Who’s Sharing YOUR Bed?

Something fascinating happened last night.

First, some background. For some time now, I’ve been waking up–consistently–between six and seven in the morning. I thought it was God, waking me up to pray. Also, I have been asking God to expose the people and spirits who are against him in my life, and I have asked him to defeat them and drive them away, no matter who they are.

This morning, I woke up, as usual. This time, I heard a voice. It was as though I had answered the phone and someone was speaking to me. Just after I awoke, I heard a woman with an American accent say something I no longer remember, and then she said, “See you later.”

She said it with a smug, hostile tone, like someone who was tormenting me and who expected to be able to come back and torment me in the future.

It got me thinking.

My prayer life has gone nuts over the last few years, and it keeps getting more powerful. More and more, I spend time on the offensive, attacking people and spirits that work against God. It works. That has to make demons and fallen angels very angry.

When Eve fell, evil spirits received the keys to the earth. It wasn’t supposed to be theirs, but they won it by fooling a carnal woman. Since then, Satan has ruled the world, and the spoiled, vicious children of the fallen angels have tormented human beings.

We talk about evil spirits (when we admit they exist) as though they’re isolated rogues, out of control. In reality, they have every right to be here and to abuse us. We gave it to them. In fact, demons are human. They are our brothers and sisters. They were created when angels had sex with human beings. The fight between demons and humans is actually a family squabble; it’s sibling rivalry.

It’s crazy to think you can give yourself to God and go on the attack without infuriating the beings you’re humiliating and driving out. They’ve had it good. They haven’t been pitched into the lake of fire. They can’t die. They are allowed to wander the earth, hidden from us, torturing and killing the beings they hate the most.

They don’t want to have that taken away from them. It’s the best thing they’ll ever have. They have no other hope of pleasure or safety. Soon they’re going to find themselves burning forever, in complete humiliation and powerlessness. It should be obvious that they will fight back.

Christians don’t like to talk about this. When you mention demons and angels, people who call themselves Christians–people who claim to worship a spirit–tell you you’re mentally ill. That’s the way Satan likes it. The best way to divert attack is to convince your enemy you aren’t there.

I see why God hates lukewarmness. If you’re lukewarm, you’re probably praying every other day and doing pretty much as you please. You’re not aware of the supernatural. You’re not doing anything to defeat Satan. You’re just lying back on the couch, allowing the enemy to have his way with you. You’re like a drunken college girl, lying beside a dumpster, exposed, with her legs up.

A lukewarm person doesn’t fight back, and God doesn’t do all that much fighting for him.

I have problems. I have had failures that were extremely improbable and damaging, in spite of my carnal efforts. No wonder! I blew my front door off the hinges and lay down on the floor, waiting passively. What did I expect?

This defeated, worthless, doomed thing has been coming to me every morning, and I haven’t done enough to get rid of it. What else is coming to me? What other problems are caused by trespassers I welcomed and fed?

When Jesus sent the disciples out (Matthew 10), he ordered them to do four things: “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons.” Those were his priorities at the time. He didn’t say, “Buy 20 purple suits for $3000.00 each, build a pink megachurch, and start a TV show.” The things he told them to do were important. They’re still important. He said he had come to set the captives free. He wasn’t just referring to salvation. You can’t be free in this life until you dethrone the spirits that control you.

This message draws all kinds of resistance, because demons do not like being humiliated. Their inheritance is weakness, servitude, and pain, and they do not want to receive it. They will come after anyone who speaks against them, and they will use Christians to shut such people down, because Christians have credibility among Christians.

I felt I should pass this information along, because chances are, you are not doing much about your spirit problem.

I want whatever authority and deliverance I can get. I plan to keep going forward so I can get whatever is available.

These things are real. Don’t expect them to go away just because they’re bored.

Or Another Box of Parts?

I am still working on the belt grinder.

As I lamented a day or two back, I found a really nice Mitsubishi TEFC motor for peanuts, and the Post Office broke it. It’s a mystery to me why people who transport other people’s things are so careless; it seems like those jobs bring out the ape and vandal in about half of the folks who take them. Look out an airplane window, and you can pretty much count on seeing a sullen twenty-something throwing suitcases just for fun. That’s a fact of life. The only solutions are heavy-duty packaging and damage claims.

The Mitsubishi was a 2-horse motor, intended to replace the open 2-HP motor I already had. I did not want metal filings and bits of abrasive going into the motor and killing it, so I had to get something that was enclosed. The Mitsubishi looked like a good deal. It was very cheap, and it was Japanese. Americans make better stuff than most people in the world, and the Japanese make stuff better than we do.

Once it was busted I had to go back to Ebay and search. The 2-HP offerings were not too bad, but they were limited. I had a thought: why not try 3-HP? That would expand the possibilities.

I was afraid it was too much motor for a belt grinder, but I Googled around and asked questions, and it turns out 3 is just about optimal. My VFD’s are rated for 3 HP, so there is no reason why I can’t move up. With effort, it is possible for a human being to bog a 2-HP grinder down somewhat. This doesn’t happen as easily with more power. Also, and I don’t know why this would be true, you can get more life out of belts with a bigger motor.

I can’t guarantee that last part, but it’s what I read. Something about bearing down on belts being better for them than light pressure. Maybe they load up less?

It sounds crazy.

I looked for brands that were well-made yet which didn’t receive the attention they deserved. You can find bargains that way. In the end, though, I went with an American-made Dayton motor. The price was great, and it looked nearly new. Now I’m hoping American Daytons are better than Taiwan and China Daytons. Not that I have had any problems with my late-model Dayton grinder, which is from one of those countries (I forget which).

The Dayton has a 182T frame, which has a different bolt pattern than the 184-frame Doerr I’ve been using. I’ll have to make a new platform. Also, a 182T frame has a bigger shaft, so I’ll have to bore out the drive wheel I bought, and then I’ll have to broach a keyway into it.

I found out what the “T” in motor frame names means. It means “thick.” It probably doesn’t really mean that, but if you see a “T” in a frame designation, it means the shaft is thicker than it would be without the “T.” A 182 frame has a 7/8″ shaft, like my drive wheel. A 182T has a 1 1/8″ shaft.

I deeply, deeply regret using Dupli-Color water-based Bed Armor truck bed paint on the first platform. It looks bad, it grabs dirt and grease, it peels, and I just found out it has another problem. It’s glue.

If you paint something with Bed Armor, and then a few days later you bolt a motor to it, the motor becomes attached to it permanently. It’s ridiculous. I had to remove the old motor from my grinder platform, and I found I couldn’t pull it off. I had to lift the motor, platform, and grinder together and put them on the floor. Then I was able to get the motor and grinder loose by pulling while standing on the platform. The paint where they had been sitting looked awful when I tore them off.

I have been wondering whether I could get away with cutting out a circle of air conditioner filter material and taping it over the air intake on the old motor, to stop crud from going in. I’ve learned that some people use pantyhose for this. But it would look stupid, and it might cut down the air flow too much, so why not get a motor that works without filtration?

I’m selling the Mitsubishi. The seller didn’t ask for it back, so I’m Craigslisting it. I figure I can get $50 for it. That will bring the effective price of the Dayton down pretty low.

As long as I’m talking about things no one cares about, let me walk back my rave review of Rust-Oleum Forged hammer finish paint. I still like it, but I learned something about it: you can’t put pressure on it for quite some time after it dries. Days after my motor’s paint job dried, I left the power cord looped over the top of the motor for a day or two, and the paint sort of tore. I don’t know how long it has to cure, but I would give it at least two weeks before putting pressure on it again. I sanded out the messed-up bit and sprayed over it with no problems, so the paint is very forgiving.

I intend to use the grinder the way it is until the new motor gets here. Then I’ll make a new platform and paint it, and I’ll bore out the drive wheel. Sounds like a day’s work.

It’s going to be cool, having a 2×72 grinder handy. It will change my life. There is no end of the problems you can solve by ripping material off of things with abrasive belts.

I’m hoping to finish off the knives I’m making. Shouldn’t take long at all. Then off they go to be hardened. I will post photos.

That’s it for this Wednesday. Pray my new motor arrives in one box.

The Epistle of Barnabas

I don’t have complete faith in the people who decided which books were to be included in the Bible. I believe all of the Protestant choices are valid, but the Catholics and Orthodox churches have included some bizarre items, and some of them are definitely wrong.

Example: the book of Judith. Even Catholics admit this one is full of errors. I assume Catholics don’t believe the Bible is inerrant. It is also believed that The Wisdom of Solomon is a forgery.

I went through most of the Catholic choices Protestants don’t like, and so far, I haven’t come across anything that appears to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. I haven’t read the books of Maccabees and Baruch yet.

Why did I do this? Because someone sent me looking for a book by Barnabas, an early apostle.

I found a Youtube channel belonging to a man named Billy Hobbs, and I’ve been watching his stuff. He understands things most Christians don’t get. For example, he knows demons are the spirits of the offspring of men and angels. Most people think they’re fallen angels.

He talks about extra-Biblical books, and he mentioned Enoch and Barnabas, so I had to see what Barnabas had to say.

At first I was very disappointed, because there is a bogus book called The Gospel of Barnabas, and that’s the first book I found. It’s a ridiculous forgery denying the divinity of Jesus. Muslims love it because they believe Jesus is not the son of God.

Looking at that book, I wondered if Billy Hobbs knew what he was doing. Then I came across The Epistle of Barnabas, which is a different book. I read it last night.

This one seems to be the real McCoy. Some of the Catholic books are clearly self-help and fables, and they don’t have the ring of truth. They are not moving to read, because they don’t resonate with the experience of a person who knows the Holy Spirit. Barnabas, however, is very consistent with the other apostles, and he teaches the way Holy-Spirit-led teachers teach, with insight that appears to come from God.

Barnabas mentions something which I thought was a modern revelation; he says the age of man is divided into thousand-year periods, and that these periods are like days of the week. The seventh period will be a Sabbath–a time of rest and peace–and the eighth period will be a time of new creation. This is consistent with what I believe. I expect Jesus to return for the seventh age and rule for a thousand years.

Here we are, in the Jewish year 5776, 223 years and change away from 6000. That makes me wonder: do we have 223 years of suffering in front of us? Is the end actually coming sooner, and is the Jewish calendar off by two centuries? Will the seventh period begin before 6000, just as Jewish days start on the preceding evening?

Jesus said only the Father knew when everything was going to wrap up, but it would be nice to narrow it down a little.

I can understand why God won’t be specific. For one thing, everyone would set a timer, sin like crazy, and then repent two minutes before the bell. You know they would; it’s not even debatable.

You can find Barnabas online. Check it out and see what you think.

Candidate Lifted into Vehicle After Fainting Spell

I have friends who are in a tizzy about the upcoming presidential election. It’s an extremely important election, because if a Democrat wins, the Supreme Court will be taken over–almost instantaneously–by liberal extremists who will make life harder on Christians, Jews, and conservatives.

I would guess that less than 10% of the American people understand that. Presidents appoint all federal judges, and federal judges run the country, because they decide what the law means.

It’s pointless to harp on that, because even intelligent people can’t seem to understand it.

