved me, however, and I look forward to being substantially less contemptible.

My friend Mike is coming down tomorrow to spend a few days. I look forward to that because Mike knows a lot about construction, and I want him to fix my chicken house for nothing he’s a good friend, and I haven’t seen him in a while. He lived near Ocala for a long time. He and his dad raised racehorses. He loves this place and wants to move back. He’ll be beside himself the whole time he’s here. He’ll get to have Krystals and Sonny’s BBQ. He’ll get to go to Rural King. Maybe I’ll let him drive the tractor. No, I think I’ll just let him sit in the seat with the ignition off and go “VROOM VROOM.”

Along with Amanda, Mike has been very helpful with my turbulent Ocala transition. They disagree on one issue, however, and that is the goat question. I would like to have a couple of goats here to eat weeds. Mike thinks it’s a good idea. When I mention it to Amanda, her head spins 720 degrees and flames shoot out of her eye sockets.

I think she’s against it.

We will agree on a few things, however. Sonny’s. Krystal. Rural King. Sonic. Carhartt. Mike-Sell’s Puffcorn Delites. We agree that Miami is a swollen can of pus.

Next weekend, I am virtually certain to be in Miami. Disgusting. Has to be done, however. Miami, like a colonoscopy, is one of those things that has to be confronted head-on. So to speak. I hope I’m not there long enough to let the stink rub off on me.

I have to paint a rental condo. If things go really badly, this is a six-hour job. I know that from experience. The materials cost eighty bucks. Possibly a hundred, if I need primer. The slackjaws in Miami want $2000 for this service. Unacceptable. I’ve painted many condos, and I can’t stomach that price. I figure I’ll paint as much of it as I can, and then even if I have to pay someone to finish it, they’ll be ashamed to charge me a lot.

Well, let’s be serious. It’s hard to shame a slackjaw.

The tree removal work is going well here, but I can see that I’m not going to get the county to move much of the debris. It would take me months to get it to the highway, and I have only weeks.

Yesterday I cut a couple of big oaks that fell by my fence. I cut one section about seven feet long and two feet thick. I tried to roll it onto the timberjack so I could cut it in pieces that might be small enough for the tractor to carry, but I couldn’t do it. I’ll be more accurate here: I could not do it at a level of exertion I considered safe. I refuse to exert myself hard enough to injure myself. I push to something like 75% of my capacity, and after that, I figure it’s time for a helper or a new tool. I don’t want artificial hips or knees, and I don’t want a bad back.

I have a number of oaks just as heavy as the one I worked on yesterday, so progress will be slow. Maybe there’s a better machine for the job. I could rent something once I have all the wood cut up. I should look into that.

I think it’s time to consider the unthinkable: serious exercise. I may get some weights. I don’t want to be so flubbery and soft I get hurt easily. My current workout is paying off about a hundred times as well as expected. I operate one exercise bike with my hands and another with my feet, for a weekly total of about half an hour. Unlike the rest of humanity, I am treated to a full view of myself in the bathroom mirror as I get into and out of the shower, and I am not the same person I was three months ago. But weights would be much better for strength.

I have a Bowflex, which is a fine machine for lazy people who are happy with moderate improvement (me), but I don’t know if it’s possible to get real strength out of it. I have not tried lately. I need to move it out of the garage. I forgot to have the movers (slackjaws par excellence) do it.

In the past, I refused to think about resuming weight training because I was so lazy I knew I would not persist. Now, however, I am getting used to a higher level of mandatory activity, and lifting weights a few times a week would not be much of an increase.

I have to move logs. I have to lift full fuel containers and hold them while I fuel machinery. A little extra strength would be helpful.

When I was in law school, I was pretty sturdy. I maxed out all the machines at the University of Miami Wellness Center. Now I feel like it’s a victory when it only takes me three tries to get out of a chair.

One great thing about exercise equipment is that it’s cheap. Very few people buy it and the use it. Generally, it ends up being used to hold clothing on hangers. I should be able to do quite well on Craigslist for a couple of hundred bucks.

I better get with it. The day is slipping away, in spite of the death of Daylight Saving Time.

Hope your Sunday is going well.