Holes

Here is the guitar body. I put a rout in it for the neck pickup, I routed out the control cavity, and I drilled passages that will connect both pickup cavities and the control cavity.

I just learned that the “correct” thing is to drill slantwise from the bridge pickup hole into the control area. Thank God I didn’t know that. I might have tried it and gone right through the back of the guitar. Instead I drilled down the centerline of the guitar from the neck pocket, all the way to the future location of the bridge pickup. This connects the pickup holes. Then I drilled a 7/8″ jack hole and inserted a 1/4″ bit and continued on to the bridge pickup area. That will connect the control cavity to the pickups. I’ll run the neck pickup wire through the bridge rout and into the control area, and the bridge pickup wire will go straight into the control rout.

Using routers is a nightmare. They jump and bite and act crazy. It’s just barely conceivable that their poor behavior may have some tenuous relationship to my complete lack of skill. But I doubt it.

I think I’m going to make a couple of tiny bowtie inlays from maple and stick them in the border between the light walnut inlay and the guitar body, above the neck pocket. This will make the pocket inlays look like something I did on purpose, instead of a massive screwup. Once it’s done, I’ll delete all Internet references to my mistakes and claim everything went perfectly. No one will ever know. Shhh.

For some reason, I inherited a bag of silver coins. I might inlay a couple of liberty dimes into the guitar, if I can find two from the years my parents were born.

Every choice I made added a new level of complexity to the project. Because of the rear control rout, I have to drill potentiometer and switch holes, and I have to create a walnut cover for the rout, and I have to cut a rabbet into the guitar to receive the cover. Ordinarily, you just make the hole in the front of the instrument and slap in a prefab metal cover that holds the controls.

Here is my conclusion: if you choose to make a clear-coated bookmatched Telecaster with a rear rout, you will multiply the woodworking time by about five. Seriously, I could make a solid-color body in two days.

The TV Jones pickups also added work. I had to figure out where to put them, and I had to use a special routing template. The templates I bought have holes for Fender-style pickups, but they’re useless for TV Jones jobs, which don’t even fit standard humbucker holes.

I’m hoping I won’t have to recess the Bigsby into the top, but after all the crap I’ve routed, it probably would not be a challenge. Maybe I should do it just to be a wise guy.

Sad news: I’ve learned that you can make a guitar neck using a router and a jig. This is sad, because it means I will probably go crazy and make a neck eventually. I’ve realized that fat necks work very well with electric guitars, even though they’re a horror on acoustics. I ordered a big neck from Warmoth, but I don’t think it’s as fat as the one on my amazing Burny LP clone, so I’m not totally happy.

I went nuts and ordered a jointer/planer. Then I came to my senses and cancelled the order. I improved my planer-jointing technique, and I decided to keep my money. Then I went nuts again. The planer/jointer is once again on the way. I face-jointed a couple of really squirrelly mahogany boards I stole from someone’s trash, and it was a nightmare, so the new machine started looking good again.

I got the planer working really well, apart from the problems with twisted wood. I learned how to completely eliminate snipe. I knew it was a good idea to pull up “a little” on boards as they entered and exited, but by experimenting, I have found that snipe disappears if you pull up a WHOLE LOT. You’re trying to simulate the action of the powerful rollers that hold the wood down, so you really have to apply yourself. I had been afraid that pulling up hard would drive the wood into the blades, but that doesn’t happen, because the roller closest to your hand prevents it. I guess if you have a three-foot-long board with increased leverage, you can apply too much force, but on a twenty-inch workpiece, you can pull like crazy.

I’m going to try to get the routing done today. Time to go out and buy even more piles of double-side tape, to hold stuff in place while I work.

If I can make my own necks, I may make a new guitar with headstock and body shapes that are completely original. Probably similar to a Telecaster, but with better fret access from above. I hate the Telecaster control plate. It’s inconvenient and jams the selector switch up against the volume knob. I’d probably rout from the rear again.

Wish me luck. More accurately, pray I don’t screw this up any more than I already have.

Don’t Blame me; it was the Boss’s Idea

Over the weekend, my job was to drive the evangelist John Bevere around. He was speaking at my church.

Usually I don’t like hauling VIPs around. It’s boring, and they don’t pay much attention to you. You find yourself standing around at the mall while they look at shoes, or you drive their luggage places while they’re having dinner with church bigwigs. Stuff like that. But I enjoyed meeting Mr. Bevere. He was very humble, and he spoke and acknowledged my existence, even though he was busy the whole time.

Unfortunately, I got pulled over while he was in my truck. There was some kind of bizarre screwup with my registration. I had no idea it was messed up. We ended up sitting in a parking lot for fifteen minutes while a cop sorted things out and gave me a reduced fine. John was kind enough to pray.

