This Yard Will Respect Me

Ordinarily, I am not up this late, but today is special. I wiped myself out working in the yard, and I came in after 8 p.m. It took me a while to decompress and stop exuding sweat, and then I had to get cleaned up. I also spent a lot of time Googling, trying to find tools for removing rocks from yards.

I love my farm, but I have no illusions about the soil. It’s sandy, and there are a lot of rocks. The rock is fairly hard limestone, unlike the airy oolite of South Florida. I don’t know how much rock is under my land, but there are some full-blown boulders sitting in my front yard. Bigger than couches, I mean. I assume I would find a few more if I knew where to dig.

When I first got here and tried to mow, sparks shot out from under the mower. I ran over an exposed rock in an unexpected place. The seller did a lot of work on this property, but he left several rocks sticking out of the lawn, and I have a talent for running into them. It’s disturbing watching sparks shoot out from under your deck.

I want to clear the lawn of rocks. I don’t care if there are a few in the woods, but the yard has to be clear of mower obstacles. The huge boulders are fine, because they constitute landscaping. The ones I hate are the smaller ones that peek out and try to bite me.

Today I warmed up for rock removal by attacking a strange piece of wood I’ve scalped with the mower twice. It was sticking up all by itself in a grassy area. I tend to give the previous owner too much credit, so until today, I left the wood alone, figuring that he would have moved it had it been possible.

I backed the Kubota up to the wood, and I slipped the end loop of a tow strap over it. I started pulling, and the wood snapped suddenly. It was now pointing 180 degrees away from its original direction. I thought that meant it was loose, but when I tried to pick it up, it felt like it was anchored to the earth’s core. I can’t figure that out. I hooked it to the tractor and pulled it in the other direction, and it came flying out of the ground. That felt good. I pitched it into the woods and decided to take on one of my rocks.

I didn’t get all of the wood. The piece I took out was part of a live oak root. I don’t care. The rest of it is too deep to bother me.

The rock in question is 30 feet from the porch. The exposed part was the size of a salad plate. For all I knew, it was the tip of an acre-sized boulder. I decided to try digging it up anyway. I got a shovel and dug around it, and what I ended up with was a rock about two feet long and ten inches wide. It’s probably around 20 inches deep. I haven’t gotten it out yet, but I proved that it wasn’t yard-sized. I proved it could be removed.

The rock had roots around it. Annoying. A big one at one end grew over it. I never got anywhere with that one. I got a mattock and cut the rest without a lot of effort. Never, ever try to cut roots with a shovel. A mattock will work. An axe will work. A sawzall will work. A shovel will just bounce off and tire you out.

Once one end of the rock was exposed, I tied the tow strap to it and pulled it with the tractor. I got it to rise a few inches, and it moved about 9 inches to the north. That’s all I got. I believe I drove it under the root that holds it down, so now I’m stuck.

What do I do now?

I have to cut the root. I believe I’m going to use the sawzall. That might loosen the rock to where the tractor will pull it out. If that won’t work, I’m going to get a subsoiler.

A subsoiler is a very strong hook you pull behind a tractor. It cuts a slit a couple of feet deep. If you hit a rock below a certain size, it will hook under the rock. Then you can use your hydraulics to roll it out of the ground. It will also bust roots. It can move stumps if they’re not too big. Sounds like something I need.

It also sounds like a handy device for tearing up water pipes, septic tank pipes, and buried cables of all types. I’ll have to make sure I know where everything is. I know for damn sure there are no cables near that rock, because it’s obvious that no one made any effort to disturb the soil in that area.

Once this rock is loose, I’m going after the rest. They will pay. Believe me. If I can’t tear them out, at least I can use the subsoiler to prove they’re too big to move. Then I can get a sledge or the rotary hammer and shatter the tops of them. I can remove everything that sticks up and put soil over them.

Eventually I should have an assortment of nice landscape boulders. Not sure if I should use them or sell them.

It’s neat to succeed at this stuff, especially when the previous owner could not get it done. I’ve found I can go out after the sun abates, use the right tools, and get a great deal done in a couple of hours. Last year I spent a lot of time working long hours in the heat of the day, wearing disgusting sunblock. That was a mistake. Work shorter hours. Work consistently. Use stuff that gets the job done. Avoid the heat and sun. That’s what makes things happen.

If you need rocks, I am the guy to talk to. I have more than I know what to do with.

Reading Pat Conroy for the First Time

A week or two ago, I picked up The Great Santini on my DVR. I search for upcoming movies and set them to record so I’ll have something to amuse me during meals and when I have the birds out of their cages.

I’ve seen the movie many times. Years ago, cable movie stations had very few offerings, so when something appeared in the lineup, you were likely to see it 15 times before it went away.

If you haven’t seen it, I can bring you up to speed. It’s from a book by Pat Conroy, author of The Prince of Tides and The Lords of Discipline. It was inspired by his own upbringing. He was the son of a World War Two marine pilot, Don Conroy. In the movie, Robert Duvall plays the dad part. His character is Wilbur “Bull” Meechum. He’s an abusive alcoholic.

Meechum is extremely arrogant. He is controlling. He humiliates his kids. He can’t stand to see them grow up and outdo him. He drinks heavily. He provokes his superiors with sophomoric behavior. At one point, he comes home drunk and threatens his wife physically.

Michael O’Keefe plays the Pat Conroy part. He’s Meechum’s oldest son, Ben. The movie focuses on things that happen during his last year in high school, in the town of Beaufort, South Carolina.

While I was watching the movie, I felt a sudden need to buy the book.

I was watching a scene in which Bull Meechum gets angry because Ben is beating him in a basketball game. The family is watching while they play. Everyone is rooting for Ben. They’re even talking smack about Bull, but they’re careful not to go too far. At one point, they realize things are getting out of hand. One of them says Bull is getting “that look.” They expect bad things to happen.

If you’ve lived with abuse, you know what that means. Abusive fathers are like dormant volcanoes. Most of the time, you can sit by a volcano without worrying, but once in a while, signs of an upcoming eruption appear, and you have to do something. If your dad is abusive, you have seen him blow up many times, and you are familiar with the signs.

You can’t always predict an abusive event. Sometimes they come out of nowhere, and they pull the floor out of your stomach. But any kid or wife who has a brain will learn to pick up on any signals that may be available, in order to be ready for the times when it’s possible to prepare or escape.

I guess it’s cowardly to say it, but it’s a relief to be outside the room when the explosion comes. Learning the art of the quick, silent exit is very helpful.

Abusive fathers are like volcanoes in another way. When a volcano goes off, you can’t do anything to stop it. It doesn’t care what you do or say. It has to run its course. When an abusive father blows up, he won’t be interested in appeasement or apologies. Say you’re sorry a hundred times, and he’ll just get mad at you for apologizing. There is something inside him he wants to release, and you’re trying to interfere.

I watched that scene, and then I looked for the book online. I found out it was fiction, and then I learned there was a nonfiction version. It’s called My Losing Season. It’s about his senior year on the basketball team at the Citadel. It covers much of the ground the novel is based on.

I deleted the movie the same day I watched the basketball scene. I didn’t watch any more. It’s a depressing movie, and while I enjoyed it when I was young, I now think it’s overrated. The story isn’t stitched together well, and a lot of the dialogue is clumsy. Duvall is perfect in his role, and he gets all the good lines, but Michael O’Keefe is not a good actor.

I’ve been reading the book for a while. I have to say that I’m disappointed in Conroy. I never wanted to read his work before, and although I may possibly read The Great Santini in the future, I have no interest in looking at his other books.

Conroy is not a gifted writer. He doesn’t string words together well. He has no feel for the language. He can’t be funny or witty. The quality of his work is reminiscent of the stuff career ghostwriters do. You can tell writing is hard work for him. That may be the worst thing you can say about a writer.

It’s disappointing. Conroy is held out to be a gem among southern writers. That’s not true. He’s no Carson McCullers or Truman Capote. Not by any stretch of the imagination. And I’m not sure he’s not all that southern. His dad was from Chicago, and he was a marine brat, raised in a number of different places. His mother was from Alabama, but that doesn’t make him James Dickey.

Why has he done so well? I think it’s because he was something of a leftist. His work appeals to leftists. He succeeded very early in life when his book The Water is Wide was turned into a movie. The theme was one that leftist moviemakers can’t stay away from: idealistic white man descends from white heaven and teaches poor black children. How many times have we seen that? Write a book like that, and you’re practically guaranteed to get film offers.

Such movies are, by their very nature, condescending. They exemplify the soft racism of low expectations. If you’re a black kid, and you want to succeed, find yourself a white liberal Jesus to tell you about Shakespeare, Beethoven, and basic personal hygiene. The implication is that black people will never be able to do anything for themselves. Somehow that is lost on the people who make the movies.

Moviemakers are crazy about teacher movies. The Dead Poet’s Society. Lean on Me. Teachers. The Principal. To Sir, With Love. The Man Without a Face. The Miracle Worker. Stand and Deliver. Mr. Holland’s Opus. Blackboard Jungle. I’m going to run out of space.

At least To Sir, With Love broke with precedent. The teacher was black, and the students were hopeless white kids.

Leftists are in love with teachers because they compete with ministers and parents and turn kids against God and capitalism. Leftists generally think belief in God is a serious problem, like blindness or cystic fibrosis. They see it as something that has to be treated. That’s the spirit of antichrist.

Conroy has almost no talent at all, but that’s okay, because sometimes what you have to say is more important than how you say it. My Losing Season is still interesting to me. He voluntarily gave the world a window into the world of an abused and neglected son, and I wanted to read it in order to feel less exceptional.

The Santini novel and movie are gentler than reality. In real life (if Pat Conroy can be believed), Donald Conroy was worse than Bull Meechum.

I’m not all that far into the book, but Don Conroy has already done a lot of vile things. More than once, he has hit his son in the face, hard, with no warning. He has told his son he’s a sissy and a loser, but he didn’t use the word “sissy.” He has bet his son his basketball team will lose. He has sucker-punched his son to the floor at a school event, in front of a crowd. He has thrown a glass of iced tea at his son’s face, opening up his eyebrow to the point where it had to be stitched.

I saw some and heard some very bad things when I was a kid, but Don Conroy is on another level. He truly wanted his kids to fail. I can’t say my situation, or my sister’s, was as bad as Pat Conroy’s. His dad gave his kids prolonged beatings. My sister and I didn’t have to deal with beatings or injuries. My dad was never out to destroy us; he hoped we would amount to something. I don’t think it pained him when we enjoyed ourselves. I don’t think he ever came home looking forward to tormenting us in order to blow off steam. Some people have had things worse than we did.

Don Conroy’s sowing produced quite a harvest. One of his sons was schizophrenic, and a daughter was institutionalized. You may believe a parent can’t make a kid mentally ill. I disagree. I think anyone can be abused into insanity, if you start early enough. Even during breaks from the abuse, an abused person suffers the lingering effects of the inner bruising. The echoes don’t die down the minute the mistreatment stops.

Pat Conroy himself suffered from depression, and he tried to kill himself at least once.

Abusers listen to demons. They don’t know the Holy Spirit. They have no one to counterbalance or run off the evil spirits that rule them. Many abusers don’t care. They don’t examine themselves. They feel no guilt. Spirits use them to torment their families, and that helps other spirits get into their spouses and kids. Secular therapists talk about “cycles of abuse” and so on. It’s all nonsense. Spirits follow families, and spirits that run your relatives will try to run you, too.

A good father helps his children to know the Holy Spirit and to increase his influence in them. If you’re not for the Holy Spirit, you’re against him. As Jesus said, there is no neutrality. A bad father helps demons gain control of his children.

Wikipedia says Don Conroy reformed, and that he and his son became close. Is that encouraging? No. The answer is no. It’s better than not reconciling, but the damage was already done. Forgiveness is wonderful, but it’s not restitution. When you’ve ruined decades of someone’s life, there is no way to make up for it.

If you’ve abused your kids or your spouse, there is nothing you can do to fix it. You can make the future much better than it would be had you not repented, and you have an obligation to do that, but you can’t pull healthy childhoods and marriages out of your ear and hand them to the people you hurt, to be inserted in the places of the experiences they actually had.

