Because Squirrels are too Fast to Club

I had some fun with the John Deere today.

I love being able to type that. I have a John Deere. I’m not in Miami. I hear English every day. Everyone is polite here. Today I took my dad to a barbecue joint, and we were waited on by an attractive young lady who was so nice, it would have been a privilege just to sit at her booth and drink water.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Miami and New York, so I suppose it’s understandable that I would forget that women can be positive factors in one’s life. They really are wonderful when they function correctly.

With all the female prizes I’ve known, when I think of women, my first thoughts are of things like whining, verbal abuse, endless manipulation, constant demands for insincere affirmations of attractiveness, the danger of having one’s house given to a person who will then use it to fornicate with the man she cheated with during one’s marriage, endless alimony, emasculation, bickering, and being seen as an annoying but necessary ATM with feet.

There are women out there who make men’s lives better instead of much, much worse. There really are. I’m pretty sure.

Anyway, I was mowing the yard, and I ran out of diesel. In my brilliance, I thought the best move was to drive toward the workshop (and the diesel can) until I got as close as possible. That turned out to be a poor strategy. It takes quite a while to get the air out of the fuel system when you run one of these things dry. On the up side, I saved myself maybe 9 seconds of arduous walking.

I got the tractor running and put it away, and then I started working on guns. On my cool new workbench.

I have been trying to get outfitted for quality squirrel extermination. I don’t want to wound them and have them sue me later. I want to be able to nail a squirrel reliably anywhere within a hundred feet. It’s not as simple as one would think.

I love scopes. Unfortunately, in order to use one at varying distances with squirrel-level accuracy, you have to know what the bullet does at every range. If you don’t, you can miss a squirrel four feet away. Figuring all this stuff out is surprisingly challenging. Then you have to add in the inherent inaccuracy of the .22 rifle and the small size of a squirrel’s kill zone.

I thought I would try a peep sight on the new Savage A22. A peep sight lies closer to the bullet’s path than a scope, so when shooting up close, it should work nearly perfectly. When shooting at longer distances, it should be nearly as accurate as a scope, with a much easier target acquisition process.

I ordered a peep sight, and then I started thinking about it. I only have two rifles a peep sight will fit: the Savage and a Marlin 60. The Savage is superior in nearly every way, and it has a dynamite Accu-trigger. It seems like it’s the prime candidate for a scope.

The peep sight I bought only works with Weaver and Picatinny mounts, and the Marlin has a dovetail. This means I need to consider a different sight. I can cobble an adaptor together, but it will raise the rear sight too high.

My current plan is to get a Tech-Sight made for the Marlin. This company makes aperture (peep) sight packages. You get the front and rear sight in one box, so you don’t have to buy the rear sight and then try to figure out which front sight you need.

This is where things stand at the moment. I now have a Nikon scope for the Savage, and I’m going to pick up some rings and install it. I already put Weaver bases on the rifle.

If this works out, I’ll have two pretty good options for killing squirrels.

I am still banned eternally at Rimfire Central, and no one ever responded to my requests for information as to the cause. I’m wondering if there is a nut over there moderating. Is it some firearm person I offended during my blogging heyday?

I dealt with some real jewels back then. I remember getting all sorts of flak on a gun forum because I said I, as a lawyer with three years of graduate education, was smart enough to read a firearm statute and understand it. There was no way to make ignorant laymen understand that this was what people paid me hundreds of dollars per hour to do, and that there had to be a reason why they were willing to cough it up.

The guys I argued with thought I was earth’s greatest egotist because I thought I could do my job. They were incensed because I said I could figure out a statute. Imagine what would happen if I told the Florida Bar I couldn’t interpret a statute! “Dear Steve: as a newly suspended attorney…”

It’s kind of astonishing that they thought they knew enough to argue with me. I don’t tell dentists they’re wrong when they tell me about my teeth.

There are a lot of insecure jerks in the firearms world. Guys, wearing tactical pants and owning guns doesn’t make you a superhero, a sniper, a SEAL or…much of anything. Lighten up and get over yourselves. Anyone who can stand in line at Walmart can have a house full of guns.

Could it be the forum poobahs are mad because I said the guy (“Arrowdodger”) who makes KAT triggers for Marlin rifles didn’t respond to my efforts to contact him? If so, they really blew it by banning me, because very few people saw my remarks there, and thousands will see them here, where they are beyond the reach of forum bans and will be on display in perpetuity. I certainly didn’t mean to disparage him or cause him any problems. I admire anyone who comes up with a product like that.

Other people have complained about being unable to reach him, and they haven’t been banned, so I suppose my ban has nothing to do with him.

I will never know. You can’t get closure when communication is impossible.

It doesn’t matter. I can live with the 3000 forums I already belong to, and besides, I can always rejoin from a different IP address. There is no way for them to track me.

I hate to lose a neat username, though.

I’ll try to get out and get scope rings tomorrow. Then comes squirrel Ragnarok. I hope.

Wake up and Smell the Bums

It’s not often a news headline makes me laugh out loud. It happened today. I went to Drudge and saw this: “SCHULTZ OUT AT STARBUCKS.”

Come on, man. What did you think was going to happen? You turned your stores into homeless shelters, and the homeless are not pleasant. They just aren’t.

On TV, every homeless person is a regular guy or gal who woke up one morning with no job and somehow ended up on the street in two or three days in spite of doing everything right. In the real world, nearly all homeless people are addicts, criminals, and/or mentally ill. They are generally unemployable. Many of them are violent and/or disruptive. Also, a large percentage of them smell incredibly bad.

It’s fine to be close to dirty homeless people when you’re doing sidewalk evangelism or social work, but dang, you don’t want them rubbing up against you with that distinctive months-old-feces-and-urine smell city dwellers know so well, while you’re trying to eat.

No one wants to have a relaxing discussion of the differences in the aroma notes of Kona and Ethiopian while sitting in a room where it smells like someone just deep-fried a diaper.

What of nonpaying “guests” who don’t smell or make trouble? Well, ask yourself this: “Do I really want to pay 5 dollars for coffee and then stand while someone who isn’t a customer sits and charges his phone at a socket I need?”

I’m not trying to pick on the homeless. They need ministry and thoughtful charity. They are not to be discarded. But they are what they are, and there are certain places where their presence, with the problems it brings, is intolerable.

In case you live in a dark, deep hole, Starbucks got crucified recently because a store manager called the cops on two young men who wouldn’t spend money and refused to leave. In the real world, this is called “trespassing” and “loitering.” No one can afford to run a business where random people fill seats intended for paying customers. But the men in the story were black, and somehow, our very confused public took up for them.

Starbucks apologized, set up some kind of feel-good charity in their names, and made every employee sit through insulting sensitivity training. Howard Schultz, the chairman of the board, directed managers to allow people to come in and hang out whether or not they spent money.

The big problem with this policy, obviously, is that Schultz could tell employees what to do, but he couldn’t order customers around. He was not able to force his customers to buy extremely overpriced and overrated coffee under the new conditions, and every intelligent person in management realized this.

This is an extension of the fundamental problem with leftism: you can’t force reality to cooperate.

It feels nice to tell people “yes” all the time, but there are consequences. If there weren’t, no one would ever say no. It takes backbone to be a conservative and remind people that some cuddly, fluffy ideas just won’t fly. Everyone can’t have a guaranteed minimum income. Restaurants can’t survive while paying burger flippers $15 per hour. Landlords can’t afford to maintain $10000 rent-controlled apartments that rent for $75. You can’t make hipsters and yuppies drink coffee next to transients and panhandlers.

I have been waiting for the Starbucks pustule to burst. It had to happen. You just can’t run a business like this. Even soup kitchens have to run certain people off.

It’s surprising that Starbucks fired Schultz instead of having him change his policy, but maybe they had lost confidence in him. Or maybe he was too proud to back down.

All over America, freeloaders must be frowning, or at least they will be later in the day when discarded newspapers trickle down to them. I guarantee you, there are thousands of people who were making elaborate plans to move into Starbucks during the daylight hours. Some of them are already ensconced there, like government employees, taking up room and contributing nothing. You know they are. Human nature is always predictable.

Imagine what a visit to Starbucks must be like in New York City right now. Ordinarily, Manhattan bums have to stand outside and glare and scream at you and expose themselves through thick, smell-proof windows as you eat. Now they’re sitting at tables with people, bumming right in their faces.

It would have been funny if Occupy Wall Street had moved into a Starbucks. Maybe they did. Imagine all those faux-liberal investors and bankers, trying to sip lattes surrounded by the Borderline Personality Drum Ensemble.

It’s too bad the policy didn’t get a fair shake, and by “fair shake,” I mean a good chance to turn Starbucks customers off of leftism permanently. After a month or two of Schultz’s Folly, a second Trump term would have been much more likely. Reality would have converted thousands. You know what they say: “A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged.”

It’s too bad we can’t have complete leftism for 6 months, just to make people sick of it. It would be a great experience, but it wouldn’t work, because you can’t get rid of leftism when you’re tired of it. Leftism is authoritarianism, and authoritarianism is ruthless about preserving itself. Gulags, killing fields, tiny free speech areas, university speech codes…they have all sorts of draconian tools to fend off rejection.

Liberty is much easier to get rid of than leftism, because free people can vote their liberty away.

I wonder what kind of details we’ll be hearing in the future. Probably none, unless there are leaks. Schultz is surely getting compensation, which he doesn’t want to endanger, and Starbucks definitely doesn’t want him to sue. Everyone involved will probably clam up. One hopes a Bradley Manning will appear.

The Schultz loitering policy is definitely what got him canned. Count on that. You don’t drop a costly hydrogen bomb of mismanagement on thousands of subordinates and then leave your job shortly thereafter unless there’s a connection. The sudden termination of your long and illustrious career is not an indication that you have happy shareholders.

Look for a quiet redefinition of the policy in weeks to come. It has already started; adjustments appeared while Schultz was still in power. By fall, Starbucks will be doing what it used to do a year ago or five years ago. They’ll run freeloaders off. I very much doubt they’ll make a sudden loud announcement. They don’t want to bring the snowflakes down on their heads.

Life is so crazy these days. I wonder what will happen next.

Marvel’s Grown Trick-or-Treaters Grow Tiresome

I finally watched Black Panther. I wasn’t looking for entertainment. I was doing research. I wanted to see if the same spell that afflicted the people who gave positive reviews to Thor: Ragnarok was at work in the panther fans.

It is, indeed, at work. This is a very long, boring movie full of cartoonish stunts and social justice warrior canards. The writing is very, very weak. The direction is clumsy. The pace is glacial. The premises are idiotic. Nonetheless, people act like this mediocre movie cures AIDS. Not only do they praise it to the skies as entertainment; they seem to think it has the potential to bring success and respect to blacks across the world.

If you are black, and you like watching movie characters blame the non-black world for your problems, you will love Black Panther. If you are on the receiving end of the blame, or if you have black friends who are poisoned by the excuse-making and blame-shifting, you may not like it as much.

I will put in SPOILERS at will, so get ready.

There is an African nation called Wakanda. It is populated by geniuses. They have technology about two centuries ahead of ours. They have always been ahead. Their natural response to their situation has been to sit by and do nothing while most other Africans lead lifestyles that are…typically African. You know what I mean. Starvation. Constant violence. Superstition. Ignorance. Illiteracy (including lacking written forms of many languages). All of these problems are fine with Wakandans, who probably had the Tesla S in 1000 A.D.

Wakanda’s only city is hidden by a big force field. I assume Wonder Woman and her mom have sued them unsuccesfully over this. Wakanda pretends to be a backward African nation (I repeat myself) even though it’s basically Asgard on earth.

Wakanda has a neat local drug. When you take this drug, it makes you super-strong. It gives you incredible speed, too, and it heals you of whatever your physical problems might be. It also makes you trip like crazy. When characters in the movie take it, they go off to the Wakanda afterlife and hang out with their dead ancestors (whom they worship).

This drug is wonderful, so naturally, only the king gets to take it.

Wakandans are far more intelligent than the rest of us, so of course, they have a sophisticated, civilized way of choosing their kings (sorry, no democracy in Marvel’s dictatorship). They have candidates fight to the death with sharp weapons.

Could anything be more insulting to black people? In the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), black geniuses resort to bloody violence to choose their leaders. Even animals are smart enough not to fight to the death, but Marvel’s black savants haven’t caught up with them.

Someone should have had a talk to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the white, Jewish creators of the Black Panther character.

The king, with his drug strength (shades of angel dust) is the Black Panther. Every king is the Black Panther of his time. New kings take the drug, and after some tripping, they begin their reigns.

Some would say it would make more sense for a king to take a drug which makes him smarter, not stronger. Kings don’t need super strength, especially when they are surrounded by technology that does everything for them.

The latest Black Panther tries to catch a one-armed thief with mental issues, and he fails because, well, he is stupid. This results in a successful challenge by a relative who wants Wakanda to rule the world and give all the “colonizers” their comeuppance.

