Innocent by Reason of Other People’s Insanity

It looks like I’m hoarding. But I didn’t mean to.

One reason I’m hoarding is that I was a hoarder before hoarding was cool. I started shopping for things like targets, pistols, and ammunition before I had any idea the American public would go nuts and start buying up toilet paper.

I went to Gander Outdoors to look at a Glock, which is probably pointless, since they are all nearly exactly the same, and I saw Aguila 9mm selling very cheap. I didn’t even want it, but I bought hundreds of rounds. I knew I would use it some day. Pay a little now, or pay a lot later.

I bought a neat Colt Woodsman pistol, and I felt I needed to quit relying on Remington’s not-quite-ideal Golden Bullets, so I ordered a fairly heavy box of CCI Mini-mags. I also bought a huge number of small pistol primers, because I was thinking about reloading. This was all before I realized people were going to snap up gun stuff. I also bought a large package of .50 AE, because I happened to be shooting that gun at the time.

I already had enough ammunition of other types to require many trips to move it from one room to another. This is just how bargain ammo shoppers roll. I accumulated this ammunition over a period of years.

The last time I bought toilet paper, I figured I might as well quit playing around and buy a lot so I would save money. When the panic set in, I still had something like 17 rolls.

I use disinfectant wipes when I go to the dump and when I leave the grocery store. I’ve been working on the same can for quite a while. After the supply dried up, I figured I was going to have to make that can last. Then I went upstairs and checked my bathroom. I had two cans that were nearly full. For me, that’s probably a 6-month supply.

I always have a lot of alcohol. I have parrots, and I used to have a parent with dementia, so I use alcohol to wipe things down all day. On top of the isopropyl alcohol I had on hand when coronavirus popped up, I had a big jug of denatured alcohol in my workshop. I haven’t checked, but my guess is that microbes don’t like it any more than isopropyl.

I checked. The Internet says it works great.

Factoid: coronaviruses have oily outer coatings, so solvent disinfectants work well on them, and soap kills them. Lysol wipes aren’t that great for coronavirus. But they will still help me when I visit the dump.

Since the Purge began, I’ve made another gun buy. It took slightly more effort than usual, but I got it done, and I got what I wanted. I needed reloading supplies, because the only good store 10mm ammunition is expensive. I was afraid I was out of 10mm powder. I couldn’t remember what I used last time. When I looked into it, I realized I had probably used Alliant No. 7, of which I have a large quantity. I also had large pistol primers because I had made a big buy while the Obama panic was subsiding. I thought I was out of bullets, though. I found 300 of the ones I like, so I ordered them. Then I looked at what I already had. Turned out I had around 200, sitting around. Oops.

I had to get some 10mm brass. I bought direct from the people who make it. I’m really hoping I don’t turn out to have hundreds of cases I forgot about, moldering in a storage box.

But it’s pretty likely.

I was planning to do some .308 shooting before crazy got ahold of us, and after it did, I was determined to go through with my plan. I found 300 rounds of match ammunition, which no one actually needs during an epidemic. If it were crisis ammunition, I would have bought something made for killing game.

Do I feel bad about any of these buys? Actually, I am having misgivings about the 10mm pistol. I don’t really need it. I just thought it would be handy, and I was concerned that the hysterical mob might make it impossible to get another one for several months. In retrospect, I think maybe I should have left it for someone else. To the person who needs this gun, I would like to provide a tip: Democrats say attackers will leave you alone if you soil your pants. They really say that, and I assume they wouldn’t say it unless they had done the research.

That was humor. Calm down.

The 10mm reloading stuff does not tickle my conscience. I did end up with more than I wanted, but no desperate person is running to gun stores demanding 10mm components for reloading. If you’re into reloading, you have ammunition already. The desperate are trying to find factory ammunition because they can’t make their own. Besides, 500 rounds don’t constitute a hoard. It’s three days of casual shooting, plus a couple of magazines for home defense.

Last week, I went to the store. I wanted to buy little red potatoes to go with a pork roast. I could not find loose potatoes, so I bought a big bag. This week, I went back, and I bought two New York strips for $5.49 per pound. Guess what? People are hoarding potatoes now. Unbelievable. The store did not have a single potato. But I did. I still had half a bag of red potatoes at home.