You can write a law that says, “Every male over the age of thirteen has to wear blue pants on Thursday,” and a judge can conclude that it means, “From now on, lobster has to be served with ketchup.” Once a judge decides what a law means, that’s what it means, until another judge or a legislative body slaps him down.

I don’t get very worked up about politics. I don’t write about it much. I dropped the silly game of exchanging links with bloggers who thought they were changing the world. I don’t give money to candidates. I don’t always vote in local elections, because I don’t identify with my area, and I don’t care that much what happens to it.

God has shown me that you have to fight things in supernatural ways, because all events have supernatural roots.

Every day, I curse the political left with defeat, and I curse the Clinton campaign, in the name of Jesus. That’s my big contribution. To non-believers and most Christians, that sounds silly. Well, we’re even. To me, scrambling around making ineffective efforts with my natural strength seems silly.

Today I got some encouraging news. Hillary Clinton fell down at a 9/11 commemoration.

Some outlets are saying she “got overheated.” They want Hillary to win, and “overheated” sounds better than “incapacitated,” which is the accurate term. Unfortunately for the left, there is video of Hillary leaving the event.

She was carried into a vehicle. You can see it in the video below.

At first, she is leaning on a concrete post for support, probably at her own insistence. It appears to be an effort to make herself look steady and nonchalant. It looks better than having people hold her up.

When the vehicle arrives, she falls forward, and you can see people reaching down to lift her into the vehicle.

That’s a serious medical event. It’s not right-wing wishful thinking or conspiracy theorizing, which is the dishonest explanation the leftist press has been giving us.

I do not want to appear glad that someone is ill. That’s not the issue. I’m glad 1) the liars who falsely accused conservatives of making up health stories have been put in their place, and 2) Clinton is going to lose votes or conceivably withdraw because she is not well. I’m also glad to see supernatural warfare pay off.

Eventually, people like Clinton will take the White House and hold onto it. They will take the judicial branch and Congress, too. That has to happen, because America has failed God. But it doesn’t have to happen in November. It can be delayed. During the delay, Spirit-led Christians can improve and work. They can reach people. They can put themselves in a better posture to endure the Nazi-style persecution that lies ahead. Cursing Democrat campaigns and turning back to God in a way that is more than superficial are worthwhile pursuits. It’s like bailing a sinking raft; you may not be able to keep it afloat permanently, but you may be able to make it to shore.

Today The Washington Post published a piece admitting the health issue is real. That’s a huge victory.

The Clintons are ruthless and selfish, like megachurch pastors. I don’t know if it’s true that they or their allies kill political enemies, but the Machiavellian nature of the Clintons has been proven by history. My best guess is that Democrats have been concerned about her health, too, but they were overruled by the Clinton machine, because IT’S HILLARY’S TURN, PERIOD. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems likely, based on human nature.

She probably thought she could suck it up until the election. Now that hope is dashed.

My advice to anyone who believes in faith and the Holy Spirit is to curse the Clinton campaign daily and ask God to help his servants get it together so our enemies will not have so much power over us. It’s nice to stockpile guns and MRE’s, but those things won’t really save us. We need the approval and help of the living God.

I also pray for God to help Donald Trump and his crew to shape up spiritually. I don’t know how much hope for that. Cyrus is probably in hell, and maybe Trump (our new Cyrus) is headed that way, too, but I have an obligation to try. Whatever they do, they will certainly be better for Christians and Jews than the left.

God still rises up to fight our enemies. Don’t doubt it just because we deserve to lose. Maybe we can’t get all the help we want, but we can certainly do better than we are doing right now.

The Bible says God stops fighting our enemies when we gloat, so I’m not doing that. But I think I should be willing to point out the obvious.

Introducing Our First Model

A few people actually commented on my last blog post, which involved a motor I cleaned up for use with a grinder. Now that I realize what a giant hit my motor essays are, I have decided to post another photo.

Here is the motor, sitting on the platform I have to re-drill and repaint, with the variable frequency drive I have to put in an enclosure.

You have to admit, it looks nice considering what it used to be. The new used wave spring I ordered arrived yesterday, so I’ll be installing that later.

I finally realized that you restore a lumpy shaft by filing in the axial direction, not across the shaft, so I may try to polish this motor’s shaft a little more. It’s not perfect. A real man would put it on the lathe, but that involves pressing the bearings off, so I would have to get new bearings.

The new used motor I ordered is supposed to arrive today, so I’m not sure why I did all that work, but if I ever need a 2-HP Totally Open to Crap motor, I’ll have one on deck.

Out of curiosity, I looked into motor longevity. Apparently, no one actually knows how long a motor should last. For one thing, no one has defined “motor death.” Is it when the bearings go bad? Is it when the wiring burns up? There is no consensus.

Leeson (DISCLAIMER: a company that really wants you to trash your old motors and buy the new ones it makes) says you can hope for something like 15 years of operation, and I assume that’s in industrial applications. If not, a lot of people who buy Leeson motors will be hopping mad, because a motor that lasts 15 years in a factory will last three months in your house.

When bearings go bad, you can replace them for a few dollars. Bearing death is not motor death. If I understand things correctly, the real problem comes when the insulation on the stator breaks down, and this can be accelerated by heat or current spikes (which, actually, equal heat).

I wondered about this, because there are always tons of used motors available on Ebay. How do you know what condition the stator is in? You don’t. A motor can look really nice on the outside without telling you much abot the inside. Maybe some of those 75%-discounted Ebay motors aren’t great deals. Or maybe they are, if insulation breakdown takes several decades. Some motors appear to be immortal, continuing to run after nearly a century, so it may be that there are motors out there with insulation so wonderful they are very hard to ruin.

I do not know.

In my garage, even a Chinese motor made the day after a major drunken holiday will probably outlive me, because I don’t use them much.

You shouldn’t use a belt grinder which isn’t anchored correctly, or which doesn’t have proper protection for the motor or VFD, so of course, I am already using this grinder. I’m not using it much, though. I used it at about 600 RPM to clean the remaining milling marks off a knife I’m making. It worked great. It was slow, because I refused to turn the speed up, but it beat the daylights out of using sandpaper or a whetstone.

A surface grinder would have knocked it out in 10 minutes, and it would have left the knife with a very precise thickness, but I don’t have a surface grinder.

This project is going really well. Even when I do the wrong things, I am succeeding at them.

Some day you’ll see a finished knife here. And won’t that be special?

Update

The new motor arrived. Check it out.

Can you believe that? The seller jammed it into a flat rate box. Naturally, the Post Office destroyed it. I wonder if they do that deliberately, just to punish people for mailing things they don’t want to carry.

The base is broken, and the fan shroud is crushed. The shaft will not turn.

To his credit, the seller refunded the cost of the motor plus shipping.

Back to Ebay, I guess.

Gross Motor Skills

I’m still not able to use my new belt grinder. Not really.

For a long time, I wanted a 2″x72″ belt grinder, because it’s a powerful tool for removing metal and other materials from stuff. If you want to change the shape of something fast, a 2×72 grinder (I am reverting to the typical lazy expression without quotation/inch marks) is your best friend.

As people who actually read this blog know, I bought a pretty yellow grinder, and I rigged it up with an old motor and VFD I had lying around. So far, so good. But there are some issues.

First of all, do not ever buy Dupli-color water-based pickup bed paint (“Bed Armor”). It’s horrible. They make a poisonous (probably) solvent-based bed paint which is magnificent, but I bought the water-based type because my local Advance Auto Parts didn’t have the version that works. The results were not good.

I intended to use it on the wooden platform I made for the grinder. I guess I should point that out. The solventy stuff makes a rock-hard finish you could probably pressure-clean, and it dries fast. It’s useful for lots of projects. I hoped the water-based version would work just as well.

I made the platform and started spraying it. The paint came out in globs and big droplets. It didn’t want to adhere to the wood, so I had to use a lot. There were big globby areas when I was done. It self-leveled to some extent, but when it was over, it looked bad. Also, it takes over a day to cure.

When it was cured, the surface was like fresh concrete, only without the durability. It was gritty. It attracted and held onto grease and dirt. Worst part: I could scrape it off with a fingernail.

Avoid.

That being said, I decided to use the platform until I got the grinder set up, with the intention of stripping and fixing it later.

The motor I intended to use had some problems. Mainly, it was caked with black grease which was not far from wax in consistency. The grease was inside the motor as well as outside. How did that happen? Don’t ask me. It appeared as though someone had operated the motor near a mysterious, implausible source of flying grease, and the motor’s fan had sucked it in through one end of the case.

Also, the case was rusty and peeling. It was like that when I got it, but I made it worse by storing capped muriatic acid near it. You can’t have muriatic acid in a room with iron. Even if you cap it, the acid will get out into the air and make things rust.

The motor was free, sort of. I bought my first lathe (used) from an outfit called Plaza Machinery, and in addition to promising me one model of lathe and sending a different one, the owner sent me the wrong motor. He made some truly pathetic, grudging efforts to make up for what he did, and sending me the crusty motor was among those efforts.

I offered to send it back to him at one point, but he had my money, and he was no longer willing to talk to me, so I kept it.

He also sold me micrometers that didn’t work. Then people got mad at me when I criticized him on a machinist forum. Amazing. Obviously, if you’re part of a hobby, your loyalty should be to your fellow hobbyists, not to characters who promise you one thing, insist on cashier’s checks so you can’t fight them through your credit card company, and then send you something else.

Forum people tend to suck up to vendors, and that’s sad. They’re like church people who try to rip out the throats of honest individuals who criticize crooked pastors. It’s a mindset I can’t comprehend.

The lathe guy was obnoxious, and his business methods were suspect, to put it kindly (more like euphemistically). I forgive him and all, but that doesn’t change what he was. I don’t care if every Internet machinist on earth gets mad at me.

I guess they’ll all stop sending me big weekly checks to pay my bills.

I felt bad putting my crusty motor beside my beautiful grinder, so I decided to paint it. I took the end shields off (that’s what the ends of motors are called). I sprayed chemical stripper on the case (outside of the motor) and used a plastic spatula to remove the crud. That stuff is amazing. It takes about ten minutes to work, and if you’re not inept, you can spray it very accurately.

I cleaned the excess stripper off in the kitchen sink. It’s good to be single.

I finished up with an angle grinder and wire knot wheel. I would guess that the whole depainting process took 45 minutes, including wiping it down with DNA (denatured alcohol). I gouged one of the motor’s wires, but I was able to perform microsurgery on it and fix it. About half of the strands were cut. I cut the rubber back on each side of the gouge. I wrapped thin wire around the remaining strands to build them up. Then I buried the joint in solder and covered it with shrink tubing. It’s really nice. I was shocked that I was able to do it at all.

Having panned a brand of paint and a machinery dealer, I will now offer some praise.

Hammer-finish paint is great for tool restorations. It has little dents and dimples in it when it dries, so it masks scratches and dings in a machine’s surface. It looks snazzy. I decided to try it. I got me a couple of cans of Rust-Oleum Forged Hammer Finish paint. This stuff includes primer, and it’s about a dollar more than the regular Rust-Oleum hammer finish paint. It has a neat spray nozzle that works in all positions.