You can’t say, “Presto! Now you had normal relationships in high school and a wonderful prom. Presto! Now you graduated from college at 22 and didn’t quit because I drove you crazy. Presto! Now you married your college sweetheart at 23 and had three great kids. Presto! Now the cops never came to our house. Presto! Now you’ve never seen your mother with two black eyes.”

Think about this. If you change when you’re 60, and you become the best dad or husband on earth, what are you really giving your family? You’re giving them what you already owe them. You don’t deserve a medal for getting back on course and doing what you were already supposed to be doing. No matter what you do, you will die deep in debt, with nothing to be proud of and plenty to be humiliated about.

You have to change. No question about that. You have to seek forgiveness. You have to patch things up as well as you can. But don’t delude yourself. You still come up way short.

Redemption is magnificent, but it can’t compare to doing the right thing in the first place. Like God says, “Obedience is better than sacrifice.”

I don’t know if I can recommend the book or not. A lot of it is about basketball, and those parts are so boring it defies description. I don’t care who set a pick on whom in a playground in 1957. Even if I didn’t find basketball itself boring, I think I would find reading Conroy’s sports recaps tedious.

The way Conroy writes about other athletes is a little off-putting. There is a lot of description of other men’s bodies and movements. “Bobby Feeny’s supple form arched through the air as his soft hands cupped the worn Spalding, and I foresaw giving him a firm pat on his talented fanny after his successful jump shot.” I’m exaggerating, but only a little. You can write about a ball game without making people want to close the door and give you your privacy.

I have a feeling all of Conroy’s books are depressing. I’ve read a little about him, and he seems like a depressing person. I don’t think I’ll create a collection.

Be good to your kids. If you can’t manage it, leave and pray your spouse remarries. Your children will remember everything, and your actions will leave marks whether you can see them or not.

Dementia Update

I feel like providing some updates on life as a caregiver.

When you have a parent who is slipping, you have to make sure his estate is organized so there isn’t a bloodbath after he dies. One thing you have to do is to make sure he has his own representation. You don’t want to go into a courtroom after his death and say, “I did this or that because I figured it was a good idea.” You want to be able to point to his attorney and say, “He had his own counsel, and he did what he wanted to.” If a decedent’s estate plan is clearly his own, it will stand up to challenges. Besides, letting them make their own choices is the right thing to do.

My dad has an attorney, and one of the things he advised us to do was to take my dad’s properties out of his name. I have been going about this over the last couple of months. It’s finally done. It could have been done sooner.

I was reluctant to take the attorney’s advice, so I didn’t move as fast as I could have. Here’s the reason: I believe God has told me my dad will not last long after everything is in order. My dad is very stubborn about accepting salvation. I think God has accepted his decision not to repent and experience a long, redemptive period as a saved person prior to his death. I believe my dad will not accept salvation until death is staring him in the face, and I think God is not going to keep prolonging his life. It would serve no purpose.

This is consistent with his medical prognosis. He is several years into a type of dementia that typically kills within about 5 years of diagnosis.

When I worked on getting the properties fixed up, I felt like I was pushing my dad closer to the grave. I felt as though I had a certain amount of power over the amount of time he had left. You can understand why I would find it hard to get things wrapped up.

My dad’s type of dementia progresses in steps. He has plateaus during which things seem static, and then he changes perceptibly overnight. He is worse than he was a month ago. He has started shuffling very slowly now, and he sometimes has to be helped out of chairs. Taking him to the grocery wasn’t all that difficult last year. Now I have to move very slowly in the aisles. He takes a long time to move through a store. His feet move quickly, so he sounds like he’s marching, but his steps are miniscule.

I’m wondering if he needs an electric cart. He refuses to use the ones stores provide, though.

His manners are getting worse, although not as quickly as his other problems. He has always enjoyed blowing his nose on the ground and sidewalks, with people all around, and he has gotten worse with age. The other day he blew his nose on the floor of a restaurant. No one saw him, thank God. I had to let him know that if his manners deteriorate too much, I won’t be able to take him to restaurants because it won’t be fair to other people. In the past, when I reminded him that bad manners could result in his becoming isolated, he would say, “Who cares?” Now he listens, but I don’t think he can change.

I don’t know what I’ll do when he loses all restraint. I’m not going to be a public spectacle. That’s too much to ask. I’ll have to quit taking him out. It’s better for him to be bored and isolated than for me to be run out of every restaurant in town.

One of my big challenges is limiting his intolerable behavior. He rubs spit on counters in order to clean them. He eats food out of packages with dirty fingers and utensils. I don’t even want to discuss his bathroom. So far I’ve been able to find ways to reduce my exposure to an acceptable level, but when it gets to be too much for me, I’ll have to ship him out. I can only stand what I can stand.

He is also inclined to be more clingy these days. He keeps asking me to come up with some kind of device that would allow him to summon me to his side instantly, 24 hours a day. Of course, that can’t be done. He can go to assisted living, where they can confine him and keep close tabs on him, but a human being who has other responsibilities can’t pop up on command like a genie. Sometimes I have to mow the yard. Sometimes I have to run errands. I have to handle business. Often I need to be by myself, just to avoid having the same argument for the 10th time in a week. Until he’s ready for a new standard of care, he’s going to have to risk short periods when he’s out of my sight.

I don’t think that’s a big problem. A certain amount of risk is unavoidable, and even in a hospital or a home, it would be impossible to protect him every second. His best friend from law school died in a hospital. I think I’ve written about it before. He got up to use the toilet because he was too mule-headed to call for help, and he fell and hit his head, right there in his room. I don’t think my dad is any less safe here than he would be in a home, and he gets to enjoy his property and spend time with me.

I can get him one of those panic buttons old people carry, but he won’t remember what it is. He has a cell phone, and he can’t use it.

I think he’s going to come unglued when he has to move. He wants to be with me. If he goes to a home, I will probably see him for a couple of hours three times a week. You can’t attend to your responsibilities if you spend half of every day at an assisted living home.

It’s hard to decide how much of myself to give to him. I’m entitled to a life. I’m not part of his body. But I want to do what I can.

He’s going to suffer. That’s inevitable, no matter what is done for him. He didn’t play his cards right in life, so he ended up with brain damage and a dysfunctional family that can’t do much for him. My sister is gone, and if she were around, she would make things so much worse he would want to die. I have no wife to help me look after him. He has no grandkids to help him pass the time.

I can’t insulate him from all consequences, and that isn’t my fault. No one is obligated to give a parent a perfect world. I couldn’t do that even if I had five married siblings sharing the load. But no one has provided me with clear rules about what to give and what not to give. Am I doing enough? I hope so. I have to make choices all the time.

He’s not able to enjoy reading any more, apart from newspapers and magazines. He gets bored watching TV. At the same time, he’s intelligent enough to need activity and things to think about. That’s the problem.

He’s in an impossible situation. Even if he were surrounded by servants all day, and they did exactly what he wanted, he would still be unsatisfied, because he simply can’t do what it takes to keep himself occupied and content. That’s the cold reality of it. He is going to suffer, no matter what anyone does for him. It’s not the nature of the world that makes him suffer. It’s the disease itself.

The only real remedy would be to be magically transformed into the able person he was 25 years ago. He wouldn’t be happy, because he was very, very unhappy then, but he would be unhappy for reasons he would like better.

He’s bored and lonely, and he’s angry because he’s bored and lonely, but he can no longer do the things a person has to do to maintain relationships and stave off boredom. He can’t enjoy books. He can’t use a computer without someone sitting beside him the whole time. He can’t ride his bicycle or even a tricycle. I don’t think he could manage shuffleboard because of his balance.

In a facility, he would be doing what he does here. He wouldn’t be able to play games. He wouldn’t read books. He wouldn’t be able to focus on hobbies. He might get more conversation, though. That would be a plus.

I’ve learned something disappointing: when I feel like I’m not handling things well, and I call in “experts,” their solutions are generally worse or no better than mine. The main difference is that we have to pay them. When you lose your mind, you’re not going to be able to go to a doctor, write him a check, and get all your problems fixed. There is no safety net out there, waiting to take all your cares off your back. There is no system. Your children or spouse, with no training at all, will be much more helpful to you than professionals. Even if they screw up.

My dad let himself down. His doctors let him down, not that they could have helped had they done things right. For all my mistakes and failures, I’m doing a better job than anyone involved. I’m not bragging. I’m making a disturbing observation on the way the world works. Get ready for it. If you’re obese and you drink too much, this is the paradigm you’re going to be dealing with. Hope someone in your family loves you.

I’ve come to believe we do too much to keep demented people alive. We can’t fix dementia itself, but we can keep people on drugs that keep their bodies working after their brains have shut down. I wonder why we do that.

My dad will never practice law again. He will never have a date or another wife. He will never travel. He won’t make any new friends, because he would keep forgetting who they were. Is it a good idea to keep feeding him pills to keep his blood pressure down and his arteries clear? I wonder if I made a mistake when I got his doctor to make him stop drinking. Maybe if he had continued, he would be with the Lord now, in a perfect body with a clear mind.

I pushed him to get a CPAP a few years ago. I thought it would prevent dementia. That didn’t work out too well.

It’s strange; I procrastinated with his property issues because I felt like I was killing him by getting things in order, but I feel funny working so hard to keep nature from taking its course, when the only result is increased suffering.

I have one major goal for him, and it’s not a cure. I just want him to receive salvation so he can go to heaven. I want him to accept Jesus. After that, what happens during his remaining time on earth will not be that important. He can’t be made happy. He can’t be made strong. He can be saved, however, so that’s what I pray for.

Learn from my experience. You are going to die, so get ready. Think of your spouse and kids. Prepare so everyone can relax.

Tide of Filth Continues to Rise

I’m not sure why I still look at the news at all. For a while, I really cut back, but I started to drift back into it after God showed me a few things, and now I read a fair amount. I can’t say it’s as damaging as it used to be, but it’s still gross and unpleasant.

Today’s menu: the destructive perpetuation of black victimhood politics, the promotion of outright hatred for white people, and a famous actress pushing the delusional notion that comments from actresses will cause men to find overweight women attractive.

I can probably find an article about “slut-shaming,” too, if I look for a few seconds. “Principal gives braless teen detention; Twitter isn’t having it.” Something like that has to be in there somewhere. The left has decided that young girls, who are not to be objectified sexually, are empowering themselves when they do everything humanly possibly to assure that they are…objectified sexually. And teachers and principals who object are somehow out of line.

Let’s see. “White privilege” article. I’m still waiting for my weekly Caucasian stipend check. “Whitewashing” article. White people are no longer allowed to use chopsticks in movies, I think. Not sure.

Well, I don’t see any new articles about spoiled girls in tube tops, but I did see this, from a well-known, big-time outlet: “Trump’s Matter-of-Fact Fascism.”

What?

I’m wondering if the person who wrote that headline has any idea what has happened under real fascist regimes. I also wonder if they understand that the biggest purveyors of fascism are leftists. The term “fascism” is not tied to the right or left wing. It’s very vague. It refers to all governments that are oppressive and cruel.

Think about this: China and the USSR. Game over. If right-wing fascists did their best to promote their ethos, starting today, and they succeeded beyond their fondest hopes, it would be decades before they caught up with the big dogs.

I’m not sure right-wing fascist can even exist. Right-wing people support freedom of contract, freedom of religion, capitalism, private property, and the right to own and carry guns. How can you reconcile those things with fascism? Leftists, on the other hand, believe in socialism, central control of all wealth, disarmament of all citizens, and tightly regulated trade. How can you have those things without fascism? Cuban is a fascist state. So is North Korea. So is Nicaragua. So is Vietnam. So is Burma. Hmm.

I have to point out a few things.

Unattractive women are going to remain unattractive regardless of how many Yahoo Lifestyle articles criticize men who find unattractive women unattractive. Even if I wanted to find Melissa McCarthy attractive, I could not make myself do it. And I don’t want to. I don’t want to, and there is no reason why I should try.
God made some people desirable, and he also made the others. That’s how things are. Some people are smart. Some people are talented. Some people are charismatic. Some people were born with a huge genetic edge over the rest of us. Part of maturity is accepting what you are and refusing to blame other people for treating you…wait for it…appropriately.