One could say that MCA’s (Marvel Cinematic Africa’s) problems are caused not by “colonizers” but by Wakanda’s long, uncompromising tradition of selfishness.

The challenger beats the movie’s hero (“T’Challa”) fair and square, and the new king sets about sending Wakandan weapons all over the world in order to start his global empire. T’Challa appears dead after the fight, having been speared in the gut and tossed off a thousand-foot-high cliff, but because this happens early in the movie, we are not distressed. We are merely annoyed, knowing he has to come back unless Marvel wants to refund our money.

T’Challa returns (surprise!), and there is a very undignified civil war fought by a total of about 300 combatants aided by trained rhinos in armor (nice technology). He kills the new king, which is technically an assassination, and all is well. He tells the UN Wakanda is going to share its technology, which impresses no one, because Wakanda has always pretended to be a backward dirtheap that absorbs charity dollars and discourages Peace Corps volunteers.

I want to complain about the stunts in the movie, but there are no stunts. Stunts died when CGI was perfected. Instead of stunts, we now have realistic-looking cartoons flipping and flying all over the screen. Whatever they are, they are silly.

One of the problems with living in a world dominated by comic book films is that we live with drama inflation. Every film has to be more sensational than the rest. Bigger crises. More-impressive characters. Crazier “stunts.” Black Panther is no exception. This is the sort of problem entertainment franchises run into when they constantly push for new heights. They end up pushing too hard, and then you end up with Fonzie on water skis beside the shark pen.

In one scene, two women who are helping the king have their car blown up while they’re riding in it. The roof comes off, and one character flips through the air and lands on it, standing. She then surfs down the road on it, toward the enemy.

What can I say? Isn’t this the point where the adults get up and go sit in the lobby? In real life, when your car gets blown up, they find little bits of you here and there, and if you’re lucky, they don’t find one big piece which is still alive.

This is worse than Fonzie jumping the shark. A man on water skis COULD jump over a shark pen, but nobody lands on their feet, uninjured, after having their cars blown up, and nobody surfs down streets on car roofs.

When you watch this movie, you get the feeling that the script was sketched out in 5 or 10 minutes, and that the actual writing took a week or less.

To understand the difference between good comic book movie writing and bad comic book movie writing, consider the first Iron Man film. It was excellent. The main character was a hoot; his jokes could not have been better. He was a blast to watch. On top of that, he had a little complexity. He struggled with guilt over making weapons.

He was also interesting from a personal standpoint. He was an incredible (but not TOO incredible) engineer, and he was a great showman. The plot was intelligent and logical. He invented something powerful, bad people took control of it, and he had to use his skills to regain that control. In the meantime, he developed an engaging relationship with Pepper Potts.

Iron Man made beautiful use of CGI. Instead of creating silly rhinos with armor, Marvel gave us a beautiful flying suit which was enjoyable to watch. The stunts weren’t sensational, but they didn’t have to be, because the writing was so good. When Tony Stark used a tiny missile to blow up a tank, in a very ordinary explosion, it was extremely entertaining. The writers set it up so well, it had to work.

I hate to cite Deadpool, because it’s a filthy movie no one should watch, but again, superior writing. It could not have been handled more skillfully. Logan was also done well. Black Panther isn’t on anything like the same tier.

Why did Black Panther get glowing reviews? It has to be the SJW angle. Critics feel sorry for black people and black filmmakers. Black Panther’s stars and director are black. It’s situated on a black continent. It makes black people look smarter than everyone else. Critics are generally liberal, so they are pumping the film up because they want approval from other leftists.

I wonder if they would rave about a movie where all the best athletes come from Japan.

People seem to think a badly made movie based on a silly comic book is going to help the black race. This is how crazy we’ve gotten. We look to comic book movies to save us.

Wakanda isn’t real. Africa is dirty, violent, poor, and full of ignorance. There is no African technology. Black people, like all other people, cause their own problems. The answers can’t be found in comic books. The real answers haven’t changed, and here they are: develop a strong prayer life, do well in school, be a good worker, and don’t commit crimes, drink too much, or take drugs. You don’t have to trip on a nonexistent African drug, and you definitely don’t have to reject the powerful majority culture. You have to embrace the majority culture and adopt its strengths.

I’m tired of hearing about cultural appropriation. It’s a good thing. It’s good when an American eats Chinese food, and it’s good when Africans live in modern houses and drive cars. Every time a black or Asian man puts on a suit and goes to work in a nice car, it’s cultural appropriation. They are appropriating my white culture, and I am all for it.

Black Panther reinforces people’s excuses, and as God has told me, when you deny an excuse, you take your power back. Excuses lead to weakness and subordination. Black Panther reinforces hostility toward whites, who are the most together people on the planet. Hating white people is a great way to guarantee failure. Our way of doing things works much better than anyone else’s, and we are happy to teach it to others.

It made me sad to see the movie blame whites for Africa’s problems. Here’s a list of the terrible things we brought to Africa:

1. Literacy. There is no possible excuse for going thousands of years and not realizing you should create a written form of your language. Illiteracy guarantees that knowledge will be lost.

2. Medicine. The rest of the world doesn’t import African medical secrets. The flow is exclusively one-way.

3. Electricity. Even in this century, Africans have heated their huts by burning fuel inside them, WITHOUT CHIMNEYS. Can you imagine what the air is like in a home where you burn firewood in the middle of the living room?

4. Pesticide. Think of all the diseases that are spread by mosquitoes.

5. Modern farming techniques. Crops don’t just happen, and primitive farming methods are nothing like as productive as modern ones.

6. Cleanliness. In Africa, it’s still common for people to go blind simply because they don’t wipe the dirt off their faces. Look it up.

Did whites bring slavery to Africa? Not really. Slavery has always been big there, and it still is. Whites simply took advantage of the willingness of Africans to sell each other to white people. There used to be 16 African ports where whites could park their ships and pay Africans for cargoes of black slaves. Look it up.

Did whites bring colonialism to Africa? No. Africans have a long history of infighting and pushing each other around. Whites brought WHITE colonialism, but it’s not like Africans lived side by side in peace before whites showed up.

Sure, white people did all sorts of bad things to Africans, but if we had never visited, Africa would still have been a disaster. It’s good that we don’t have African colonies now, but the end of white rule isn’t giving rise to reform or better lifestyles.

White people didn’t bring evil to Africa. We just did evil things better.

If all western white people were removed from the world this afternoon, things would almost surely be much worse a year from now than they are today. In spite of our enormous faults, we are a positive influence, especially when it comes to spreading the gospel.

Black Panther reinforces the idea that whites are responsible for the world’s ills, and that, naturally, reinforces the idea that whatever evils people choose to do to us are justified and maybe even necessary. I don’t appreciate that. I don’t like it when a movie studio puts a target on my back in order to make money. I haven’t done anything wrong, and I don’t deserve this.

This must be how Jews felt when they started seeing propaganda in prewar Germany.

Thank God the movie has a black antagonist. Things could have been a lot worse. The villain could have been a red-haired billionaire who operates casinos and eats African babies.

It’s funny; telling damaging lies about white people is proof of enlightenment, but making any effort to correct the record is racism.

I’m looking forward to the end of the comic-book-movie era. I’m not sure it’s coming, but I look forward to it. I’m tired of the silliness. I think grown men and women look like idiots in bat and cat costumes. They look like trick or treaters, except they take themselves seriously.

Chadwick Boseman looked like a mental case in his cat ears. It was like something you would expect to see on reruns of Second City TV. John Candy and Martin Short (as Ed Grimley), prowling the streets of Toronto in Danskins and ski masks, thwarting evildoers who steal people’s Labatt Blue and peameal bacon. “Get in the white van, Mr. Panther! We’re taking you to Avengers Headquarters!”

It’s wild to see intelligent blacks pin their hopes on a ludicrous character created by two white Jews who wrote lowbrow fiction for bored children.

The names comic book characters give themselves add to the unintentional humor. The S.H.I.E.L.D. show had a guy named “Deathlok.” What? What does that even mean? It’s like something a six-year-old would come up with. “Deathlok! Mom says to come down from the treehouse and drink your Capri Sun!”

I’m not happy with the idolatry we see in comic book films. Black Panther contained ancestor worship plus a remark glorifying Hanuman, the Hindu antichrist demigod Barack Obama endorses. How likely are we to see positive references to Yahweh/Yeshua, the only real God, in a Marvel movie? Not very. Kids should not be exposed to idolatry in films (or anywhere).

Black Panther is a sick, badly made film. It’s too bad it has done so well.

I am Retiring the Ottoman

FedEx has done me dirty. They delivered my electronics bench two days early.

Yesterday one or more of my army of gadgets told me the bench had been delivered. I went outside with all the enthusiasm of Navin Johnson picking up the new phone book.

I saw nothing.

FedEx has my gate code. When you live in the sticks, and you have an electric gate to keep pilgrims out, you have to give your code to a few organizations unless you like seeing your packages sitting in the rain. Every so often, a lazy driver decides punching the code in is just too much work.

Eventually I discovered a large box beside the gate, a long way from the house. Great.

The weather has been very bad here lately. Rain, rain, rain. The serious rain is over (for now…I keep telling myself), but the ground is wet, so when the sun comes out, steam fills the air. Nasty. I drove our SUV to the gate, put 100-pound-plus box in the back, and dumped it in the garage. Then I took everything out of it and moved the parts upstairs. By the end of the process, I was wet with sweat, and I felt like I had marched across the Everglades.

Is this enough whining? I’m not sure. I can always add more later.

The thing to focus on is that I got my bench early.

This bench is possibly the greatest product ever made for any purpose. It’s Chinese, so I guess that’s a bad thing. They can make fantastic stuff when they want to. Is America trying to compete in the $240-workbench market? I’ll bet we’re not.

The bench top is wood. No, not “pressed wood” or “flaked wood” or “former wood now best described as cardboard.” It’s actual wood. It’s not just wood. It’s some kind of hardwood, like maple. It’s glued together from small pieces, but so are bowling lanes, so no problem there. I would say the top alone weighs 80 pounds. It’s magnificent.

The frame is sturdy steel with some kind of super-duper coating on it. I don’t know if it’s a powder coat or some kind of fancy paint, but it’s flawless. The frame is full of threaded lags for screws, and every part has a label on it saying what it is and how to orient it.

You follow the clearly written non-Chinglish instructions, screwing one part to another with the provided screws and bolts. You use the nice screwdriver and the functional sheet metal wrench they supply, and if you lose a fastener, you open the little bag that contains spares.

When you’re done, you have a bench that holds 750 pounds. It has a steel pegboard on top, with a number of included hangers. It has an LED (not fluorescent) fixture over it, and it also has a power strip and a big drawer with steel partitions you can move.

Dude.

This is too much. Chinese products should not be this good.

I only dinged the top once during assembly. I wish I hadn’t, but this thing will continue to receive dings if I use it, so I’ll have to get over it. It’s a shame they made it so perfect. The initial perfection made the ding hurt.

There are ways to raise dents out of wood. I may try one.

I have the bench set up in the corner of my androgen-therapy chamber, i.e. my upstairs bonus room. I will permit you to look at a photo. For a fee, you may drop by briefly and touch it.

No. I take that back.

The company that makes these things is called Seville Classics. I’m glad I found out about them. They make other shop stuff, and it’s probably just as good as this bench.

The news for America isn’t all bad. This bench would be useless for woodworking. But then it’s not a woodworking bench. I should keep quiet. They’ll probably design one next week and put it on Amazon.

Now I need a chair. I was going to use my dad’s old ergonomic office throne, but it’s too low. This gives me a fresh puzzle to solve.

A long time ago, I bought a Craftsman shop stool with a padded back rest. This is a Chinese item probably NOT made by Seville Classics. A thousand retailers sell pretty much the same stool, with various logos on it. Mine is pretty bad. I’ve had to re-weld the backrest supports twice, and I feel like twice is enough. I don’t want to buy a new one that has the same weakness. When I look for a new stool, I keep running into the Craftsman stool other different names on it.

It’s surprisingly hard to find a nice padded work stool. I guess people want hard, uncomfortable seats that last longer. Forget that. I want comfort. I want a cupholder and built-in shiatsu machine if I can get them. If my comfy chair breaks, I’ll buy a new one and send the old one to a landfill. It’s the American way.

Seville Classics makes a padded stool which is probably nothing short of divine, but it has no backrest. Chinese workers don’t need backrests like soft Americans.

I’m thinking of getting a drafting stool. This is basically a tall office chair with a thing to put your feet on. They come with casters, which may not work well on carpet. Some clever person invented steel glides that fit in caster sockets, so if I hate the casters, I have another option.

The danger is that once I get the chair, I will do nothing but sit in the chair with a beer in my hand, thinking about how wonderful life is until they come to put me in a home.

