Ultrasound of 12-Week “Fetus” Exposes the Lie

Today I came across the Huckabee interview of the Planned Parenthood executive who quit after watching an abortion on ultrasound.

It’s amazing that anyone would object to forcing abortionists to show ultrasound videos to potential clients. It’s illegal to sell a candy bar in the United States without printing the ingredients and nutritional information on the label. What possible rationale can we have for failing to provide a mother with full disclosure when she is contemplating abortion?

Here is a three-inch-long baby. It’s an ultrasound someone posted on Youtube. This is what three months looks like. Obama wants to abort babies at 9 months. He voted to let babies die of starvation and cold when they survived abortions. Imagine killing this tiny creature with a suction tube, and then imagine how much worse it would be if it were several months older and lying naked on a stainless steel table, groping for an embrace that would never come.

How can any woman abort a baby without fear of God? How can she think he won’t see what she has done, or that there won’t be consequences? Is adoption really so traumatic that it’s worth taking a chance on God’s wrath? Surely not.

Bad acts bring curses, and curses last up to four lifetimes. When we do wrong, we may bring punishment on our great-grandchildren as well as ourselves.

I don’t care if the video upsets people. It should upset them. If it helps someone make the safe and moral choice, a little offense is justified.

Help is out there. Here’s a link to Care-Net. They help pregnant women who want to do the right thing.

I Have Cut the Cord

I am in torment. Okay, not really. But I’m a little disturbed.

I haven’t had a cigar since 2007, unless my memory is faulty. Which it is, but still, I think I’m right. I don’t think smoking a cigar is a sin, but they started keeping me awake at night, and I found it harder and harder to find convenient times when I could smoke them, early enough in the day to avoid sleeplessness. Months without a cigar turned into a year. Tobacco-free time piled up, and now it has been nearly two years.

Once I realized it had been a very long time since my last smoke, I felt a motivational barrier between me and my stogies. I just could not reach for one. Sometimes I got them out of the Rubbermaid storage box, but I always put them back.

My sister was diagnosed with lung cancer. My mother and my aunt died from it. Two of my great-grandmothers died from it, although neither smoked. My uncle died from stomach cancer which was probably related to tobacco use. All four of my maternal grandfather’s daughters smoke or smoked.

My family has grown a lot of cigarette tobacco, and I have been against it for decades. I suspect that our addiction and cancer problems are spiritual blowback related to selling a poisonous addictive drug. We’ve killed a good number of people, and we haven’t made much money from it, so we don’t even have the excuse of financial incentive.

For a while now, I’ve felt that it was hypocritical to have cigars around. They’re not addictive, and they won’t make you ill. Not unless you suck on them night and day. But tobacco is a horrible drug. Probably the worst drug man has ever encountered. If I keep it around, I’m going to feel like I’m giving Satan his own little place in my closet. A foothold.

Perry Stone notes that a minor error in one generation of a family can become a major sin for the next. It’s an interesting point. Grandpa smokes a pipe. Dad smokes cigarettes. Junior smokes dope and cigarettes. Junior’s son smokes crack. Things like this really do happen. It has happened in my own family. A family’s morals tend to move in one direction or the other. If I have cigars in my house, wouldn’t it be easier for the young people who see them to accept cigarettes?

Spirits follow families, and they are associated with objects we possess. No sane Christian would own a Ouija board or a Hindu idol or a stack of porn magazines. It’s important to keep a clean house, morally as well as physically. That’s indisputable. So is it okay to keep a big pile of expensive cigars in your closet? How can I pray for my sister to get over her cancer and her addiction when I keep tobacco for myself? Besides, while cigars in moderation don’t cause cancer, they do fill you with nicotine, which renders your body less capable of fighting new cancers that arise from other causes.

Charles Spurgeon smoked cigars. I read about it while making this decision. But Charles Spurgeon didn’t know everything.

My cigars are sitting by the side of the road right now. I have to apologize to Aaron, because I was planning to donate them to his study group. He gets together with other Jews, under the authority of a rabbi, and they talk religion while enjoying good stogies. I wanted to send the cigars to him, but I can’t rationalize taking something questionable out of my house and putting it in someone else’s. So I put 19 boxes of delicious smokes–most of them Cubans–out in the trash heap. It’s like throwing out a stack of twenty-dollar bills.

I feel like I left a baby out there. Oh, my poor stogies. I think I’m having heart palpitations. But the reality is, I am never going to smoke them. Tell me I’m going to survive this day.

Here’s a prayer request:

Steve,
I am having arthroscopic knee surgery tomorrow. It is on my “good” knee. The other needs total replacement but we are trying to save this one from going down that road. I got up this morning with extremely high blood pressure, probably from anxiety, stress and pain, but I know they won’t do the surgery tomorrow if it is still this high. Please prayer for my anxiety to cease, my blood pressure to be normal and for a good outcome of the surgery. The surgery I am confident of, but I need that BP down. Thanks for your prayers for me and for the many others you intercede for.
Ruth

Hop on it while I weep for my smokes.