You can’t keep potatoes forever. They sprout or they rot. Hoarding them is a bad idea. What happened to make people hoard them? Did Oprah tell all her girls to buy potatoes?

It’s gross, the way women worship her. Millions of women think she’s a genius. She’s so influential, Weight Watchers pays her to do ads, and she’s obese! Unless she converts to Christianity and gets help from God, she will probably be obese until she dies. Obviously, she doesn’t know how to be thin, but they pay her, and many women listen.

If they want me to listen, they’ll have to hire Kate Moss.

Why would you hire an obese person to give people dieting advice? It’s like hiring Amy Winehouse to counsel drug addicts.

I was running out of paper towels when the insanity started. I found some online, through Office Depot. I only wanted 6 rolls, but when I bought a small package, the deal fell through. I had to buy 15. So now I have more than twice the number of paper towel rolls I would usually have, and because I bought an off brand, I got a deal.

I just found more alcohol in an upstairs bathroom. Sorry, but I did.

When are people going to start hoarding fuel? They’re hoarding water, which has a zero percent chance of a supply problem. Why not fuel? Maybe I need to fill my cans in case people get even crazier. I don’t think they’ll hoard fuel, but I didn’t think they would hoard water and potatoes, either.

I guess fuel won’t be a problem, because the supply is great and people have nowhere to hoard it. If you’re an average person, you can fill your car and maybe a few cans, but that’s it. We only have fuel shortages when the supply is bad.

Oh, buy. I checked. No gas cans at Home Depot! People never cease to disappoint me. I have more cans than I know what to do with, so it doesn’t matter.

Why are things going so well here? Here is what God has to say, in Psalm 37:

The LORD knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time: and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied. But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.

Am I saying God rewards me because I’m a wonderful person? Of course not. That’s obviously untrue. My faults are not hard to see. But you don’t have to be perfect to get God’s protection. Give your life to him, be baptized with the Holy Spirit, move in the gifts and fruit of the Spirit, develop a powerful prayer habit, claim God’s promises, focus on being changed internally, and you will meet the criteria.

I am trying to keep listening to God so I don’t mess up my protection. I’m not saying this will work. I’m just saying it has worked for me for the last 12 years or so. That’s a pretty good run, for someone who is wrong.

If it works for 30 more years, I’ll be dead before my streak ends. WINNING!

When the real estate recession hit, God said, “This recession is not for you,” and it turned out to be true. I didn’t have any problems. Why should 2020 be any different? Same God.

The best retirement account is the one you build up through years of prayer. It’s an account in heaven, where nothing can touch it. I haven’t knocked myself out trying to make money, but I’ve been extremely consistent with daily prayer, for a very long time. I’m doing fine, and I live far from areas where the coronavirus psychosis is making people suffer. I don’t even have a mayor, so I am less likely to have my civil rights taken away during this ordeal.

It’s not good enough just to pray to “God.” You have to know JESUS, and you have to be full of the Holy Spirit. “God” doesn’t mean much unless the word is connected with Jesus, because to reject Jesus is to reject God. If you don’t know the Holy Spirit, you won’t have good communication with God, so you’ll lack guidance, and you’ll get out of his will, even when you think you’re doing things that make him happy. To be out of his will is to lack is full support. You can be a missionary and fail to please God.

As for the virus, it looks like my forecast equation is still doing quite well, although the actual numbers are still diverging upward from my prediction. It’s not a big deal, because a true plague would infect more people by orders of magnitude.

I check figures in the morning, and I saw something like 276,000 today. It’s higher now. My prediction for this morning was about 252,000. If this were a plague, we would be looking at hundreds of millions by now. Even if we are missing many cases, I am still being vindicated by the data. Even if the actual case number is 10 million, we’re not seeing anything like flu rates, and we have had plenty of time for the infection to spread.