I taped the motor off (the way people who actually care about their work do), and I blasted it with paint. Over the next day, I would say I ended up with three coats. It looked wonderful. It’s hard. It’s shiny. It makes the motor look smooth. Excellent. Buy it. It does take a long time to cure, though.

The end shields on the motor are aluminum, and I was not able to make them look good by buffing and sanding. They were too beaten up. I cleaned them using electrolysis (and by boiling them in cleaning-strength vinegar), and then I hit them with black hammer finish paint. The results are beautiful.

The grease was a real problem. I cleaned the motor on the outside using DNA and turpentine, but I couldn’t do much to the inside. The stator (the wiry bits that don’t move) was bonded to the case, so I couldn’t remove it to clean. I wiped off whatever I could and let it go.

Turpentine takes grease off in a hurry. It dissolves it instantly. Then it evaporates. Highly recommended.

The motor had a broken wave spring (washer that functions as a spring and holds the rotor in place in the shield), so I ordered one from Ebay. I also put a clamp fitting in the hole where the wires come out, to provide strain relief and keep the wires off the sharp threads in the hole.

This motor has no junction box. A junction box is a little sheet metal box the wires go into when they leave the motor. Another nice present from Plaza? I don’t know. I can’t believe the motor was made that way. Because it has no junction box, there is no place to connect a ground screw. I’m thinking I may buy a galvanized box from Home Depot and attach it.

So anyway, now I have a beautiful motor that runs like new. That’s a problem. The motor isn’t really suited to grinder use. It’s not sealed against dust, so abrasive and/or conductive stuff from the grinder will get sucked into it. Initially, I didn’t care about this. Free motor. And it was old and beaten up. If it blew up, so what? But now that the motor looks like a rock star, I don’t want to ruin it.

Now I have some wonderful facts about motors, for your enjoyment.

Far as I know, there are two types of motor that work well in dusty environments. One is TEFC, and the other is TENV. TEFC means “totally enclosed fan-cooled,” or something close to that. TENV means “totally enclosed non-ventilated,” or something similar. Look it up. What am I? Your nanny?

The motor I have is more like TOTC, or “totally open to crap.”

If you decide to put a grinder or sanding machine together, think about grit and try to keep it out of your motor. I already have a little belt grinder with a TOTC motor, but I at least arranged the fan so it sucks air from the clean side.

I couldn’t stand the thought of my painted motor eating grit, so I went on Ebay, and I found a TEFC motor for the low, low price of $65, with an ad that practically said, “We will take almost anything for this.”

The motor is a Mitsubishi. I kept looking at the photos, trying to figure out whether it was bulletproof, better-than-American, Japanese Mitsubishi or crappy, depressing licensed Mitsubishi from China or Nigeria or something. I sent the seller a question, and he said he didn’t know, and he offered to take fifty bucks. SOLD!

So now I have that on the way. I have to wait for it before I can do the final setup on the grinder.

The motor has a 145T frame, and the old motor is a 184-something, so I’ll have to put different holes in the platform.

More motor information: motors can be described by frame designations. These are numbers like 145T, 184, 156, and so on. An organization called NEMA created specifications for various frame numbers. If you know a motor’s frame number, you can look it up, and no matter who made the motor, you will be able to determine the motor’s shaft diameter, feet pattern, and so on. This is very helpful when you’re trying to install a motor in a machine you already have. If NEMA says it fits, it fits.

My new motor and my old motor have the same horsepower rating and speed, but the 145T is smaller (nice), and the base is different, so the 184 holes won’t work. With luck, one of them will be okay, but I’ll have to make three more, which is more aggravation than you would think. When you’re Carlos the carefree Cuban self-taught handyman from Hialeah, you just grab your Harbor Freight drill and one of your three rusty drill bits, and you make crappy holes surrounded by tearout. Then you demand payment in cash and run away before your work explodes. When you’re trying to do a good job, you have to use at least two bits per hole, and you have to clamp stuff under the work to prevent tearout. So I have that to look forward to.

When all this is done, I have to make some kind of housing for the VFD, to keep crud out of it.

In about 8 days, I should have a grinder that works. Exciting.

I realize no one read this, but I write what makes me happy, so I suppose that’s okay. If you made it this far, your prize is the photo I post below. In the photo, the motor is only mocked up, but you get the idea.

Enjoy. You lucky, lucky few.

It’s Available, Cheaper Than You Think

As much as I try to avoid saying anything useful, occasionally I have to break the rules and tell you something that could help you. This is one of those times.

For years, I’ve been trying to defeat nighttime congestion. It’s a horrible problem. When your nose clogs up during the night, you may dream you’re suffocating. Nighttime congestion puts you in the habit of feeling stifled and frustrated, so you don’t fully escape the aggravation during the daytime.

I’ve used nasal sprays. They work, but you have to use them every day, because once you’ve used something like Afrin two days in a row, you will start to get rebound congestion. Every time the spray wears off, your nose will close up, even if there is nothing around to provoke an allergic response. Also, sprays will irritate your nose to the point where you’ll blow out blood and little scabs.

Cleaning up helps, because it gets rid of dust and mites, but I don’t think anyone who lives in a normal house with fabrics and paper and so forth can ever get it clean enough to completely get rid of congestion. Maybe you could do it if you had a bare closet containing only a cot.

A few years back, I got a Honeywell air purifier. This thing is a big box the size of a hamper. It has three filters in it. A noisy fan blows air through it, and supposedly, it takes allergens out of the air.

Here is a summary of my conclusions regarding Honeywell air purifiers. They do remove dust from the air. They also blow dust into the air, because they keep air moving. They don’t have much of an effect on allergies. They make a nice white noise, however, and that’s very helpful when you’re trying to sleep, especially if you have Hispanic neighbors. The noise costs $200 plus electricity, so it’s not a great deal. The filters are expensive, too.

Last year, somehow or another, I decided to try adding things to the air in the house. There are certain substances that naturally open your airways up. Camphor, pine oil, tea tree oil, menthol, and so on. One of the chemicals that do the work is alpha-pinene.

Alpha-pinene is expensive in its pure form. Guess how you can get it cheap? By buying turpentine. Alpha-pinene is one of the main ingredients in turpentine. Why does a quart of turpentine cost six bucks, while an ounce of alpha-pinene or pine oil costs seven bucks? I do not know.

Anyway, I found that splashing a little turpentine in a dish and leaving it in my bedroom was very helpful with congestion. If you don’t like the smell of turpentine, you can buy tea tree oil and put a few drops in a dish. Somehow the aromatic chemicals overcome the funk and must and whatever that make nostrils clench up.

You can also buy tea tree oil and put it on your upper lip. Or you can buy Vick’s Vaporub, which contains camphor, eucalyptus oil, and menthol.

Vick’s sells little waterless vaporizers that plug into electric sockets. The problem is that they use little pads that will cost you about $400 per year, and you also have to find a free socket.

Whatever you use will evaporate during the night, but you can always start over.

You can’t just buy a jug of turpentine and take the cap off every night. The good parts of the turpentine evaporate and leave the useless parts behind. If you leave the jug open, the good stuff will disappear early, and then you’ll have nothing. You have to dispense and use a small amount every night.

It also works to deodorize your house. I add it to mop water, and sometimes I pour it on the floor under the air conditioner air handler. It blows throughout the house.

Miami’s natural smell is like the smell of a pile of warm sweaty underwear. That’s just the way it is. It’s nice to have something clean and crisp to counteract it.

I tried these things in 2015, and they worked. Somehow I got distracted and quit. Big mistake. I went back to it this week, and it’s wonderful. I don’t have to worry about lying on one side so the nostril on the other side will open up. I don’t have to lie on my back so both nostrils will open. I just sleep.

Now, what do I do with the machine? My neighbors are still noisy and thoughtless. I need sounds to shut them out.

I’ve decided to try a dedicated white noise machine. I already have a Homedics Sound Spa clock radio, which is very nice. It plays relaxing sounds. The problem with it is that the digital audio clips it uses are short, and once you’ve heard one a few times, you know exactly where it stops and starts. You start listening for the repetitions, and then you lie awake. A true white noise machine doesn’t use digital files.

A company called Marpac makes a machine called the Dohm Sound Conditioner. It comes in a model with one speed and a model with two speeds. It’s completely analog. It has been around since 1962. You can adjust the pitch and volume of the sound. I ordered one, and if it works, the Honeywell is going on Craigslist.

If your nose keeps you awake and you’re tired of the terrible medications used to treat it, give this a try. I think you’ll be glad you did.

Cops Hate the Cop Cops

I keep watching videos of people who claim they’ve visited hell. It has been interesting.

Some folks like to say it’s not possible to visit hell. They say the Bible says man dies once and then goes to judgment, so that rules out returns from the dead. That’s wrong, however, because a number of Biblical figures died and were resurrected.

That’s the end of that argument.

It’s generally true that people only die once. Generally. Not universally.

It’s possible to visit hell, and it’s also possible for people to stay right here and make up lies. If you claim you went to hell, you can get a lot of attention, and you can make money off of it. For some people, attention is all it takes. Somehow I like them less than the greedy. At least the greedy get something tangible in exchange for their honor.

Yesterday I tried to watch a girl named Sarah Binayamo Boyanga. I assume she’s African. She has a Youtube video. In the video, she’s a well-dressed young lady who seems to have a nice personality.

I found her claims implausible.

For one thing, her video is boring. When God talks to spiritually aware people through other people, it’s not dull. The Holy Spirit wakes you up and makes you listen. I can’t believe Jesus would take someone on a tour of the spiritual realm and then allow her to give a talk that causes people to drift off.

Another issue: she said God is happy if you pray two minutes per day. I mean, seriously…is that credible? The devil works around the clock. Rotten people work around the clock. You can’t ask God to counteract that in two minutes, and aside from that, you can’t have a relationship with another person, based on 120 seconds of perfunctory interaction. God wants children, and children love their parents and include them in their lives.

Did Paul say to pray two minutes per day? No, he said he thanked God he prayed in tongues more than all of the Corinthians. Did Jesus say to love God a little bit here and there? No, he said to love him with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might. Can’t do it in two minutes.

She said Jesus told her that if a person is serving the Lord, that person can’t die of disease. She said that if anyone had a loved one who was ill, and that person was serving God, that person would be healed. Problem: Elishah died from disease. If Elishah didn’t serve God, who does?

Lazarus also died from disease. We don’t know much about him, but his sisters served God, and Jesus was his close friend (not just his rabbi), so how can it be true that he didn’t serve God?

I kept getting bored and wandering off, so I didn’t see the whole video. I don’t think I need to. If you prove you’re wrong in the first ten minutes of a speech, the rest of the speech can’t help you.

It’s easy to be fooled. I can’t tell when people are lying, and you can’t, either. People think they can. It’s just pride. If you don’t have the help of the Holy Spirit, lies will look just wonderful to you. It has happened to me, many times.

I often wonder how many times people have lied to me. My natural inclination is to assume people are telling the truth, because even liars tell the truth maybe 90% of the time.