Bring me More Free Stuff

I got appalling news this morning.

I got up and got on the scale and got a very pleasant reading. I weighed myself again a few minutes later to confirm it, and I got the same reading. Before getting in the shower I removed everything I was wearing and weighed myself a third time, expecting a slightly better result. The weight shot up seven pounds! I reset the scale and tried again. No difference!

Looks like my scale is crazy. I have since weighed myself on a balance scale, and it looks like I am seven pounds fatter than I believed. So my recent weight loss has been merely fantastic. Not shocking and extreme.

I can live with that. Fantastic is not bad. I may have to amend my weekly McDonald’s breakfast order, though. I don’t care. It doesn’t mean what it used to mean to me. The good Lord has made portion control extremely easy, so I guess I can do whatever I have to.

Time to toss the electronic scale. I thought they were more reliable than that. Seven pounds is a huge error.

It’s wonderful to know I don’t have to worry about rebound weight gain. For the first time in my life, I don’t have to think about that. What happened to me is better than having the weight disappear instantly. If that had happened, like virtually every dieter who ever lived, I would be a fat person who was temporarily thin. Instead, I was permanently cured of fatness. That means that now I’m a thin person who is temporarily fat. That’s incredible. Once the fat is gone, it can’t return unless I invite it back.

I was thinking about grace this morning. What a hard message to preach. For centuries, we’ve been telling people they were bad because they did wrong, and we’ve been condemning them and even wishing punishment and failure on them. And we thought we were right. “God helps them who help themselves”; isn’t that what we’ve been told? It sounds evil and self-indulgent to say God will fix your behavior for you. But it’s absolutely true.

Think about it. How did Adam live? He was the first person God created, so presumably, his lifestyle tells us what God intended the rest of us to have. What did Adam do for a living? Did he plant corn? Did he slop hogs and cut hay? No. His job consisted of reaching up and picking fruit off trees God had grown for him. That, quite literally, was his livelihood. God did not want him to work, in the sense that we “work” today.

We are not supposed to earn things. We’re supposed to cooperate and obey and have faith. We’re supposed to go to school and get jobs. We’re supposed to try to be good. But it’s not supposed to be drudgery. The work of our flesh is not supposed to make heroes and martyrs of us.

If you earn things, what does it mean? It means you don’t owe them to God. It means you did it yourself. If that describes your belief, what are you? What word describes you? “Righteous”? No. “Proud.”

On the other hand, what if God gives you the strength to behave, and he gives you peace, and he allows you to prosper without working yourself to death? How are you going to feel? Grateful. Unworthy. Somewhat ashamed. What word sums that up? “Humble.” Doesn’t the Bible tell us over and over that God likes humility? Is there anything it condemns more than pride?

God would rather give us things and have us humble than make us earn them and have us proud. I’m sure of it. How else can you explain the crucifixion? God could have given us tasks that would purify us, but he didn’t. He insisted on making it a gift.

God wants us to have his nature. That’s why he wants us to give all the time. God has a compulsion to give. Generosity is a fundamental aspect of his nature. No sane Christian would deny that; it would be blasphemy. If that’s true, aren’t we obligated to humble ourselves and receive? How can God give if we won’t take?

Am I saying God would spoil us? No. What you give people doesn’t determine whether they’re spoiled. Their attitude determines that. Abraham and Job were obscenely rich. Were they spoiled? I wouldn’t dare say so; it would be a slander. On the other hand, we have poor people in America who are horribly spoiled. They wait for the eagle to fly instead of going to work, they do nothing for others, they vote for people who give them other people’s money, they indulge every unhealthy desire they have, and they still say the system is unfair to them. You can’t hurt a humble, grateful person by giving him stuff and doing things for him. On the other hand, an ungrateful, proud person can only be hurt by gifts. That’s why God often withholds things from people he cares about.

I don’t deserve to be thin. I don’t deserve the other types of deliverance God handed to me free of charge. I will never deserve these things. I have sometimes felt that I had to respond to these gifts by trying to be worthy of them, but that’s stupid. I can’t be worthy of them. I still have to be good, but the purpose isn’t to earn anything. It’s to show my gratitude and to acknowledge that sin and iniquity (evil inclinations) can bring these things back on me.

I am a charity case. I am not a hard worker who earned a just wage. I am receiving welfare and food stamps from God, because I am incapable of taking care of myself. I have nothing to be proud of.

I’m politically conservative, but you could call me socialist in my religious beliefs. Man’s socialism, imposed by governments, is evil. It’s a vile mimicry of the pure, right socialism of the kingdom of God, which is based on voluntary participation by individual believers motivated by the Holy Spirit. I resent giving money to wasteful government programs that addict the poor to handouts and teach them to be proud and weak. I am grateful for the opportunity to donate to the church and religious charities. The money is not the issue. The issue is whether a charity is secular or God-guided. The second type is a fountain of blessings. The first is a money toilet.