He gave a wonderful sermon. The best guest sermon I’ve heard. It was basically the same thing I keep telling people: God wants to do it for you. He came at it from a different angle, but it’s really the same thing. Christians get saved, and then they go home and look at porn and cheat on their spouses and take drugs, and they never have any power in their lives, and they can’t change their behavior. It’s not supposed to be like that. We are supposed to have power. Eternal life is swell, but if that’s all you get, you should literally live like a psychopath until ten minutes before you die and then ask for forgiveness. The power is supposed to flow here on earth, not just in heaven.

I bought his book. I have to be honest; I think we get some preachers who are utterly full of it, and I almost never buy their stuff. I think some of them are just DVD salesmen. I don’t know if they’re unrepentant con artists who have learned to speak Christianese, or whether they’ve just got themselves fooled.

We have a recurrent guest who is supposed to be a prophet, and I don’t even want to say what my impression of him is. I got a free book by a guest, for donating to one of our church’s ministries, and it’s somewhere at the bottom of my closet, under a bunch of crap. But I bought John Bevere’s book, because I felt sure what he said came from God, and I thought he probably knew more about this message than I did.

I haven’t looked at the book yet. Watch me endorse it without reading it and then open it and find out it’s full of new age gobbledygook. I don’t think that will happen, though.

The Holy Spirit works. If you pray in tongues a lot, you will start to get revelation. The Bible will start to make sense to you. The missing pieces will show up. God never created a human being smart enough to understand it with the unaided mind. If you have a consistent habit of praying in the Spirit for long periods, God’s power and wisdom will grow in you like a tree you water and fertilize every day. Like a mustard tree, as one very smart person put it. God doesn’t want you to do it on your own. He wants to do all the heavy lifting. You just have to drop your pride and admit you’re a charity case.

When you get revelation coming to you regularly, you will find that when “brilliant” evangelists tell you things, very often, you already know them. And it helps you judge what’s worth receiving and what is just plain puke.

Revelation is part of the power God gives people here on earth. Because I had revelation, which comes by grace, I was able to judge John’s message, the subject of which was grace. That worked out pretty good.

Satan hates this message. We are conceived–literally–as potentially godlike beings when we receive salvation and the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Satan wants us to be stillborn, so we will die weak, without taking the world back from him. He tells us tongues are nonsense. He tells us Christianity is about discipline and hard work, and that we have to earn it all. He tells us it’s trashy and immature to ask God for things we don’t deserve. The truth is that God wants us to have things we don’t deserve, without earning them. Hello? That’s why he allowed himself to be nailed to a cross. Why would he buy us salvation and then refuse to buy us anything else?

God has a whole shop full of power tools waiting for each of us. How would you feel if you ran a garage and the mechanics refused to touch the air tools? Imagine it. They come to you and they say, “We’ll turn the nuts by hand because we’re not worthy of air tools.” You’d want to strangle them. They’d put your shop out of business.

People always wonder why God doesn’t fix the world. He never said he would. He created humanity to fix the world. Look it up. Read the Bible. Adam was the world’s manager. God expects us to be proactive. He doesn’t look down and see bad things happening and think, “Wow, I better fix that.” He thinks, “Someone should be praying for me to fix that. Someone should be trying to fix that and praying for my help. Someone should be using the gifts of the Spirit to fix that.”

He wants us to be in charge. He wants us to do mighty things. He wants us to have supernatural power. And he wants us to get that power by faith, not works.

The world is never going to work right until the Messianic Age. The kingdom of God is inside us. It’s not a political kingdom that will spread and rule the globe. We are not going to become a super church that cleans up the world until it’s so perfect, it’s as if Adam never sinned. But each of us is supposed to do powerful things and change as much of the world as we can. Think of the police. They don’t eradicate crime, but they don’t quit, either. They tackle the jobs they have the power to tackle, and the results, though imperfect, justify the effort. God doesn’t want the world to be perfect right now, but for reasons of his own, he wants us to battle to improve it, by putting his power inside as many people as possible.

We will never make the world right in this age, and neither will God, but we are supposed to clean it up as much as we can, and we are supposed to play offense. We can’t do it with our pathetic minds and flimsy meat bodies.

I’m still not crazy about driving evangelists around, but I’m glad I met this one. I hope his book lives up to my expectations.

It’s ALIVE

I could do this all day (click to DL big animated gif).

How did Arnold get in there?

Seven Years is a Long Time to Put Off a Funeral

I see Dennis the Peasant has quit blogging.