Maybe I could put stilts on the recliner…

I also need a little tool storage. I am determined to be serious about the “little” part. I’m not going to splurge for a bulky rolling tool cart. I’m not. I’m not.

I’m not.

I think I’m not.

Maybe it will fit.

Note to self: stop.

An Israeli (!) company named Keter makes a little plastic cart with drawers. It’s way cheaper than steel, and it’s probably a lot tougher than cheap steel rolling chests. Most steel rolling chests are made of a material I would describe as foil. Harbor Freight makes surprisingly sturdy steel tool chests, but there is also a lot of junk out there.

Seville Classics makes a neat rolling cabinet with drawers.

That just slipped out.

I have to get more pegboard hangers and figure them out. I didn’t expect pegboard to be confusing, but it is. Tools don’t seem to fit the supplied hangers.

Because the quality of the hangers is good, I have to be careful what I buy. I know what will happen if I don’t watch it. I’ll have 30 very nice Seville Classic hangers and 50 Amazon hangers made from paper clip wire.

If you want a prefab bench that will last for eternity and not cost a thousand dollars, this one is tough to beat. I recommend it highly.

Put the Skee-Ball Machine Down by the Stuffed Moose, Boys

I am working on my lofty sanctuary.

The new (still new to me) house has a big upstairs room where I hang out, and I am getting it ready for more effective use. This room has to be my office, music room, TV room, gymnasium, and upstairs workshop.

It doesn’t have to be, exactly. I have spare bedrooms. But using this room for multiple functions seems like the way to go.

I’ve had my recliner, couch, and entertainment system up here for a long time, along with the exercise equipment, some musical things, and the computer. But I haven’t done much to organize it or add a tool area. Last week I moved all the furniture, got rid of some things, and started adding tools. I even vacuumed.

As noted in an earlier post, I have a prefab workbench on the way. Sneer if you want. It would cost me something like $150 to cobble something together from two-by-fours, and it would be a big pain in the butt. I will end up putting about $250 in the prefab bench, and it should be up and running an hour after UPS drops it off.

The bench won’t be here for three more days. I’m using a folding table in the interim. Once the bench is here, I plan to use it for electronic instruments and whatever else shouldn’t be on the bench itself.

I’ll show you what I’ve done so far, and you will have to accept it and continue functioning if I go over things I mentioned last week.

I’ve been picking up tools. I’m not trying to have a complete shop up here. That would be redundant. I’m trying to assemble enough tools to prevent me from having to go up and down the stairs 300 times whenever I have something to do on the second floor. Also, it will be nice to have a bench within view of the big TV/monitor. These days, you have to be a fool not to use the Internet when you work on things.

I’m not trying to locate the finest tools on earth. I just want things that will work well and not fall apart. If something fails, I can always go to the main shop and get something better.

The bench itself will be Chinese, of course. It will have a light fixture, pegboard and hooks, a big drawer, a solid wood top, and a power strip.

I got myself a Tekton socket set. It was pretty cheap, and it’s Taiwanese. It will cover the vast majority of jobs I need to handle up here. Looks very nice.

I needed screwdrivers, so I got the blue Felo set in the photo. Seven drivers which will turn most screws. I also have a cheap set of Grace gunsmithing screwdrivers, and I think I’m going to leave my old Wiha precision drivers up here and get new ones for the main shop.

No intelligent person turns screws manually when he has a choice, so I have a DeWalt gyroscopic screwdriver.

I love the Ridgid Jobmax. Make fun if you want, but if you’ve tried one, you know how handy they are for little jobs that involve multiple power tools. They saw. They sand. They turn fasteners. They drill. I had a cordless Jobmax plus one with a cord. I am replacing the cordless one the main shop with an 18-volt version with more grunt, and I’m moving the old cordless up here. I got a few new tool heads because…stairs.

A long time ago, before I realized my dad was becoming demented, I bought him a 12-volt Panasonic drill and impact driver set. The set was cheaper than the driver all by itself. Go figure. The drill is small, but it will work fine for most of what I’ll do here. The driver is very nice indeed. It can’t match my corded Makita, but it’s a very serious tool. This set has crappy non-lithium batteries, but my dad has never used it, so they ought to give me a year or two of good use.

I got me a set of Bondhus ball-end hex wrenches for a pretty good price. There is no excuse for skimping on quality when the best costs $18 and garbage costs $14.

I splurged on Klein side-cutting pliers. Very expensive for little pliers, but people love them, and I was feeling whimsical.

I have a set of Gearwrench metric and standard box wrenches on the way. I thought I could use some tools we already had, but I was wrong. A long time ago, I bought a set of Craftsman sockets and wrenches for my dad’s boat, and I wanted to use them up here. When I opened the box, I saw that some of the items had walked away. People who work on boats are very dishonest, which is unfortunate, because the vast majority are also incompetent.

Individual Craftsman sockets and wrenches cost a lot to replace, even when entire sets are cheap. I looked at replacements and decided I was better off getting the Gearwrenches. The quality is better, and the price is very good.

I also found a great price on a set of Craftsman metric and standard ignition wrenches. These things are very handy.

I will probably get some kind of bench block. I’m not sure what to do about workholding. My feeling is that if a job requires me to use a vise, I should probably take it to the main shop.

I’ll be putting my Ersa soldering station here. It’s too nice for the garage. I can move my old Weller out there.

The lamp is the one from my electronics station back in Miami. I’ve been using it as a living room lamp. I’m going to get a floor lamp from Home Depot to light the room. I have articulated magnifier lamps I’m not using, and I will probably put one on the bench and put the one in the photo elsewhere.

I don’t know what to do about seating. The bench is taller than the table (which can be raised). I have a very, very, VERY expensive ($1400) ergonomic office chair my dad doesn’t use any more. If I can raise it high enough, I’ll make it my tool chair. If not, I’ll have to think.

I’m sorely tempted to move my CNC lathe up here. I have the wall space for it. Hobby CNC is a computer-intensive game, and it would be nice to do it near the main PC and the fridge.

When all is said and done, I will live in obscene luxury up here. I will be able to watch my favorite Youtube tool gurus from my workbench in total comfort. Guys I went to high school with are probably fussing over the color schemes for their new Lear jets, but to me, a couch, a recliner, and a nice workbench equal extreme self-indulgence.

If I were married, my wife would be reading over my shoulder and working on the necessary papers to put me in a mental home. When you’re a single man, putting a CNC lathe in your den is not a problem. I could put a mechanical bull in here if I felt like it.

I have started to think the machine tools (the big ones) should be in the garage, not the main shop. Space in the main shop is not as generous as I had hoped (at least the way I have things arranged now), and the temperature in the garage is usually more comfortable. Also, it’s nice to have space between your machine tools and the things that throw sawdust.

I need to make a firm decision and get a quote from an electrician.

In any case, I am living the dream. I know you want to be me, especially if you live in a house full of throw pillows, cats that aren’t stuffed, potpourri, and Hummel figurines.

I’m going to go over to the table and smell the tools now. Don’t wait up.

Surprising News from Gaza

Here’s a video to brighten your day.

The Messianic ministry One for Israel teaches about Jesus in Israel. When you watch their videos, you will usually see Jewish men teaching. Nonetheless, they reach out to Arabs, too. They produce videos in Arabic, and some of the people who testify in their conversion videos are Arabs.

They say they have gotten a great response in Gaza, a place known for irrational hatred of Jews and Christians. How about that?

People ask why there can’t be peace in the Middle East. The reason is that Arabs and Jews reject Jesus. He is the only source of unity in the universe. When people from groups that battle each other over religion come to worship the same God, with the same doctrine, in the same houses of worship, they become brothers. It happens here in the United States. Go to a charismatic church, and you will probably see a mixture of races.

The video I’m embedding is a short report on the successes of One for Israel’s ministry.

Peace isn’t coming to the Middle East. Things are going to get worse, because most people there will continue to reject Jesus and the Holy Spirit. But there is no reason why thousands or millions can’t be drawn aside, made parts of the same family, and removed from the conflict.

I Have a Taste for Edgy TV

I want to brag about a great achievement. I have recorded and watched nearly every episode of Forged in Fire.

When I first saw promos for the show, I thought it was stupid. I didn’t trust reality TV game show contestants to know anything about making knives, and I figured the whole thing was BS. I am not sure my opinion has changed, but nonetheless, I got suckered in.

Here is how Forged in Fire works. Four oddly-dressed guys with strange social quirks arrive in a room full of forging equipment. Two guys just like them, plus a very unusual martial arts expert, sit at a table to judge them. A man who used to be an Army Ranger or something stands by the table and plays emcee. The contestants get three hours to make blades out of weird materials. Then one contestant gets tossed. Then they get three more hours to finish their knives. Then one more gets tossed. Then the remaining two are sent home for five days, during which time they produce blades to be entered in a final competition.

They don’t tell you the show takes two days to film. After the contestants make their knives, the people who run the show temper them, and the contestants return the next day. In the interim, the contestants are sequestered in the Hallowed Hall of the Bladesmiths’ Guild, or as you and I call it, “La Quinta.”

The winner gets a life-changing check for $10,000. It’s kind of funny watching the emcee say, “TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS,” like he’s telling them they won at Powerball. It’s a real Dr. Evil moment. “I’ll destroy the world unless you give me TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS, plus some frickin’ sharks with frickin’ lasers on their heads.”

There are only three guys who are there every single time. The first is David Baker. He made swords for the Highlander shows. He has a goatee. He will remind you of the old guy who played the Wizard of Oz. He wears a very tight vest with a tie. Makes me uncomfortable to watch him.

The second permanent fixture is Wil Willis. This is the Army guy. He has thick, kinky hair which is different in every episode. You never know what it will be. Man bun. Pony tail. It’s like he, or his hair, is searching for something.

The third fixture is Doug Marcaida, a Filipino who teaches an art called kali. I know nothing about it, and neither do you, which means it’s probably not a great martial art. Knives figure prominently. Martial artists agree: an art which allows you to carry a bunch of knives is more effective than all the ones that don’t.

Marcaida is great because he tests the weapons to see if they will kill. The show buys very expensive see-through ballistics dummies made of gelatin. They have plastic bones and guts, and they’re full of colored fluids to simulate blood. Marcaida lunges at them and does all sorts of gross things to them. Then he sticks his fingers in the wounds and makes them spurt. If he likes a blade, he sort of bows his head and says, “Your weapon…will KILL.” This is the highlight of the show.

The “kill” and “weapon” stuff is contrived. The show’s creators are behind it. Most knife makers pay the bills with things like chef knives, but no audience wants to see a show where people compete to make kitchen equipment. No one wants to hear Doug Marcaida say, “Your weapon…will SPATCHCOCK.”

The contestants make knives in what is possibly the worst way known to man. They take steel that rusts, heat it up, and pound it with hammers. This was great technology in 300 B.C., but now we have magnificent stainless steels and electric grinders. If you actually want to make a good knife, you buy stainless, grind it into shape, and send it off to be heat-treated.

Forging knives on an anvil is very cool, but the results are hard to predict, and you end up with a rust-prone knife which is inferior to modern knives in every possible way, including cost of production. It may have hidden faults that will make it snap when you put pressure on it. The edge may have soft spots. The steel may have a coarse grain that makes it weak. Still, a home-forged knife looks pretty neat when you put on your kilt or viking horns or whatever and prance off to frolic with your interesting buddies at the nearest medieval reenactment festival.

“Toss me a Pabst, ye varlets, and check out my new panzerstecher.”

Unless you know what you’re doing, using a forge to make a knife is an iffy business under the best circumstances, but when you get just three hours to do it in a TV studio with no air conditioning or fans, and you have to make the knife from an old tricycle or a frying pan, it’s even riskier. The creators of the show love to give the contestants total garbage to work with, and often, the results are about what you would expect. The amazing thing is that many of the smiths manage to make beautiful knives that actually work.

Blind hogs and acorns, I guess.

Many of the contestants are certified “master smiths,” accredited by an organization known as the ABS. The BS part may be dominant. Over and over, men who say they are master smiths make awful knives on the show, and sometimes you’ll see them get thrashed by kids just out of high school.

I could start an organization tomorrow and call it the International Guild of Expert Knife Dudes. No one could stop me. I could certify people left and right, in exchange for beers. I kind of wonder if this is how the ABS works. Except they probably ask for mead.

If you’re a master at anything, you don’t screw up royally, even on TV. Take a master cooper, hundreds of years ago. A guy like that couldn’t survive if 30% of his barrels leaked. Full-time, serious craftsmen know their stuff. They learn from repetition. I seriously doubt that a man who spends an hour a week using a propane forge in his lawnmower shed is a real master.

If you want to win on Forged in Fire, I can tell you how. The contestants always do the same dumb things. They don’t get beaten; they lose. All you need to do is avoid their mistakes.

1. Do NOT try to impress the judges with a fancy blade with unnecessary Damascus, a fuller, finger rings, USB ports, or anything else that isn’t required. You will fail. You have three hours to do a day’s work, so cut the crap and make something that functions. Let the guy with the Viking-rune face tattoos do the overreaching.