When I was a kid, my best friend was a thief and a liar. I remember losing a pocket knife in my front yard and asking him to help me look for it. We looked all over a small patch of grass, and I never found it. Oddly, he turned out to have a knife just like mine. I also lost my dad’s hunting knife when he was around. I’m old, and it only occurred to me recently to put two and two together. I didn’t lie to my friend or steal from him, so I assumed he treated me more or less the same way.

Preachers lie constantly. My grandfather was a tort lawyer, and he also served as a prosecutor and circuit judge. He said, “Whenever you see a preacher on the stand, get ready to hear a bunch of lies.” He was too kind. He should have said, “Whenever you see a preacher anywhere.”

I turned back to God because I had genuine supernatural experiences, and I wanted to know people who were in the same boat. I heard preachers on TV and in pulpits telling them Jesus appeared and said this and that. I figured they had to be telling the truth. After what I had been through, surely other people had experienced similar events.

Preachers still love to say, “God just told me there are __ people in this room who need to give a thousand dollars each.” God never said any such thing. If I tell you God told me something, you can be sure one of two things is true: God told me something or I just think he told me something. I’m not going to make things up, and I am eager to expose those who do. I have no mercy, and I take pleasure in informing on them. When the wolf charges in, you don’t hand him a water bottle and take his coat. You blow his brains out and make a nice rug out of his skin.

There are so many liars, the truthful are hard to find, and once you find them, the habit of rejecting liars makes it hard for us to believe them. Liars are like the chaff airplanes drop to fool missiles. If you can get people to follow liars, they won’t be available to listen to the truthful. They waste their energy chasing garbage trucks instead of armored cars full of riches.

I don’t know if Sarah Binayamo is a liar. I just know I don’t believe her.

She’s a great choice for a decoy. She looks and sounds sweet and innocent. Anyone who criticized her would be likely to be accused of picking on a nice kid who just wants to help God. That makes sense. A smart jihadi doesn’t hide a bomb in a carry-on belonging to a hairy guy who looks crazy. He hides in in the wheelchair of an old lady with blue eyes and a big smile.

I don’t care what people think about me criticizing folks who mislead in God’s name. I was thinking about it last night. I’ve belonged to three churches. I left one because the prosperity gospel turned me off. I left the other for the same reason, and the preachers told lies about me behind my back and held secret meetings to find out what I was up to. I left a third because the preachers were proud, selfish, immature, and, of course, caught up in the prosperity gospel. The head pastor was so mad at me, he chased a friend of mine down in the parking lot and started screaming at him about me.

You know what I am? God showed me last night. I’m internal affairs.

Cops stick together. If one cop blows a kid’s brains out for no reason, the first instinct other cops will have will be to obstruct justice and help him avoid arrest. That’s just human nature. Cops help other cops. But they don’t help all cops. They hate the cops who investigate other cops. They hate the people from internal affairs, because those people expose their crimes and bring justice down on them.

If all you do is sit in a pew and confirm your pastor’s delusions of godhood, you are part of the thin blue line. You’re covering corruption so it can fester. If you stand up and tell the truth, you’re internal affairs. People will condemn you. They will say much worse things about you than you say about your pastor, without worrying about whether those things are true. They will think they serve God when they attack you.

Carnal principles apply to carnal people, both inside and outside of the church.

Prophets are internal affairs. Prophets are lonely, or at least they’re aloof. A man who sits in the front row at church and lets the pastor take him on trips paid for out of the building fund…that man has a conflict of interest. He’s like a teacher who takes bribes in exchange for good grades. The people who tell the truth sit in the back, rejected, or they don’t go to church at all. They have to keep their feet dry.

The Jews killed prophets, both before and after the crucifixion. Christians do the same thing. The Jews killed Isaiah. A Jew killed John the Baptist. They put Jeremiah in a cistern. Ahab, a Jew, was guilty of the murder of the prophets his pagan wife murdered. He consented to the effort to murder Elijah. Ahab hated Micaiah because he told the truth. The Jews had Jesus killed, and they killed Stephen. At their command, Paul murdered people who were full of the Holy Spirit.

Nothing changes. Religious insiders want to destroy anyone who tells the truth. It’s not easy for a preacher to get away with killing someone who corrects him, but they do what they can. They ostracize them and lie about them.

I am not saying I’m a prophet, but I am a somewhat truthful person who says things that make crooked preachers uncomfortable. In that sense, I am similar to a prophet.

The closer you get to God, the more you will recognize and repeat the truth, and the more people will hate you. They have sold out to the devil. They love getting along and going with the flow. If you contradict them, they’ll try to destroy you instead of receiving healthy correction.

I have realized I need to be more honest. I think of myself as an honest person, and I have always had a reputation for honesty, but it’s an illusion. I’ve lied more times than I can remember. You don’t have to be very honest to set yourself apart in this world. I have lied enough to make it hard for me to perceive the truth.

God showed me that dishonest people lose the ability to perceive truth. When they start lying at an early age, they know they’re lying. At fifty or sixty, an unrepentant liar is actually mentally ill. He is unable to tell the difference between lies and reality, so he doesn’t have much potential to change. If you can’t receive criticism, which is truth, you are spitting out medicine.

Hell is full of liars. They stand in hell, burning…and still lying. “God didn’t give me a chance.” “I was a preacher; I don’t belong here.” “If you sent me back to earth, I’d be different.” “God is vicious and unfair.” They’re in hell because they made themselves immune to truth. Once that happened, there was no point in trying to save them. Salvation requires cooperation and honesty.

People say my sister would sooner climb a tree and lie than tell the truth and stand on the ground. She was a terrible liar when she was young, and now she doesn’t know what truth is. Harsh things to say, but true. It’s why God doesn’t ask me to pray for her or work with her now. There is no return on the investment.

She doesn’t say things with conviction. She just says things she thinks may bring about a desired result, and then she watches to see if they stick. It’s like watching someone spin a wheel at a fair. You can tell when you watch her that she’s just throwing dice. It’s reflected in her expression.

I’m not in that shape, but I have definitely let pride and bias damage my honesty. It’s one of the things I need God to help me fix.

Faith is perception of the truth. Peace is perception of the truth. Worry and fear are belief in lies. No wonder liars are so miserable.

If I want to tell other people the truth, I need to maximize my own ability to discern it. Things could be worse, but they can definitely use improvement.

We swim in a sea of lies, every day. Only the Holy Spirit can lift you up on top of it.

Things are getting weirder and more chaotic in the US. Christians need protection and help, more than ever, and our need is increasing, fast. Satan is almost completely in charge now. The filth we tolerate and love is like nothing we have seen before. If you don’t start looking for correction and redemption, you’re going to be unprepared when it really gets bad, and God is not going to listen to your cries for help, because you turned him down so often in the past.

God is full of help. Get in touch and start receiving it. You’re already receiving from his enemy; you might as well have both channels open.

Grinder Takes Shape

I have my 2×72 belt grinder set up, more or less.

It has been an interesting project. To make it work, I had to choose between getting a new base for the grinder or making it work with my old abrasive cart, which is a Northern Tool cart that held my 1×42 belt grinder and bench grinder. In the end, I decided the smart thing was to try to jam both belt grinders on the cart. It’s easier to put the bench grinder on a new base than to start from scratch on a belt grinder base.

The motor I’m using is gigantic. It’s the old 2-HP Reuland motor I got for nothing (sort of). When I bought my first lathe, the unscrupulous dealer sold me the wrong machine, and he included a 1-phase motor instead of the 3-phase job he had advertised. He made a little effort to make things right, and that included shipping me the ancient Reuland. The shaft was banged up, so I took to Ebay and bought a beautiful new 2-HP Baldor, cheap.

I guess I can’t call it free, since the dealer still cheated me, but I didn’t pay for the motor.

When I first tried to use the Reuland, I had a hard time getting the lathe’s pulley mounted. Then it ran funny. When I took the pulley off and looked at the shaft, it appeared that someone had banged it pretty hard with a giant hammer or something. It had burrs and a big flat spot. I can’t even guess what kind of idiot does a thing like that to a top-of-the-line 3-phase motor, but I can tell you this much: it was an employee, not the owner of a company. People who pay for things don’t beat them with hammers.

When you bang on a piece of metal and make a depression, you also raise metal. The metal you displace from the depression has to go somewhere, so it usually rises up around the depression, forming a rim. I heard a master machinist describe this as “disturbed metal.” My motor’s shaft had disturbed metal around a big ding, so the pulley had a hard time sliding past it.

I got rid of that lathe a long time ago, and of course, the buyer cheated me out of a hundred dollars. I had it rigged up with a VFD, which I kept. The fact that I had a motor and VFD lying idle figured prominently in the rationalizations that enabled me to buy the new belt grinder.

When I tried to put the new drive wheel on the motor (to pull the grinding belts), it didn’t want to go over the damaged shaft, and the keyway in the shaft looked enormous. I assumed it was larger than the usual keyway for a 7/8″ shaft. It looked bigger than the corresponding keyway in the wheel. I figured I would have to broach a bigger keyway into the wheel.

I got the motor running, and I used the spinning motion to help me file the bumps off the shaft. I then sanded it. After that, the wheel went right on, and surprisingly, the key fit. Apparently, the monkey who banged up the shaft also did something or other to cause the keyway to wear, and it made it look like it was a size larger than it is. Whatever; as long as it works.

That’s the exciting story of the motor.

It turned out I actually had two VFD’s to choose from. A long time ago, I bought a VFD for my milling machine, thinking I was buying a pulley machine. A machine with multiple drive pulleys allows you to change speeds by moving a belt from one pulley to another. The seller, who tended to screw up a lot, informed me he was sending a variable speed mill instead. Nice, because that’s a pricier tool, and I wasn’t paying extra. But I had already spent maybe $250 for the VFD.

The purpose of the VFD was twofold: 1) to turn 250V 1-phase power into 3-phase power, and 2) to allow me to vary the frequency (changing the motor’s speed) without handling belts. I no longer needed the frequency feature, but I still needed 3-phase, so I hooked the VFD up.

Later on, I bought a big phase converter (machine which turns 1-phase into 3-phase), so I didn’t really need a VFD for the mill. I left the VFD connected anyway, because I was lazy. Yesterday I removed it, and I’ll be connecting the mill to the phase converter soon.

Now I have two VFD’s ready for use. One is small and easy to mount. The other has a nice detachable control pad, so I can mount it out of the way of dust and run an ethernet cable to the control pad. I can connect a remote speed-control pot to the smaller VFD; it won’t be as elegant, but it will work.

I wired the motor up to the VFD. I cut a piece of thick plywood to use as a platform. I put the motor and grinder on the wood, and I clamped them down. I ran the motor with a belt on the grinder and moved things around until I was happy.

After that, I used a stubby pencil and transfer punches to mark drilling locations on the wood, and I made holes for 3/8″ bolts.

The bolts go through the grinder and motor bases and then through the plywood. I didn’t want anything to protrude under the plywood and scrape up my cart, so I used T-nuts. These are nuts that sink into wood. I used a Forstner bit to cut shallow cavities on the underside of the wood (for the T-nut bases to fit into), and then I installed the T-nuts. Perfect.