Look, Jesus said his yoke was easy and his burden was light. Was he a liar? Seriously, would he lie to us about that? Am I supposed to go on pilgrimages, crawling up and down the streets with bloody knees and a cross on my shoulder? Should I abstain from marriage? Should I beat myself with a flagellum and wear a hair shirt? I don’t think so. I think actions like those are rooted in pride, regardless of how they may look on the surface. I think I’m supposed to be thrilled with what I received and that I should try to help other people receive it. I’m supposed to enjoy the good things I get, without letting them become more important than the one who gave them to me or the other people he wants to help.

If we spend our time yammering at people who misbehave (as I have), telling them how awful they are, we hold ourselves out as superior, which is wrong and counterproductive. The way they are now doesn’t matter. It passes away when they accept Jesus and get filled with the Spirit and begin to get free of their demonic bondages. We need to be telling them that their problems are caused by sin and lack of faith, that they are surrounded by invisible enemies much stronger than they are, that they can be fixed right here on earth, and that it doesn’t matter what they’ve done in the past.

The Bible compares us to unfired pots that have been marred. You wouldn’t throw one out; the clay can be reshaped. It’s stupid to fixate on the defects, because they’re curable and have no relationship to the quality of the final product. And when the repair process begins, you don’t get upset over setbacks. You don’t worry that it takes time, and that it’s a gradual process. You know it will work, so it doesn’t matter if it’s not instantaneous. These things are true, so how can condemnation be a good idea? Warning, sure. Condemnation? Probably not.

It’s so easy for the enemy to fight this message. Our consciences agree with him. They tell us we can’t expect to be spoon-fed and pampered. It feels so righteous when we claim we need to work real hard and bleed and suffer and deny ourselves. But there’s nothing righteous about it. It’s evil. You are not supposed to obey your conscience. It makes mistakes. You’re supposed to obey God.

Many times, God commanded the Jews to ignore their consciences. He forbade them to pity the people he had selected for death or punishment. Under Joshua, the Hebrews had to slaughter children and pets and old people. What you think is right isn’t what matters. Fortunately, we don’t have to do things like that any more. But we do need to give up the idea that we have to earn things from God, using our own strength as the primary means. God is like power steering. We provide a little bit of strength–in faith–and he provides the rest. Admit your faults, repent, fast, and pray. Fight your demons God’s way. They will lose, and you will change.

The enemy hates this message because it provides acceptance and hope, and because it’s based on the reality that evil spirits exert control over most people, not just a few. We can run these spirits off and experience greater self-control and happiness; then we’ll be able to help others do the same things. That’s what we’re supposed to do. Jesus told us to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons. If you’re casting out demons, you’re overthrowing Satan’s kingdom. It’s a revolution, and Satan is being deposed. He’ll do anything he can to shut this message up, and he has pretty much succeeded for almost 2000 years. I believe we are now seeing a reawakening, and that grace–God’s unearned help–is going to set hundreds of millions of people free from sin, disease, and curses in the coming years. I think the war has resumed in earnest.

One test of the validity of a doctrine is the anger it stirs up in well-meaning Christians who cling to error and live in failure. If you don’t make the blind guides furious, your message is probably just making things worse. The enemy has always killed and persecuted those who told the truth. He doesn’t usually crucify his servants. He loves opposing the truth from within the church. Many prophets have been killed by believers instead of heathens. Believers tried to push Jesus off a cliff on the first day of his ministry. The Romans had no interest in him until some of his own people demanded that he be killed.

I can see why the Bible predicts increased persecution toward the end of the age. This message is getting more popular, and it has always drawn a violent response.

Rapid Fire no Fun

I’ve had a weird morning.

Today I was supposed to go to the gun range with some guys from church. That’s not the weird part. The weird part is that my dad went. When he found out I was going to the range, he wanted to go, in spite of the fact that Christians would be there. How about that?

I wanted to go to Trail Glades, the outdoor county range I always go to, but John, the church volunteer leader who arranged the outing opted for an indoor range up north. This turned out to be a good thing. Trail Glades does not permit “rapid fire,” which means anything faster than once every five seconds. That means you can forget about three-shot drills. The range we went to is somewhat grubby and dark, but it has no speed limit.

I started out with the .45 and .38 Super, and I shot very nicely. Then I noticed that John was shooting faster, and I asked him about it. He said he was practicing shooting twice to the body and once to the head. We were using silhouette targets (another thing Trail Glades does not permit), so it was easy to see how the paper perp was faring.

I decided to try three-shot drills. It was pretty humiliating. Suddenly, I had to worry about target re-acquisition. I was using 5.5″ Caldwell Orange Peel targets over the heart and head of my victim, and when I switched to shooting three shots per burst, I started getting a lot of shots that were completely out of the black.

I noticed a few things. First, while my Glock 26 is great for slow-firing, it took longer to get on target when shooting fast. The results weren’t great. I tried John’s Glock 17, and the vast majority of my shots stayed in the black at about 25 feet. My .45 ACP 1911 also performed well. My 1911 .38 Super wasn’t that good, although it was the first gun I tried rapid shooting with, so it makes sense that I didn’t do well.