He says political blogging has become boring, and:

Six years ago, the political blogosphere was not dominated by the money and resources of mainstream media and professional political advocacy groups. Now it is. The political blogosphere has now acquired all of the defects (and none of the virtues) of mainsteam and advocacy media. With money has come self-censorship and intellectual dishonesty.

Wow, wasn’t I here in 2007? I talked about this when Pajamas Media popped up. Let’s see. Wikipedia says that was 2004. I’m farther ahead of my time than I realized.

People like Dennis and me spelled out what would happen, and it all came true, and the lemmings and backslappers called us traitors.

Blogging is dead. Or maybe it has come back to life. Political blogs launched by genuine grassroots nobodies got big ten or eleven years ago, and they were great because they were not run by journalists, most of whom are lazy and stupid. Then Big Media noticed the blogosphere, and they started pumping money into it. We ended up with websites that were not really blogs. Chris Matthews pretends to blog. Jake Tapper. Greta Van Susteren. And they’re not the worst examples; at least they have things to say. You can probably find blog-style sites featuring Courtney Friel and and Soledad O’Brien, if you look. Cheesecake and cotton candy masquerade as entrees.

Corporations put up websites, and they force their TV meat puppets to do something meat puppets were never designed to do: write original material. Meat puppets read. They are not built to write. The circuitry is not present.

A few outsiders made it into the inner circle, and they generally became insiders. They were so excited about being recognized, and so afraid of being kicked out, they became what they originally arose to counter. Ho hum. Why read that crap? Turn on CNN, and you’ll get the same spin.

I say blogging may have come back to life, because now that we are insignificant again, blogs may become what they were intended to be: personal, truthful websites written by people who are beholden to no one.

The haves always keep the have-nots down. For a while, the have-nots did okay on the Internet. Now the haves are back in charge. The natural order of the universe has been restored.

Blogging is utterly unimportant now. Truthlaidbear should label us all microbes or maybe viruses or prions. From a global standpoint, what we do is completely worthless. It has no impact. Big Media is safe from us again. Their chosen Internet darlings (recognizable for their sheep-humbling team spirit and complete lack of talent) may get a foot in the door once in a while–they may get occasional chances to bask and kowtow in the glow of Greg Gutfeld’s stagnant, Sisyphean insignificance, or they may be mentioned very briefly on Fox–but they won’t make a living, and the rest of us are permanently locked out of the VIP room.

I don’t think we’ll see another outsider opportunity again, until bandwidth gets so cheap you can have your own hour-long Internet TV show, complete with callers and chat. Nowlive tried to do that, but it failed because there was no way to make the finances work.

Dennis made the right choice. These days, it’s all downside and no reward.

Give me Another Week

The Telecaster clone is taking shape. Today the neck arrived, so I fixed the neck pocket and did the roundover rout around the body.

This thing is going to look fantastic once the Bigsby is in place. I hadn’t realized how good it would look.

I Made It

I finally got my guitar body repaired. Arrgh.

To summarize the mess so far, I made three pairs of bookmatched walnut boards, and I glued them together like a sandwich to make a Telecaster body with a glue line down the middle. Then I shaped it into a Telecaster body, and I routed the neck pocket. In the process, I used the wrong thing (weak clamps) to secure the router templates, and I ended up with an extra-large pocket. I then had to make bookmatched walnut inlays about 0.7″ thick to fill the pocket so I could rout it again.

When I made the basic body shape, I gouged the side of the guitar at the head end, where the strap pin would be. Because this guitar will have a clear finish, I had to fix the gouge, and I could not do what Fender does. I could not use Bondo. I decided to make a maple inlay, rout a cavity around the gouge, and stick the inlay in it.

Today I made the inlay and installed it.

I found a reasonably nice piece of maple, sawed it open on the band saw, and then shaped and jointed it (on the milling machine) so the bookmatched grain on each piece would be at about a 15° angle to the grain on the other piece. This looks better than merely reflecting the patterns. I glued it together using Titebond III, and when it was solid, I face-jointed it on the mill.

After that, I had to use the table saw to cut a piece of acrylic, and I turned that into a router template by cutting it on the mill, using the DRO to get a precise rectangle (which I screwed up because of addition and subtraction errors).

When I finally had what I thought was a good template, I stuck it on a piece of scrap and tried to cut a cavity with it, and danged if the router bit didn’t jump and eat one of the corners of the template. I hadn’t realized I needed room for the bit to completely exit the wood on each pass.

When it came time to stick the template (still usable) on the guitar, I realized I was an idiot for making a bookmatched inlay, because it had a glue line which had to match the one on the guitar to within a few thousandths. Somehow, I made it work. I routed the hole, smoothed it with a file, and checked the inlay. It fit like it grew there, and the corner which was screwed up by the damaged template was clear of the guitar, where it would be carved off later.