Drilling wood is a real pain. It always blows out and tears up on the lower side. I made a lot of effort to avoid this. For one thing, I clamped scrap to the underside of the wood so the scrap would support the fibers where the bits came out. For another, I drilled tiny starter holes all the way through the wood, and I used them to guide a spade bit which I applied from the underside. This created shallow 3/8″ holes on the underside. When I drilled down from above, I met these holes, and there was less wood in the way to blow out.

Here’s a photo of what I have now:

Some people insist on metal plates and so on to anchor belt grinders. I guess that’s nice if you work in a factory and you put hundred-pound loads on your grinder rest. The setup I created is as solid as a rock, and it doesn’t have to handle heavy loads. I used 3/4″ plywood, but 1/2″ would have worked fine.

I’m going to sand the rough edges off the platform. Then I think I’ll hit it with truck bed paint. It goes on without primer, it dries fast, it looks good, and it wears like iron. After that, I’ll try to situate rubber feet on the underside of the platform, so they’ll butt up against the inner walls of the cart and hold the platform in place. The platform won’t sit in the cart. It will rest on the outer edges. That lets me use platforms that are larger than the top tray, and it leaves space in the tray for belts and belt grease.

I can retract the tool arm(s) when I’m not using the grinder. That will keep it out of the way, to some extent.

I haven’t figured out what to do about dust. One easy solution is to hang the VFD under the tray, away from dust, and run wires to a pot mounted on the platform. I hate to cut holes in my nice cart, though, and I wonder if it will protect the VFD. Generally, people put them in boxes with air filters. Mine would be exposed, but it would be in an area which sees little dust.

I think that will work. I’ve seen where the dust from grinders falls, and it doesn’t fly around corners or in loops. It falls under the platform and belt. It won’t make it to a VFD under the tray.

I can already tell the grinder is going to be a fantastic tool. While I was setting it up, I used it to remove some of the milling marks from a knife I made. The grinder has a flat platen behind the belt, and you can press flat objects against it, so it creates a flat surface. From the results I got, I believe it will work well enough (accurately enough) to allow me to put flat, scale-free sides on knives.

This will sound crazy, but I held the knife against the platen with my bare fingers, turned the motor on, and let the belt grind it while I held it there. It was no problem at all. In the future, I think I’ll put something between me and the blade, so my fingers won’t hit the belt if I slip, but at low speeds, it’s not likely to hurt me because I can move my hand way in plenty of time.

I’ll need a big contact wheel. That’s is a giant pulley (maybe 10″ in diameter) that replaces the platen. It allows you to grind the sides of knives so they’re slightly hollow. That makes sharpening easier, and it makes for a less clunky knife. Contact wheels cost a lot of money. Not sure why.

I’m going to have two nice grinders, side by side, with speed controls. That will be excellent. If you haven’t used grinders, you don’t understand how useful they are. They sharpen. They deburr. They clean. They shape. They polish. Wonderful machines.

Now I suppose I need to learn about belt grinder safety so I don’t sand myself to death.

Good tools turn frustration into pleasure. I look forward to using this thing.

Take That However You Want

I finished Ovid yesterday. The last thing I read was the letter from…now I’ve forgotten…Medea to Jason. No, it was Sappho to Phaon, whoever that is. I had to check. You can see how much it impacted me.

It’s essentially a remake of the other letters, which are remakes of each other. Sappho said a couple of things that were relatively clever, but they weren’t clever enough to raise her above the level of the other jilted stalkers.

My main reaction to finishing Ovid: relief. Of course. Now I get to read Augustine. I don’t like calling him “St. Augustine” because he’s not a saint. By that I mean he’s not better than other human beings. He’s not someone people should pray to. Great guy, maybe. Not a saint. The saints were created to replace the Greek pantheon. God had nothing to do with it.

If you had told me a year ago that I was going to have to read Augustine, I would have looked for a way out of it, as I did, successfully, back at Columbia University. After my ordeal with the Greeks and Romans, Augustine sounds like a trip to Disney World. Bring him on. I can’t wait.

The Sappho letter lends credence to the idea that Sappho was a truck-driving, Anne Murray-listening, overall-wearing ladies’ lady. She complains that Mr. Phaon has ruined her for women. After her Phaon fornication binge, women just don’t do it for her. Does this mean she was really a lesbian? I don’t think so. Ovid lived a long time after Sappho, so he probably didn’t know much more about her than we do. Once you get a reputation, justified or not, it tends to stick. Maybe Sappho had already been lumped in with the field hockey players and non-shavers of legs before he was born.

Maybe there is a document out there which proves Sappho liked women. I will never know, because I am done with the classics. I wouldn’t read another classic author even if his book was a collection of winning lottery numbers in Roman numeral form. But the document must not exist, because people who actually like the classics do not agree on her orientation.

I don’t know why I’m discussing this. Maybe it’s because it’s the only thing about Sappho that is even remotely interesting.

It’s hard to think of anything exciting enough to follow up speculation about whether Sappho was a flannel-wearer, but I will try: today my belt grinder is going to arrive. If Fedex gets it right. I ordered it a week ago, and the shipper decided to fix it so it required a signature, so I’m stuck at home.

I think I made a good buy. I’m spending maybe $200 more than the cost of building my own grinder, but I will save a pile of work and time, and it looks like the grinder I chose–the Oregon Blade Maker–is a tremendous deal and a good product.

I say that before trying it.

If Sappho were alive, I bet she’d have a belt grinder.

Is it okay to make jokes like that? I don’t actually care, but I guess these days it’s likely to bring out the pierced and tattooed villagers with thrift store torches and Ikea pitchforks.

The coming increase in the persecution of Christians is a frequent topic here, but there are some aspects I haven’t thought about yet. Here’s one that just occurred to me: we will probably be beaten and imprisoned by hipsters. That’s terrible. It’s embarrassing. I’m not sticking up for the Nazis, of course, but I feel like it’s less of a blow to your self-respect when the man who shoots you in the head is wearing a smart military uniform with shiny death’s head pins. We’re going to be murdered by “men” who look like Snuggles the Fabric Softener Bear with glasses. It will be like getting punched out by Truman Capote.

Suddenly the Romans don’t look too bad. Having your brains clubbed out by a 6’8″ barbarian centurion…that’s a man’s death. Centurions didn’t have to say, “Hold my latte,” before they killed people. We’re going to be slaughtered by the snowflake patrol.

I never thought musing about persecution would look like this. You have to wonder what people will make of it when I’m gone.

I would not be the first Christian to have a sense of humor about it. They say that when Lawrence was roasted on a grill (by the church), he looked up and said, “I’m well done. Turn me over!”

If I have to take sides, I think I’ll side with John, not Lawrence. Lawrence was grilled, and grilling is about health, not flavor. John was deep-fried. It didn’t take, but it was certainly a superior method of preparation. Now that we know KFC’s secret recipe, I can request to be breaded.

I look forward to trying the grinder, but it won’t solve my scale problem. I will still have to find a way to clean mill scale off of steel, without ruining the shape of the metal. A surface grinder would be great to have. Another possibility: buy steel a little oversize and put screw holes at the ends. Screw it to a big piece of metal, put the metal in the mill vise, and mill the scale off. The large piece of metal and the screws would hold it flat, better than a vise could.

While I wait for the grinder, I’m working on my next food project. I keep making large batches of food so I can reheat during the week instead of cooking from scratch over and over. Yesterday I gave up and bought collards, hocks, neck bones, corn meal, tomatoes, and Vidalias. I’m going to make collard greens and hoe cakes. I just hope I don’t overeat. This food will be off-the-charts good.

I look forward to making the hoe cakes, because I have a Griswold griddle I’ve never used. I Ebayed it and used electrolysis to get the crud off. It looked brand new when I was done. Then I seasoned it with bacon fat. It should be wonderful to use. A griddle is great for things like pancakes and crepes, because it provides easy access for a spatula.

I don’t think I’d want to be griddled. I keep hoping I’ll be hit by a meteor. I can’t come up with anything that beats that plan. Makes a mess, but that’s not my problem.

Maybe I’ll post a photo if I get the grinder running. Or maybe I’ll just lie on my back eating hoe cakes.

Ovid Knew When to Shut it

I am going to knock Ovid off today. I’m very grateful to have a short reading assignment to kill the taste of The Aeneid and help me heal from the boredom.

I’m done with Dido’s letter to Aeneas, and I just started someone else’s letter to someone else. It doesn’t matter who wrote whom; they’re fungible. One letter is almost exactly like another. Same voice. Same whiny, neurotic, meandering style. Does Tiger Beat still exist? They probably get letters like this all the time, scarred by clove-cigarette burns, with instructions to forward them to Justin Timberlake.

“My parents don’t understand our secret love. I know you were moved by the triquetra and unicorn I drew in the dust on the side of your tour bus. I totally understand why you had your security people restrain me while you drove away. They’re not worthy to witness what we’re becoming.”

Medea. That’s who it is. Medea wrote Jason. I don’t know anything about these two, except that Jason was in one of my favorite Saturday afternoon movies when I was a kid: Jason and the Argonauts. Jason roamed around in a boat, fighting cool Ray Harryhausen monsters. I loved that stuff. We didn’t have fancy CGI back then; some crazy old coot had to build statues and move them a degree or a millimeter at a time for the cameras. I thought it was wonderful.

To be clear, it’s Medea, not Madea. If you don’t know who Madea is, good for you. It’s a Tyler Perry character. If you don’t know who Tyler Perry is, see previous.

Tyler Perry created very bad TV shows, and somehow he became extremely successful. Now he creates very bad movies. I can’t understand his popularity. He uses BET-grade actors, and the scripts are like something I would have written in the sixth grade.

Back when I was at Trinity Church, they showed a Tyler Perry movie, which I’m sure they did not pay for. It featured a big family of miserable black people having a holiday meal and discussing infidelity and VD (each other’s). The message of the film: we should all admire good-looking guys who date extremely overweight women.

My feeling on the subject is this: people like what they like. If you prefer women under 300 pounds, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. If you like them big, it doesn’t make you a good person. Maybe you’re just an Arab.

Yes, they talked about VD and adultery in church, and not in a constructive way. The decision to show the movie was typical of the Wilkerson attitude. The obvious blew right by them. Any normal preacher would have thought, “Maybe this isn’t a great thing to show kids at 9 a.m.”

Trinity was maybe 80% black, and the Wilkersons knew the movie would please the crowd. The crowd’s happiness was always job one, and it still is. Feed the beast. If you don’t feed it, you can’t milk it.

Madea is Tyler Perry in a big flowered dress. I don’t know too much about “her,” but I believe she’s an angry and somewhat carnal church lady, sort of like Lamont Sanford’s Aunt Esther. As a Christian, I’m not a big fan of drag. The Wilkersons love drag. Their son and another pastor did a video in drag.

Madea does not figure heavily in Greek mythology. I guess that’s my point.