The other guy from church–his name is Joey–let me shoot a clip from his Springfield XD. I can see why people like them. The trigger pull is vastly superior to a Glock’s. And I shot it as well as the Glock 17. It was a short-barreled version in 9mm. Not sure which one.

My dad was shooting a bizarre 4-shot .357 he inherited. The brand name is “Cop.” He found that it didn’t always fire. No idea why. Good thing, I guess. Now he’ll know better than to rely on it. I let him shoot the Glock 26, and he really liked it.

On the way home, we dropped into a new gun store near me, and I priced a Glock 30. I think the thing to do is to get one, ditch the Glock 26, and practice rapid-fire drills. A laser now seems like a must. Why squint at tiny sights when you can look for a nice bright dot? Trying to use the sights is fun and challenging, but I don’t think challenge is a good thing when you’re ventilating an armed burglar.

This experience reaffirmed my faith in long guns. A pistol is way better than nothing, but a long gun with a green laser would be far superior to anything I shot today.

I think maybe I should give up on full-sized pistols. It seems like there isn’t much of a niche between compact pistols and 7.62mm carbines. A tiny Glock will do nearly anything a big Glock will do; if you need more oomph, you should probably reach for a folding carbine. That’s my guess.

After we shot, we hung around the front of the gun range clinging to our Bibles and bashing immigrants. Which didn’t go all that well, since one of us was born in Trinidad and another was Cuban. But we really tried. We felt we owed it to Janet Napolitano to prove how bigoted and ignorant Christians are.

Yeah, if there is one thing Yesterday’s events prove, it’s that Christians are the ones the government should be watching. I don’t know how we got a peace-loving Muslim to shoot up Fort Hood, but I’m sure Bill Maher could explain it.

“And Over There is Where the Garage Used to Be.”

Every time I crank up the ammunition press after a layoff, I find new ways to torment myself.

Let’s see if I can remember all the stuff that happened today. I was making .38 Super ammunition.

1. The plastic cylinder on the powder measure fell off twice. I finally taped it to the press. Perhaps I was wrong to use the Shop-Vac to clean up the spills, but after a while, when you make aggravating mistakes, you get so annoyed you would rather blow yourself up than be inconvenienced further.

2. I put the large primer feed tube on, but I was using small primers, which turned themselves upside-down in the tube.

3. Powder residue stopped up the primer feed slide and clogged up the tube to where I had to get a steel rod and force the primers out. Then I had to clean powder sludge out with brake part cleaner.

That’s all I feel like admitting.

It turns out No. 7 is a horror when you spill it. One or two microscopic grains can immobilize your primer feed slide. And when you spray it with Hornady’s expensive remedy, which is Hornady One Shot, it doesn’t really help. I think it may actually make it worse. It certainly doesn’t move the powder very well.

I was using pretty new Starline brass. This was a first. I suspect the primer pockets on new brass are tight. I had all sorts of problems getting the primers in. I had to squoosh a bunch of them in my bench vise. This may have had something to do with exposure to powder residue, though. I ended up priming and shaping the casings and then adding powder and lead in a second operation. Took forever.

Another weird thing: Starline .38 Super brass doesn’t seem to like the old-style Hornady Lock-N-Load shell plates with the spring around the casing bases. That surprised me, because everyone raves about Starline brass. I guess I won’t buy it any more. Maybe I should upgrade my press. But if I’m going to do that, I might give up and buy a Dillon. This thing is incredibly temperamental. Today I found two new design flaws, which I am too tired to describe.

If anyone from church asks to shoot my guns, I think I better tell them to buy their own shells. I have been known to manufacture questionable rounds, and I don’t want some noob shooting one round halfway down the barrel and then following it with a full charge.

I hate to waste my last boxes of factory 9mm ammunition, which I got for like $9 each. I know they’ll be that cheap again in a few months, but it’s irritating to shoot the last boxes I got at a decent pre-Obama price. That guy has killed recreational shooting. I assume. Surely people haven’t been rushing to the gun range with $25 9mm ammunition.

I’m pooped. Thank God I have piles of .45 ACP ready to go.

“Neighbors Regret Making Fun of His Enormous Truck and Pressure Canner”

It is a nasty, rainy day. What great news. In weather like this, the garage air conditioner will work better, and I won’t be tempted to leave home and do something fun. So it’s a perfect day to straighten up the garage and make piles of ammunition for tomorrow’s trip to the gun range.

I don’t have any idea whether I have .45 bullets. I’m afraid to look. I found Unique and primers. The bullets may well be the bottleneck.

Laser-Cast is giving 10% off on orders of over 1000 bullets. I don’t know why anyone would order fewer than that.

Hey, I forgot. I still have all sorts of Hornady .45 bullets that came free with my ammo press.

Does life ever get any sweeter than this? Hanging out in the garage, surrounded by an obscene glut of tools, with the stereo playing country music, making your own ammunition for a trip to the range with people from church?

If so, I probably could not handle it.