2. Do NOT take the judges seriously when they tell you to incorporate a useless type of steel in your blade. If they say you have to use a Slinky in your knife, weld one quarter of an inch of Slinky to the end of the handle and let it go. Do NOT incorporate huge amounts of Slinky in your blade or try to harden Slinky steel. It will fail, and it will not walk downstairs by itself, either.

3. Do NOT try anything new. Are you kidding? This never works. As a cook, I learned something a long time ago: when you’re cooking for guests, you don’t experiment. Cook your dishes exactly the same way you cook them every week, or you will be disgrace yourself. Same thing goes for making knives. If the camera catches you saying, “I’ve never tried this before, but…”, you WILL be sent home after the first round.

4. Do NOT wear a leather hat, a leather vest, leather pants, a leather apron, musketeer boots, and your favorite long-sleeved wool tunic. Do NOT dress in your favorite impractical nerd costume, even though all your pals down at the D&D club are watching. Contestants say it gets to over 100 degrees in the studio, and heat exhaustion will get you even if you’re wearing all your mystical Asatruar amulets and praying to Wodin. Not even boots of escaping can save you from the laws of physics. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people collapsed on chairs while the show’s EMT’s try to get them to drink fluids. If you’re wearing a hat indoors while working over a forge, people already know you’re bald, so go ahead, take it off, and release some heat.

5. MICARTA! MICARTA! MICARTA! How many times do I have to say it? NEVER make a handle from something brittle like antler, bone, “stabilized” pine cone, wood, kirinite, or ANYTHING THAT BREAKS. Micarta is essentially fiberglass made with cloth. It is nearly impossible to break. USE IT.

6. MEASURE YOUR BLADE. The hosts always tell people how long to make their blades. Then people show up with blades that aren’t even close. How are you a master smith if you can’t work a ruler?

7. Do NOT wait until two minutes before the time is up to heat and quench your blade. Your blade will warp. Your blade will fail to harden. Something bad will happen. Give yourself time to fix whatever goes wrong.

8. When you’re making your blade at home, PUT THE QUENCH TANK OUTDOORS. Do NOT start an oil fire inside a building where you keep $100,000 worth of tools. Obvious?

Forged in Fire is a lot like life. Avoiding obvious mistakes will get you far. If you don’t smoke, drink, use drugs, or stuff yourself, you will probably make it to 70 in good health. If you don’t make the classic Forged in Fire mistakes, you are almost certain to make it to the last round.

I don’t know if it’s smart for a knife maker to appear on Forged in Fire. When you make blades in private, no one sees your mistakes. If you make a bad blade and it breaks, you can replace it quietly. If you screw up on Forged in Fire, people will think you always screw up, and there goes your already-struggling business. One contestant complained about his business tanking after his loss.

There’s a Youtube guy who makes neat videos on knife forging. He comes across as a person of gravitas; a guru. He seems totally self-possessed, and besides, he makes Japanese-style blades, which adds a level of smugness. I don’t know why people are so convinced the Japanese are the master race. They make nice cars, but they have nearly every Western vice, plus dental problems and racism.

This guy appeared on Forged in Fire and made a blade that snapped in the first round. He says it was because the studio lights were so bright he couldn’t tell how hot the knife was when he quenched it. Probably true, but if you’re going to spend $300 on a dubious handmade knife, is this the guy you’ll choose?

Some of the contestants really are masters. They plod along quietly and do everything right. They produce works of art, even in the early rounds. Tellingly, they rarely require breaks or oxygen masks. They do very impressive work without struggling or fretting, which is what you should expect from masters.

I remember a guy named Burt. He has a gorgeous workshop. He makes flawless knives. He even makes them for his wife. Their kitchen is full of them. His work is on a level way beyond the stuff most other contestants make. When he works, nothing goes wrong, because he knows his job. That’s what “master” means. Once you’ve seen a guy like Burt at work, it’s hard to be impressed by someone who dresses like Robin Hood and makes blades with cracks in them.

I love the tools some of the contestants have at home. I admit, some work in the dirt, using modified hibachis or whatever. On the other hand, some have huge shops with giant power hammers and machine tools. The quality of the tools and the quality of the work aren’t always related, however.

The Forged in Fire people have a new show: Knife or Die. It’s hard to discuss, because I don’t want to ridicule anyone. Any person with a desire to compete can show up with a big knife, and they will turn you loose on an obstacle course of things to cut. The first episode featured a Caucasian man wearing an Aikido costume and running shoes. I am serious. He carried a katana or “samurai sword,” even though aikido guys aren’t taught how to fight with swords. He hit a block of ice with it, and it bent in the middle.

That was a major blow to the Japan cult. Katanas are supposed to cut concrete blocks! At least that’s what they say in the Tokyo airport gift shop.

Why does aikido attract troubled people with unrealistic expectations? A high school friend of mine took up aikido. The Internet says he runs a dojo now. He gave his life to aikido. Unfortunately, aikido has a serious problem: it doesn’t work at all. Sure, you can twist people’s wrists and immobilize them if they are stupid enough to give you their hands, but everyone who has tried aikido in the ring has had his behind handed to him in individually wrapped slices. I can’t understand devoting your life to a martial art which can be defeated easily by 95% of angry untrained drunks. Would you open a store that only sold appliances that didn’t work?

Here are the words that start every single aikido demonstration: “Give me your hand.”

People are enchanted by Japan. They think the Japanese have deep wisdom we lack. They do, and here it is: do your job well and treat your elders and your boss with respect. That’s about it; the rest is hocus pocus. There are no Japanese superpowers. There is no chi. Steven Seagal has never once used magical Japanese aikido to fight a real fight because he knows he would experience humiliating losses.

Forged in Fire has its funny moments, but Knife of Die is a little too ridiculous to lampoon. It’s almost sad. It’s probably dangerous, too. Untrained eccentrics swinging razor-sharp knives of unknown quality in a timed test are a recipe for deep wounds and severe blood loss. I would hate to be in the studio when half of a knife goes flying off at 60 miles per hour.

They hired Goldberg, a former professional wrestler, to do commentary. Thank God. A TV wrestler! That will give the show a little dignity.

It’s a fun watch, but not nearly as entertaining as the original.

Now you know how to win on Forged in Fire. If you compete, I will expect a check for $5,000.00. You better cough it up, because if you don’t, I have my aikido costume and running shoes hanging in the closet.

No Rehab for Conservatives

I am out of control today. I’m blogging AGAIN.

I feel like airing my important thoughts regarding the Roseanne Barr kerfuffle.

As background, I should note that Barr is unstable. This is not news. She has claimed to have 7 personalities, none of them all that alluring. If Tom Arnold is to be believed, she made a pretty terrifying wife. She has a history of offending people deliberately. She posed for a photo for a Jewish magazine, dressed as Hitler and baking cookies that looked like people with big noses.

She is Jewish herself. I guess she thought it was okay.

ABC hired her to do a reboot of her sitcom, knowing exactly who they were dealing with.

Barr just released a pretty nasty tweet. She compared Obama crony Valerie Jarrett to a baby resulting from the coupling of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Planet of the Apes. People are saying this was a racist remark. It is not undeniably racist, but I would put the odds at 80%. Jarrett is black, and Barr essentially said she looked like an ape.

Barr claims she thought Jarrett was white, which would make the remark harsh but not racist. Is that credible? Could be true, I suppose. Jarrett is light-skinned and has mostly Caucasian features. But she’s not THAT light-skinned. Best guess: Barr knew she was black.

I’m guessing. Everyone in Hollywood is certain.

ABC had a hit on its hands with the new show, and it seemed like many conservatives were happy about it. Not me. I am not sure how to get network TV on my pathetic DirecTV system. I don’t know which channels to look for. That tells you how much I care about network TV. I don’t think much about it, and if I did, I wouldn’t think a controversial sitcom controlled by a formerly liberal crank, which appears to endorse cultivating sexual perversion in troubled children, was good for conservatism.

Remember Milo Snuffelopoulos or whatever his name was? He was gay, and he was conservative. So exciting. We had our own gay! We owned one! It proved we weren’t homophobic. I guess. Anyway, to me, he was in the same category as Arnold Schwarzenegger: a so-called conservative who would one day bring us shame. I was right about that. I figured Barr was the new Milo.

Milo was very obnoxious, and his sexual morals were beyond the pale. People supported him anyway, just like they support Ann Coulter and Ted Nugent.

Is it okay to reject Milo and support Trump, who is an adulterer and a loose cannon? Yes. The reason is mathematical.

If I had to choose between Milo and Hillary, I would pick Milo. I might even pick Barr over Hillary. In a presidential election, you only have two real options, and you do your best. The realm of punditry is different. There is an inexhaustible supply of political noisemakers out there. None are indispensable.

Barr’s cleverly named Roseanne character is or was a Trump supporter. I am not sure why, because I haven’t seen the show. I thought the old show was the network equivalent of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman with a few twists, so I wasn’t interested. Anyway, Barr herself has clearly become conservative. Like Dennis Miller and other celebrities who have wrestled with the inner conservative voice and the conflicting desire to be liked by the cool kids, she has been moving to the right with time, and she, when not in character, says positive things about Trump.

This left ABC with heartburn. One the one side…money, money money! Mammon was pleased with his minions! On the other…intolerable show that doesn’t excoriate conservatives. The networks really hate wasting an opportunity to lie about us and bash us. Making us seem human seems dangerous to them. They canceled Tim Allen’s show even though it was a hit, and he didn’t even tweet beforehand. He was minding his own business.

Roseanne’s show was canned like one day after her tweet. By canceling the show, ABC succeeded in severely damaging the livelihoods of not one but a whole slew of political extremists. I am referring to Barr and the dozens of far-left liberals who also worked on the show. To ABC, wrecking a whole bunch of liberal lives was okay as long as Barr got it in the neck, too.

It reminds me of the way people responded to Trump’s truthful statements about Mexico. He lost contracts that involved goods made in Mexico. Trump stayed rich. Lots of Mexicans lost their jobs.
Okay. It’s not my job to advise other people on the best way to be petty and vengeful.

Barr is now criticizing her castmates, who have made it clear, in tweets, that they have no idea who this “Roseanne” person is or that they were working with her. I exaggerate. But they are using words like “abhorrent.” Barr is calling them out for their disloyalty.

At first, I thought Barr needed to knock it off. But now I think she has a point. She did a lot for these people. No one wants to see a Sarah Gilbert sitcom. Barr was the whole reason for the reboot. Even John Goodman couldn’t have done it. The people whose careers she boosted ought to think a little bit before stomping on her corpse.

Barr is not right, mentally. We all know that. Why not show a little patience, especially if you’re her “friend” and you’re getting rich off of her talent? She says she was out of her mind on Ambien. Is that true? Maybe it matters. What if it’s not true? What if Barr was just driven by her psychological problems? Mental illness isn’t something you can expect people to shut down at will.

How about this: instead of piling on her without hesitation, you suggest she confront what she did in an interview? What about having her talk to a therapist? Maybe this could be a helpful moment for mentally ill people everywhere. Maybe dozens of jobs and the welfare of a disturbed person are more important than an opportunity to grandstand.

“Disturbed” appears to be the right word for Barr. That is her reputation. Everyone in the cast was happy to let a disturbed woman be put in harness for their benefit. Now they’ve turned on her, in the space of one day, because she did what disturbed people should be expected to do.

A double standard has also been mentioned. I think that’s a credible point. Vile things leftist celebrities say generally go unpunished, much like the flagrant felony leftist David Gregory committed when he held up an illegal gun magazine on national TV.

I don’t care if the show survives or not. I will never watch it. I don’t think Barr is someone conservatives should get behind, either. I never have. I don’t think she’s a good person, and she is completely unreliable. But it’s revealing when the people of the loving, patient, tolerable left pounce on someone with a long history of serious psychological problems without even discussing the possibility that understanding is called for.

What would have happened had Barr tweeted something awful about Christians or conservatives? Nothing or nearly nothing.

I’m not happy with the atmosphere of anti-conservative hatred that forces us to meet higher or even impossible standards. It’s inevitable, though, so there is no point in getting wound up.

More

Roseanne Barr cited Ambien (a sleep drug popular with date rapists) as a factor in her strange, catastrophic tweet. Unbelievably, the makers of that drug decided to post a juvenile response. Nice way for a pharmaceutical company to treat a patient!

Here is the text of their tweet:

People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication

Whether Barr is right or wrong, it is childish and unwise for a drug manufacturer to go after a patient. Amazing. And besides, are they right?

Here’s a list of known Ambien side effects (to which Sanofi probably should not have drawn attention): “mental/mood/behavior changes (such as new or worsening depression, abnormal thoughts, thoughts of suicide, hallucinations, confusion, agitation, aggressive behavior, or anxiety).”