I don’t understand why leftists want to force men to like unattractive women. When did this become a legitimate, useful project?

Where is the movement to force women to be attracted to short men and unsuccessful men? Can I have an update on that? Women say men are shallow because we like beautiful women, yet men under a certain height find it very hard to get dates, even if they’re real catches. Men who don’t earn a lot have trouble landing women, too. How come no one ever bemoans the loneliness of Gary Coleman and Vern Troyer? Maybe it’s because women who reject short and unsuccessful men aren’t doing anything wrong.

The rules of attraction are what they are. It’s not wrong, and it’s not a conspiracy.

Men–even men who are not attractive–prefer attractive women. They always will. People like chocolate bars better than liver. People like silk better than burlap. There is no use raging against things that can’t be changed, and using inalterable conditions of life to justify tormenting innocent people is immoral and cruel.

As for black victimhood politics, all I can say is that it’s a great strategy for making potential employers look for ways to reject you without inviting lawsuits. If, before you even start to work, you have a chip on your shoulder and an entitlement attitude, plus some overt racism, your resume is going to the bottom of the pile, and that’s not discrimination. That’s common sense. No one wants to hire a lawsuit time bomb.

Spoiled girls in tube tops…where do I begin? Men look at women. It’s not because we’re pigs. It’s biological. If we could turn it off, a lot of us would. I certainly would. I’ve learned to avoid sexual provocation; I don’t encourage my own desires. It leads to spiritual problems, and I don’t like being controlled by sleazy women with IQ’s that resemble my house’s thermostat settings.

Stop blaming us for something we can’t control. You are not helping. But then women who tempt men aren’t trying to help. They’re looking for power and an excuse to cause suffering.

It’s disrespectful and thoughtless to expose yourself at school or at your job, and it makes you look like a bimbo, which, if you do expose yourself, you probably are. Boys going through puberty need all the help they can get, and dressing like a whore in order to get attention from boys, and in order to control them, is not something a quality person does. School administrators realize this, and if they tell you to put on a longer skirt and stop showing your underwear (if you are thoughtful enough to wear underwear), it’s not oppression. It’s sound educational policy, and it’s also in your best interest.

Being thought of as a whore will curtail your social and employment opportunities, and it will eventually lead to misery. If you want to peak in 11th grade, slut it up, but in a couple of years, you will be an object of ridicule.

Slutty women have no idea how people talk about them when they’re not around. That’s too bad.

When I was in college, I visited Georgia Tech with a friend. We stayed in a frat house. The frat guys had a sort of mascot. I have no idea what her name was, because they called her “the whore.” She was a student. She was a cute little blond girl. She liked hanging around with the boys. When she was present, they treated her nicely because she provided a service. When she was out of the room, they would say things like, “Where’s the whore?” She probably never found out. This is what life is really like when you’re promiscuous and provocative.

One of the reasons I visited was that I thought I was in love with a girl who went to Emory. My friend got to Georgia Tech a few days before I did, and being the kind of friend he was, he invited her for a visit and made out with her. At one point she had quite a few drinks and sat on some bleachers above the guys, and she did not sit in a ladylike manner. When they looked up, they saw a lot more than they needed to. From then on, she had a secret nickname, too, and it’s too crude to mention here. The implication was that she omitted her undergarments and displayed her privates. My friend (someone I ejected from my circle years later) would probably still use that nickname today if we discussed her.

It’s not easy for a provocative woman to get respect from men or anyone else. She may get tolerance, and she may intimidate with social pressure, but she can’t get respect.

Incidentally, I say “dressing like a whore” with considerable forethought. I’ve seen how actual whores dress. Many mainstream women and girls of 2018 dress the way prostitutes dressed in 1995, and this is especially true of celebrities. Leftist heroin Chrissy Teigen appeared on TV wearing a dress that exposed her genitals and then made fun of people who were upset.

“Whitewashing”…who cares? Is it really a big deal if Tom Cruise stars in a movie about samurais? Is it going to bring back railroad coolie camps? I don’t think so. All movies are silly, when you get right down to it. Actors hate hearing that, but it’s true. It’s maladjusted, angry people playing make-believe. We make too much of it.

No one minds “blackwashing.” Well, that’s not entirely true. I thought it was weird when people talked about hiring Idris Elba to play James Bond. He’d do a bang-up job, but James Bond is half Scottish and half Swiss, and he has always been played by white men, so watching Idris Elba play him would be like sitting through a pointless, carping lecture which would go completely against the politically incorrect underpinnings of the James Bond universe. It would be like going to a Stones concert and having Keith Richards stop the show and give a lecture on temperance.

I think Tom Hardy will be the next James Bond. Who else could follow Daniel Craig? And he’s young enough to make an investment in him worthwhile. Idris Elba is pushing 50.

Anyway, no one cared when Denzel Washington played the Equalizer, a character that was originally white. No one cared when Jaden Smith played the Karate Kid. It’s hard to believe people get agitated about things like this.

What was I referring to when I mentioned hatred of white people, above? I was talking about a woman named Sarah Jeong. I assume she’s Korean. The New York Times (which really is failing, as the president says) hired her the other day. Problem: she has a bunch of fairly recent racist tweets. And they’re not mild. They’re not “arguably” racist. They are worse than most of the things Nazis said about Jews. At least the Nazis pretended to have reason on their side.

You can go look the tweets up. I am not going to quote them.

Her excuse is that she was being provoked by vicious racist tweets aimed at her. Does that really fly? No. If a Jewish extremist tweets that all gentiles are monkeys, it’s still not okay for me to call him a kike or say Hitler was right. It doesn’t work that way. Even if it did, why did she leave the tweets up for two years? No, that dog won’t hunt.

People are defending her. That’s disturbing.

God told me something a while back. He said, “The hate is already here.” He was referring to the hate that will eventually cause mainstream Americans to torment and murder Christians. For some reason, leftists conflate Christians and white people, so Jeong’s bizarre tweets appear to be symptomatic of the hate God was telling me about.

It’s scary that she was tolerated for two years after tweeting these things, but it’s a helpful warning, too. Buy guns if you want. Buy a plot of land in Idaho and learn to grow your own food. Can’t hurt. But what you really need is to get close to God and learn how to get his protection. Guns and homegrown carrots won’t be the best answers when things get really bad. Carnal tools have never been the best choice.

Leftists, some of them prominent, now use the Internet to call for the slaughter of conservatives, whites, and Christians. It’s just words now (unless you get beaten up for wearing a red hat), but what people need to understand is that the tweeters and Instagrammers aren’t kidding or bluffing. They are fully willing to do what they say should be done. They are being restrained right now, but that won’t always be true.

People do what they’re given permission to do. When the government and our famous bellwethers give Americans permission, we will be beaten and killed, wholesale. Don’t think for a second that Americans are above it. Americans can be just as vicious, sadistic, and self-righteous as anyone else, when they lose touch with God.

I’m glad I moved to the country, but as long as I’m on this planet, I will never be far from the kooks and crazies. Ever notice how many leftist-nut stories come from Texas? Texans are WAY overrated. They will lie down for just about anything these days. They hire all sorts of poisonous educators now, and when there’s a conflict, they roll over and play dead. How did that happen?

I’m glad I’m not closer to the flames, but I haven’t escaped. I’m just retreating and enjoying temporary cover. If you think you’re doing better, you’re out of touch with reality.

The Bible says that if riches increase, we should not set our hearts on them. It’s the same way with everything that belongs to the earth. Our bodies. Our nation. It’s all temporary. I no longer feel attached to this life. I can’t wait to leave. I am not depressed, and I would never even think about suicide, but I know this place is messed up. I’m like a Peace Corps volunteer who can’t wait to come home from Sudan.

I look forward to being out of the reach of leftists and violent crusaders forever. I look forward to being surrounded with like-minded brothers and sisters in perfect, immortal bodies. I look forward to not needing reading glasses any more, now that I think about it.

Northern Florida is a glimmer of the life to come. I see very little hostility or disagreement here. I experience a lot of warmth and kindness. I hear people talking about God, without shame or reluctance. Heaven will be like this, only many times better. If they had an Internet in heaven, it wouldn’t be polluted by the sordid antics of Kim Kardashian and Chrissy Teigen. It would be full of love and agreement.

I feel like I’m in a lifeboat, watching the Titanic sink. I can’t do one thing to stop it. All I can do is pull people aboard.

I guess I’ll close now. I need to go catch up on pithy articles about society’s great need to promote topless breastfeeding in restaurants.

Enjoying Nature’s Thoughtful Gifts

Today I had fun cutting a tree that had collapsed on a fence. Afterward, I realized the area near the tree was carpeted with something which is probably poison ivy. Now I’m sitting around reading everything I can find, trying to figure out how to cope with this weed.

My farm has lots of poison ivy. I didn’t know what it was when I moved here, but at some point, I did some studying, and I found out the little three-leaved plants that occupied so much of my land were the famous toxic vine. Sometimes it appears as small, isolated plants. Sometimes it’s thick, woody vines 70 feet long. Today it was a big area of lush ground cover that actually looked pretty nice.

Most of my poison ivy has fat leaves with multiple points. The plants I saw today had long, oval leaves with pointed ends. They looked very little like the rest of the plants, but that doesn’t mean anything. Poison ivy has an annoying ability to look like different plants. If you see a shiny plant with three-leaf clusters, and the first two leaves in each cluster are directly opposite each other instead of being staggered, you may be looking at poison ivy.

Because the stuff I was wading in today didn’t look like normal poison ivy, I was happy to thrash around in it and put my saw down on it and walk on it for about an hour.

The Internet is full of mythology, but I think I’ve distilled a few facts out of the mess, so here I am to relate them to you.

The poisonous part of the plant is an oil called urushiol. It takes its name from urushi, a lacquer used by Asian woodworkers. There is a tree that secretes urushi. It’s called the kiurushi tree.

Japanese woodworkers coat their work with urushiol, and then they let it cure for months. Once it cures, it’s harmless. They wear gloves and long sleeves when they handle the uncured oil.

In poison ivy, urushiol is found inside the leaves and vines. You can’t get a rash just from touching a leaf. Maybe that’s not true for people with crazy sensitivity, but it’s generally true. To hurt you, a leaf has to be damaged.

Once the oil is out of the leaf and it gets on something, it can remain poisonous for 5 years. That means you can get it from sharpening a lawnmower blade or resting your hand on a tractor tire. That’s bad. How many people know exactly what their tractors have run over? I’m sure I’ve run over poison ivy. I wonder how tractor mechanics keep themselves safe.

If you get urushiol on yourself, it will only cause a rash on the areas it touches, and it has to stay in contact with your skin for a minimum amount of time in order to cause a reaction. If you remove the oil from your skin right after you get the oil on you, you will not get a rash. Unfortunately, you won’t know if you’re in the clear until days later, because poison ivy can take days to develop.

To get urushiol off of your skin, you have to use soap or detergent and friction. You can’t just run water over yourself.

Experts say people get less sensitive to urushiol with age. They also say you get more sensitive with successive exposures. They don’t seem troubled by the obvious contradiction.

Here’s a bummer for you: the mango tree is related to poison ivy. It does not produce urushiol. It produces a similar chemical called resorcinol. This chemical is found in the leaves, sap, and rind. If you’re allergic to poison ivy, you are probably allergic to mango sap, and vice-versa.

I have worked on this farm for almost a year, and while I have been burned, bruised, scratched, and bitten, I have never had a poison ivy rash. This is true even though I didn’t know what I was walking through (and on) until long after I got here. Now questions arise.

Am I immune, and if so, will it last, or will it go away? This is the question that interests me most. Some people never get a rash. On the other hand, some people start out insensitive and then break out in oozing blisters. I want to be in the first group. If I’m not, how can I protect myself? I have a mower and a tractor. God knows what’s on them, and they’re not that easy to clean.

If I’m immune, what about other people who visit the farm? Will I put them in the hospital by letting them use my tools? That would be awkward, wouldn’t it? And what if I take my tractors to the shop? Do I warn them, or will they think I’m nuts?