I still don’t understand why people admire Ovid. The letters he wrote are like something Bradley Manning might write to Justin Bieber. Stalkerish. “I hope you die. Well, no I don’t. Because I want you to live long enough to suffer for abandoning me. I’m not mad at you. Please come and kill me. If you have a minute.”

Our notions of romance have changed since the 19th century. Before that, it was perfectly okay to be a stalker. We admired stalkers. You could probably get away with that lifestyle up through 1920 or so. Now, we don’t think it’s romantic to mail someone your ear or jump on a bonfire because someone left you. We think it’s sick and crazy.

It’s a little unfair. We encourage young people to read stalker literature, and then we get mad when they grow up and hack the online accounts of people who dumped them, or when they cut themselves. We don’t expect them to take the things we teach them seriously. We expect them to have the good sense to be hypocrites, like the rest of us.

I don’t recall the Greeks getting excited about stalking. Maybe it started with the Romans. The impression I have is that in the Greek stuff, people who couldn’t let go were considered pathetic.

That would make sense. The Greeks admired moderation. Even in their rape, murder, pillage, arson, and theft.

A friend told me I was the least codependent person he knew, because I was so fast to cut people off and so serious about not taking them back. It was a nice compliment, but I clung to counterproductive people in the past, and that’s how I learned that it was better to cut out the dead wood and move on. I had to make a fool of myself many times before God helped me see what I was doing wrong. However I got here, you don’t have to worry about me stalking anyone now. I wish people the best, and I hope I manage to help a few get to know God, but I think my epitaph will be “Buh-BYE.”

I seem to be immune to loneliness these days. Years ago, it was a real problem for me. When I was living in Texas, undergoing the torture of toxic ADD drugs and consistent failure at my chosen profession, I had almost no one, and I was like one of those zoo animals that develop tics and repetitive movements because of isolation. Now I’m kind of glad I don’t deal with people too much. I guess some people go the St. John route, and others go Kaczynski.

When you’re around people too much, they pressure you to be what you don’t want to be. That’s fine if you’re three. You need the guidance. It’s not so good when you’ve gotten a glimpse of God and you’re surrounded by people who think carnality is the bomb.

After today, I am done with Greeks and Romans. I move on to Augustine’s Confessions, which could be a pretty good read. Surely it will not be full of two-paragraph similes, the way Homer and Virgil were.

The next assignment is actually a combination of Luke and John, but I’ve read those three million times, so I don’t plan to go back over them.

I will continue to regale you with tales of my scholarly exploits. I’m sure someone will want to publish my sophisticated insights. I think I’ll hold my breath until I get an offer.

In any case, I’ll get a little closure and redemption. And I will know where Phrygia is.

Blameless Virgil Gnaws the Dust

I have earth-shattering news. I finished The Aeneid.

People who are keeping up know the story. I felt bad about reading almost none of the books on the Lit. Hum. list back when I was “studying” at Columbia, so I downloaded a syllabus and went to work. I slogged through Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, and some other crap I am too lazy to list. Then I grounded my hull on Virgil. He’s a terrible writer, and I accidentally bought a translation by an even worse writer; by the time I realized it, I was about 60% of the way through the book. I bought the right translation and started over.

It’s a punishment fit for a mythological character. It’s almost Sisyphean. I refused to read this horrible book when I was supposed to, so I was condemned to read it later; not just once, but 1.6 times. I got the Santayana treatment, to the tune of 60%.

Man, this book stinks. It was agony. With junk like this to deal with, no wonder the ancients took so long to achieve literacy. It must have been extremely unappealing.

Checking the syllabus, I see that my next Herculean labor is Ovid’s Heroides. To show how little I learned at Columbia, I will reveal that I have no idea what the book is about. Maybe it wasn’t on the syllabus in 1902 when I took the course, or maybe it just wasn’t on the list of things I expected to be on the exam. In any case, I know nothing about it, and I kind of wish it could stay that way.

Wikipedia, I summon thee!

The Wiki-Oracle informs me that Ovid was a guy who gave up law to become a poet. Not sure that’s a step upward. He wrote in something called “elegiac meter.”

Here’s a quotation: “An elegiac couplet consists of one line of poetry in dactylic hexameter followed by a line in dactylic pentameter.”

Now I have to look up dactylic whatever.

My God, this is boring.

“The foot is the basic metrical unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Western traditions of poetry.”

“A dactyl (Greek: ????????, dáktylos, ‘finger’) is a foot in poetic meter. In quantitative verse, often used in Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight.”

If a dactyl is three syllables, how can you have dactylic PENTAmeter? “Penta” means “five.”

Oh, okay. I see it now. Dactylic pentameter is apparently fifteen syllables.

How can anybody care about this stuff?

No, I’m wrong about the fifteen syllables. There is apparently a thirty-page book somewhere explaining the rules of dactylic pentameter, and there are lots of variations.

I guess I’m a low-foreheaded potato eater, but I have never understood how meter alone could turn something into verse. When someone reads “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” I totally understand why it’s called poetry, but just screwing with rhythm in unimportant ways only creepy, mildewed academics can perceive is a different matter.

I think haikus are stupid. Is it okay to say that? They’re stupid. Compared to a haiku, a limerick is exciting new technology.

Ordered Sonic fries
She brings me cheese tots instead
Tears in my lime slush

While I was reading The Aeneid, I looked for some evidence that it wasn’t plain old prose, and I gave up. I’m sure it’s in there, but it doesn’t exactly jump out at you or have any detectible positive effect on the reader. You don’t sit there thinking, “Wow! This meter is really clever!” It’s more like, “BOREDOM! BOREDOM! WHEN WILL IT END???? OW, MY HEAD! WHY DID HE WRITE THIS???”

Rhythm is very important to writers. Sometimes a writer’s understanding of rhythm is obvious. One of the neat things about David Mamet is that he has good rhythm. His dialogue bounces along in a very appealing, balanced way. But that doesn’t mean arbitrarily choosing a completely ineffective, rigid rhythmic scheme makes you a great writer. If anything, it makes you self-deluded. A person who gets off on weird rhythmic regimes is missing the point of literature. It’s like thinking your food is good because all the ingredients are autumn colors.

If you want to make clever patterns other strange people notice, my suggestion is to take up needlepoint or maybe drums.

I can already see that Ovid’s rhythmic genius is going to be lost on me. I will just take that as given.

Once Ovid is in the can, I’m out of the Greek mythology ghetto. I can’t wait. The only person I’ve developed any liking for is Herodotus, and that’s only because he isn’t serious. The rest deserve all the bad things that happen to them. The characters and actual human beings in these books are like members of street gangs: they estimate the value of their existence based on the completely unnecessary, narcissistic suffering they inflict on themselves and others. Your son got his head chopped off in battle? Boo hoo! Maybe you should have stayed home instead of sailing off to hit other people with swords.

I didn’t do a calculation, but I’m pretty sure Aeneas lost more men than he took with him. I think he had fourteen ships at the start. What does a Greek ship hold? Say 150 men, tops? By the end of the book, Italy was buried in the rotting corpses of Trojans. One guy–Turnus–killed thousands of Trojans and Tuscans (I think it was Tuscans). Virgil had to be fudging his numbers. My guess is that he wrote the first part of the book, establishing the number of Trojans, and then he got carried away with slaughter in the second half of the book. Then he was too lazy to go back and correct the math. Even Virgil got tired of The Aeneid.

Just a theory.

I should write my own Greek epic and call it The Idiocy. It would be about a bunch of Greeks who got drunk and decided it would be great fun to go burn and pillage someone else’s city, only to find out that war is really unpleasant and lots of people you like die.

Oh, wait. That epic has already been written. Three times.

How could the ancients admire these morons? What kind of infantile morals did they have, to get worked up about which racist rapist murdering crybaby attention-whore thief won which battle?

It goes to show what the world was like before Judaism and Christianity. People had the values of monkeys.

I guess I’ve vented enough about Homer and Virgil. I’m not sure, though. I may have to resume later. I may not be completely purged; I may just be tired.

I’m looking ahead. I only have to read 134 pages of The Inferno. I’m tempted to get down on my knees and thank God, but the little intelligent part of me is screaming, “Who teaches a course and tells you to read a third of a book? What good is that?” For the rest of my life, I’ll have to tell people I read little bits of Dante’s Inferno and then stuck it on a shelf, so I don’t really know what’s in it.

Maybe this course is stupid. I hadn’t really considered that. I considered it back in the Devonian Era, when I was actually in college, but looking back, I thought that was just immaturity. Maybe I was right!

They put Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon on the list. I’m not reading that. It’s just a sop to black people and women. Besides, I already read it. They could have put something really good in that spot, like 1984 or Animal Farm. They didn’t have to struggle to find a black female author and jam her in there in spite of the dubious quality of her work.

Song of Solomon wasn’t in print when I took Lit. Hum., so I give myself a pass. Maybe I’ll give myself Lit. Hum. credit for reading Catch-22, which is a work of real genius.

They stuck Virginia Woolf in there, too. I may blow that off. I haven’t read Lord of the Flies yet. Maybe it will fill the hole. I don’t know anything about Virginia Woolf, but the Burton/Taylor movie was quite depressing.

Apparently, Goethe and Nietzsche have been part of the curriculum in the past. I have no memory of reading either, so I may jam one of them in the Woolf opening. How to choose, though? Wait! I know how! Which one is shorter? Hmm…they’re both around 150 pages. But Goethe’s Faust is a story, not a dreadful philosophy book. I’m a Christian; I already have a philosophy. I don’t need a new one which is necessarily wrong, inferior, and pernicious.

Okay, Faust. That kills Virginia Woolf.

Here’s something interesting! My old Lit. Hum. prof, James R. Russell, moved to Harvard and tried to start a Lit. Hum. knockoff. He has a syllabus, and it’s online. This would be closure, a la mode. I’m trying to relive the course he taught, so what better way to replace Toni Morrison than to make a selection from his list?

Well, this is sad. I looked at the syllabus, and there is nothing from the 20th century in it. I’m apparently on the second semester, and he never did a second semester.

There goes that plan.

I learned some other interesting stuff while Googling Lit. Hum. today. Remember how I said I cheated on a couple of tests at Columbia in order to avoid being expelled? I hate cheating and cheaters, so it really bothered me. Well, it turns out Columbia’s Lit. Hum. system has had other cheating issues. The Columbia wiki site lists THREE, in 1987, 2007, and 2013. In all cases, instructors leaked test questions early. That’s how I cheated, and I believe it also happened in Columbia’s Contemporary Civilization course. I remember a bunch of guys sitting in a room, looking over the exam and frantically flipping through books for answers. I may have cheated in that class, too.

Someone I knew took a test early; his professor was a lady named Lavinia, which happens to be the name of the lady who married Aeneas. The instructor let him keep the test paper, and naturally, it got passed on.

Lots and lots of people cheated on the core courses at Columbia, and instructors helped. Sorry to burst the world’s bubble. It’s Quiz Show all over again, only nobody reads this blog or cares.

I don’t recall ever cheating on anything else in school. I was a mess, and I really did not want to be sent home for failing tests. The pressure was too much. Embarrassing.