Hmm. “Abnormal thoughts.” “Aggressive behavior.” Those could fit.

I don’t need Ambien, but if I did, my new knowledge of the things it can do to ruin your life would discourage me from trying it.

Is it addictive? Might as well check, while we’re all raising awareness. Here is what Wikipedia says:

Abrupt withdrawal may cause delirium, seizures, or other severe effects, especially if used for prolonged periods and at high dosages.

I call that addiction. If you can’t stop taking it without seizures, your body needs it.

It sounds like it’s pretty good stuff, if you only take it once, you don’t kill yourself, you don’t hallucinate, you don’t become aggressive, you don’t have abnormal thoughts, and you don’t sleepwalk and fall down the stairs (another claimed side effect).

I can’t even guess whether Ambien causes people to say nasty things, but it appears to be within the realm of possibility, and even if it’s not, the manufacturer should not have stooped to the level of Twitter trolling.

Thinking up Mischief for Vermin

I should quit writing, but I have unexpected freedom, so I am suffering from “runaway slave” syndrome. I thought I had to take my dad to the dentist to get a crown fixed, and it turned out he wasn’t due for two weeks, so I am reveling in the unexpected gift of time.

I am trying to find a way to put a peep sight on my new Savage A22 .22 rifle.

When I do things like this, I completely understand why people buy the Ruger 10/22. It’s not the greatest .22, but there are a trillion aftermarket parts for it. Scope bases, peep sights, trigger kits, stocks…you name it; it’s out there. The A22 is like the Marlin 60. No one cares about customizing it, so products are few.

I shouldn’t compare the Savage to the Marlin, because the Savage is three times the gun. I took the stock off mine last night to get it ready to shoot, and I saw why it weighs more than the Marlin. There’s a real gun in there! No pot metal plates held together by pins. Just lots of machined steel. In comparison, the Marlin is a toy. It’s like comparing a $700 Home Depot John Deere mower to the old diesel job (original price $9800) I bought for the farm.

I can’t find a peep sight made for the A22, but it has tapped holes on the receiver for a scope base. That means I can put a Picatinny rail or Weaver bases on it. Once I get that done, I can attach a peep sight made to fit the rail or bases.

Believe it or not, Williams, the big name in peep sights, doesn’t make a Picatinny or Weaver sight. They make one that fits a crappy .22 dovetail.

After much searching, I located a UTG air rifle peep sight that fits a rail. A Williams sight runs over $75. The UTG is about $16. I’m sure it’s less fancy, without click adjustments and so on, but it will be just as accurate when adjusted correctly. I found Weaver bases for about $7 a pair.

I can slap this stuff on the gun and see if it works. I might have to get a new front sight. I’ve located those already. Williams makes them in various heights. I think I should get the rear sight, use it with the existing front sight, and see whether I need to go higher or lower.

I wonder if I could cut a Weaver base down to look like a .22 dovetail. That would allow me to use the Williams dovetail sight.

There are a lot of peep sights out there for AR rifles. I don’t think I’ll ever be an AR fan. AR peep sights are way high, so they’re far from the line of fire. I think that has to cause issues when you fire at varying distances. I don’t want to use a tall AR sight on the A22. As it is, the Weaver base will jack things up a quarter of an inch or so.

I wish the weather would clear up so I could shoot. I have a good feeling about this gun.

Kill the Meddling

Lately I’ve had a lot of meaningless dreams. I used to have dreams that came from God, but for a few months, I’ve been waking up after dreams that didn’t seem to mean anything. I have asked God if there was any point in exploring the dreams, and the answer was negative.

Today I had a dream that obviously came from God.

I was a steward on an airplane. It was a small commuter jet. I was standing at the front, doing whatever stewards do as people board. A coarse little man who was losing his hair boarded, and he reached down and put a package in my sock, without permission.

Picture Ben Gazzara, with greying hair, about five feet four inches tall. He was stocky. He wore shorts and a tacky golf shirt with horizontal stripes. He looked like a retiree fresh from the grandstand at Hialeah. He should have had a Racing Form in his hand.

The package was rectangular. It was a few small items wrapped carelessly in plastic wrap. Judging by the outline, one of the items was an ampule of morphine. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Deep, you know what a morphine ampule is. It’s a tiny glass bottle, welded shut at the top.

I reached into my sock immediately and took the package out, and I told the pilot what was happening.

The pilot was a young man with blond hair. He would have been around 25. He had hair with tight waves, and it looked like it hadn’t been long since he got out of the shower and combed it. His hair was damp with something that was probably oil. He was thin. He was around six feet tall. I would describe him as a pretty boy. Not someone you would be afraid to fight.

The pilot was not all that helpful. He was earnest and so on. He wanted to do a good job. But he was indecisive and weak.

I saw that the short man, who had no business on the plane, was talking to the passengers. He was standing at the front of them, addressing them as though he had authority. He was telling them counterproductive things. He was lying.

I grabbed him and shoved him down in a seat. I shut him up. The pilot was too weak, so I did it.

The dream was about me, but it could be applied to anyone.

The pilot is my mind. He is supposed to make good decisions and guide me. He is supposed to be strong and decisive.

I was my spirit. I was better qualified to run things than the pilot, but I was in a service role.

The sock was clothing, and clothing means excuses and works. We hide behind it so we can continue sinning.

The package represented iniquities. It represented the evil habits Satan uses to apply drag to me and impede my progress. It was clear because Satan’s efforts are not original or clever. They are not unpredictable. They work even though we can see them coming.

Feet represent flesh. The package was placed in my sock because it represented habits Satan works to cultivate in my flesh.

The airplane and the people in it represent my purpose. Like any Christian, I am supposed to help a certain number of people to be elevated and to journey toward God. It was a small plane because not many will listen.

The short man was a demon, sent to corrupt me and deceive the people God sent me to talk to.

It’s not flattering to have God use a waffling cream puff to represent your mind in a dream! I would have preferred Daniel Craig’s James Bond.

The dream confirms what I already know. Demons try to rule us through habit, and this is true of Christians who think demons are rare or that they couldn’t possibly have demons. Demons are small, weak, tired, and old, and if we fight them correctly, their knees give way and they collapse.

The demon was like a weary old salesman with no light left inside him. Willy Loman in a golf shirt from Marshall’s.

It has to be discouraging, selling the same moldy products to one generation of human beings after another, with no hope of salvation and no reward except the ashy-tasting pleasure of knowing you are helping other beings to share your terrible fate.

God invites people to the marriage supper of the lamb. Demons invite people to burn and scream along with them in the universe’s garbage incinerator.

The dream underscores this: if we are overly burdened with iniquity, the people we are sent to help will see it, and they will judge God not by his perfection but by our corruption. A Christian can corrupt people through preaching.

It’s important to get rid of demons. Bottom line. They make us miserable. They drive us to commit sins and increase our guilt. They give us diseases. They kill us. They need to go. And churches are doing virtually nothing to fight them, even though God gave us the tools to do it. The biggest church teaches us to pray to them.

I should be more committed and decisive in driving demons out of my life, and so should everyone else.

There is no one to teach us, so we flounder. Preachers are weak and full of lies.

We’re supposed to be heirs, not pioneers. We should be inheriting knowledge and power from earlier generations, but they threw it all away, so there is nothing good to inherit. We are not like Jews, who pass knowledge, skill, and wealth down to their children. We are like ghetto dwellers who start from scratch at birth, repeating fatal mistakes heirs would never make.

Every generation should be better off than the last.

Think of a garden. If you buy plants and water them consistently, they will grow larger and become self-supporting. Then you can go to them and take what you need whenever you want. If you don’t water them, they only supply you until they die. They never grow. When you want something from them, you have to start the process over again with new plants. This is what secular sages call a “cycle.” They think self-esteem and handouts can break it, but only God has the answer.

If you don’t inherit good, you inherit evil. There is no neutrality. God gave me this word: “I am a living thing.” He meant I am always changing. I can’t rest and expect to remain prosperous and well. I get better, or I rot.

Marlin Needs an Intervention

I hope no one thinks I would be self-indulgent enough to buy another firearm this year. Even though this is what I just did.

Shut up, okay? It was another case of entrapment. Gander Mountain is selling the Savage A22 .22 semiauto for $209. Are you seriously suggesting I wasn’t going to buy that? Bud’s Gun Shop, which is cheap even by online standards, charges $239.

I have a Marlin 60 which is not even three months old. I acknowledge that. But the Marlin is not the greatest gun in the world. I paid $170 for the gun, maybe $5 for sling studs, and about $70 for a trigger kit. The trigger I ended up with, which is made by a company called M*Carbo, is pretty good, but it’s not the best. I couldn’t get the guy who sells the best one to answer an email. Annoying.

I joined a rimfire forum to get help with the Marlin, and yesterday they banned me for spamming. No idea what that’s about. I can’t get them to tell me. Obviously, I don’t spam anyone. I think they’re so mad at me for spamming, they won’t tell me why they’re mad at me. But I didn’t spam. I have maybe 6 posts on the forum, all about the Marlin.

The Marlin has a lot of appeal. It’s light, it looks great, and it feels great in my hands. It even has a nice figured stock. It’s a classic American firearm one is expected to own. But it seems like it keeps bringing me problems.

The Savage costs $40 more (with a fantastic deal), but look what you get: sling studs, a Savage barrel (Savage makes great shooters), a vastly superior magazine which can be replaced quickly, a milled receiver, and the famous Savage Accu-trigger, as contrasted with the famous Marlin slop trigger. Another plus: the Savage will shoot all sorts of ammunition, whereas my Marlin needed a new recoil spring in order to digest hypervelocity rounds which have been on the market for years.

The Marlin 60 doesn’t have a receiver. Not really. It has two cheap plates of stamped mystery metal joined by a few pins held in by E-clips. You can call that a receiver if you want, but to me, a receiver is a steel box, not two sheets of metal.

The Savage A22 has a dumpy black plastic stock. It doesn’t look cool or feel cuddly in the hand. The other side of the coin is that it will last forever and it can’t tear, splinter, or stain. Modifying it, if necessary, will be easy and free of risk.

The A22 magazine has a lower capacity (10 shots instead of 14), but let’s be real. You don’t need 14 rounds in your magazine to go hunting. If you need more than three, you should stay home.

Well, that’s coming from the guy who shot a squirrel in the head three times and didn’t kill it, so maybe I lack credibiity, but I still think it’s true. You’re not supposed to spray and pray. You’re supposed to wait for good shots.

A company called Butler Creek sells a 25-round magazine, if you absolutely must.

I hope the gun shoots well. The squirrels are getting to me. Today I saw one climbing around in a hedge by the pool. They have the whole farm to defile with their presence, and this thing was right up against the house, probably trying to make sure it didn’t leave me any blueberries the last time it visited.

I am thinking about a scope. First…do I want one? I am considering a peep sight. I have come to terms with the fundamental crappiness of the .22 LR cartridge. People on the web get excited when a .22 rifle shoots 1.5″ groups at 50 yards, which is pathetic. I now believe that despite the fraudulent nonsense about people shooting squirrels in the head consistently at 50 yards, the .22 is useless for squirrels more than 100 feet away. Since this is the case, is there any point in paying for glass? A peep sight should work very well at 100 feet, and it has advantages over a scope.

A scope starts out 1.5″ above the barrel, so the line of sight points down toward the line of fire and eventually crosses it. When the bullet drops, it crosses the line of sight again. This means the scope is zeroed at two distances. The rest of the time, you have error. If you’re shooting a deer 50 yards away, it may not matter, but squirrels are small, so you really need to know the deviation between the point of aim and point of impact.

Squirrels are not helpful. They don’t march off your zeroing distance, put on blindfolds, light cigarettes, and pose for you. They can show up at any distance. I had one stare me down from about eight feet. At very close range, a scope’s point of impact is not easy to guess. You may end up shooting very low.

I don’t know, but my guess is that peep sights are easier to deal with, because you start out 3/4″ above the barrel, not 1.5″. If I shoot a squirrel 20 feet away using a peep sight, the point of impact will be danged close to the point of aim.

Another advantage: field of view. When you look through a scope, you only see a small area. If your scope shows you a circle 5 feet across, and the squirrel is 3 feet from the center of the circle, you won’t see him. To find things, you have to move the scope around and hope you guess right. With a peep sight, you use your unaided eye, so you aren’t looking through a tiny tunnel.

Of course, with a scope, you can see things you can’t see with your eye. You can see little bits of squirrel sticking out from behind things. That can be helpful.

I can’t find a peep sight made for the A22, so I’m not sure it can be done without paying someone.

Scopes are fun, but killing squirrels dead, reliably, is even more fun.

If I get a scope, I may try a Nikon. A nice one is on sale cheap right now.

I can’t try the gun out today. We’re having a flood. It hasn’t been raining long, but it’s raining very hard. Water is rising all over the place. I assume it will go away fast. The ground isn’t saturated. Anyway, I can’t do anything until tomorrow.