Doctors claim you can’t make yourself immune to poison ivy. They say you can only make yourself more sensitive. Okay, but I have seen claims that people who have been exposed to mangoes a lot can become insensitive to poison ivy. Supposedly, Hawaiians, who eat mangoes, are insensitive to mango oil, which would mean they were also insensitive to poison ivy.

I’ve been around mangoes for decades. Miami is buried in them every year. They’re a plague. I’ve handled tons of them. I’ve sliced them up. I’ve gotten the sap all over me. I’ve never had a reaction, which is good, because some people in Miami can’t go out in their yards without blowing up. Is it possible the mangoes got me ready for poison ivy?

Am I immune? If so, am I immune because of mangoes? If that’s not it, am I just temporarily immune because I haven’t been around poison ivy enough? Do I have to worry that one day I’ll swell up after touching my boots, which have definitely stomped on a fair amount of poison ivy?

What if I’m sensitive to poison ivy but I’ve been incredibly lucky all year? Maybe I just happened to avoid touching every contaminated surface, consistently.

I don’t know the answers.

I have considered taking a poison ivy leaf and applying it to a tiny area of my skin, in an area where a rash wouldn’t drive me crazy. This would be my DIY patch test, to see if I react. But what if it merely made me more sensitive? What if I’m immune now but my little experiment ruined it for me?

My prediction: nothing will happen to me after today’s exposure. I got in the shower when I got home, and I used my usual toxic castile soap to scrub myself, so if I got any oil on me, it’s gone, along with all of my skin’s natural oil. Also, I wore long pants and leather gloves today. I do feel a little regretful about using the finger of one glove to scratch my eyelid, but I think I’m in the clear. There has to be urushiol on my boots, but that’s always true, and nothing has ever happened to me.

After I realized I was probably in poison ivy, I drove back to the house and got the super-duper Roundup. Most people don’t realize Roundup comes in two varieties: the super-duper kind, and the kind that doesn’t work. The regular kind is useless except for accidentally killing your lawn. The super-duper kind actually kills weeds, and it even mentions poison ivy on the label. I blasted the daylights out of the area where I had been using the chainsaw earlier. I hope it works. I just need a few more dry hours to let it soak in.

It would be nice if being exposed to mango sap all my life left me with some protection from poison ivy. I would like to think I got one positive thing from my horrible relationship with Miami.

…Every Time Two Fools Collide?

Florida has another “stand your ground” case. Or does it? And does “another” even make sense in this context?

I am tired of typing “stand your ground,” so from now on, it’s “SYG.”

Florida’s first controversial SYG case was that of George Zimmerman, who shot a violent criminal in self-defense and was then railroaded by prosecutors who went so far as to perjure themselves to get him indicted. Problem: SYG was not involved. The SYG doctrine says you are allowed to use deadly force against an assailant, without trying to flee. Trayvon Martin, the deceased, sat on his victim and beat his head on a concrete sidewalk. Zimmerman was not able to flee, so SYG was not triggered. If you can’t flee, you don’t need SYG to save you. You’re stuck, so you do what you have to.

Zimmerman appears to have lost his mind after his acquittal, and it’s easy to understand why. Franz Kafka could have written his story. The government, which is the entity one ordinarily goes to for justice, tried to nail him to a political cross. Liberals drove his parents out of their home. A second man tried to murder him and went to prison. Now he’s probably as crazy as liberals tried to make him seem during the trial.

The Zimmerman case did not involve SYG, but people who are dishonest or ignorant keep saying it did. Human nature is really something.

The new case involves a man who was attacked at a convenience store. Michael Drejka, a white Florida man with some sort of handicap, saw a black woman parked in a handicapped space. Mr. Drejka has a history of yelling at people who steal these spaces. While he was peacefully arguing his case with the lady, her boyfriend, Markeis (you see where we’re headed) McGlockton, came out of the store and attacked Drejka physically. He shoved him to the asphalt and stood over him.

From his position on the ground, Drejka pulled a pistol and shot McGlockton, who then died. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri (who supposedly has a law degree) declined to press charges, citing the SYG doctrine. He mealy-mouthed in his announcement, suggesting he didn’t agree with the law.

I will now point out the two issues with this case.

1. Mr. Drejka could not flee. He was on the ground in a heap, with a powerful man standing over him a few feet away. When you can’t escape, SYG is not a factor. This is not an SYG case.

2. When Mr. McGlockton saw Drejka’s gun, he backed up and appeared to be intimidated. It was pretty cowardly. He was brave as he could be when he ran out and attacked a handicapped man for no reason, but when he saw that he himself might take some punishment, he danced a different dance. Coward though he was, it appears that his shooting was not justified. Once an assailant gives up, you’re not allowed to shoot. It kills the right to self-defense.

It may be that Drejka was right to shoot. For all we know, McGlockton said something like, “Put that gun away, or I’ll take out my piece and blow your brains out.” Maybe he said, “You scared me, but I’m about to give you a beating anyway.” We don’t know everything that happened. The most likely explanation is that Drejka got mad and shot McGlockton for pushing him. That would be second-degree murder.

The decision not to prosecute is mystifying. The sheriff didn’t cite any facts explaining why it was okay for Drejka to shoot a man who was backing off.

Journalists hate the right to self-defense, and they really hate SYG, so they are playing up Gualtieri’s law degree. Their unspoken thesis is that a lawyer said it’s an SYG case, so that’s what it is, and now a man is dead because SYG legalizes murder. Journalists are fairly stupid, as we all know.

Here’s the problem with relying on Gualtieri’s law degree: he may be a bad lawyer. When a thousand people graduate from law school, the one with the worst grades is allowed to take the bar exam. When a thousand people take a bar exam, the person with the lowest passing grade is given a law license. Mr. Gualtieri is a bar member, so he must have passed the exam, but that’s not a powerful endorsement.

People with good prospects for jobs as attorneys generally do not become cops. It has probably happened, but it’s not normal. Police work–forgive me, police–is not intellectually demanding. Departments reject applicants for scoring too high on intelligence tests because they know smart people will get bored after a year of rousting bums and arresting the same wife-beaters over and over. I don’t know Mr. Gualtieri, but if he were a good lawyer, he probably would not be a sheriff.

In any case, he appears to be wrong about the McGlockton case, and it’s strange that prosecutors haven’t stepped in to change things.

If he’s restraining himself because he hates cowardly, violent people like McGlockton, I certainly understand. McGlockton deserved prison time and maybe a beating which Drejka could not supply. But the law is the law. You can’t kill an assailant who chickens out.

I don’t feel sorry for McGlockton. He got what was coming to him, whether the law says so or not. I don’t like violent criminals. If you’re going to go around attacking smaller people, don’t cry injustice when you get shot. He didn’t feel bad about the injustice he himself perpetrated.

I don’t feel sorry for Drejka, either. He could have waited for brave McGlockton to run away, and then he could have called the cops. It’s not that hard to refrain from shooting a person.

It’s unfortunate to see nearly everyone involved in this case get it wrong, but it’s something anyone who has been on earth for more than 15 years should expect. People are not that smart, and they are very biased. It’s a wonder we get so many things right.

On the Internet, I have seen some people defend McGlockton’s actions. “Get in my woman’s face, and I will put you down,” and so on. There are some cultures in which any verbal friction or refusal to submit is considered to be an excuse for a beating or killing. I have seen this attitude a lot among black people. For example, some believe you have to beat any non-back who says “nigger” or “nigga.” It’s not exactly uncommon among white southerners, Italians, and Hispanics, either. In come cultures, you’re supposed to use your fists every time someone makes you feel bad.

This is not how life works. It’s not a sustainable lifestyle. It’s how you keep yourself and your family on the bottom, and society is not going to accommodate your misconceptions. It can’t afford to.

Going back to the English common law, it has always been clear that mere words, short of threats of immediate violence, never justify physical attacks. If they did, weak people would essentially be gagged in their daily dealings. Big people would be punching folks in the mouth all the time, without redress. Life does not work that way. It’s intolerable, so we don’t tolerate it.

SYG is an excellent doctrine. The idea that we should have to try to escape from stronger or better-armed people is ridiculous. It compromises our ability to respond. While you’re trying to get away, you’re not going to be able to focus on fighting back, and it may cost you your life. I shouldn’t have to prove I can’t get away from a larger, younger, stronger man, or one who is better-armed, when I didn’t cause the problem. The burden should always be on the criminal. If you don’t want to get shot, obey the law like everyone else.

SYG promotes civility and lawful behavior. If you’re a criminal, and you see a weaker person with a fanny pack or a bulge in his pocket, you know you better obey the law. That’s a positive result. It’s better for criminals to die than it is for innocent people to be injured, raped, or killed. An innocent person shouldn’t have to sustain brain damage or a broken arm just to protect you from yourself. It’s more just for you to be shot, even if you die.

It’s too bad journalists keep trying to change the law. I suspect it’s because they know most violent crime in America is committed by minorities. A lot of minority criminals get hurt by people defending themselves. That’s sad, but who chose that paradigm? Not the innocent. Rewarding criminals and punishing victims will only make crime worse.

My prediction: Drejka will face a jury. Either that, or new facts will come to light. Notice I don’t say he will do time. There are jurors who would refuse to convict him, and he might get lucky so he can go off and shoot more people in parking lots. Prosecutors have to obey the law, so I think an indictment is coming, but jurors can do anything they want. Remember O.J.

It will be a nice experience for prosecutors this time. They won’t have to make anything up.

More

Looks like I’m not alone in my take on this. Here’s a Politico story which says even the NRA’s Marion Hammer disagrees with Gualtieri.

Gualtieri apparently thinks he was legally barred from making an arrest, and Hammer says he is wrong, as long as he had probable cause.

Ben Crump, the scavenger lawyer who helped Trayvon Martin’s family profit from his death, comments in the story: “This was a cold-blooded murder. This is not self defense. And communities of color, the black community, are very emotional about this issue with these stand-your-ground cases.”

What a crock.

Crump may not be smart, or he may be misrepresenting things deliberately because he hopes to cash in (or both), but he got it wrong. “Cold-blooded murder” describes crimes committed by people who are not angry. For example, if you shoot a stranger for money, it’s cold-blooded murder. If you’re mad because a criminal just shoved you onto the hard pavement of a parking lot, you can’t be a cold-blooded killer. Second-degree murder laws were written for the specific purpose of prosecuting people who don’t kill in cold blood.

Why does he say SYG is a special concern for blacks? It applies to everyone. It’s very much like ordinary self-defense: if you’re where you’re supposed to be, and you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re in no danger. If you’re in someone else’s house holding a crowbar, you have a problem. And you should.

As long as minorities commit the majority of violent crimes, they will form the majority of people killed in self-defense. That’s just how it is, and it will still be true even if SYG is done away with. Trayvon Martin would have been killed with or without SYG. His victim had no choice, and Martin made it happen.

This week we saw a remarkable BLM reaction to a completely justified killing. A chronic Minnesota criminal named Thurman Blevins was sitting around with an illegal gun hanging out of his pants. The cops told him to stop and put his hands on top of his head, and they warned that they would shoot. He ran, and while he was running, he pulled the gun on them. Guess what happened.

Still, the BLMsters are up in arms. They seriously believe shooting criminals who pull guns on cops is wrong. We can’t pay any attention to the excuse-makers. They are against ALL minority killings, except in the cases of minority Trump supporters, and they don’t care about the facts or the danger to innocent people.

Thurman Blevins ran from the police after they accosted him with probable cause to believe he was committing a felony. That obligated them to chase him. He pulled a gun on them during the chase and refused to drop it. That justified the shooting. It’s not a puzzle. In half a second, he could have turned and killed one of them. But BLM people are creating self-righteous memes calling for “Justice for Thurman Blevins.” Unbelievable.

Ferrari Looks; Fiat Reliability

I have been trying to be open-minded, but as of today I have drawn a conclusion: the Marlin Model 60 .22 rifle is a piece of garbage.

I bought one earlier this year. Could not hit a soda can at 50 feet, using a rest. No exaggeration. Took it back. Marlin gave up on it and sent me a new one.

When the new gun arrived, I still had to install sling studs. The Model 60 doesn’t come with them, and it’s hard to install them without using the magazine as a support. I had to modify the stock and a sling stud and nut to make it work.