Why is Italy doing so badly? Maybe it’s because Southern Europeans aren’t as clean as Northern Europeans. Sorry, but it’s true. The Germans and Scandinavians are much cleaner than people to their south. That would explain the high Italian transmission rate, but why are so many dying? The German death total is 73, and the Italians have lost 4,000. It can’t be because Italian cases have had longer to worsen, because China has a lower death rate than Italy, after 4 months.

If you take the figures for cases by nation and deaths by nation side by side, you will see that the order is different. Countries that are high on one list are low on the other.

Are more Italians obese? We know they’re older than other Europeans, but it’s hard to believe it makes that much difference. I just checked, and the median age, which ought to be close to an average, is higher in Germany than in Italy.

The average age of victims in Italy is supposedly around 80. This would explain the high death rate, but why are so many being infected? I suppose the general dirtiness of Southern Europeans is the explanation. They must not be protecting older people, and older people are probably dirtier anyway.

It makes people angry when you say one ethnic group is cleaner than another. So what? Read about personal habits in places like China and Iran. Gross. There are places in Africa where people use their fingers to shove food in other people’s mouths, as a sign of affection. Is it okay to admit this happens? Koreans eat out of the same dishes when they have meals. My family never did.

I would say my mother’s family was in the 90th percentile in terms of cleanliness, and my dad’s was much lower. His family was closer to what people in Kentucky call “white trash.” Southerners from good families are phobic about cleanliness, but poor Southerners will sit at a dinner table and scoop mashed potatoes from the common bowl with their forks. I picked up some of my dad’s filthiness and some of my mother’s cleanliness, and I have been trying to improve all my life.

When I was a kid, I had a friend whose mother was a Lebanese Arab. She wouldn’t let him go to Lebanon. I asked her why, and she said, “Because of the damn dirty Arabs.” She was afraid he would die from food poisoning. Different cultures have different standards. I’ve cleaned out apartments after Hispanic tenants left, and I saw things you would not believe. There are entire apartment buildings in Miami that smell like cockroach manure. My time in such buildings is the only reason I know what cockroach manure smells like. Ordinarily, there isn’t enough of it in a building to create a smell you can detect.

Speaking of Miami, I just got a really annoying text from Miami-Dade County, in SPANISH. It looks like it says, “Since we’re all staying at home, why not fill out the census?” Says it’s from Alcalde Gimenez. I absolutely hate being dragged into anything involving Miami. Their site says they will leave you alone if you text “STOP” back to them, but how did they get this number to begin with? That place is like a stink that won’t wash off.

Maybe old Italians are dying because they’re Italians. Imagine all the great food and drink an 80-year-old Italian has had. Maybe Italy had a high smoking rate when these people were young, and their lungs aren’t strong enough to stand up to the disease. Anyway, it sure looks like Italy is letting the aged down.

Journalists here in the US are trying to tell us young, healthy people are in great danger. They put out a story about a family in New Jersey. Several of them died after a gathering. I saw a photo of the family. Everyone visible in the photo was obese. The skinniest one was a lady who had to be 40 pounds overweight. None looked to be under 45. Most were older. They looked awful. Saggy and weak, with terrible posture and crepey skin. They were exactly the kind of people this disease kills. Reading the twisted coverage from journalists is very trying.

Coincidentally, or not, the sick family in New Jersey is Italian.

If Bernie Sanders were president, we would be hearing about his brilliant response, and journalists would be looking for ways to reach back and blame George Bush for his failures. They hate Trump and are conditioned to lie about him, and this is an election year, making things worse. They also love exaggerating crises because it makes them money and builds careers. It’s a perfect storm for propaganda. Until it becomes hard to find a new case anywhere, it will be impossible to get them to admit the epidemic isn’t that bad.

If you’re looking for a Glock 10mm pistol, I apologize, because it’s on its way to me. I felt like God said I should buy it. I pray before I buy just about anything. Maybe I was wrong. I don’t think it would matter, because there are still used guns all over the place. Nothing interesting is happening with the used guns on my Gunbroker watch list. There’s even a new Tanfoglio Witness that hasn’t sold.

Just try to be nice to the home invaders. It could work.

The other stuff was hoarded in advance, making it unintentional, and intent is an element of hoarding. Before you know there’s a shortage, hoarding is just smart shopping.