I used an inlay kit to make the inlay and hole. This is an amazing set of tools. If I described how it works, you would not understand, but if you saw it in action, you would get it. Basically, you stick a set of bushings over a 1/8″ bit, and you center everything precisely on the router, and you make a rout for the cavity and a rout around the inlay. By removing one of the bushings, you adjust the router so the same template that made an inlay will make a hole that fits it perfectly.

I pounded the inlay into the hole, and it worked, so I pulled it out, applied Titebond III, pounded it back in, and applied a [probably superfluous] clamp. Then I sat down and hyperventilated for 20 minutes.

Not really. But the whole time I was doing this, I was waiting to make another impossible-to-predict mistake and ruin the whole project. I felt like I was running on a frozen pond in buttered shoes with a bottle of nitroglycerin in each hand.

For me, using a router is like walking in a minefield. Things are going fine, and then BAM, your project is sawdust. Preparation helps, but without experience, you are going to do stupid things you can’t anticipate.

Tomorrow, I hope to rout off the excess inlay material and then use a roundover bit to go around the edge of the entire guitar body. After some sanding.

Man, I should have made a solid-color guitar. I could have made ten of them by now.

Soon the neck and hardware will arrive. I’ll have to finish the bridge I’m making and order a Bigsby. I’ll have to grit my teeth and try to apply a finish. That will be harder than anything I’ve done yet. Paint hates me. It sits in the can plotting against me. It thinks of ways to run, or to fail to mix properly, or to make orange peel, or to just explode. Paint can do things to me that it can’t do to anyone else.

I have no problems with house paint. I can paint an apartment in four hours. I used to do that. But anything requiring a quality finish…scary.

Sometimes when I wonder how I will get this thing done, I think back to getting my physics degree. I had gotten Fs in high school math, and I didn’t really know algebra. Somehow, I did it. If I can do that, I ought to be able to make a guitar out of a cigar box and a bag of wet newspapers.

Sometimes you have to keep plowing forward, assuming the answers will come later.

I’m not thinking about Telecasters any more tonight. This was a good day. I am entitled to rest.

Mommy Only Leaves so Many Twenties in her Purse

Conservatism is about building and growing and passing it on to future generations. Liberalism is just legalized looting.

More

Liberalism is what happens when covetousness becomes law.

Ignorance is Always on the Menu

I keep watching Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. I can’t stop.

I don’t watch much TV, but there are usually one or two programs on the DVR. I like Breaking Bad, Pawn Stars, and Perry Stone. Now Ramsay has made the list.

Here is how the show works. A restaurant flops. Ramsay goes in and spends one week trying to turn it around. After he leaves, it almost always goes out of business, but that appears to have more to do with lack of capital than Ramsay’s advice. Once you’re in the hole deep enough, you can’t get out even if your business becomes profitable.

The show started in England (I can’t make myself type “in the UK”), on the BBC. I tape it on BBC America. It’s also on Fox now. They say the Fox version is much dumber and more sensational and less honest than the BBC original.

I’ve learned a lot from watching it. I’ve learned that there is no curse on the restaurant business. People always say 90% of restaurants go out of business, and that this makes it a bad idea to invest in a restaurant, but lots of people get filthy rich running restaurants. The people who go out of business do so because they do things wrong, and often, those mistakes should have been extremely obvious. The mistakes I’ve seen on Kitchen Nightmares are incredible. Let’s see if I can think of a few.

1. Filthy premises and spoiled food. I can’t believe anyone would sink his net worth into a business and then disgust his customers, make them ill, and risk fines and forced closures. I used to love the roast beef subs at Miami Subs, but I learned that every time I ate one, I got so sick Imodiums might as well have been Tic Tacs. My cousin, a restaurant manager, told me it was because Miami Subs cross-contaminated all their meats by slicing different things on the same machines without cleaning them in between. Whatever the reason was, I quit going, and all the local franchises are gone now, so I guess I wasn’t the only one. And who can go back to a restaurant after seeing roaches or rat poop? I can’t. I don’t care if they clean up and get five stars from Mr. Clean himself. The mental image of the former filth will prevent me from enjoying the food.

2. Poor service. There used to be a place called Jake’s Gastropub (what an unappetizing word) in South Miami. “Used to be.” The food was okay, and the location was very good, but it took forever to get served. People hate that, especially when they’re on their lunch hours. If you take half an hour to serve someone, you pretty much guarantee they’ll be late getting back to work. And it’s disrespectful. Aside from that, the wait staff seemed confused about priorities. Once while I was ordering, a waitress ran off–as I was speaking–to wait on the restaurant’s owner, who was at a nearby table. And he let her do it. I guess he showed me who was important. Now he has no restaurant. He should have known better.