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How could I have doubted my own right-wing extremism? While I was cleaning the garage I found several hundred rounds of lovely .45 ACP reloads. Excellent.

Bigger Pantry Needed

I guess people get tired of reading things like this about the food I make, but…the sweet pickles I made turned out to be the best I’ve ever had. Even better than my grandmother’s. I can’t believe pickles can be this good. After a day in the fridge, the salt and seasonings did their thing, and the result was magnificent. Now I’m worried about having these things around. Dills are virtually calorie-free, but sweet pickles are loaded with sugar. I was miraculously delivered from gluttony back in August, but that doesn’t mean I need to tempt myself.

I’d post the recipe, but it came from a cookbook, so you ought to just get the book. Besides, I’m sure there are a million similar recipes on the web. I omitted the onions from the book receipe, and I used white sugar instead of brown. Other than that, it’s exactly what you’ll find in Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken.

Church was amazing last night, and this morning, I got a startling answer to prayer. Unfortunately, I can’t describe it in any detail, because it involves another person’s private business. All I can say is this: when you know someone whose behavior is atrocious, and you want to change it, fasting and prayer will give you surprising results. People have free will; no doubt about it. But that doesn’t mean God won’t work his persuasive powers on them. Besides, some bad behavior is due to demonic oppression, and your fasting can clear that up in another person.

This morning it occurred to me that I should always attack problems spiritually before acting in my own strength. I can’t say all problems are rooted in spiritual causes, although maybe they are. I can say that all problems should be attacked via spiritual warfare before we step in and screw things up with our blind bumbling. I think maybe this was what Jesus was getting at when he talked about turning the other cheek and so on. It wasn’t so much that it’s good to be a loser. His point, I think, was that your first response to hostility or adversity should be spiritual, not fleshly. Maybe I’m wrong. Either God put this stuff in my head, or it’s wrong, and I came up with it myself.

Last night at church, I told my pastor and one other person that things are going so well for me now that I don’t have any real problems. I have relatively trivial difficulties, but nothing major. I said that these days, it’s the people around me who have problems. They’re the ones I think I need to apply the bulk of my energy to. I may have sounded arrogant when I said all that. I certainly hope not; I was trying to comment on God’s goodness to me.

Here’s a funny thing about Christianity. When you talk about the great things God is doing for you, other people may take it as boasting. We’re all trying to get our lives sorted out and walk in blessings, so when someone else does well, it may seem like that person thinks he’s a better Christian than you. That’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m just saying…this stuff is WORKING.

The Psalms say, “My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. The humble [or ‘needy’] shall hear thereof and be glad.” That seems to indicate the intelligent and constructive way to receive another person’s good news. If someone else gets something good, the smart thing is to try to find out what they did right.

I guess I was wrong to get up and do the Church Lady Superior Dance during the altar call. That, I regret.

I forgive the lady who sacked me and sat on me until the ushers arrived with the wheelbarrow. I wish I knew her name so I could return her weave. I probably shouldn’t be using it to dust my CD collection.

One of the funny problems I have right now is that my weight loss has made my skin break out. The weight loss has irritated my gall bladder, and the end result is slight skin problems. I guess I can live with that. It’s not like I have leprosy. Fifteen or twenty pounds from now, the weight loss should stop, and then I’ll be at equilibrium, so the stress to my body should go away.

Gall bladders are catch-22 organs. If you get fat, you become susceptible to gall bladder trouble. If you lose weight, during the process, you’re likely to have gall bladder flare-ups. Your gall bladder wants you to stay fat so it never gets well. Presumably, when I’m no longer fat or losing weight, I’ll be just fine.

I started taking a disgusting daily tonic of lime juice, olive oil, and oil of oregano, and I feel a whole lot better. And it gives me a use for my gigantic supply of fresh limes. Oil of oregano is loaded with terpenes, which are supposed to be hard on gallstones. It amazes me that medical science has absolutely no effective treatment for gall bladder disease. They know virtually nothing about preventing it. They don’t even try. I guess jerking gall bladders out at $5000 a pop is just too easy. Medical science has decided God made a mistake when he gave us gall bladders. They used to feel the same way about tonsils and appendices, but that’s changing. Bodies are like cars. I trust the engineers who design cars more than a slackjawed mechanic who tries to fix them.

No Bailout Money Was Used in the Writing of This Blog Post

I tried the pickles I made. I’m not sure whether they’re a success. The pickling solution is just about perfect, but the pickles themselves seem slightly off. I think they have a little too much salt in them.

The recipe I used called for 9 cups of cucumbers and 3/4 of a cup of salt. You salt the sliced cucumbers and let them sit for three hours, and then you rinse the salt off. Seems a little odd; maybe the point is to suck water out of the cucumbers. Anyway, a lot of the salt stayed in the cucumbers. I assume it will leach out over time.

The recipe may also need additional sugar, but not a whole lot. The pickles are acceptably crisp, but next time I’m using calcium chloride to improve them.

Canning is really easy. I’m surprised. There’s a certain amount of work involved, but it’s not tricky at all.