I’m going to read Lord of the Flies. That will just have to do. It’s 20th-century. It’s post-war. It’s not a consolation prize for a mediocre writer who belongs to an underrepresented group. It’s not about a bunch of bitter, thwarted cirrhotic Algonquin Round Table rejects getting plastered and making emasculating remarks about each other.

Sold.

I looked over a bunch of other potential works. I’m surprised to see that I’ve read most of them. For a person who more or less gave up on literature at 25, I got a lot done.

Today is a great day. Virgil is behind me. Now to get back to them tasty potatoes and maybe some NASCAR.

More

I felt like I should say a few more things, about cheating at Columbia University, and about Ovid.

When I attended, there were three core courses (that I now recall). One was Contemporary Civilization, and it more or less covered the history of Western thought. The second was Literature Humanities; it covered the history of Western literature. The third was Art Humanities; it covered looking at slides of different types of marble columns. Ionian! Doric! That other kind!

I have a dim memory of attending one or two Art. Hum. classes before making my grand disappearance, but that may be something I dreamed. I seem to remember kouroses.

The big problem with these courses was that every student had to take them, and the exams were standardized. As a result, each course had numerous instructors and sections, and if an idealistic hippie instructor decided grading was a male-exalting, eurocentric concept that tended to inhibit homosexuality and socialist urges, then that instructor could hand the exam out early to take pressure off of his or her students. Those students could, and did, pass them out to students in other sections. This is why cheating was…not unheard of. In fact, the system made it hard to get a fair shake playing it straight.

That covers that.

As for Ovid, when I read his name, I always think “Egg.”

Also, I just started reading his works, and I am happy, happy, happy to report that they are short. Really short. Other than that, I wonder why they were written.

The first one is Penelope’s letter to Odysseus. He is about to come home, kick ass, and take names. Telemachus has already made his voyage to Pylos, and Penelope is really tired of feeding suitors.

I’m sure there is something brilliant about this “poem.” I do not see it. It doesn’t rhyme. It’s not clever. It doesn’t tell us anything new or even a little bit interesting about Odysseus. On top of that, it’s another example of the sick, sad obsession the ancients had with Troy.

If there is something brilliant hidden in it, someone will have to explain it to me. For less than $30,000 a semester.

I looked it up, and Homer was born at some time within a century or so of 1000 B.C. The accepted date for the sacking of Troy is 1270 B.C. Virgil was born in 70 B.C., and Ovid was born in 43 B.C. How long do these people need to get over Troy?

Creativity isn’t that hard. You just say to yourself, “I’m going to come up with something new,” and then you wait. Eventually, an idea will come. It’s not necessary to drag the carcass of Odysseus out over and over for a millennium.

The ancients had the sequel disease; the one that gave us 55 Fast and Furiouses when one was way more than enough. In a thousand years, they could not come up with anything better than Iliad III: the Final Reckoning. Maybe we shouldn’t look down on Hollywood [note: yes we should]. Entire generations of Greeks and Romans were no smarter.

Good news: Heroides short. Bad news: still stuck in 1270 B.C.

If Dante so much as hints at the existence of Troy, I will fly to Italy and desecrate his grave.

Food Fit for a Merry Prankster

Last night I finished off the meatloaf and potatoes au gratin I made last week. I still can’t get over the experience.

When you think of great food, meatloaf does not come to mind immediately. When I was a kid, meatloaf was something I ate because it kept me alive. It was okay, but no sane person begged his mother to make it. That has been the way I’ve seen meatloaf all my life. Cheap, easy to make, and good enough to eat without struggling. It’s probably the most pedestrian food on earth that doesn’t come out of a can with an easy-open top.

The meatloaf I made last week, combined with the potatoes, made an astonishing meal. On top of that, it got better while it sat in the fridge. The seasonings mingled. The pepper in the potatoes worked its way through the potato…meat. By the time I finished it off, it had reached a sensual crescendo.

I could not stop eating this stuff. There are some things I just can’t have in the house, and this combination appears to be one of them. I can’t have fun size Snickers bars or miniature Reese’s cups around. I can’t have Fat Boy ice cream sandwiches around. Now I have to add meatloaf and potatoes to the list.

I ate the last of it, and then for at least two hours, I found myself reliving it and exclaiming aloud that it was fantastic.

Yes. I had meatloaf flashbacks. I have PMSD: Post-Meatloaf Stress Disorder.

I felt like I had ingested drugs. I was borderline euphoric. From food.

There is no restaurant on earth that does that for me, but it happens with my own food all the time. I can’t understand it. Last night I sat on the couch, marveling at the strange gift God had given me.

I would be completely happy being an okay cook. I have no family to feed. Even though I make good food, I’m not that picky about what I eat. As far as I can tell, I don’t really need to be able to produce exceptional food. But it happens time and again.

I made meatloaf and potatoes so well, I can’t make it any more. If I make it again, I’ll eat 5,000 calories a day until it’s gone. I don’t have a church to cook for any more. I quit cooking for my friends because I have no wife to help me shop, cook, or clean up. What am I supposed to do with the recipe?

Even worse, I know I can make it a lot better. I’m going to resist trying.

By the way, one of the keys to making the meatloaf work is baking it at 400 for at least half an hour at the end. This creates a thin black crust around it, on the sides and bottom. The flavor this crust provides puts the icing on the cake, so to speak.

It’s too bad I can’t come here and say, “Wow, God made me an incredible composer/musician/singer/mathematical genius/inventor/whatever.” There are things I wish I could do extremely well, and cooking is not one of them. Mozart got perfect pitch, flawless timing, endless musical creativity, and peerless dexterity. I got potatoes au gratin and strawberry cheesecake.

Which I don’t have the metabolism to tolerate.

There must be a reason for it. It’s not so I can open a restaurant. Forget that. I watch restaurant shows all the time, and I am now sure I would rather be struck by lightning every day than supervise the kind of people who cook on lines and wait tables. It’s not so I can sell things I cook. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting for people to sue me because they pretended to choke on things I made. I definitely don’t want to run a commercial kitchen where the government will force me to sit through seminars about my legal obligation to encourage my gay employees to get “married.”

I feel like one of the lame superheroes. You know. Like Storm, the X-Woman. Her big gift: making it rain on bad guys. Whoopee. Impressive. “Oooh, I’m scared. Whatever you do, don’t jack up the humidity and make my hair frizz.”

The superhero who makes great cheesecake and ribs will never save the world or get the girl. You can bank on that. He’ll be back at Justice League headquarters, hosing out filthy smokers and inhaling unhealthy quantities of hickory smoke. “Wonder Woman and I are flying back to her island on her invisible jet for a three-week honeymoon with no cell phones. Can you fix us some to-go plates before we abandon you to clean up the kitchen alone?”

You can always pick Food Boy out in group photos, because he wears his cape in the front.

It’s a nice gift to have, but if you know why I received it, you are way ahead of me.

Speaking of food, I guess everyone knows the KFC recipe is now public domain. Colonel Sanders has a nephew, and the nephew found the recipe, written in the Colonel’s handwriting. KFC swears it’s a fake, but sadly for them, people who try it say it’s the real thing. The only missing item is Accent, i.e. monosodium glutamate.

I’m happy about the news, because KFC quit making the real thing a long time ago. They used to fry chicken in beef fat, but the joy-killers got to them and made them switch to something inferior. Probably canola oil, which is like sunflower seed oil that has had a small fish fried in it. Beef fat is loaded with cow flavor, and it’s satisfying. Now that we have the recipe, we can make real KFC at home, with proper fat.

Some people are saying the leaked recipe has too much paprika in it. Paprika is pretty mild. You can probably vary the amount a great deal without hurting anything. If the real KFC recipe has less paprika than the leaked one, it may simply mean that KFC decided to save money by cutting down on a low-impact ingredient.

Here is the recipe:

KFC CHICKEN INGREDIENTS

2/3 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. thyme
1/2 tsp. basil
1/3 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. celery salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. mustard
4 tsp. paprika
2 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. ginger
3 tsp. white pepper
2 cups flour
MSG
BEEF FAT!!!!

I haven’t tried it. I don’t fry chicken all that well, and I’ve been busy with other stuff. If you try it, I hope you’ll report back. They say you have to fry right at 350 degrees, and you should be aware that KFC uses pressure fryers, so you probably won’t want to go all-out and use the same type of equipment. I can’t figure pressure fryers out anyway. How do you know the chicken is done if you can’t see it?

If I made that stuff, I think I’d replace some of the paprika with chipotle powder. Maybe I’d have to cut back on the white pepper, though.

I don’t feel bad about passing the recipe around, because it was never patented to begin with. It’s a trade secret, not the subject of a patent. Infringing a patent is a statutory tort and a crummy thing to do. Using a trade secret you received legally is fair play!

Now that I think about it, the KFC spice profile would be great on fish. You could use it in a fish and chips recipe. That would rock.

I made pot roast today. First time ever. It’s merely very good, so I think I’m safe.

I’m going to go have some now. If I start to freak, talk me down.

More

Predictably, the pot roast was really good. It would go great with hoe cakes or cornbread.

Might as well post the recipe.

INGREDIENTS

3 lb. chuck roast
3 large (large) red potatoes
2 large yellow onions
1 pound grape tomatoes
1 packet beef flavor onion soup mix
1 lb. carrots (peeled baby carrots are fine)
10 oz. Carlo Rossi Paisano or similar red wine
1 qt. water
olive oil
salt
pepper
1 teaspoon starch

Salt and pepper the meat. Use lots of salt. Fry it in a little oil to brown the outsides. You may have to use high heat with a piece of meat this big.

Pour the wine into a big casserole dish or something similar; it will have to hold the meat and all the vegetables. Add the starch and a teaspoon of salt to the wine. Make sure the starch is stirred in. Put the meat in the wine and sprinkle the soup mix on it.

You could probably double the starch and get a better result than I did.

Bake the meat at 300 degrees for three hours. Slice the onions. Cut the potatoes in big chunks. Add the vegetables to the meat along with the water. Salt the vegetables heavily and then season them with pepper. Cover and bake for another 90 minutes.

You may want to turn the broiler on at the end, uncover the food, and brown it on top.

Check the sauce to make sure it has enough salt in it. If not, add salt and swirl it around to dissolve it. Test again and get it right.

You might want to use 1 1/2 packets of soup mix. It’s very good with one packet, but it might be nice to make it more intense.

Also a possibility: 1 bay leaf in the sauce.

We are Sifted Every Day

Today I was thinking about the Patton Oswalt clip I probably should not have linked to (“I’m wearing boots of escaping!”), and I thought about his work in movies and on TV. I decided to check Youtube to see what else he had done.

I found a video in which he compares God to an imaginary sphincter that hovers over his head and threatens to devour him if he isn’t good.

The injustice of that comparison is hard to stomach. He is talking about someone who allowed himself to be tortured to death by cretins in order to save bad people from humiliation, disease, and damnation. But Oswalt’s vile, truth-hating mindset isn’t rare. America is filling up with people who literally hate Christianity, and many of them hate God himself.