3. Bad food. There is no excuse for this. People who run restaurants probably tend to think they cook better than everyone else. If so, they’re smoking crack. If you’re truly honest when you taste restaurant food, usually, you’ll realize you can do better at home. Convenience and atmosphere make restaurant food seem better than it is, and there are some dishes that are difficult to make at home, so a restaurant can get away with ordinary food. But once the food gets significantly worse than food cooked at home, no one wants it.

Ramsay has also reminded me that culinary school graduates often can’t cook. I knew this already, and so do you, if you think about it. A big percentage of restaurants have degreed chefs, and many of those restaurants serve bad food, because the chefs are poor cooks. How can that be?

I don’t know how they grade at cooking schools. You would think the taste of the food would count, but maybe it doesn’t. Maybe they only care about teaching technique. And as they say, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” Maybe cooking school chef-instructors aren’t qualified to teach. If they were, they’d be doing something else, right? Nearly all law school professors are incompetent lawyers. I don’t see why CIA and Le Cordon Bleu wouldn’t have the same syndrome.

I envy people who’ve been to cooking school, because they don’t have to reinvent the wheel all the time, which is what I do when I cook something new. They are more likely to know which machines to use and which tricks work and which ingredients are best, so they probably don’t flounder and waste time like I do. Nonetheless, the ability to write a new recipe is a God-given talent, and if you don’t have it, cooking school will not impart it to you, and knowledge and technique won’t fill the void. You would think that trained chefs would at least be able to follow proven recipes, but judging from what I’ve seen on TV, many chefs literally can’t tell good food from bad, so when they try to cook, it’s like Stevie Wonder trying to pitch at the World Series. They can’t tell when they’ve got it right. Or wrong.

I suspect that cooking school has less to do with good food than it does with running a business and getting food plopped on plates. I know some chefs who can get edible stuff on the table in an institutional setting, yet whom I would consider unfit to cook for guests in my home. They can prep stuff in advance, and they know how to feed a lot of people, and they have a number of unoriginal, safe recipes they know will work, but on the whole, I’d rather eat at Wendy’s.

Another interesting thing: the show confirms that some people who have never gone to cooking school make fantastic chefs. One of the owners Ramsay tried to help was a self-taught cook who ended up working as the head chef at Gallagher’s, in New York. He quit to run his own place, and his business methods were bad, but he knew how to cook.

Talking about bad cooks reminds me of a sad episode involving a Mexican place. A lady who was a successful caterer built a gorgeous restaurant and served her trademark dishes, and the business failed. Ramsay went in and found she had freezers loaded with entrees cooked days or years in advance. Naturally, the food was no good. And she was amazed! How is that possible? She was like a person whose breath drives people out of the room, yet who can’t smell it herself. How can you serve food every day and never try it yourself, especially when you’re about to lose your business, home, and savings?

Ramsay told her catering was not like running a restaurant, and I guess he’s right. I’ve had a lot of catered food, and almost all of it was substandard. People think caterers are brilliant if they show up on time, get the food out, and clean up when they leave. No one really expects the food to be good. This lady probably became successful because she ran a tight ship and got things done, not because she was any kind of cook. Seriously, have you ever had really good food at a wedding or catered event? I haven’t.

This lady’s head chef was a timid little friend who had no idea what she was doing. Ramsay challenged her to come up with an original recipe, and she said she couldn’t think. She ended up serving chicken breast with salt and garlic. She should have been making salads and slicing lemons. The owner had to fire her.

Ramsay gave this lady a lot of sound advice, but her restaurant tanked anyway. On her Facebook page, she blames her location. Maybe she’s partly right, but I know this: when the food is good enough, people will climb a mountain in the snow to get to your restaurant. So ultimately, her lack of talent is probably what did her in.

It seems like you have to have two types of people to run a restaurant. You need someone who knows what good food is, and you need someone who can manage a business. If you can’t tell whether your food is good, it will be bad, because good food doesn’t happen accidentally, and word will get around. If you can’t run a business, your food will probably be bad in spite of your talent, so your talent will be nullified. And you’ll have all sorts of problems in other areas. You’ll have a staff that doesn’t get things done. You’ll waste money. Your standards will be nonexistent. You’ll anger your customers.

It’s easy to see why people prefer practicing law or medicine. You charm your customers, you do things they don’t understand well enough to criticize, and if you lose in court or fail to cure them, hopefully they’ll like you so much they’ll take your side anyway. If you’re good at customer relations, people will say you’re a great lawyer or doctor, even though they can’t possibly know what they’re talking about. In a restaurant, you have to produce something that tastes good, and you have to serve it correctly and provide a nice atmosphere. Those are things anyone can judge competently.