I may throw out my first efforts. The peppers, not the pickles. I am not totally sure they’re okay. And the last two jars came out a little weird. While the canner was cooling, I pulled the pressure regulator off to see what would happen. I think the stuff in the jars boiled and shot out of the jars, because the level of the liquid is considerably lower than it was when the jars went into the canner. They sealed okay, but some of the peppers are exposed to air.

I had a funny idea for dehydrating food. I was thinking I’d put trays of food in the oven and put a heat source in with them. Maybe a small space heater or a very weak blow dryer. That would blow warm air over the food, and I wouldn’t have to turn the oven on. The minimum baking temperature is 175°, and that would cook the food.

Peppers dehydrate just fine without a machine. I slice them open and thread them on strings and hang them until they dry up. Seems to work. If this pans out, making smoked peppers will be a cinch.

I’d like to make cayenne sauce and can it. My Home Depot cayennes are phenomenal. They taste like hot cherries. If you grind them up and cook them with sugar, garlic, and oil, you get a magnificent sweet paste sort of like Chinese chili paste, but it’s much better.

I could also can fermented chili sauce. The canning process should arrest the fermentation and kill the germs. This stuff is wonderful.

I should buy some store mangoes and work up a chutney recipe. Next summer, God willing, my trees will bear, and I won’t be able to eat all the fruit. Chutney is great if you make it sweet enough and hot enough.

Kim chi…that would be a gift from heaven. How can cabbage taste that good? I don’t know if it’s possible to can it. Maybe cooking ruins it.

I still have to make canned sausage. I noticed that ground pork is very cheap, as are Boston butts. The advantage of a butt is that I could brine it in baking soda before grinding it. That would kill the boar taint and result in superior sausage.

I found a cheap source of calcium chloride, so I bought a pound. I have Damprid, which is calcium chloride, but I don’t know if it’s food grade.

My goal is to be able to feed myself in grand style without ever spending money on anything, except for vacuum bags and Ball jars.

Perhaps I am a tad idealistic.

Canning Craze Continues

I don’t know what the deal is in other areas of the country, but here in Miami, pickling cucumbers are available year-round. I would assume that’s true everywhere, in the era of trucks and trains, but Ronni Lundy’s cookbook, Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken, says they’re only available in the summer. Whatever the deal is, I bought a bunch of them today in an effort to replicate the sweet pickles my granny used to make. Unfortunately, I forgot the green food coloring she used so liberally. And I suspect she used calcium chloride to keep the pickles crunchy.

Right now I’m sterilizing jars, and I have the pickles on salt, and I’ve mixed the other ingredients. The kitchen smells EXACTLY like my grandmother’s basement! It’s like having a time machine in my nose.

The recipe in Lundy’s book calls for brown sugar and onions, but I used white sugar and skipped the onions. That seems more like what Granny did.

Can’t wait to see if this works.

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Here’s what I got. This is exactly the shade of green Granny used to get.

Week Shaping Up

Name something better than getting up in the morning and having nova and cream cheese on a toasted garlic bagel! Bet you can’t.

Every Tuesday, I go out to breakfast with my father. I quit eating eggs because of my gall bladder, so I always have one of two things: a tuna salad sandwich, or a nova platter. Today was a nova day. It was spectacular.

Even more exciting than nova on a bagel: being able to tuck my shirt in. I suppose I could have done that before, when I was wearing bigger shorts, but for fat people, shirt-tucking never really works well. The flubber jiggles around and moves the shirt out of the pants in random areas. Now, thanks to the grace of God, my flubber is sufficiently thin that it’s not a real problem.

The hazard of tucking my shirt in is that the tail no longer covers the pocket where I carry my pistol. I suppose a clever and nosy person could stand right behind me and spot the gun. A little bit of the grip can be seen. Is that a violation of the concealed weapons law? I hope not. I really don’t want to go to a fanny pack.

I need (I should put the second word in quotation marks) a new Glock. I sold my .40 S&W to Mike, and I shipped it off to New Hampshire. There were bad memories associated with it, and I also felt that I had been sold a bill of goods RE the ballistically superior .45 ACP. When I got the .40, I chose it largely because experts said the .45 was hard to shoot. That’s a total load. I love shooting .45s. I should break down and spring for a Glock in that caliber.

I have a 1911, and it’s a joy to shoot, but let’s be honest. As a tool, the Glock is superior. It holds more ammunition. It’s lighter. It’s a cinch to strip and clean. I hate to say it, because it’s butt-ugly, and everyone loves the 1911, but come on. Truth is truth. I got my 1911s to shoot at the range, and the pretty .38 Super would be a great carry piece under a suit, but if I were in the house with a maniac searching for me, I would be a whole lot better off with a Glock.

Of course, I would not use a pistol for self-defense if I had a rifle or shotgun handy. I may as well admit that. The Vz 58 with 30 rounds of 7.62 x 39 plus a laser and blinding flashlight is hard to top, as is the Saiga 12. You really, really don’t want to be in this house after sundown.