The trigger in the Model 60 is horrible. I tried to buy an aftermarket trigger called a “KAT,” but the guy who makes them failed to respond to my efforts to contact him via email and Facebook, so I gave up and bought an MCarbo trigger for something like $75. Installed it myself. Result: a PRETTY GOOD trigger. Pretty good. That’s the best I can say. For the money, it should be perfect.

The iron sights were cheap and nasty, so I got a Tech Sights peep and installed it. The other day I went out to try it.

I shot a few rounds, and when I tried to reload, the magazine moved. It was loose. The magazine was held in by a little pin, and that little pin was gone. It’s somewhere in my pasture.

For contrast, I’ll discuss my new Savage A22.

I bought the A22. I installed $4 worth of scope bases in it. This took maybe three minutes. I bought a new trigger spring for around $9 and installed that. This took maybe half an hour, and it was easy. I’m done. The gun is fine.

Well, it WAS fine. The plastic dust cover on the receiver flew off while I was shooting, and it looks like a piece broke off. That may be my fault. Savage is sending me a new cover, free of charge. Minor thing.

People say the Model 60 is a great cheap .22. Oh really?

I have about $225 in the A22. Guess what I’ve invested in the Model 60. Guess. I’ll tell you. It’s $250, not including the peep sight and sling. It was cheap when I bought it, but I had to keep investing in parts to make it function.

Here’s what the extra $25 got me. It has a flimsy trigger housing or whatever it’s called (the thing that holds the moving parts). It’s two sheets of metal held together with pins and a chunk of plastic. The barrel is pressed in and held in place by a pin, which is sort of like saying it’s nailed in. The gun cannot be dry-fired safely. I had to do a lot of work installing the sling studs. I had to do a lot of work installing the new trigger parts.

What about the A22? It has a heavy-duty milled receiver. It has a heavy plastic or composite box holding the trigger stuff. It came with an adjustable factory Accu-trigger, which is wonderful. It has a super-low trigger pull weight, because I changed the spring. It came from the factory able to shoot hypervelocity rounds. It has Weaver bases. It can be dry-fired all day. It can receive a 25-round magazine if I feel like buying one. The barrel screws in, just like it does on a real gun. If I get tired of the scope, the Savage is ready. It has adjustable iron sights. Real ones. It has an indestructible free-floated synthetic stock.

That’s what I got, for $25 LESS than my modified Marlin.

The Model 60 is crap. It just is. I know it looks nice, and it’s light and handy. Doesn’t matter, when it’s put together like a BB gun. The looks and feel are insufficient compensation.

Even if I get this gun to work, it will still be more fragile than the Savage. The trigger will be much worse. Its compatibility with fast ammunition will be dubious. No matter how you slice it, the Savage is a much better deal.

If you buy one of these things for yourself or your kid, you will be missing out. It’s junk when you buy it, and aftermarket parts are scarce and expensive, so you won’t get much help mitigating the flaws. When you do what you can to fix it up, it may work better, but it will still be junk.

Most people says the Ruger 10/22 is the way to go. I have no experience with that gun. I got a Savage because I like my other Savage and the price was great. I think it was a steal. Savages are accurate. No one says that about Rugers.

It’s a letdown when you try to like something and can’t pull it off. Zillions of people praise the Model 60. I tried to see things their way. I figured they had to know something. They don’t. It’s not a matter of taste. They are wrong. They’re conning themselves. The gun is inferior by objective standards.

Will I keep the gun anyway? I plan to, unless it keeps giving me trouble. It has a peep sight. The barrel is good. It’s handy. I can keep it around for pest control and iron sight practice. Would I hunt with it? NO NO NO NO NO. When you hunt, you want a gun that works, which is another way of saying you don’t want a Marlin Model 60. You don’t want to have to say, “Squirrels were everywhere today, but the magazine keeps falling off the Marlin.”

Maybe I won’t keep it. I’m thinking about it. If it has been a disappointment for four months, it may well continue to disappoint, and I could probably get $150 for it, which I could put toward another Savage.

I’ve been wondering why Marlin still makes this thing. I figured out the answer. They make it because people buy it. But why do people buy it when it’s clearly inferior? I think it’s nostalgia. The “60” stands for “1960,” which is the year the gun was released. When you buy a Marlin 60, it’s like walking into a showroom and buying a new 1960 Chevy. It hasn’t changed much. I think guys want to have a gun “just like paw had”; the 60 was very popular back in the old days when there were fewer rifles to choose from. The problem with buying based on nostalgia is that new guns are way better. Not just different. Better.

I feel gypped. I really got suckered in. How can so many people be so wrong?

Wait a minute. The most popular beer in the world is Budweiser, and most Americans think the Kardashians have a great TV show. Of course a lot of people can be wrong.

Do not buy a Marlin Model 60. Learn from my suffering. If you absolutely have to buy a Marlin .22, make it the 795. It has a box magazine. You can load it without putting your fingers in front of the muzzle, and it has more wood in the forestock for a sling stud. It’s still junk, but it’s better junk.

Weeds Closing In

I am considering getting a flail mower.

The farm is getting weedy and overgrown. Apparently the cattle that used to live here did a good job consuming vines and bushes. Now that they’re gone, I need a solution.

I was thinking about goats and sheep. I still am. Everyone says goats will get the job done. I have read that Katahdin sheep will do the job even better, without the goat behavioral issues, and they don’t mind the heat. They raise them in the Caribbean, so Ocala will not be a problem. They don’t produce wool. They’re among the breeds known as “hair sheep,” which means they don’t have to be sheared.

A friend of mine says she talked to a lady who has raised goats for 30 years. The lady said goats won’t eat weeds. What? Google “goats” and “weeds” and see what comes up. Cities are paying four figures each to rent goats to clear lots of weeds. How can people have different opinions about goats and their appetite for weeds in 2018? Hasn’t the human race had enough experience with goats to figure out the truth?

My best guess, based on the gigantic amount of material claiming goats eat weeds is this: goats eat weeds. But if that’s true, why would a lady who raises them disagree?

I read that you’re not supposed to give goats grain. Supposedly it makes them ill if you give them a lot of it. I wonder if this lady has spoiled hers with goat feed.

If I get ruminants, I have to get a donkey. We have coyotes, and donkeys hate them. Coyotes may be brave enough to mess with sheep, but donkeys scare the bejeezus out of them. They chase them around, and they have been known to grab them and throw them. I would pay to see that. I wonder if I could teach one to throw coons and squirrels. Maybe I could set up a target.

If I do all this, I have to think about water, fencing, veterinary expenses, and God knows what else. But they’ll do the work for me, and they’ll probably do it better than machinery. They can go places machines can’t.

How many animals would I need? That’s a good question. I was hoping I could get away with maybe three goats or sheep, but this is a fairly large property. I don’t know how much they eat.

I have a bush hog, which is basically a 6-foot-wide lawnmower. It will take down grass, bushes, and little trees, but it’s sloppy and it’s not easy to maneuver.

Someone suggested flail mowers to me. I had no idea what they were. The reason I didn’t know is that they are new to America. They are popular overseas. A flail mower has a rotating horizontal cylinder on it, and the cylinder is covered with hinged knives. The swing into the vegetation and pulverize it. It’s hard to describe it, but you can Google and see pictures.

A flail mower sits right behind a tractor’s rear wheels. It’s compact, so it’s not hard to make it go where you want. It will clobber branches better than a bush hog. It cuts things in small pieces that fall straight down, while a bush hog sort of throws things into an undesirable row.

You can use a flail mower to do all the things a bush hog does, and it will also mow grass. You can cut your yard down to an inch if you want, and it will look like you did it with a real lawnmower. A bush hog is useless for finish work.

If I get this thing, I should be able to sell the bush hog and make space in the workshop. The bush hog is old and grimy, so it doesn’t matter if I leave it outside, but it would be nice to be rid of it if I don’t need it.

It’s tough trying to keep a farm under control when you grew up in the suburbs. I’ve spent a lot of time on farms, but they belonged to my grandfather, and he had cattle to keep the grass cut. I don’t have anyone to advise me except for Internet forum people.

Animals would provide poop, and they would generally do a better job than a machine, but they are a bigger responsibility, and if they decided there were things they didn’t want to eat, I would still have to cut those things myself.

I’m trying to make myself accept something: the people who used to live here didn’t do a great job. They chose plants badly. They left a lot of trees that need to come down. They didn’t choose the best machines. They kept it neat, but I need to make this place my own and quit trying to restore their strange plan. I need to get better plants and better tools, and I need to start killing annoying things the sellers left here.

I feel like I should seriously consider a donkey plus some sort of animal to keep it company, regardless of what I do. Any animal that injures or kills coyotes is a treasure.

Disaster is Better Than Catastrophe

It sort of looks like Trump attorney Michael Cohen has chosen disbarment over the threat of prison.

I call him “Trump attorney” and not “former Trump attorney” because he still has a duty of loyalty to his client. The duty of loyalty generally survives the client/attorney relationship, and it is not a trifle or merely a custom. It’s codified in ethical rules for attorneys.

Michael Cohen recorded conversations with Donald Trump, and he didn’t get consent. In Florida, this would be a crime. In New York, it appears to be legal. No matter where you are, it’s unethical.

A lawyer has a duty to put his client’s interests first. When the lawyer and the client have conflicting interests, the client wins. There is no conceivable reason for taping a conversation surreptitiously, except to put the other party at a disadvantage relative to yourself. Simply by making the recording, Cohen betrayed his client.

I wonder why almost no one is talking about this. Well…I don’t wonder. I know. Leftist journalists are so happy the recordings exist, they don’t care how they were created. We have seen this before. Someone committed a crime by stealing part of a Trump tax return and giving it to the press, and journalists could not have cared less. Democrats taped Newt Gingrich illegally and released the recording, and journalists were thrilled.

Mind you, these are the people who would call for impreachment and prison time if Donald Trump double-parked.

Cohen his turning on Trump, and he wants immunity from prosecution. I haven’t read that he wants immunity, but it’s obvious. Problem for Cohen: there is no such thing as immunity from bar discipline. A prosecutor or trial judge can’t order a bar association to ignore ethical violations. They don’t have jurisdiction. Even if Cohen is never charged with a crime, his proud, continuing violations of the rules of ethics are going to bring consequences.

Why does he fear prosecution? Dinesh D’Souza. Mr. D’Souza was convicted of making illegal campaign contributions. If Cohen paid an aging stripper off in order to help Trump get elected, he may have violated campaign finance laws. Because he did it for a Republican, if convicted in New York, he would probably get prison time. This is a place where you can get a slap on the wrist for armed robbery, but they take it very seriously when conservatives break the law.

Cohen may be playing it smart. If he catches a felony conviction, he will, at the very least, be suspended from practice. He will also go to prison. If he merely turns on Trump, suspension or disbarment is all he has to worry about. Better to lose your career than to lose your career and your liberty.

Even if the bar were to leave Cohen alone, who would hire him now? Only a moron. His other clients must be calling him, demanding that he destroy his recordings of them. They are surely dropping him and hiring new people. Who would hire a lawyer who turns on former clients?

He may be panicking. It may be that Mueller’s case against him is weak, and Cohen may not know it. It could be that a good lawyer would have figured this out for Cohen by now. It seems like Mueller gave Cohen a little squeeze, and Cohen burst like a pimple instead of considering his options. Maybe he’s a dream snitch.

I don’t know what kind of legal advice he’s getting. If I were him, I would hire a top criminal lawyer and go into seclusion. That’s what intelligent defendants do. Everything he says that hurts his defense can be used against him in court. All of his eccentric actions can be brought up. He’s not just his own attorney; he’s a future witness, via an exception to the hearsay rule (declarations against interest). He should hire a good lawyer and let him do the talking.

Cohen hired Lanny Davis, a former Clinton apologist who loves cameras. I have never seen any reason to believe Davis is a great legal light. Lately I’ve seen a lot of evidence that he’s a fool. He’s letting Cohen destroy himself. He should make a DVD called “Clients Gone Wild.”

Cohen went to the nation’s worst law school. He may not be the greatest lawyer on earth. You can be fairly dumb and get rich practicing law, if you have a ton of brass and you stay away from anything intellectually demanding. Maybe Cohen has no idea what he’s doing.