The audience in the video was disturbing. They squealed with delight as Oswalt piled cruel remarks on God and Christians. They were thrilled to see someone “telling it like it is.” I could sense the release of pent-up anger; someone was telling them it was all right to hate us, and they were enjoying the opportunity to let it out en masse, in a nurturing, approving environment.

A safe space. Safe for some.

As a Christian in America, I grew up feeling that my country was my safe space. I didn’t think I was surrounded by potential persecutors. I knew such people existed, but I certainly didn’t feel outnumbered. I thought of them as harmless nuts who could not get traction. How that has changed. Today you can literally be fired from a job for refusing to say a man is really a woman.

I decided to Google “I hate Christianity” to see what came up. I found people blaming the world’s hatred of Christians on Christians. We’re intolerant. We’re self-righteous. We’re mean. Yes, and Hitler burned Jews because they were pushy and dishonest and ran the German banking system. It wasn’t because Germans and Austrians were vicious racists who wanted scapegoats; that notion was unthinkable, so Germans and Austrians replaced it with their own version of blood guilt.

If you really want to murder someone, you can always come up with a rationale, and no matter how insane it is, you can make yourself believe it.

It doesn’t matter at all what we do, just like it doesn’t matter how much land Jews give to Muslims. We are not hated because of what we do. We are hated because we exist. For that reason, we should stop trying to appease the world. It offends God, and it gives the world power over us.

People who hate God belong to Satan, and they dance to his tune. Satan doesn’t want a truce. He doesn’t want Christians and Jews to be nice, pay for abortions, and leave gays alone. He wants us removed from the planet, along with our remains. When he went after the Jews sixty years ago, he wasn’t content with sending them away and taking what they had “stolen” from Gentiles; he insisted on turning their bones into untraceable dust. Satan wants a world in which no one remembers we were here. That’s why he convinced many Jews to say, “May his name be blotted out forever,” when they referred to Jesus. He didn’t just want Jesus deleted; he wanted the hard drive incinerated so Jesus couldn’t be recovered.

Until fairly recently, I didn’t realize how bad hatred for Christians was. I definitely didn’t realize how much scientists hate us. That makes no sense at all; apart from a few people who want to teach kids creationism, which is a very minor issue, we don’t interfere with science any more. Centuries have passed since a pope threatened to burn Galileo. Atheists have interfered with science relatively recently; the Soviets imprisoned people for accepting scientific conclusions that seemed to conflict with socialist notions. Why didn’t scientists rise up and attack them? Answer: because Satan likes socialism. It would have been pointless for him to send one group of his flying monkeys to attack another.

Earlier this year, I thought it would be fun to replace some of my threadbare T-shirts with shirts related to science and technology, so I looked to see what was available. I was startled to see that sites selling pro-science shirts were full of selections attacking Christianity. The most disturbing shirt I saw featured a cartoon Satan with the caption, “Keep studying science, kiddies.” What on earth was that all about? Are scientists so overwhelmingly against God that a shirt like that has a significant market?

Recently a strange group of people at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) staged a performance in which robed figures appeared to sacrifice a woman to Shiva, a sick demon deity which is part of Hinduism. CERN bigwigs claim it was a joke. No one really knows what happened. No one denies it took place. Imagine how the world would have reacted had we seen movies of Robert Oppenheimer pretending to sacrifice women to false gods at Los Alamos. He would have been placed in a mental institution.

This is not the America I grew up in. It is not the world I grew up in. God is withdrawing, day by day, and Christians can’t accept the fact that they lost the war. We still issue misguided prayers for the salvation of America. We say God is warning us so we can turn back to him. We need to turn back to him, for whatever help is still available, but we’re not being warned. It’s too late to warn us. We got beaten.

Jesus said the world would hate us. We don’t believe it. We think turning away from the world is judgmental and wrong. We think we can never give up on people, even though God does it every day. The world really does hate us. When we were doing well in the US, our enemies tended to keep quiet, so we didn’t know how numerous they were. Now they’re on top, so the closet doors are springing open. The tide was already up to our waists before we knew it was coming in.

All I want is to live in a relatively peaceful place until I am done with this body, which, I hope, will not take very long. I want to mind my own business as much as I can and do whatever God calls me to do, although I don’t know if those goals are compatible. Regardless of how far I retreat, eventually, the tide will reach me, but it can’t hurt to get away from Miami, which is a node of evil, aggression, pride, demon worship, and hate. It’s not Detroit, but it’s pretty bad.

The other day I was thinking about an unstable person I used to be entangled with, and I asked God if this person was going to hell. The answer seemed very clear to me: yes, and there was nothing I could do to change it. It was depressing and sobering. Justice is real; it may be delayed, but it will come. It is indescribably harsh. Whatever this person may have done to me, I do not wish hell on them. But they have chosen their path.

There is no point in making contact or praying for this person. It’s done, and besides, I already tried those things over a prolonged period. The world is full of such people. God knew they would exist, so he created a place in the earth where they could be stored after death, in preparation for the day when they would be removed to the lake of fire. They hate God now; they blame him for everything. They will still hate him and blame him while they burn. There is nothing that can be done. They have to be locked away so they won’t ruin heaven for the rest of us, the way they ruined the earth.

Walk down a city street, and all around you, you will see people who might as well not exist. They are temporary. It seems like a waste of time to acknowledge them. Anything you say to them will be taken to hell. Where you’re going, it will seem as though they had never been created. They will not be remembered. We will not visit them. The world is like an ovary, and people who aren’t saved are like unfertilized eggs that wash out and disappear. Each of us thinks he’s a big deal, saved or not; we can’t conceive of a universe in which we are not important. But to God, we are more like gametes than fully formed beings. We are disposed of, in large numbers, daily.

People love to say we’re all God’s children, but that’s a lie. The Bible doesn’t say that. We are all God’s creations, but not all of us are his children.

It will be interesting to watch the mess unfold over the coming years. I’m glad I won’t be caught up in it.

I Really Needed One More Tool

I did it. I bought a 2×72 belt grinder.

I’ve been wanting one of these things forever, but they’re not cheap, and building one for yourself is a pain and costs nearly as much as buying one. I figured I could live without it. Then I started making knives, and I realized using a small 1×42 grinder was going to make me miserable in the long run.

Actually, it makes me miserable even in the short run.

Truthfully, I am not quite as gung ho about knife-making as I was a week or two ago, but I kept getting the nagging feeling that I needed to do this. I felt like God wanted me to do it for some reason or other, so I gave in. Now that it’s on the way, I hope I use it.

A lot of Christians are involved with knives and guns, not to mention all types of machining and woodworking. Strange. I guess the zombie predictions are coming true; the heathens are busy playing video games, protesting, and fornicating, so they’re not as likely as we are to have shops full of much-needed tools and weapons when everything goes sour. They will probably be visiting us in groups eventually.

A 2×72 grinder is a remarkable thing. If you work metal, there will be many, many times when you’ll need to remove metal from parts in a hurry, and depending on the job, you may need an angle grinder, a mill, a lathe, a band saw, a drill press, a plasma cutter or cutting torch, or a big belt grinder. They’re not interchangeable.

Now that I think about it, I didn’t mention shears. In the metalworking world, “shear” doesn’t just mean scissors. It can mean a heavy machine you operate by jumping on a treadle, to make long cuts in big pieces of sheet metal.

I’ll post a video of someone showing off a belt grinder. If you’re a man, and you have struggled with wimpy tools, you will instantly want one of these things. Spend two days trying to cut a part down with files and a bench grinder, and you may be willing to trade a leg for a belt grinder.

Here’s something really nice about belt grinders: they’re not limited to steel and iron. You’re probably thinking, “Neither is my bench grinder. I grind aluminum on it all the time.” Well, here is bad news: you’re risking a big accident. Non-ferrous metals can accumulate on a bench grinder wheel and melt into it. Then the next time the wheel gets hot, they can expand and make the wheel explode. When that happens, the best possible outcome is that the wheel will be destroyed and you’ll have to take time off to replace it. The worst outcome is that bits of it can penetrate your face. That has actually happened to people.

Another wonderful thing about belt grinders: you can change grits very quickly. It takes about ten seconds. You can go from 24 grit to a cork belt with polishing compound without removing screws or turning nuts. That’s very nice.

There are a lot of grinders available. I decided to try an Oregon Blade Maker. Some guy, presumably in Oregon, started making grinder bodies from heavy steel plate. He welds them together and puts wheels on them. People who use them like them a lot, and the design seems a lot smarter than the stuff the competition puts out. Also, they’re pretty. They come with nice powder-coating.

Best part: not expensive. When you put “well made” and “not expensive” together, you have my attention.

You can drop three grand on a factory grinder. I don’t see where the money goes. It’s not a complicated machine. You make a box with a cavity that holds an arm that holds the contact wheel or platen, and you stick a few wheels on it, plus a tensioned arm that allows you to put slack in the belt in order to remove it. Simple. It’s not a vertical machining center.

People talk about how grinders have to have mass and so forth. I suppose they must know something, but it seems to me they must be exaggerating. You don’t put an engine block on a grinder rest. The grinder doesn’t have to resist tons of force. It’s not like a mill, which has to weigh over a ton in order to get anything done. I started to make a belt grinder from plywood once, and I’m sure it would have worked fine. I am confident that a welded box made from heavy plate will work just fine, and it should be easier to move around than a giant industrial machine.

Let me see if I can find a Youtube of a wooden belt grinder, just to be a troll. I’ll bet I can.

I found one. This guy went a little nuts; he even made wooden wheels. But the grinder works.

He probably died horribly later. Like the old joke about the guy who backed into a sander says, “a horrible end, but a beautiful finish.”

I was all worked up about making a stand for the grinder. Then I realized I already had one. I have a Northern Tool foam cart I use to hold my bench grinder and 1×42 grinder. I am thinking I’ll remove the bench grinder and put it on a Harbor Freight stand. Then I can put both belt grinders on the cart. That will be convenient.

I learned a few things about belts. Most people like 3M and Norton belts. Basic belts come in aluminum oxide and zirconia. Belts made with zirconia cost a little more, but they supposedly last twice as long, so I assume they’re worth it. I rooted around looking for belts I could buy with credit card points, and I found Red Label Abrasives. You can get them at Sears.com. I have never used one, but I saw a lot of glowing reviews, so I took a chance.

Aluminum oxide is harder than zirconium dioxide (zirconia), but zirconia is tougher. Don’t ask me to explain it, but it supposedly makes a better belt.

While we’re on the subject of economics *rationalization cough cough*, big grinding belts are cheaper than little ones. A 2 x 72 belt contains 144 square inches of grit. A 1 x 42 has 42 square inches. That means a 2 x 72 belt gives you 3.43 times as much grit, for a lot less than 3.43 times the money. Big belts and big motors save time and money, apart from the initial expense.

I wish I could use the plasma cutter for knife work, but I’m a little worried about having problems with the steel, as a result of having nearby metal vaporized at 6 million degrees. It might work, though. I suppose what you do before heat-treating steel isn’t that important.

That would be hilarious. Draw a couple of lines on the metal…ZZZZZHHHHTT…ZZZZHHHHTTTT…clang…done.

I will keep the world informed of my progress, if any. I hope this gives you reason to carry on.