Maybe the Glock is a stupid idea. Maybe I’d be better off selling my Glock 26 and getting a small Glock .45, whatever the model number is. I can’t see carrying a full-size Glock, and when I’m not carrying, a long gun is the weapon of choice. The small .45 would be nearly as portable as my Glock 26, and the stopping power would be better. Eleven rounds of .45 ACP in a small, highly accurate, easily maintained, extremely reliable pistol would provide me with excellent security with minimal hassle.

People always tell me the small Glocks are too small for their hands. I think this has more to do with male ego than fact. Men love to talk about how big they are, and how it makes life difficult for them. I can only get two fingers around the grip of the Glock 26 (the grip only has two notches), and I shoot it more accurately than either of my full-size 1911s. In all likelihood, having your pinky on the grip reduces accuracy, because it tends to move when you use your trigger finger.

I’m fairly certain the small Glocks are nearly identical to the big ones, except that the barrels and grips are shorter. If so, a man who can shoot the big ones should be able to shoot the little ones. My hands are average-sized, but I wear a 13 ring, which is pretty big. Ring-size charts only go up to 14. If my fat fingers fit on the grip, yours should too, unless you’re a circus freak. Gaston Glock is said to have very large hands. It would surprise me if he designed a gun he could not shoot.

Weird surprise: a guy from church just called and asked if I wanted to go to the range later this week. Fantastic. Maybe some of the ex-military guys can give me tips on shooting. I better go make some ammunition.

More

Someone has suggested I try a Glock 30 before buying, but that may not be possible. Gun ranges that rent can be found, but locating that particular Glock would be difficult. The guy from church wants to go to an indoor range up north. I don’t know if they rent guns, but if they do, there is always a possibility that they might have a Glock 30.

As for accuracy, here are two targets I found on my hard drive. The first is a Glock 22 (.40 caliber, full size), and the second is a Glock 26 (9mm, very short barrel, short grip). As you can see, the compact gun shoots beautifully. I have no reason to think the Glock 30 would be any different.

More Peppers

Today I went to a meeting at church. On Saturday, one of the volunteer leaders invited me. I didn’t know what it was about, but I enjoy this sort of thing, and my morning was free, so off I went.

It was a meeting of the church’s leaders. If I understand things correctly, they have a practice of meeting on Mondays, and now they’re extending invitations to people who aren’t paid employees. I may have that wrong, but I think it’s about right.

I was relieved to see that they’re trying to communicate with people and organize them. I always complain about Christians using the Holy Spirit as a parachute. Don’t plan; don’t think. Just jump, and when you get in trouble, count on God to pull you out. The church is working to put together a hierarchy of volunteers with defined responsibilities, and it ought to make things run smoother.

On the way home, I picked up a copy of God’s Armorbearer by Terry Nance. This book was recommended to me when I indicated an interest in getting into the inner circle. I also got a copy of The Torah Blessing by Larry Huch. It’s full of stuff connecting Judaism and Christianity. I go through Christian books fast, so I figured one book was not enough.

Right now I’m canning Trinidad Scorpions in lime juice. What will I do with them once they’re canned? Danged if I know. But I canned those suckers. Oh, yes. They are canned. They’re not going ANYWHERE.

I want to dry apples so I can have dried-apple pies at Christmas. Is that too much to ask from life? I think not. But I don’t know how to go about drying them. If I had a junk car, I could dry them inside it, like my aunt used to do. I hate to spring for a dehydrator, but I probably will. It would give me a use for the tons of papayas I grow. Fresh, they’re not so hot. Dried, they’re excellent.

New Milestone

Yesterday I felt like McDonald’s was getting an unhealthy grip on me. I decided to forgo my usual Saturday McMuffin breakfast. I felt led to do that. Today I got up, and THREE MORE POUNDS WERE GONE. I’m down over twenty.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. I can’t believe it! Don’t even try to tell me this isn’t supernatural. For months, I’ve been losing weight because I’ve had the God-given willpower to eat like a normal person instead of a food addict. But yesterday, the fat just plain fell off, with no explanation. I’m within TEN POUNDS of my goal. If I can take another five pounds off after that, I’ll be almost as thin as I was when I boxed.

I don’t know why I talk in terms of goals. I’m not doing this in my own effort. I don’t know where it’s going to stop. But I have a weight I hope I reach.

Everyone thinks I’m a kook, so I’ll continue being honest and adding fuel to the fire. I think uncontrollable weight gain (the kind most fat people have) is imposed on us by demons. I strongly suspect that a typical fat person has more than one spirit working against him. And I think they depart in stages. The toughest, meanest one is the one that puts the first twenty pounds on you. That one is nearly impossible to get rid of. You can overcome the other ones in your own strength, but the primary one will stay and fight, and it will beat you over and over. When it beats you, the others come back, and they like to bring new friends. I seriously believe that. I think this is what Jesus referred to when he talked about a spirit returning to a clean house and bringing seven spirits worse than itself.