I should retract that. He definitely has no idea what he’s doing. If he knew what he was doing, he would not have paid off a stripper during a campaign. He would have researched the law and found out he was inviting prosecution. Oddly, his lack of foresight may have insulated Trump from prosecution while landing himself on the griddle. His rash payoff may put him in prison, and his slimy recordings may keep Trump in the clear. With the worst intentions, he may have done what a lawyer is supposed to do. He may have fallen on his sword for a client.

People are ridiculing Trump (of course) for criticizing Cohen’s underhanded recording practices. If they couldn’t criticize Trump for that, they would criticize him for breathing. Trump is absolutely right. There are times when a lawyer has to take steps to protect himself from a client, but you don’t do it by surveilling him without permission. There is no way to make that fly in front of a bar committee.

It’s okay for lawyers to protect themselves from attacks from clients. Lawyers have to think about malpractice a lot. It’s normal to document things you tell clients. It’s normal to document their consent when you do things for them. What Cohen did is different. He tried to set a client up for blackmail and prosecution.

A lawyer may oppose a former client in court, under certain conditions. He can’t go after a former client in the same open matter in which he represented him. Cohen is doing that now.

In order for Trump to get in trouble, Cohen will have to show that Trump knew in advance that Cohen was going to do something illegal for him, or he will have to show that Trump found out later and did something illegal to cover it up. It doesn’t look like that will happen. If not, there will be a lot of suffering in newsrooms.

Liberal journalists are like dogs forced to balance juicy Trump-shaped dog biscuits on their quivering noses. They may look all they want. They may smell the prize. Slobber may run down their cheeks. But they never get to taste. I don’t think they ever will.

I took a course in ethics, and I’ve had to consume a whole lot of continuing legal education materials related to ethics. I’m wondering what that was all about. Was I supposed to take it seriously? Maybe the joke is on me. Look how prominent lawyers act.

The Clintons are lawyers. Cohen is a lawyer. Michael Avenatti is a lawyer. They’re revolting. No sane person would trust any of them. Even Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor and prosecutor, is acting strangely. He practices in front of TV cameras, and he makes legal and factual claims he has clearly not researched.

You’re not really supposed to practice in front of cameras. Even when it’s within the rules of ethics, it stinks. If you’re determined to do it, you should be 100% sure you’re helping your client and avoiding provoking your judge.

Seems like Alan Dershowitz is the only attorney who even glances at the law before he talks on TV. I’m okay with his appearances, because he’s not involved in the cases he discusses. Why is he doing better work than the people who have the most at stake?

People are disappointing. My mom and Lex Luthor said, “People are no damn good.” I’ll just say they’re disappointing. This is not what the practice of law should look like. There are many lawyers all over the country, doing it right. It doesn’t have to be a TV circus. TV doesn’t make you a good lawyer. It may make you a rich lawyer, but if you’re on TV regularly, chances are, you’re a hack and a disgrace to the profession.

Ninth Circuit Experiences Brief Spasm of Lucidity

I always tell people they’re…misguided…when they don’t realize it’s impossible to vote for an individual in a presidential election. People say dumb things like, “I vote for the man, not the party.” They don’t understand that a president isn’t just a man. He is also part of a team, and when you vote for the captain of the other team, you gut everyone on your own team. Conservatives who voted for Hillary Clinton or who refused to vote at all weren’t just attacking Donald Trump. They were attacking every conservative politician in America.

One of the president’s most important jobs is to appoint federal judges. These people are very dangerous. They are accountable to no one, and they rule for life. I say “rule” because that’s accurate. They decide what the law means. If a federal judge says a law against arson actually bans cheating at tiddlywinks, that’s what it means, until another judge overrules him. The text of a law means nothing until a judge tells us what it means.

We have a bunch of federal circuits. Each circuit is composed of areas from several states. Some circuit panels are more sane than others. The worst circuit in the US is the Ninth Circuit, which rules over California, Hawaii, and some other western states. They are completely unhinged. They routinely agree with far-left eccentrics, and their decisions can be very damaging.

This week, the Ninth Circuit did a shocking thing. An appellate panel changed the law in Hawaii, and the ruling applies to all other Ninth Circuit states. The court held that OPEN carry of weapons was protected by the US Constitution. Not concealed, mind you. They say regulating concealed carry may be okay. They decided to protect OPEN carry. We don’t even have that in Florida, which has a reputation for loose gun laws.

Believe it or not, Hawaii and California were already open-carry states. In Hawaii, you could carry openly with a carry permit. The problem was that carry permits were impossible to get. The new case makes it much easier to get permits.

Prior to the decision, Hawaiians were not allowed to have weapons in their vehicles. It was open season on people in cars. Can you believe that? Now they can walk down the street with holsters on their hips.

The opinion is startling. In its lengthy endorsement of the famous Heller case, it firmly, decisively rejects the “militia” connection liberals have tried to tack onto the Second Amendment. All cases holding that 2A doesn’t apply to individuals are now bad law in the Ninth Circuit. They were already bad law because of the Supreme Court’s Heller decision, but now the Ninth has expressly adopted Heller just about as hard as possible. Courts can play games with rulings from higher courts. They can deliberately misconstrue and delay. “Sorry; your transmission was garbled.” This new case is an unconditional surrender.

The opinion also defines the phrase “keep and bear” very clearly. As I have often said, and as some courts have said, “keep and bear” means “own and carry.” This is obvious to anyone who owns a dictionary, but liberals dispute it. The Ninth Circuit now says its subjects are allowed to carry outside their homes. It points out that the right to carry means nothing if it doesn’t apply outside the home. The founding fathers didn’t include the word “bear” so you could carry your rifle in circles in your living room.

The most satisfying part of the case is a long passage in which the court compares deprivation of the right to carry with Reconstruction-era confiscation of firearms from freed slaves! You really have to read it to believe it. Leftists want us to forget something very important: the right to own and carry arms is a CIVIL right, and people who support 2A are civil rights activists.

It’s interesting to look at the history of the case.

The suit was filed by a man named Young. He was upset because Hawaii did not like issuing permits. Hawaii would only give permits to people who were special. Security guards were able to get permits. Magnum, P.I. was able to get a permit. Probably Higgins, too, because of his MI6 connections. Maybe Don Ho. People who showed extraordinary, urgent need could (supposedly but probably not really) get permits. Mr. Young sued the state and his county.

The lower court judge is named Helen Gillmor. See if you can guess who appointed her. I’ll tell you: Bill Clinton, husband of the unelected woman who anointed herself healthcare empress. Gillmor is an undistinguished lawyer who went to school in New York and Boston. She is a former PD, which speaks volumes. PD’s are delusional in their hatred of everything good. Perhaps I exaggerate, but the job attracts real kooks.

Gillmor made some crazy rulings. She appears to have had no respect for Mr. Young’s pro se lawsuit, so she did some frivolous things in order to turf his case into a black hole, surely hoping the Ninth Circuit would back her up. For one thing, she denied that 2A granted rights to individuals. That’s not even close to what the case law says.

The appellate judges who fixed things were named Ikuta and…some Gaelic name I’m not going to go back and look up. One is a Bush II appointee, and the other is a Reagan appointee. The third judge dissented. Bush II appointed him. Oh, well.

Why talk about the judges? Because their history is more important than the law. Their biases determined what they ultimately decided. Clinton’s girl bent over backwards to distort the law to suit her frustrated wishes, and two judges appointed by Republicans straightened things out.

If you didn’t vote for Trump, you voted against your 2A rights. Even if you stayed home, you helped activist judges who don’t mind if their actions give criminals the power to kill or rape you at will. You should be ashamed of your ignorance, your childishness, or both.

One of the most beautiful things about Trump’s victory is his work to appoint conservative judges. Obama appointed all sorts of crazies. Now Trump is working to dilute the cesspool. He can’t fire the nuts, but he can fill spots with people who will fight them. That’s very important.

We’re about to see Kavanaugh seated on the Supreme Court. No one can predict what a justice will do once he has no one to answer to (Reagan appointed Kennedy), but more likely than not, Kavanaugh will be very helpful to us. Ruth Ginsburg is in bad health, and Clarence Thomas is getting old. We may have a chance to get rid of a socialist who has said she wants to repeal 2A, and we may be able to replace a faithful servant with someone younger. This is a very big deal. But the never-Trumpers don’t get that. They would rather be petty and watch their rights disappear so they can tell the rest of us they told us so.

The never-Trump plan is not working out well. The economy is strong. Trump is doing a lot of great things. He needs our help, because he runs again in two years, and the alternative will be someone like fake Indian Liz Warren or Kamala Harris. I wonder how long the pouters will sit on the sidelines and pray for Trump to fail. The more he succeeds, the dumber they look.

Enemies are bad. Treacherous friends are worse. That’s why armies have traditionally fed and sheltered POW’s while hanging spies. The GOP has a lot of spies right now.

I completely understand that Trump rubs people the wrong way, and that he is disappointing on a personal level, but that doesn’t justify turning on the rest of us.

I have never seen a candidate I supported in the primaries win a presidential election, but that didn’t drive me to sit in a corner and suck my thumb. I held my nose and voted for McCain and Romney. I preferred Cruz to Trump, but I voted for Trump in the end. You have to buy off the rack. You can’t always have the candidate you want. It’s important to grow up and do what you can.

The Hawaii case shows what can happen if we keep Republicans in the White House. Why are so many of us working against that?

I don’t know why I write about this stuff. In reality, prayer and repentance are what matter. If people are voting stupidly, it’s because we have turned away from God and opened ourselves to deception. If we don’t turn back to God, all the conservative policy in the world won’t help us. Still, it’s nice to see America’s decline retarded.

No One Really Knows How to Do This

I haven’t written as much lately as I usually do. My dad’s accident caused a lot of problems. I’ll provide an example. On Saturday, I had to do something like 8 loads of laundry, and my dad’s laundry is not simple. We have a horrible “high efficiency” washer that takes two hours to do a load with a prewash.

I want to get an old-fashioned washer that takes half an hour. I do not care how much water it uses. I have a well, and our water goes back into the aquifer through the septic tank. Not that I care whether it goes back. If Al Gore can have a compound with a $3000 monthly electric bill, I can have a real washer. If Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t like it, he can come here on the jet he uses to fly to environmentalist events, and he can lecture me about it.

The earth was provided by God to make my life easier, so if I damage it a little, tough.

High efficiency washers don’t work all that well. They will accept larger loads than normal washers, but they don’t get them clean, because the stuff in the middle stays dry. Try it yourself and see. In reality, you have to baby them and be careful not to put too much in them. Then when your clothes come out, they smell like mildew. There is nothing you can do about this. You can minimize it by running cleaning cycles with various chemicals, and you can waste your time cleaning the gaskets, but a certain amount of mildew will always remain, and when your clothes get hot and wet enough during the day, they WILL smell, and people will think it’s you.

It’s hard to find a decent washer. Everything is made in China, and nothing is reliable. Horror stories abound. Even Speed Queen makes questionable washers now. I think the best option is to get a mid-priced agitator washer and accept the fact that it will probably die after three years.

I keep learning things about being a caregiver. Here’s one: demented people should not have complicated bedding. My dad used to have a quilt and a blanket, which is a lot for Florida. Right now, he has a synthetic polar fleece blanket which weighs less and is easier to wash. I don’t think he liked giving up the heavier bedclothes, but once the blanket was in place, he forgot all about them. The blanket is a lot easier to wash.

That’s another important thing to remember. No matter how upset a demented person gets about something, he will forget about it in a day. Very often, you will find yourself in ridiculous circular conversations about nonsense that seems very important to the patient. The proper goal isn’t to resolve things. The resolution will be forgotten. The proper goal is to end the conversations peacefully. I don’t lie, but I try to say what will stop the boat rocking.

If you really have to, you can walk away and leave the patient angry. It will pass, because he will forget.

The other day my dad decided we had to go to Sears, right that minute, and get him a lift recliner. There is no Sears near here. There was no place except La-Z-Boy, it was early Saturday evening, and their cheapest offering was $1600, which Medicare would not help pay for unless it was cleared in advance. Was it even in stock? Who knows? I wasn’t going to drive 10 miles just to find out. And who was supposed to deliver it and carry it into the house?