I disagree with Ramsay’s obsession with things that are “fresh” and “new.” Many highly successful restaurants avoid change and innovation at all costs, and it works. I find nouvelle cuisine and weird ingredients and cutesy presentations tiresome. Give me a nice steak or a great slice of pizza, any day. What you cook is less important than that you cook it correctly, and creativity is no substitute for time-tested flavors and textures. When I go to a restaurant I like, I’m always hoping it will still have the same great things it had in the past. I don’t go to restaurants to be amazed. It’s not Cirque du Soleil. It’s food.

The show may be contrived and less than totally honest, but it’s still a good way to learn how not to run a business.

Funny thing: supposedly Ramsay’s own empire is on the ropes. Maybe he needs to go on Emeril’s Kitchen Nightmares or Mario Batali’s Kitchen Nightmares. I don’t think either of those guys can cook, but their restaurants seem to make money.

Church Adopting Arab Propaganda as Policy?

Today in The Jerusalem Post Christian Edition, I read something infuriating. A Catholic bigwig, with the approval of the Vatican, has declared that there is no chosen people.

Yes, you read that correctly. And in case you think this guy is an isolated nut, let me quote an October 23 Jerusalem Post article about Vatican-sponsored gathering at which this announcement was made:

Bishops from the Middle East who were summoned to Rome by the pope demanded on Saturday that Israel accept UN resolutions calling for an end to its “occupation” of Arab lands.

More, from the same guy:

We Christians cannot speak of the ‘promised land’ as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people. This promise was nullified by Christ. There is no longer a chosen people – all men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.

So evidently (given the conspicuous absence of a repudiation from the Pope) anti-Semitism may still be official church policy. Here’s some more info about this disgusting, evil pronouncement:

“The Holy Scriptures cannot be used to justify the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians, to justify the occupation by Israel of Palestinian lands,” Monsignor Cyril Salim Bustros, [Lebanese-American] Greek Melkite archbishop of Our Lady of the Annunciation in Boston, Massachusetts, and president of the “Commission for the Message,” said at Saturday’s Vatican press conference.

All I can say is, may God correct you quickly and mercifully. May he lead you to repudiate your own words publicly, so you will not have to suffer his chastisement.

What greater attack could you make on the Jewish people than to claim they are no longer chosen? That isn’t just anti-Semitism. It’s anti-Semitism per se. It is a denial of the sole valid justification for the existence of Jews as a people.

It is also a rebellious, insolent, arrogant denial of God’s many express acknowledgements, in both testaments, of the special status of the Jews. Nowhere in the Bible does it say or imply that God’s covenant with the Jews has been “nullified.” In fact, the still-unfulfilled prophecies of the Revelation cannot come to fruition without 144,000 undefiled Jewish males who refuse to serve the Antichrist. Where is the passage about 144,000 displaced Palestinians or 144,000 Catholics? I must have overlooked it.

The Bible says that he who harms the Jews touches the apple of God’s eye. That means the pupil. Can you imagine anything that makes God angrier?

And denying the right of the Jews to reenter their given land…how do you respond to a position so ridiculous? It has supporters. Unfortunately, Satan is foremost among them. Evidently, Bustros has never read Exodus, Joshua, or 1 Kings.

From a practical standpoint, where does Bustros expect the Jews to go, if they can’t have Israel? The alternatives are forced conversion and death.

Diaspora nations always turn on the Jews sooner or later, because the spirit of Antichrist works in the minds of those who are not baptized with the Holy Spirit and fans the flames of anti-Semitism. Assimilation is not a realistic alternative. Even the United States, which has a pretty good record when it comes to asylum for immigrants, allowed Jews to go to the gas chambers instead of welcoming them. The Germans and Austrians slaughtered valuable Jewish citizens, including distinguished World War I heroes. Man–in the form of Gentile host nations–is not going to save the Jews the next time the tide (to use God’s own metaphor) rises against them. God and a defensible homeland are their only hopes. And if they are not given preferential treatment in that land, their enemies will outpopulate them, and Israel itself will be like a Diaspora nation.

If the Pope doesn’t loudly disavow the vile things Bustros said at the press conference, we will be back where we were at the end of the Holocaust. The Catholic Church will be anti-Jewish again. Not just “anti-Judaism,” which could be rationalized as an extension of the desire to win souls, but quite literally opposed to the existence of the Jewish people and their state. The church will also be endorsing replacement theology, which has always been a convenient cover for a desire to see Jews disappear.