Forgot to buy a sling. Where is my mind?

Pray I come back with a good accuracy report. I really need to crack down on these scrofulous rodents.

British Judge Propels Silenced Activist to Unexpected Fame

I wonder how weird the news can get.

Today I read about a right-wing British activist who calls himself Tommy Robinson. He just got arrested for reporting on a pedophile human-trafficking trial in England. A news story says he was standing outside the court, live-streaming on Facebook. He was asking the defendants questions.

I don’t know much about Robinson, so don’t get the idea I’m endorsing him. He seems to be a career jailbird.

The defendants are Muslims. Robinson is a bit different from American conservatives. We are upset about illegal aliens. Robinson appears to be angry about legal immigration from Muslim countries, and he is not happy about the Muslim refugees that have poured into Europe legally.

Many Muslims behave very badly in Europe. There is a Muslim-rapist epidemic in some places. Paris has Muslim neighborhoods the police are afraid to enter. I can see why it makes sense for westerners to restrict Muslim immigration. I don’t think their efforts will go anywhere, however, because white western liberals have a lot of power, and like Jews, they are suicidal as a culture. They would rather be admired for unrestrained fawning over people perceived as minorities than hold onto their cultures or sovereignty.

Everyone who knows Muslim immigrants knows nice people who go to college, become professionals, and behave very well, and these are the people we hear about when there are complaints about Muslim immigration and travel. Thing is, the percentage of hostiles is very high, and you don’t need a lot of angry Muslims to cause very serious problems. The 911 attack only required 20 nuts. Two people bombed the Boston Marathon.

Here’s something funny. White people are criticized constantly for interfering with other people’s cultures. It would be colonialism if we went into the Amazon basin and rescued the ignorant inhabitants from disease, extremely high infant mortality rates, and so on. We even get in trouble for selling tacos and wearing Chinese dresses, if you can believe it. These things are true, yet it’s unacceptable to be concerned about the destruction of American and European cultures.

Hmm.

Our cultures are pretty good. They are the best, in fact. We have far better lives than other people, objectively. Exporting our cultures is one of the best things we’ve ever done for humanity. It’s odd that we are discouraged not only from exporting our cultures but from preserving them.

You don’t see many Americans talking about how they envy Africa’s illiterate, backward Maasai, who live in the dirt and eat cow urine mixed with curdled blood and milk. Not many of us want to live in India and get by on two dollars per day. On the other hand, people from other cultures risk death every day to get into our countries and share in our way of life. Random thing, I guess.

I’ll tell you something people ignore. The justification for discouraging the criticism of backward cultures has nothing to do with the equivalent value of those cultures. Our culture is flat-out superior. The primary reason we started restraining such criticism was to avoid offending people and causing unrest. The fact that criticizing, say, the culture of American Indians upsets people doesn’t mean the criticism is wrong.

We forget that most Europeans, who are now identified with civilized “white” values, sprang from backward cultures. The Romans forced things like literacy and laws on our ancestors. My ancestors were imbeciles who ran around in blue paint killing each other with bronze cleavers out of pure boredom. They were depraved savages. Thank God the Romans exported their culture to them. Western culture is Greek and Roman culture, seasoned with Christianity. We are all culture appropriators, and it has worked out great for us. It’s too bad people want to end the exportation of quality cultures and encourage the preservation and importation of cultures that are pathological.

We, ourselves, endorse the importation of superior cultural ideals every day. I don’t wear blue paint, even on weekends. I drive cars. I read and write using Roman letters. I use Arabic numerals. What did my stupid, drunken, violent ancestors invent? Nothing! Thank God I don’t have to depend on their impoverished legacy. Yet I am not allowed to share my imported, appropriated ideals with others who need them.

Okay, I’m wrong. Sure. The didgeridoo, which sounds like cow flatulence and only produces two notes, is a great musical instrument, just as good as a Steinway grand. Forgive me. Inca engineers, who never figured out the importance of the wheel, were just as important as Werner von Braun and John Moses Browning. I see it now. African languages which still have no written forms in 2018 are just as praiseworthy as modern English. No question about it.

Do you know why people argue about African history? Because there is no record. Africans have been illiterate for millennia. No writing, no history. No math, either. No science. Almost no accumulated wisdom at all. Every generation in Africa has had to rediscover solutions to simple problems instead of applying old solutions, so there has been no progress.

Systematized pedophilia in Afghanistan and New Guinea is just as healthy as traditional western heterosexual marriage. Mayan human sacrifice is no worse than chewing communion wafers, which requires the brutal murder of innocent wheat kernels. Traditional Chinese medicine works just fine, and powdered rhino horn really does cure impotence. No, I mean it. Not sure what I was thinking earlier.

I wonder why the Chinese keep building western-style medical schools and hospitals. It must be sarcasm.

I hate to state the painfully obvious, but leftists are tremendous hypocrites. They moan about the virtues of diversity all the time, while crucifying everyone who actually tries to implement it. Your daughter can’t buy a Chinese dress and take advantage of a different oriental aesthetic. College students can’t buy tacos in their dining halls and enjoy the Mexican take on corn and beef. Westerners aren’t allowed to preserve their culture and promote its obvious benefits to others.

Only a leftist could celebrate diversity by building a blacks-only student union.

I wonder what leftists are going to do about the millions of Samoan-style “tribal” tattoos that now adorn the arms of white people of questionable taste. Liberals themselves love those tattoos, just as much as they love oriental calligraphy tattoos they can’t read. Should we force people to go get lasered?

I ate a bagel with Nova and cream cheese this morning. I’m not Jewish! Maybe I should go vomit in front of a synagogue.

Wait…didn’t the Jews get smoked salmon from the Russians? I’m appropriating appropriation!

We ought to be adopting the good and shunning the bad. Make all the Mexican food you want, but don’t adopt their corruption and violence. Buy Chinese dresses, but reject China’s rigidity and totalitarianism. Accept quality immigrants, but reject those who are virtually certain to murder Americans or slice out their daughters’ clitorises on our soil.

When we invite people from screwed-up countries to live among us, we invite their problems, especially when we crush anyone who suggests they should assimilate and show proper gratitude. Sometimes the problems immigrants bring are so great, we need to consider selective immigration limits. That’s the simple truth. Blowing up skyscrapers and public events is not a trivial thing we should sit by and ignore.

Sadly, most people who want to move to western countries live in very screwed-up nations. If they didn’t, they would be happy to stay home.

Is Robinson being persecuted for talking about Islam and Muslims? Not exactly. In England, Canada, and Australia, free speech doesn’t really exist. Trial courts are allowed to ban reporting on certain types of trials. Robinson is reporting on a trial that belongs to one of those types. The courts believe they should protect the defendants and victims through censorship. The judge thinks she is advancing the cause of justice by imprisoning Robinson simply for talking.

Scary. And counterproductive. By trying to ban coverage by British journalists, the court forced the rest of the world’s journalists to jump on the story. Robinson’s arrest is public knowledge, we know the names of the defendants, and we know what the trial is about. But for the judge’s decision, the now-sensational case would be nearly unknown outside of her country.

I can’t go on Facebook and upload child pornography, and I’m not allowed to broadcast certain state secrets that fall into my hands, but other than that, I can say pretty much what I want. It must be strange to live in a country where you can be gagged so easily.

Why is Europe having so many problems with Muslims? Simple. Inversion of authority. Europeans used to acknowledge God. They did it poorly, but they made some effort. God used to back them against Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Toaists, Confucians, and people who practice whatever toxic, demonic religions they practice in Africa. God wanted to establish Europe and then America, for his own reasons. Now the connection between Europeans and God is tenuous. They don’t do much for God, so they lack unity with him. They don’t identify with God, so he doesn’t identify with them.

Is God supposed to get worked up when atheists, Muslims, and pagans fight? Not his circus, not his monkeys. God doesn’t hate Islam any more than he hates paganism and atheism. He may prefer it to some degree, since Muslims make some effort to recognize his existence. It makes sense that non-Christian Muslims would rise up and defeat other non-Christians.

It’s fine for secular activists to shake their fists and spout slogans, but it will never work unless they somehow get Satan on their side, and the price he will charge for his help will be too high. God isn’t going to help them. A lifestyle of true victory comes from God alone.

I always say I try not to get political, and here I am, writing about politics. Perhaps I can excuse myself by saying I’m not advocating a political solution to anything. Rallies and signs won’t help. Violence will turn us into what we hate. Blogs definitely won’t help. What a joke they’ve become! Our problems are supernatural. My big response to the rot and deception in our world is to expose it, analyze it, and pray. At home.

Speaking of God, I got a word today: “Thank you for beauty.” It’s about the way some things in this world function properly and bring pleasure. When you know God, a lot of things go right, and it’s very pleasing. It takes some of the pain out of watching the world at large crumble.

I’m having very strange experiences in my effort to get free of hostile spirits. I can feel the battle inside me. When a spirit gets expelled, part of my inner monologue goes away, because the being supplying it is silenced. In all seriousness, I wonder who I am. I made other beings part of me and repeated the things they spoke into my mind and took credit for them until, in a way, I was them. Now they’re being pushed out, and the Holy Spirit is taking their place. What is my real personality like, without freeloaders and illegal aliens shaping it? I don’t know the big picture. I know there will be more love and less fear and worry. I will have more authority, and things will work better. More beauty.

I feel like a gestating baby in a disintegrating uterus. The world is rotting away while I prosper.

Even Better Than a DVD Bundle From T.D. Jakes

As I said I would, I will continue to post things I’ve heard from God.

A couple of weeks back, I got this: “I am in a place of perversion and poison.”

God was not referring to my house. He was talking about the world I live in.

When you have ants or roaches in your house, one way to get rid of them is to spray poison in places they live in or pass through. Satan takes the same approach to us. We are surrounded by temptations, provocations, and dangers. The world is salted with them. The devil does particularly well with lust and anger. You can’t drive down a highway in a major city without seeing nearly naked women on billboards, and forget about turning on the TV. Even if you only watch shows you think are safe, the commercials are crazy. As for anger, go to a news site on the Internet and read the comments. And TV is not helpful, either. News shows are difficult to sit through without taking antacids.

Lot was rescued from Sodom, a filthy city of cruelty, greed, sexual perversion, and selfishness. He wasn’t happy while he lived there. Here is a passage from 2 Peter:

For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly; and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly; and delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked (for that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds) then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority.

Lot’s story is a clear picture of what we go through down here on this scab of a planet as we try to serve God.

Jesus referred to his servants as the feet of God, figuratively:

And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city!

He said that as he sent disciples out to evangelize. The ostensible meaning of his words was that they should leave houses where they were rejected on this particular mission, but on a deeper level, he was describing all of his servants, until the end of the age.

Feet are the body parts that touch the earth, and we are the parts of God that touch the earth. Feet are dirty. Jesus washed people’s feet in an act that symbolized the way the Holy Spirit sanctifies believers who listen to him and spend time with him.

We have to live down here in order to reach other people, and while we are here, we live in bags of unrefrigerated meat we call bodies. In the Bible, dust is flesh. We are trapped temporarily in flesh bodies, exposed to all sorts of contamination from the world around us. When we die, the dust drops off, and contamination no longer has a way to get at us.

While we are here, we have to cope with the filthiness of the world. It is not a good place. The world doesn’t work. It is dysfunctional. It’s a mistake to try to see it as healthy or to attempt to fit in and function smoothly as part of it.

Doing evil things is counterproductive, but it can also be counterproductive simply to see or hear about them. Satan knows this, so he is constantly broadcasting the most poisonous things he can come up with. This is why he gave us slut walks.

A while back, I received this: “I am behind enemy lines.” Nothing could be more true. I don’t belong to this place. It’s as if I were a flu virus and Satan were constantly sending antibodies and white blood cells and whatever else after me. This isn’t my home. I’m here to make trouble. I am a guerrilla and a counterinsurgent. I have to avoid looking for rest here, like Samson falling asleep in Delilah’s lap.

The earth is a real mess. It is disgusting. It’s frustrating to think about it. No one wants to live on a planet where he has no chance of fitting in and prospering.

God gave me this last night: “Extremely effective.”

This one hit me hard. I thought it was a strange thing for God to say, and I certainly doubted it applied to me, so I asked him to confirm it, and his response practically blew my head up. By that I mean I felt an overwhelming rush of faith and affirmation that left me immobilized as I waited for it to run its course. Okay, okay! I accept it!

This week I moved to a new level with regard to getting things done. I attacked some intimidating business issues and got them fixed. I got confirmation that other problems didn’t actually exist. I’ve been having trouble motivating myself to take care of certain jobs on this property, and I have been ramping up my efforts, not through willpower, but because I suddenly feel eager to get to work, and also because I feel liberated to get things done.

Yesterday I put LED bulbs in the fluorescent fixtures in my bathroom. They had been flickering for weeks. I hate fluorescents. They hum. They supposedly give off positive ions that make people feel bad. They don’t last long. I like replacing them with LED tubes.