I could not get him to accept the fact that we could not get a recliner at that instant, and I finally had to go away and leave him with his annoyance. There was nothing I could do, and he would have gone on for hours or maybe all night.

Another thing: a demented person with chronic pain will never be quiet about it. Every time they notice the pain, they think it’s a fresh topic that needs to be discussed. My dad’s back is bothering him, so we have repeated discussions about it, in which I say the exact same things: we have an appointment with a doctor, all he can have is Aleve, he already rejected surgery, and maybe he will have to live with pain from now on.

Demented patients may worry a lot, about things that will never happen. The other day he was worried about getting stuck in bed. He can get out of bed without help now, but I discussed various solutions anyway. Mechanical devices.

Ultimately, no matter what strategies we choose, short of assisted living, I am the fail safe. When he asked what would happen to him if something happened to me, I didn’t have anything positive to offer, so I said I guessed we would both die. I said there were some risks I could not avert.

He’s not completely gone. I couldn’t say, “Superman and Tinkerbell will fly in and look after you.” My response had to make sense, so I told him the truth. If I die, he will have very serious problems. Nothing I can do. We can get him some kind of alert device, but will he be able to use it? Maybe.

He didn’t seem all that worried about the “Steve dies” part of the scenario! Not at that moment. He was troubled by the thought of the adverse effect on him.

Should I be determined to make sure his life will be perfectly safe no matter what happens to me? Let me ask you this: have you had kids? Have you ever lived alone with a baby or small child? Did you feel it was irresponsible to live alone with a baby or child, knowing they would be in real trouble if you died suddenly? No. There are limits to what we can do, and we accept them. If I’m severely injured, my dad won’t be able to do anything for me, but I’m not putting MYSELF in assisted living in order to prevent that. Life is full of unavoidable risk.

Think about this: old people, like everyone else, can fall down. Their bones are more brittle than young people’s, and they are more likely to receive brain damage or to break hips. Do we make them wear motorcycle helmets all day? No. Do we force them to live in rooms with padded floors? No. We get them canes and walkers, we keep them off stairs, and we hope they don’t fall. Just because you CAN do something to make someone safer doesn’t mean you should. Death and injury are facts of life, and all you can do is take reasonable precautions.

The only way to keep my dad “safe” is to put him in a wheelchair. Then lack of exercise would kill him in 6 months.

I decided against putting a ramp in front of the house, because ramps don’t work well with people who are still walking. My dad can read. I have signs telling him to stay off the steps. I need to get a little work done on his bathroom, and I’m going to get all the information I can from his doctor today. Until he loses the ability to walk, I think that will do.

Here’s another issue: what kind of vehicle should a caregiver have? I persuaded him to replace his ancient SUV with a new one, and it has worked out extremely well. Would I make that choice now? I don’t know. He could be in a wheelchair a few months from now. How will I get him in and out of the car? In retrospect, I wonder if a van would have been better. You can have them fitted with wheelchair stuff. On the other hand, when he reaches that stage, won’t assisted living be the better choice?

I have to make all these decisions myself. If you’re a caregiver, get rid of the delusion that you have to listen to your patient and give their opinions and desires real weight. You have to talk to them and get useful input to make their lives better, and you have to be considerate, but you can’t let them make final decisions. You wouldn’t hire a demented doctor or even a demented TV repairman, so why would you let a demented relative tell you what to do?

I used to try to persuade him to go along with things. These days, I only do that when it’s appropriate. For example, I used to try to get him to throw things out or give them away. Now I do those things without consulting him. He doesn’t need the NordicTrack any more. He doesn’t need 50 pairs of underwear dating back to Bill Clinton. He doesn’t need a pistol beside his bed. He doesn’t need half a cubic foot of old napkins and paper towels on his dresser. I get rid of things that cause problems, and he rarely notices.

There is one area in which he does whatever he wants. When it comes to legal representation, he’s his own man. I got him his own lawyer, and the last time we consulted him, the lawyer put me in the waiting room so he could talk to my dad privately. He’s still competent to discuss certain things. I don’t know what they said. I didn’t ask. That was necessary, in order to avoid issues with his estate down the road, and we didn’t get the solution I wanted. So be it. Other than that, I butt into his affairs all the time. It makes the wheels of life turn smoothly.

I always feel like there should be some source of ideal advice. Someone out there should be able to give me a list of things to do. It’s not true. I hire professionals, and truthfully, their ideas are sometimes worse than mine. I’m sure I’ve wasted money on them. Everyone who plays this game is winging it, regardless of what you might think. If you’re a caregiver, don’t expect yourself to be perfect. The earth is a corrupt place where things go wrong all the time. You can’t look after yourself perfectly, so hoping to take care of someone else perfectly is fatuous.

I rely on God for guidance. I know that if I maintain my prayer life and use the tools he has given me, I’ll end up where I need to be. I may get off course, but things will work out. I don’t know how people who don’t know God survive.

Actually, I know a little bit. They fail. They flounder. They suffer humiliation and regret. Even when they look successful, they’re face-planting.

I keep having supernatural experiences. As I’ve mentioned before, God gives me little phrases which I write down. I go to them later and repeat them to myself. When I do this, I feel God’s power going through me. It brings peace very quickly, which is something I can’t do for myself.

Today I started doing this, and my insides started gurgling and making other rude noises immediately. I felt a little nauseous. By now I know that these things indicate the presence of enemy spirits.

I don’t force this stuff. It’s not possible. Try to make your stomach growl. Good luck. Can’t be done.

I’ve had this experience before, while casting spirits out and so forth, but this was the first time it happened while I was doing other things. Apparently, the spirits I brought into my life through decades of rebellion are very disturbed by the phrases God gave me.

I decided to see if it happened while I read the Bible. I brought Psalm 32 (appropriate) up on my phone, and I started reading. Sure enough, the same thing happened. That’s new.

Christians don’t fight demons. It’s tragic. Paul told us our primary job was to battle spirits. He said we don’t wrestle with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers and so on. Remember? Yet we focus on powerless rules and positive thinking, which help no one.

In the post-2000 world, people who believe in spirits are considered crazy. I could probably have my sanity called into question because of the things I write here. Think about that! God is a spirit. If it’s crazy to believe in demons, it’s crazy to believe in God, who told us demons exist and who cast them out, personally.

In the future, and I don’t mean the far future, Christians will be declared incompetent because of their faith. That will be interesting.

Joy Behar thinks Mike Pence is nuts because he believes he hears from Jesus! And she wasn’t afraid to say it on TV, in a country where God used to be honored by default.

She’s a Jew. Her people turned their backs on Moses after he talked to God. They turned their backs on God, too, after he appeared to them every day in a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud. Her attitude is not something that should shock anyone.

Most Jews are atheists. That’s one reason so many Jews love leftism. Mommy government is a substitute for God’s help. It’s a false messiah. The Jewish prophet Samuel told them what to expect from that idol, but they didn’t listen. American Christians are headed the same way. We want to suck on that black, toxic nipple because we love sin too much to quit.

To get back to my situation, I have to avoid focusing too much on strategizing with my own mind. God gives me solutions when I take my hands off problems. No one can foresee all the problems a caregiver will face, and no human being can come up with the right answer every time. I have to put these burdens on God, who, after all, asked for them.

I need to do some business and get ready for a doctor’s appointment. Hope what I wrote helps someone.

New Progress

The dad saga continues to unfold.

Today we had a breakthrough. Generally, when people tell my dad he has dementia, he uses profanity to dismiss their remarks. If you gently remind him that he doesn’t know his address or have a driver’s license, he comes up with explanations. This morning, he finally listened and accepted the diagnosis.

He was trying to start his day, which took two hours of OUR time. He started asking me things about his condition, so I laid it on him. I said his doctors believed he had vascular dementia. I said he wouldn’t improve. I told him he would continue to get worse, in discrete steps. I told him the worst part: it shortens lives. I said he could be looking at a couple of years.

I don’t believe in soft-soaping people about their medical problems. It’s disrespectful, and it’s a way of controlling them and ignoring boundaries. He needs to know his time is short. He needs to accept salvation and understand his limitations.

I don’t want him to go to bed thinking he has all the time in the world and then die in his sleep and wake up in hell. It’s not a joke or a fable. It’s real, and I know people who are there right now.

Oddly, he wasn’t disturbed at all by the notion that he might not be here in a couple of years. He was much more upset by the increasing difficulty of functioning. He said he might as well kill himself.

He doesn’t mean that. For some reason, he and my sister are incapable of self-harm. Neither of them could seriously entertain the idea. But he’s not happy about his situation.

He still speaks of God, heaven, and hell with total contempt. He thinks it’s all a fairy tale. He says that if heaven exists, he’ll go because he’s a good person. He doesn’t think about bad things he’s done. And being “good” won’t keep you out of hell. You have to accept Jesus.

I’m happy for any improvement in his attitude. If he can accept his diagnosis and prognosis, he can also accept salvation eventually.

I also tried to make him understand that his life can’t necessarily be made easy or comfortable. We may not be able to get rid of his back pain or maintain his mobility, and I can’t promise him he won’t be bored. He has been blessed so far, but God never promised us we wouldn’t have chronic pain or boredom. He may end up in a home where he lacks stimulation. Society provides mechanisms for caring for the demented, but it doesn’t guarantee their entertainment. And entertaining demented people can be difficult or impossible due to their inner limitations.

After he’s gone, I will not accept involvement with other unsaved people, except to tell them about God and move on. I will not become intimate with people who reject God, and I won’t partner with them. I’ve had enough. My relationship with my dad will be the last unequal yoking in my life. And I’m the kind of person who means it when he says things like that. Ask anyone I’ve cut off. I never go back.

A buddy of mine started turning to God, and then he got into a relationship with a Jewish lady. It’s a real mess. She has a mentally ill son who complains and talks about suicide all the time. He’s in an institution right now. My buddy can’t get them to consider prayer and church, which would help. It will never happen. Many Jews conflate Christianity with Nazism, which is insane. You can’t break the spell with persuasion, because it’s supernatural.

Missionary dating doesn’t work. It’s disobedient, so you can’t expect God to honor your choice. Also, he will not violate free will and force an unbeliever to change.

My friend cuts his girlfriend’s grass and helps her out in many ways. He comforts her. He had to cancel a visit to Florida because her son was committed. He has been holding her hand for a week or two, but she won’t take his advice. It’s like he’s watching a ship sink and he can’t do anything to help. Meanwhile his own life is on hold, as if it has no importance.

This is what happens when you yoke yourself to people who reject Jesus. Me, I’m all done with unequal yokings. I can’t take it any more.

On top of all these issues, she appears to do absolutely nothing for him. He was laid up a while back, and she was nowhere in sight. He had to fly to Mexico for dental surgery before that. He went alone.

Here’s what happens when you have vascular dementia: you get worse in steps. You lose the ability to recognize familiar people and perform basic tasks such as bathing. Then you die. It may come from a stroke or heart attack, or your brain may just shut down from lack of blood flow. My dad is several years into an illness that usually takes 5 years to kill. My guess is that blood pressure pills are the only things that have kept him alive. Statins don’t help.

I don’t know whether my dad will wither over a period of weeks or die suddenly. I don’t know whether he’ll last long enough to go into assisted living. I can’t plan that well. I can’t say, “I’ll need to move him into a home on September 5.” Maybe he’ll go to a home, or maybe the coroner will pull up to the house one day and take him. I have to look at the possibilities and plan as well as I can. I count on prayer to make it work.

Honestly, a sudden departure would be easier on everyone concerned. In a facility, he will be reminded of his status every day. He will be powerless. He will be surrounded by people who don’t care about him all that much, and he’ll know it. His desires won’t matter much at all. He’ll do things on their schedule, at their convenience.

I’m not afraid of death. Not even a little bit. I’ve seen a lot of it. You miss people, but losing them doesn’t ruin your life, especially when they go after a long period of sickness or infirmity. When a person has been ill long enough, his relatives will start to feel that death is better than what he is going through, and when he goes, they will feel relief as well as grief. People don’t like to admit that, but it’s true. Suddenly the house doesn’t smell like diapers. You can leave for a day and not worry. You can get rid of the ugly, depressing medical equipment. You can sleep a whole night. You no longer worry about the patient’s future.