When you get what low-carbers call a “whoosh,” which means a sudden loss of several pounds, it probably means one of your enemies just gave up and left. This is warfare, and warfare works that way. When you lose, you give up positions one by one, until the enemy is in your country. Whatever has been oppressing me is losing, and I am taking ground in steps. Like the Hebrews under Joshua. First Jericho, then Ai, then the rest of Canaan.

I think these things get power over us because of the way we and our ancestors act. We say horrible things. We do horrible things. Demons get permission to afflict us, and God doesn’t listen when we ask for help, because we haven’t repented. Then we and our kids end up with persistent, seemingly hereditary problems like alcoholism, food addiction, divorce, failure in business, and violence.

If you decide a little bit of sin is okay, and you carve out a place for Internet porn, gluttony, drunkenness, greed, anger, workaholism, vanity, arrogance, self-righteousness, or some other failing, you leave the front door open, and you don’t know what will come in. You can’t say, “I’ll be 95% pure, because that’s pretty good.” That’s like trying to stay six weeks pregnant forever.

I have control over what I eat. I have sexual self-control. I have also been delivered from unjustified anger, although it keeps trying to get back in. My deliverance wasn’t just a fat thing. It’s not a mystery illness. I don’t have cancer. It hit several areas. Please don’t try to tell me I did it, or that I lost weight because fasting days dropped my average daily calorie intake. That wouldn’t explain sexual self-control. Those explanations are all filthy, stupid lies. I could not do all these things for myself. I don’t know how. I wasn’t particularly upset about being fat. I wasn’t lying on my face praying about it all day. God picked this time to deliver me, for reasons of his own. It came as a complete surprise.

And it’s going to spread to even more areas. Hopefully, it will spread to other people.

Every morning, I take communion, and I search myself for bad acts (sin) and bad attitudes (iniquity), and I confess it and repent and ask God to drive it out. I think this is the correct purpose of communion. It’s not really the blood of Jesus. It’s not really his flesh. There is no miracle change. Come on; flesh and blood do not taste like crackers and wine. Jesus was not a cracker. The miracle–which truly is miraculous, because the means is supernatural–is deliverance from problems you and your ancestors have imposed on you through rebellion and ignorance. This is why communion can bring physical healing. Illness is often the result of sin and iniquity. God does punish people physically. He did it in the Bible, and he does it now. Why would he change?

I am not stating all of this as fact, althought the parts supported by the Bible are definitely true. This is how I see things now. I am no authority, but my experiences bear out these observations. If it all rings true to you, take it up in prayer and see if you get what I’ve gotten.

This week someone tried to tell me these good things happened to me because I was special to God. I corrected that revolting lie in a hurry. It’s not because I’m special. It’s because he’s special. Anyone can have what I have.

Here’s what I think you have to do.

1. Accept salvation, properly, giving yourself completely to God.
2. Get baptized in water, to acknowledge your salvation before other people.
3. Get baptized with the Holy Spirit.
4. Pray every day with your mind.
5. Pray every day in tongues, as much as you can make yourself. The Bible says this builds you up, and I have found it to be true.
6. Take communion often, searching yourself for sin and iniquity, confessing and repenting on your own behalf and on behalf of your ancestors, and asking God for deliverance. Never stop. Never decide you can tolerate a chronic sin or a bad inclination.
7. Fast and pray often, and when you fast, make sure you spend a good deal of time praying for the things from which you need deliverance.
8. Give to ministries and the poor, and to help the Jews and Israel.
9. Try to be good.

If you can do all that (pretty easy), I think you’ll have such a powerful foundation, the rest will take care of itself. I know there is more to Christianity than this, but I found that doing these things got God working in my life, and that caused the other things to get done. I found myself reading the Bible, going to church, listening to good teaching, reading helpful books, and so on.

If you can’t do it all, do steps 1-5. If you blow a day, start again the next day. If steps 1-5 are too much to ask, you are beyond help, because you won’t help yourself.

Think of this as your fallback position. Your base camp. This is as far back as you will let the enemy push you; you will always do this much, even if you don’t do anything more. If you can hold this line, you will end up taking ground sooner or later. You will end up doing more and seeing blessings in your life. I really believe that.

Use a timer to make sure you spend enough time in private devotion. You can spend three minutes a day praying in the Spirit, surely. You can spend five minutes praying with your mind, and five reading the Bible. Start with what you can do, and later, you’ll have the character to do more. Start with a mustard seed and water it daily. It will get bigger. Don’t expect it to happen instantaneously, although sometimes you’ll get huge, instantaneous leaps in progress. Your direction is more important than your location. Never forget that. At one point in Columbus’s first trip to the New World, his ship was three feet from a dock in Spain. That’s the nature of a journey. It shouldn’t discourage you. And it shouldn’t bother you if you get pushed backwards once in a while. That happens to everyone.

Jesus told his disciples to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out demons. These were the right things to do two thousand years ago, and they’re the right things to do now. If believing him makes me a kook, so be it. I will be a thin and healthy kook, and lots of Christians who disagree with Jesus will be fat and miserable.