The worst thing about this is that uneducated Catholics the world over will see Bustros’s words as code for “It’s okay to get the Jews.” God is all for it now! It’s the convenient thing to do here on earth, and you’ll be rewarded in heaven. They’ll see Jews the way the Philistines (literally synonymous with “Palestinians”) saw Samson after he was shorn. If God isn’t on their side, and they’re driving up oil prices and causing terrorism, why not persecute them?

It’s typical of Satan to put this kind of rhetoric out. It’s a different spin on the 72-virgins myth. Act on your hate, and God will either ignore it or reward you.

How can anyone oppose prophecy and the wellbeing of Jews while claiming to speak for God? This is a textbook example of taking the Lord’s name in vain. Jesus never denied the Jews (or his Jewishness), nor did Paul, nor did any of the New Testament authors, all of whom were Jewish. Nowhere does the Bible say we are to replace the Jews. The very notion reeks of ignorance.

The Bible tells us the temple will be restored, as will sacrifices. Who does Bustros expect to do that work? Who will make the incense? Who will inspect and slaughter the animals? Who will recite the proper prayers and blessings? Catholic priests? Jew-hating Muslims? Assemblies of God preachers from places like Georgia and Texas? Jews, and only Jews, can do that work. There are no Gentile Levites, and there never will be.

God says Israel, including areas currently under Muslim control, belongs to the Jews. Forever. Cyril Bustros says part of it is “Arab land.” You can believe Bustros if you want. I believe God.

It’s good that Bustros said this, because he was clarifying a very vague message the bishops had issued. Few would bother reading the message itself (it’s online), and if they did, they would not see in it the anti-Semitism from which it sprang. In fact, it affirms God’s covenant with Abraham, in direct contradiction of the remarks Bustros made (see bold text):

8. The same Scriptures unite us; the Old Testament, the Word of God is for both you and us. We believe all that God revealed there, since he called Abraham, our common father in the faith, Father of Jews, of Christians and of Muslims. We believe in the promises of God and his covenant given to Abraham and to you. We believe that the Word of God is eternal.

The Second Vatican Council published the document Nostra aetate which treats interreligious dialogue with Judaism, Islam and the other religions. Other documents have subsequently clarified and developed the relationship with Judaism. On-going dialogue is taking place between the Church and the representatives of Judaism. We hope that this dialogue can bring us to work together to press those in authority to put and end to the political conflict which results in separating us and disrupting everyday life in our countries.

It is time for us to commit ourselves together to a sincere, just and permanent peace. Both Christians and Jews are called to this task by the Word of God. In his Word, we are invited us to listen to the voice of God “who speaks of peace”: “Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his holy ones” (Ps 85:9). Recourse to theological and biblical positions which use the Word of God to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable. On the contrary, recourse to religion must lead every person to see the face of God in others and to treat them according to their God-given prerogatives and God’s commandments, namely, according to God’s bountiful goodness, mercy, justice and love for us.

Without Bustros around to say what was really on the bishops’ minds, that would be seen as a meaningless, toothless, platitudinous, feel-good ramble put together by harmless old men. With his words added, it becomes ominous and menacing.

There will be no political or church-driven solution to the conflict in the Middle East. Those solutions would be carnal, and no church should put any faith in them. The conflict is based in the supernatural. The physical overlays the supernatural like a Band-Aid on a festering sore. Apply all the patches you want; the disease will not die until Satan is bound. We have to work for peace with our physical tools, but we have to realize that all we can do is minimize the pain. It will never go away while Jesus tarries, and we should not try to accelerate the healing process by doing things that infuriate God and contradict his word.

Thank God the Catholic Church has no army these days. Thank God Israel has a good one.

None of this will affect Israel in a macroscopic way. God watches over her continuously, and a few mistaken, bigoted men can’t oppose him. They will make fools of themselves and fail, and Israel will prosper. But these foolish words could cause suffering or death for many individual Jews, and they could also cause many Christians to commit atrocious sins and bring God’s judgment on themselves, their families, their churches, and their nations.

I hope people will pray that Catholic leadership (and the leadership of other liberalized mainstream churches that do not support Israel) will have a change of heart, and that the Holy Spirit will protect them from causing their followers to offend.

INCOMING!

Marv’s message for today: “Eat your bird. Big fat.”

Why did I buy this thing?

Marv has gotten so good at tactical pooping, I no longer get mad at him about it. Instead, I feel awe and respect.

The other day we were on the couch, and Marv managed a stealth poop in a location where I later put my face. I had to give him his props for that. It transcended ordinary poop. It was an Improvised Poop Device.

Last night he got off a poop that hit my hand and then the floor without me even knowing it. He did it while I was putting him in the cage. By the time I knew I had been shelled, I had tracked all over the house. I had to get out the mop and the Clorox.