When my mom died, my aunt and I put her clothes in the car the next day and gave them away. BANG. Like that. That’s how you do it. You don’t sit around in your moldy, cobwebbed shrine and worship the dead.

I can’t relate to people who are afraid of death, so maybe I don’t understand how they feel when I write bluntly about it. Maybe they think I’m inhuman. Fear of death is a symptom of immaturity, though. It’s not something we should cater to and encourage.

My dad will never drive again. He will never ride the bicycle I bought him. We will never go fishing again. We will never have another real conversation. We are done traveling together. There isn’t much to hope for while he lives. All I want is to see him receive salvation. That will satisfy me.

I don’t like to think about his wasted potential. How different our lives should have been. But if he makes it to heaven, a hundred years from now we won’t be concerned about the things that happened here on earth.

At least he’s starting to acknowledge his mortality. That’s a start.

Give Masonry its Proper Place

My dad’s recovery continues. He fell this week, and he came back from the hospital day before yesterday. I finally got what I consider to be a good night’s sleep last night.

I have been working on his master suite, throwing out crap he has held onto. This is a problem that never stops. He hoarded crap in Miami, and he hoards it now. Wet naps from restaurants. Napkins from restaurants. Receipts from restaurants. Empty water bottles. Toothpicks. You name it.

While I was tossing junk, I came across something disturbing: materials from the Masonic lodge he joined in 1961. A book and a couple of cards.

My dad was never much of a Mason. He probably never gave them a dime or set foot in a lodge after he left Kentucky. Still, I wish he had never joined. Freemasonry is a cult that competes with Christianity, and its ability to draw applicants is based on the belief that it’s okay to cheat non-Masons out of economic opportunities. Reminds me of Islam, which got its start as (and remains) a protection racket. Like a fraternity, the Mason organization is affirmative action for mediocre white men.

I took a quick look at the book. I wondered if I should keep it and learn about Masonry. While I was reading, I saw a laughable passage saying you have to swear you’re not joining for economic advantage. Ridiculous. That’s the only reason for joining. Masons give each other work and blackball everyone else. Look it up. You can be more honest, more skilled, faster, and cheaper and lose work to a Mason, and you will never be told why.

I wonder what happens when a grown frat boy (oxymoron?) Mason has to choose between giving work to a frat brother or another Mason. It must be hard, deciding whom to cheat.

Masons are cowards when it comes to business. They have enough courage to deprive competent people of work they deserve, but they don’t have the guts to admit it. Maybe that’s the worst thing about Masonry (and fraternities): the cowardice. Secret signs. Secret handshakes. Secret sweetheart deals for hacks who do inferior work. Masonry supposedly teaches people how to be morally superior. I guess gutless, clandestine blackballing, and rewarding irresponsibility and incompetence, are signs of good character! Way to go, Masons!

Actually, I think the worst thing about fraternities is the persistence of forced sadistic homosexual rituals for heterosexuals.

I asked God what I should do with this stinking book, and then I threw it out. I happened to have a trash can that contained a misplaced dirty diaper and a mixing bowl one of my pets pooped in, and I could not think of a better place to put the book. That will be where it will rest from now on. Until it disintegrates completely, it will be next to a dirty diaper in a landfill.

It’s appropriate. God likes turning areas used by idolaters into garbage dumps and latrines. Look at the Bible and see.

I didn’t want that filthy book in my home. It’s an insult to God, and insulting God brings consequences. As the Bible says, God is not mocked. Surely honoring God by putting that book in the trash will also have consequences.

You can claim Freemasonry is compatible with Christianity all you want. Any group that makes you partially disrobe and swear loyalty, and which requires you to participate in supernatural rituals, is a problem for Christians. If it’s not obvious to you already, then I can’t explain it to you. Also, Freemasons believe you can only get to heaven through works, and that is the opposite of what God teaches. Hell is full of nice people who rejected Jesus, and heaven is full of thieves and murderers who repented.

There are concentration camp guards in heaven, and some of the people they tormented are in hell. Works don’t get you anywhere.

Corrie Ten Boom told an interesting story. As you should know, she was a Christian woman who was put in concentration camps for hiding Jews. Years after the war, she preached about forgiveness, and a former Nazi she knew from the camps came up to shake her hand. He didn’t know they had already met. He told her he had been a guard, and he asked for her personal forgiveness. She knew she had to accept him, although she didn’t feel like it. When she obeyed, she felt God’s “healing warmth” flow through her. A man like that could never make up for what he did. Not in 10 lifetimes. But God accepted him anyway.

If you need an auxiliary cult to get you through life, you don’t have God’s favor, and something is wrong with your approach to Christianity. It’s that simple. That’s the hard truth.

The Jews used to have synagogues with two altars: one for Yahweh and one for “the Queen of Heaven,” which means the disgusting female false god they worshiped in the Middle East. They also burned their children alive as sacrifices to Molech, in an area which later became a dump. All the while, they called themselves Jews and prayed for God to look after them. Things are no different today. Christians join cults all the time, and they think they’re still Christians.

I feel very good about that book and its resting place with the diaper. I will feel good about it for the rest of my life, when I think about it buried deep inside a reeking landfill. I will feel like it’s an investment I have working for me, just as it was a curse that worked against me when it was in my home.

Life is full of investments. We invest in life and our future dignity, and we invest in death and future humiliation. We even invest when we think we’re not taking sides.

Every drop in the bucket helps. If you have Masonic garbage, astrology materials, yoga equipment, magical crystals, tarot cards, or any other idolatrous paraphernalia in your house, I encourage you to dump it now. Don’t sell it or give it away. Make it unusable. Burn it. You’re going to pick a side whether you want to or not, so try to pick the right one.

Relief Gives Way to New Problems

I appreciate all the helpful comments I received after writing about my dad’s fall.

It looks like he didn’t injure himself seriously. He’s home, and he will be seeing his primary care physician soon for a follow-up.

I am still researching ramps and so on.

I now think a ramp is a bad idea. Ramps are great for wheelchairs, but they aren’t a good solution for people who can still walk. It’s easier to walk up a few steps than it is to shuffle up a 10-foot ramp.

Right now, I’m looking into handrails. If he had handrails, he would be able to use the steps more safely. Also, nice handrails would be an improvement to the house. That’s saying something, because this is some kind of house. It’s very nice.

I have checked into tools for getting him off the ground. I’m very disappointed. The main thing that disappoints me is the price. Companies are selling $300 products for $4000, just because insurance pays for them. Human nature is really something. The other thing that’s disappointing is that they are generally made to lift people off beds. They generally won’t work for people who have fallen.

My initial solution to the problem was an air mattress. You stick it under the patient, which isn’t hard, and you turn it on. It blows itself up, lifting the patient to a convenient sitting height. I can plug it into his car’s AC outlet or a portable generator if he’s outside. I might do it. A good twin mattress would be light and handy.

I had another idea: a tubular A-frame with a manual lever hoist on it. Put it over him and crank the lever. Four pieces of aluminum tubing, a crossmember, a hoist, and a belt. It would work considerably better than a $4000 hoist, and it would be lighter and cheaper.

I believe the hospital made his condition worse. They wouldn’t let him move around. When you’re 86, the last thing you need is to lie in bed for two days. He seems stiff, and he has a harder time standing up. I didn’t see this coming. One more curve ball, courtesy of old age.

He now has trouble getting out of bed. I am hoping that’s temporary. Otherwise, I have to look at assisted living and attendants. There may be a good respite care place near me. That’s temporary assisted living, for people who are injured or ill. If so, that will be plan B, after keeping him here and hiring a part-time attendant.

I got him up, and I am having him walk and do his exercises. Hopefully, that will fix the problem for now.

Whose Side are You On?

It is 8:18 a.m., and I have been up for almost three hours.

A little before 5:30, my phone started ringing. I assumed it was a robocall, but it was from the hospital. My dad is still there, being observed after taking a fall.

When you have an elderly parent in the hospital, and they call you before dawn, certain ideas flow through your head. You know it’s not good news, and you can’t think of anything trivial that might generate a call.

It turned out he was still among the living. They told me he was combative and that he was cursing the staff and refusing to cooperate. Security people were in the room. They asked me to come and deal with him.

I thought it was 3:27 a.m. I had read my clock incorrectly. I wondered how he could possibly be up that early.

I had them put him on the phone, and he told me the people at the hospital were ignorant and that they were refusing to let him get out of bed purely because of ego. He wanted to use the bathroom in his room, and they wanted him to stay in bed.

Needless to say, it was not long before I found myself driving to the hospital.

When I got there, he was in bed with his feet facing the head of the bed. I started asking him what was happening, and he gave me his opinion of the staff again.

What a mess. He didn’t have any interest in hearing about the medical or legal reasons for discouraging him from walking around. He asked me if I was taking their side.

I don’t know what they did. Maybe they were tactless or heavy-handed. In any case, there wasn’t a whole lot of merit to his complaints. When you’re in the hospital, you work with the staff unless they’re completely crazy. You don’t curse at them or get in physical confrontations with them.

They said they had given him some kind of “medication,” which I took to mean he had been given a sedative or tranquilizer.

I worked with both sides, and we helped him use the bathroom and settle himself into a recliner. I turned out the lights and sat with him, and eventually, he slept. Unlike me, he can sleep in a hospital chair. Finally, he asked to be moved back to the bed, and once he seemed to be inclined to sleep, I left to get some breakfast.

I reminded my dad about what happened to his law school friend Joe. He had surgery to fix an abdominal aneurysm, and while he was in the hospital, he insisted on going to the bathroom by himself. He fell, hit his head on the sink, and died. This is what my dad’s nurse wanted to prevent. I don’t think I made an impression on him.

I’m about to go lie down with ear plugs and a sleep mask and see if I can sleep for a couple of hours. I had been looking forward to a full night of sleep, so I was not happy when the phone rang. I left the hospital after 2 a.m. on his first night there, so last night, I figured I was going to make up the deficit.

If you like to fight with people and get your own way, you need to get over it while you’re young. The last thing you want, when you become demented, is to have the habit of pushing people around. It doesn’t work after life takes all the face cards out of your hand. You may be a big shot today, but when you lose the ability to look after yourself, you’ll be just another patient in a gown, and people with very little status or education will be telling you what to do. You’ll also be wrong consistently, so your battles will be a waste of time, serving only to make other people miserable and motivate them to mistreat you.

You may be the boss today, but there is no way you’ll be able to tell people what to do when you get close to 90. You may lose all your clout a lot sooner than that.

If you’re grateful and considerate, health care people and your relatives will treat you better. They’re human. They can only stand so much crap, and they will reward seniors who make their lives easier.

As for hospitals, they are funny places. They are dedicated to improving people’s health, yet they make it impossible for patients to sleep or walk. Isn’t sleep important to health? Of course it is. But if you go to a hospital, you will find that they leave your door open all night, with the light streaming in. People who work there will walk up and down the halls all night, talking loudly and socializing. You’ll start to drift off, and someone in scrubs will yell, “HEY! TINO! WHASSUP?!”

If I ran an institution that gave care to crabby patients, I’d do everything I could to help them sleep. When hospitals keep patients awake at night, the staff pays for it during the day.

Patients need to walk, too. Obvious? But hospitals don’t make much provision for it. They are actually causing health problems by forcing ambulatory patients to lie in bed.

Hospitals are monuments to mankind’s failure. God wanted to take care of us and keep us well, and we didn’t listen. Now instead of divine health, we have things like catheters and staples and amputations.

I found a nice access ramp I can install to keep my dad from falling on the steps again, and I am sorting through ways to help him get on his feet. We might need to look into an electric cart eventually. I wonder if they can be rigged with GPS so he can only go so far.

The physical side of his problems can be addressed fairly well. I can’t do anything about his attitude or his perceptions, and I don’t think he can do anything, either. He could have changed his way of thinking 10 years ago, but now it’s too much to hope for.

If you don’t get along with people, change your ways now, while you can. Eventually, they will have the upper hand almost all the time. You will be at their mercy, and you better know how to make it flow.

I’m off to bed. Let’s see how long I go before the next phone call.