The fixtures in my bathroom are a real pain to work on. I had to stand on the sinks in a crouching position while I cut and stripped wires and made new connections. It was very unpleasant. I got it done, though, and all of the fluorescent tubes–even the ones that still work–are in a box waiting to go to the dump.

I’ve been doing laundry like crazy. Not sure how two men can come up with so much to wash, but we do.

My dad’s special issues make washing his bedclothes complicated. I have to wash mattress pads and a quilt as well as the usual stuff, and all the white things get bleach and a 2-hour cycle. Doing his laundry correctly takes more than one day. My own laundry is easy.

I rearranged the furniture and exercise equipment in my special upstairs testosterone chamber. The arrangement I threw together last year wasn’t working out. Now I have room for a workbench (ordered), and I’m not jammed up in one end of the room.

I ordered some tools for this room. I’m not going to march to the workshop (or even down to the garage) every time I need a pair of pliers. I’m going to have a lighted bench with pegboard plus enough okay-quality tools to handle 95% of the jobs that have to be done upstairs.

I shouldn’t mention tools because I get distracted, but…I decided to get an 18-volt Ridgid Jobmax for the farm. I’m going to take my 12-volt job and add it to the upstairs tools. The Jobmax is not great at much of anything, but it’s good at almost everything. If you keep a Jobmax handy, you will pick it up over and over and avoid having to break out other tools which are less convenient. Very nice tool to have if you like convenience and you don’t mind blowing a couple of hundred bucks to get it. It drills, drives fasteners, and does oscillating-tool stuff.

It’s not a cheap solution, but I don’t care. It makes life easier.

I also ordered a set of 7 Felo screwdrivers with plastic handles. This is a German company that makes very nice tools. The set runs less than $30, and it should cover a lot of ground. I also picked up a surprisingly affordable dual set of Bondhus ball-end hex wrenches (metric and imperial).

I should probably get another $35 Harbor Freight 115-piece drill index. Greatest bargain on earth. Not the world’s greatest bits, because they tend to grind the ends a little funny, but they nearly always work fine, and they cost maybe 15% of what you would pay for real drill bits.

A long time ago I picked up a boxed set of Craftsman wrenches for my dad’s boat. I’ll mount them on the bench pegboard along with the Felos and hex wrenches if I can.

Still need some pliers. I think I’ll splurge for Channelocks or maybe even Knipexes. Life is short.

Once my soldering station is up here along with my other electronics stuff, I’ll be cooking with gas.

I would like to do reloading here, but it will be hard to come up with an intelligent way to fix the press to my workbench. The bench has a big drawer, and the press would block it if it were mounted permanently. I may be able to use clamps.

Maybe I should finish things off with a Dremel kit. If you can’t do it with a Jobmax or a Dremel, you probably need to hire someone. Throw in duct tape and WD-40, and you can rule the world from your garage.

I already have a gyroscopic DeWalt power screwdriver for the house. I bought it because it was shorter than the big DeWalt driver. You put it in the screw, push the trigger, and turn it, and it knows which way it moved. It starts cranking in that direction until you turn it back, and it varies the power depending on how far you turn it. Frankly, I think it’s stupid. It would work just as well with just the trigger. But it was short, and it’s DeWalt.

I’ll need a little bit of tool storage. I don’t want to jam a big Harbor Freight rolling cabinet in here. Maybe some kind of portable from Home Depot.

I hope God is telling me I’m going to be more effective.

All my life, I’ve felt constrained, and I know the cause is supernatural. A few years back, a pastor cast a spirit of acedia out of me. Acedia refers to a condition of laziness, apathy, and discouragement. I’ve fought these things all my life. The pastor was teaching about acedia, and I started to feel cold. My hands felt like ice. I felt nauseated. I went up for deliverance. For weeks afterward, I got things done. It was wonderful.

Eventually, acedia came back, and since then, I have battled it off and on.

I know why it came back. I was taught about deliverance, but I didn’t learn anything about the cords that tie demons to us. I hadn’t opened up to God about whatever it was the bound me to acedia, so it had a way to get back in. I still don’t know exactly what it is that tied us together, but I have been confessing and repenting much more deeply lately, and various bonds are snapping.

Will I be free of it long-term? I suppose so. If not, why would God give me a word of confirmation?

We’ll see what happens. I have made mistakes before.

I think acedia follows families. When my dad was a young lawyer, my mother used to have to wake him up and put his shoes and socks on him to get him to go to work. As far as I know, my sister hates all types of work. The thought of being required to work makes her very angry. When she has luggage, which is always excessively heavy, she assumes other people will carry it and gets mad if they refuse. I can’t recall seeing her do any type of labor.

She has real problems, though. She used to lose her mind when we traveled together and I sat in the front seat, as if it were her personal throne. She would stand by the car and demand I move, which was a strange spectacle to those who witnessed it. I’m talking about a middle-aged woman, not a toddler. You can probably guess whether I moved or not.

I’m so glad I’m rid of her. She must be making other people extremely miserable right now.

I got one other word: “Only the Lord rules.” I think this was about authority. I believe God was giving me reassurance about my continued authority over the angry but powerless spirits and people around me. They are not to be taken seriously, because no one important is on their side.

It’s sad to see people lose, but it’s very good to win, and the losers bring it all on themselves. I can’t feel bad about problems I didn’t cause and can’t fix.

I hope this is useful to people.

Blessed is Better!

I had a wonderful experience last night. First, some background.

When I was a kid, I was afraid of the dark. I suppose I had a good excuse. I used to wake up and see snakes and giant bugs and lizards crawling all over the room, including the bed, walls, and ceiling. I had nightmares every night. I once woke up and called for my mother, and when I saw her at the door, she shrank until she was about two feet tall. I’m not saying it was her, obviously, but I don’t think it was my imagination, either.

I still get creeped out sometimes when I’m in dark places alone. I honestly think it has to do with the presence of demons. Some places feel creepy, and others don’t. Eastern Kentucky is extremely creepy. It’s as if you can feel the demons swarming around you as soon as twilight sets in.

Ocala is not creepy at all. There is a warm, safe feeling to this area. Don’t ask me why.

Now to the experience I had last night.

I was thinking about a woman my mother knew. She used to see a spirit. A little man would appear and watch her. He would laugh at her. Out of curiosity, I Googled other people’s experiences with visible demons. I got more than I bargained for.

There were all sorts of online testimonies, and many of them were from people who weren’t religious. Me, I would believe in God after seeing one demon. That’s just how I am. Not sure what kind of cognitive dissonance prevents other people from believing. If you can believe you saw a spirit while you were wide awake, why can’t you believe there is a great benevolent spirit we know as God?

You can believe. You choose not to, because God will make demands on you. You might have to stop smoking weed and fornicating. You might not fit in with the cool kids any more.

One person said he was in a bunk bed with his sister. She was in the top bunk. He looked up and saw her hanging from the upper bunk, looking at him. Then he realized she was in the bunk, asleep. What he saw hanging from the bunk was something else. A woman said she was in a bedroom she shared with her brother. She looked across the room and saw him sitting on the couch, eating chocolate and staring at her. Then she noticed his arm hanging down from the bunk above. He was still in it, snoring. The thing on her couch only looked like him.

As you can probably tell, these were childhood experiences. It would be a little odd for siblings of different sexes to share bunk beds as adults.

Stories like this aren’t all that rare, and they don’t always come from people who believe in the occult. Years ago, a murder case was solved with help from an apparition. A person was driving down the highway and saw a naked woman lying on the shoulder. She was just watching cars go by. The driver went back to help her, but she was gone. Afterward, the body of a murdered woman was found just off the highway, behind the place where the naked lady lay. I learned about this while watching a true crime show on cable.

I started reading various accounts last night, and I felt a little spooked. I live out in the woods. The nearest human beings are maybe 500 feet away, and they wouldn’t hear a thing if something happened to me.

I wasn’t worried about being unable to sleep. I thought about the presence of God. Lately, I have had the ability to get into his presence at will. I remembered something he put in my mind: “When you’re with me, no one can touch me.” I also remembered this: “Problems are darkness, and you are light.”

I got into God’s presence and went to sleep.

When God is with me, I’m the most dangerous thing on the property. I shouldn’t fear. I should be feared.

This experience was a big deal to me. It shows that the problems I’ve had with inverted authority are disappearing. When I was young, spirits, animals, disease germs, and obnoxious people had a lot of power over me. I couldn’t fight back successfully, even when I was dealing with enemies that seemed weak. I didn’t know God, and I hadn’t set him in authority over me and my flesh. I was outside of the chain of command, so I had no backup and no power. As I’ve gotten closer to God, beings that mistreat me have received more and more defeat.

When I was a kid and I was afraid at night, I would sit awake all night with the light on, or I would go into my parents’ bedroom. Now I roll over and sleep. Let my enemies deal with the fear; it’s their property.

I wish I had been able to do that when I was 5. I suffered a great deal as a child. I hated my childhood, and I hate the memory of it. If I had had God’s authority and presence, I wouldn’t have been so miserable.

I hate the way I was picked on. Spirits and people did what they wanted to me. I wish I could go back in time and help myself. I wish my past could be replaced. But I can’t say it wasn’t just. This is what happens to the children of the ungodly. It’s normal and right.

Real victory is anomalous in this fallen world. People who don’t know God are supposed to live in defeat. Many ungodly losers live under the delusion that they’re victorious, but they just experience candy-coated defeat. Think of Howard Hughes and Johnny Depp. In my case, my loser status was obvious to all. I got it straight with no mixer.

Recently I wrote about something that appeared in my bedroom here in Ocala. I woke up and saw a thin female figure dressed in black, hovering at the foot of my bed. Nice try, loser. I told it off and went to sleep. What I would give to give that power to the little kid who slept with the light on.

Many Christians are afraid of the devil and other spirits. Not me. God told me something years ago: “Satan isn’t that tough.” It’s a fact. He lost before the world was created. If you’re scared of the devil, you’ve been watching too many movies. In movies, the devil does whatever he wants, and God sits as though his hands were tied. It’s as if Satan were writing movies to make himself feel good. Hollywood belongs to Satan, so he gets great PR. He puffs himself up, like Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Un. In reality, when Satan wants to do something, he has to go grovel before the throne. He may be the god of this world, as Jesus said, but he is constrained.

I’m glad my authority keeps growing. It’s a huge relief. But I’m sad to see most Americans losing authority. Look at the people who push us around. Illegal aliens. Backward ghetto dwellers who manipulate our prosecutors with the threat of riots. Pitiable, enslaved people controlled by spirits of sexual perversion. Wives dominate husbands. Kids dominate parents.

It’s going to get worse. We insist on more fornication. More sexual perversion. More yoga. More feminism. More weird religions. More piercings and tattoos (which God has always hated). More pride. More cruelty. More drugs. These days, a person who looks and acts like a long-term prison inmate did in 1980 may wear a police uniform, run a church, or teach your kids.

I read something interesting last night. Americans are losing their protection from demons, which are supposed to be among the lowest, most defeated creatures in existence. I learned it by reading about the Catholic church. We now have several times as many exorcists as we did a few years ago. The church is raising up exorcists in response to a very large increase in demonic manifestations. When even the Catholic church is aware there’s a spiritual problem, you know things are getting bad.

Unfortunately, the pope seems to have the idea that only fully possessed people need deliverance. That’s a Satanic canard. All or nearly all Christians need deliverance. You don’t have to be barking like a dog and levitating in order to have demons. Satan has the church sending out a few exorcists who focus on sensational possessions in order to make it look like something is being done. Meanwhile, the church gives no relief to the rest of us, whose demonic issues are less spectacular.

It’s what a corrupt mayor would do, in a city controlled by organized crime. Have a highly publicized raid once in a while in order to please the public, while sheltering whorehouses and bookie joints all over the city.

It’s as if our medical establishment were healing a few advanced cancers while doing nothing for countless millions who have chronic illnesses and addictions that take all the joy out of life.

While I’m on the subject of demons, I now believe that deep confession is essential to lasting deliverance.

Through sin, we give spirits authority over us. Every Christian who isn’t ignorant knows about this. Try drugs, and you may get a demon of addiction. Sexual sin can lead to fetishes and perversion. We know demons enter us and give us habits. What we don’t understand is that the demons that motivate us also hurt us. They can give us physical and mental illnesses. They can depress us.

An unequal yoking always has a cost. Write that down. Memorize it.

You may be able to cast a demon out without confronting the problem that allowed it to come in. If you do, your deliverance may be temporary. It’s as if an elastic cord binds you to the demon. You can stretch it, but it won’t snap while you hold onto your excuses. If you refuse to confess, you give the demon title, so he can return.

I used to think I was honest with God. I tried to confess as well as I could. I told him very disturbing things about myself. Recently, I’ve gone to a deeper level. I’ve confessed truly disgusting things that surprised me. Generally, these were things I disapproved of. I had bad habits and desires I genuinely despised, and because I had contempt for them, I thought I was free of them. That’s not how it works. We have bad habits we like, such as sexual compulsions, but you can have a bad trait you hate and want nothing to do with.