I don’t know how he does it. He’s an artist.

Christmas Grub

This was amazing. I added this and that to the crust and topping, and it was even better than usual. I can’t believe I put this recipe in my book. The general public does not deserve this.

And here’s the prime rib. The horseradish sauce was glorious. Much better than the whipped cream version I tried last time.

Work Hard to Make Ordinary Food, or Take it Easy and be a Star

If you want a good Christmas dinner and you don’t want to work, do what I do: prime rib, baked potatoes, cheesecake.

I admit, the cheesecake takes some doing, but the other stuff is so easy, you’ll have time for it.

Right now I have a juicy prime rib roasting at 200°. I bought it about nine days ago. I salted it down and stuck it in the fridge to improve. Yesterday I greased it heavily with strong garlic butter. Today I stuck in on a roasting pan, covered it with foil, put a thermometer in it, and put it in an oven timed to crank up on its own, at the appropriate time. When the roast gets close to being done, I’ll max out the temperature and remove the foil to brown it. Very simple.

I bought some nice potatoes, washed them, salted them while they were still wet, and let them dry. Ordinarily I’d bake them at 450 for an hour, but that won’t be possible today because of the roast. I’m going to bake them at 200 for two hours and then leave them in while the roast browns. I think that ought to do it. If not, there is no law against touching them up with the microwave.

That’s the whole dinner. No pointless salad. No other sides. This is all you need. I guess shucky beans would have been a nice side dish, but the truth about steak and roasts is that almost anything you put beside the potato is a distraction.

It’s funny; it seems like every cook I respect makes prime rib in nearly the same way. Low and slow, finished off with high heat.

I don’t agree with people who say the meat should be pink all the way out to the edge. I like the contrasting flavors you get from differing degrees of doneness, so it’s fine with me if the outer inch is medium-well. That’s the juiciest, softest piece of the roast anyway. It won’t get tough if it cooks through.

I also disagree with those who cut their roasts off the bone and tie them back on. I’ve done it, but I think it’s probably better to keep the meat and bones together, for flavor. Maybe I’m wrong. Separating the meat and bones makes for easier carving, but you can separate them after the roast cooks, and then you don’t have to go through the horror of attaching twine and praying it stays on. The advantage of separating the meat early is that you can get extra seasoning close to the center of the roast.

I think I have a good system here. The kitchen is clean. The dessert is ready. The roast is taking care of itself. I have nothing to do for the next hour and a half. Sweet.

I got a funny compliment on Facebook this week. A girl I go to church with referred to my “unnatural cooking ability.” I thought that was interesting, because she’s probably right. There is nothing natural about writing down amazing recipes on the first try. I seriously believe God speaks this stuff into my ear.

Feliz Navidad

Merry Christmas, everybody. I hope your holiday is safe and full of cheer.

Killing Flies With an ICBM

Everyone should own a milling machine.

I had a problem with the guitar I’m making. I routed a cavity bigger than it should have been, and I had to make some 0.7″-thick inlays to fill it so I could start over. I was piddling around, trying to get my router table to work so I could put perfect 1/4″ corners on the inlays (to match the cavity cut by a 1/2″ router. I started thinking, “Man, I wish I had a 1/4″ roundover cutter for the milling machine.” Then I realized…I had a collet that would fit the router roundover bit.

Naturally, that put all thoughts of routers out of my head.

I started machining the inlays. Man, what a difference. I face-milled each one down to within 0.010″ of the correct thickness. I made the edges perfectly square. I used the band saw to cut them to length, but truthfully, and end mill works better. The cuts are virtually perfect, and the surfaces are glassy.

I stuck the router bit in the mill and made that corner. It probably took 15 minutes, because I had to sneak up on it on two axes. But by the time I was done, it was much better than anything I could have done on a woodworking machine.

Unfortunately, when I was using the band saw to rough-cut the pieces down close to the right size, I made a cut from the wrong end and ruined an edge adjoining the nice corner I made. So I have to make that corner all over again. Still, the mill is amazing. I should use it for face-jointing difficult pieces of wood.

I don’t know why more woodworkers don’t use mills. I know they cost a lot, but for precision joinery, they blow woodworking tools out of the water.

New Problem

The doctor had ordered mom to be released this evening, but when the nurses tried walking her, she started having bloody diarrhea.
So tomorrow afternoon, her GI doctor will be doing a colonoscopy. Please pray that there is nothing wrong with her and this blood is just something minor.
Her heart is doing well, as is the bladder infection. Your prayers and the Lord have brought her so far. I really feel like she would not have made it with them. Please keep praying.
Thanks so much & God Bless,
Heather Page