When a demon is in trouble, you may feel its distress in the form of nausea or coldness. I’ve been feeling nauseated when I confess. It’s a manifestation of the demon’s panic. They don’t want to leave. It must be like being evicted during a blizzard.

I believe that when I confess with real honesty, I cut the bungees that bind demons to me. I also cut the attachments to curses and problems.

If you have a problem you can’t get rid of, you’re doing something to perpetuate it, because God wants you to be free. If he is allowing you to carry a painful burden, there is something you’re not doing, which will move him to set you free.

People hate this message because excuses are like our precious, spoiled children. We hate anyone who says a word against them. We will attack people who try to help us by exposing them.

This year, God gave me this: “Excuses are lies.” God also says liars can’t enter the kingdom of heaven. Eternal punishment in the lake of fire was created for “all liars,” according to the Bible. If you’re not confessing, you’re a liar, and you are keeping your most draining problems alive.

These days when I confess, I have a mental image of a big knife slicing thick, rubbery cords.

How did I get this old without learning these things from preachers? They didn’t tell me because they didn’t know. They are dangerously ignorant. You can’t give away what you don’t have.

I can’t be honest without God’s help. I don’t think anyone can. We need to ask for help and receive it.

Adam and Eve weren’t cursed as soon as they sinned. They were cursed after they deflected blame and covered themselves with leaves (which represent works). They put barriers between themselves and God, and when you block God’s presence, you block his help.

No one seems to have any deep knowledge. What hope is there for the world? The more deep knowledge I get, the more I see how different it is from the infected puke they serve at churches.

I’m very wary of preachers now. I have nearly no use for them. They have wasted my time and money. They have betrayed my trust. They have persecuted me. They have taught me garbage which made my problems worse. They are extremely ignorant. I feel like they’ll poison me again if I get too close.

God keeps looking out for me. He never steers me wrong. I can’t see myself looking for someone to replace him.

Freedom is available. We know this because God said it was true. We don’t have freedom, therefore we are doing things wrong. Better things are available, and we should be seeking them instead of making excuses for our patterns of defeat. “God doesn’t work miracles any more.” “God doesn’t talk to people any more.” Wrong. We need to stop sheltering our failure behind walls of meticulously cultivated excuses.

I am determined to go forward and succeed in God’s kingdom even if everyone else on earth goes to hell. I want whatever he will give me. I’m not going to bite my tongue and sit on my hands and miss out just to fit in and be popular.

Deer are for Wimps

Every week, I find new justification for my war on squirrels.

I put a blind in my yard. I sit in it and shoot [at] squirrels. I leave it set up so I don’t have to go through the hassle of taking it down and setting it up all the time. I have been leaving one of my precious plastic red Adirondack chairs in it.

This area was soaked with rain last week, so I couldn’t shoot. Yesterday I went out to resume my campaign of rodent “harvesting,” and when I looked at my chair, I saw rodent poop, bits of acorn, shreds of red plastic, and chew marks.

That tears it. You can slash my tires, toilet-paper my trees, short-sheet my bed, and make me watch Ellen, but you do NOT mess with my Adirondack chairs.

I take back what I said about Ellen. That was extreme.

One good thing about the chair damage is that it assures that I am on solid legal ground, shooting nuisance squirrels out of season. They are damaging my property, and that’s all I need to prove.

I got myself some special squirrel ammunition. It’s called CCI Quiet. The version I bought has bullets that fly into three pieces after hitting a squirrel. The word CCI uses to describe it is “segmented.” The package advertises a low speed of 710 fps, which is about like an air rifle. You can shoot it without ear plugs.

Yesterday I set up some targets to sight my rifle in for it.

I have neat targets, by the way. I think I’ve solved my expensive-target problem. Birchwood-Casey sells 2″ Shoot-N-See bullseye stickers. You get 9 to a sheet.

This is a great product. Most of the time, my shots stay in a 2″ circle, so why am I paying for 5.5″ and 8″ targets? It’s stupid. Now I only pay for the paper I use.

As background, let me say that I’ve been having a discussion on a shooting forum. I withdrew because the thread turned into a loop. I say A, and another person responds with B, thinking he has proven me wrong. I respond with C, proving him wrong. His response: B. I don’t want to read B 300 times.

I was trying to find out whether experienced squirrel hunters thought it was humane to try to shoot squirrels in the head. I shot one in the head three times and still had to stamp on its skull with my boot in order to kill it, so I was highly suspicious of people’s claims that they always went for head shots.

Given their stupidity, squirrels have surprisingly large brains. They are about an inch long. Nonetheless, they are not easy to hit with a .22 unless you prepare and do things right. As I found out, you can hit a squirrel in the head and not even knock him out.

Typically, squirrels get shot with .22 rounds at distances of 50-100 feet. Hitting a 1″ target with a .17 HMR at 100 feet is very easy. A .22 is another story. They’re not very accurate. To be able to hit a 1″ squirrel brain at realistic hunting distances with a .22, you should be able to hit a 1/2″ target reliably when you’re seated and using a rest. It’s harder to shoot accurately while hunting. If you can hit a 1″ target over and over from 100 feet with a typical .22, under suboptimal conditions, you need to join a circus, because you’re a phenomenal shot.

I set my targets up yesterday to see what I could do. I found that the rifle was pretty accurate at around 60 feet. Hitting a squirrel brain was not out of the question. Then I shot at a squirrel at 100 feet, using a chart to allow for bullet drop. He did a backflip, and I figured he was toast. He landed behind a tree where I couldn’t see him. Later, when I went to check, I found no squirrel and no blood. I had missed.

I set the targets up at around 90 feet, and I found that I shot 2″ groups. That’s not good enough for squirrel head shots at 100 feet. It’s not even good enough for body shots.

I looked around on Youtube, and I learned that my results were not bad. I saw a video of some guy shooting the same ammunition from a bolt action .22 (more accurate than my semiauto) with a rest, and his groups were huge, too.

He didn’t shoot ridiculous, misleading three-shot groups. He shot 10-shot groups which actually mean something. Everyone occasionally puts three consecutive rounds into a very small area. It’s meaningless unless they can do it consistently. Shooters don’t talk about this, because 10-shot groups would turn a lot of 1-MOA shooters into 3-MOA shooters.

In the video, the shooter is getting 12 MOA. That’s 2″ at 25 yards. Fine for shooting coons by your trash cans or for shooting squirrels 10 yards off. Useless for my squirrels.

Here’s a shot of his target.

The lines are 1″ apart. There is no way this guy could hit a squirrel brain at 25 yards. If you stapled the squirrel to his target, which is an unusual occurrence in a hunting situation, almost none of his shots would hit the brain.

His aim point was the bottom of the black bar. Assuming he corrected the scope, he would still be putting most shots around the edge of a big circle centered at the point of aim. And predicting the point of impact would be hard at different ranges. At 10 yards, he was pretty much dead nuts on the center of the bullseye, but at 25, he was not only high, but off to the left. I wouldn’t be able to predict that. If I moved up or back, I would compensate for elevation, but I wouldn’t expect big changes in windage.

I’m assuming this guy isn’t a horrible shot. I think that’s true, because his results seem typical.

If I can’t do it, and the guy with the bolt action .22 can’t do it with a bench and rest (really a clamp–a Caldwell Matrix), how are all these other guys doing it while walking around in the woods?

There are two answers.

1. Most of them aren’t doing it. They lie like crazy.

2. The ones who are doing it are using better ammunition. And still lying a little.

You say you only shoot squirrels in the head. Okay. How many shots did you take last year? How many produced dead squirrels with ruptured brains? How many wounded squirrels did you have to chase? How many missed entirely?

How about a simpler set of questions? How many rounds did you shoot? How many squirrels did you bring home?

I think my gun, with CCI Quiet segmented ammunition, is only good for 60 feet. I think it’s good for 100 feet with better ammunition, provided I shoot at the upper body, not the head.

People told me some nutty things. One guy said that if I took body shots, I had to shoot for the aorta, not the chest. I had to point out that I can’t see a squirrel’s aorta. Besides, it’s tiny. It’s probably as thick as a pencil lead. If I can’t hit a 1″ brain, how am I supposed to hit a microscopic aorta I can’t see?

He then said I should aim at the aorta in order to get a good chest shot. “Aim small, miss small.” This is a sound shooting principle. It means you find the tiniest point of aim you can and focus on it. If you miss while shooting at a dime, you will probably confine your shots to a smaller area than you would had you been trying to hit an orange. Unfortunately, this only works when you can see what you’re shooting at. It’s dumb to even discuss it when you can’t see your point of aim.

I can find a squirrel aorta on a squirrel anatomy chart. I can sort of guess where it is on a live squirrel, if he looks at the chart and then poses exactly like the squirrel on the paper. Show me a real squirrel in a typical random squirrel position, and I can’t tell where the aorta is.

Incidentally, someone put up a squirrel anatomy diagram, and it was wrong. Having pulled out a few squirrel hearts, know where they are. they are way up high in the chest. On a person, it would be the top of the sternum, below the neck. The diagram showed the heart down near the belly. The aorta comes out of the heart, so if you put the heart in the wrong place, you also misplace the aorta.

I can’t believe I’m dignifying terrible advice with all this discussion.

It was a poor suggestion. That’s my point. If an aorta is a good aim point, a squirrel eye (which is visible) is even better, but a squirrel eye is not a good aim point at 100 feet, for a gun that can’t be trusted above 60.

If you shoot for the chest, you shoot for the center of the chest. That’s the best you can do, and any hit to the chest ought to do the job. If the bullet goes through the chest wall, you have a kill. You’ll shatter the heart, collapse the lungs, break the spine, tear up big blood vessels, ruin the diaphragm, or so something else that will turn the squirrel off.

I’m not sure what I should do. I like the quiet cartridges, because I don’t want to annoy people who live nearby, but I need to kill these miserable squirrels, and I don’t want them to suffer.

Should I take the scope off? If I’m going to shoot at 60 feet or less, a scope may be more trouble than it’s worth. For really close shots, the scope will make the gun shoot an inch or more low.

I have an air rifle which seems very accurate at 85 feet. I believe I can do head shots with it under 50 feet, and chest shots should work farther out. The pellets are light, however, so the stopping power may be lacking compared to a slower, heavier .22 round.

I could get myself some segmented high velocity .22 rounds, which should be more accurate than the quiet jobs. They will be noisier, but this is a farm, so I don’t really need to coddle the neighbors. Maybe I should stop worrying about the noise. It’s possible to spoil neighbors. I don’t want them to feel entitled to tell me what to do.

The .17 HMR will flat get it done, and range is irrelevant. As long as the wind is low, you will hit what you aim at. It’s noisier than a high velocity .22, though.

I no longer care about saving the meat. Pest control is job one, and butchering every squirrel will slow me down. The .17 HMR may open a squirrel up like a book, but I’m planning to throw the carcasses over the fence anyway.

I’ve learned that the word “accurate” means nothing on the Internet. A person will say a pistol shoots accurately, and then you’ll find out he shoots horrible 4″ groups at 7 yards. You have to see targets in order to judge, and you have to see large samples, not three-shot groups.

The .22 is an extremely disappointing gun for small targets. Clarification: to me, a coon’s skull is a big target, and a squirrel’s brain or chest is a small one. Also, people are completely full of it when they describe their accuracy (“My grandkids never miss golf balls at 50 yards”). Look at how serious shooters do using sleds, and then tell me you can hit a soda can, from the shoulder, every time at 100 yards. You’re a big fat liar. Man up and say it. The .22 is not an accurate weapon. Not in the same world where the .17 HMR and .204 Ruger exist.

Maybe your granddaughter hits the golf ball 50% of the time. Maybe you hit the soda can every third shot. Misses count, unfortunately. If you’re not hitting something 90% of the time, you can’t use the word “reliably” or the word “consistently.”

I understand why people say squirrel hunting is challenging. It really is, unless you use a shotgun. Any fool can hit a deer or a hog. They’re gigantic, they hold still, and they generally stay out of trees. Squirrels are small and jumpy. They sit on the ground. They climb a hundred feet up in trees. They’re hard to spot. The only advantage they give hunters is their abundance.

They’re stupid, too. I should admit that. You can shoot a squirrel in a certain spot and then shoot another 5 minutes later. I don’t know if larger animals will stick around like that.

I think I should put up some targets and see how well I can shoot Golden Bullets and Mini-Mags and so on. Then I should stick with whatever is most predictable. I can save the Quiets for the pistol and use it to blast wounded squirrels at close range.

I may get rid of the scope or even switch to the Nylon 66, which has no scope. Lots to think about.

People should respect my opinions. After all, I once put two .204 rounds through the same hole. I’m a 0.3-MOA shooter.