“We are Here to Poop on the Gifts”

Check out the great holiday greeting I received from Peg and Mr. Mollo: CLICK.

That photo will help you understand why people love parrots.

Real Talk from Fake Santa

Don’t even tell me I don’t go to the weirdest church in America.

I hope Pastor Terrance’s mother doesn’t see that video. I remember her talking about her disciplinary style. She said, “My hand is QUICK.”

Also Much More Likely to Work

I thought I would report on the woodworking efforts. Sadly I am too lazy to take photos.

I decided to make a Telecaster clone, using a router and some templates. A template is like a router stencil. You fasten it to the wood, and the router cuts away everything that doesn’t look like the template. Hopefully.

I put six pieces of walnut together to make a bookmatched slab, and then I succeeded in routing out the guitar body. But I still had to rout out the neck pocket and some other stuff.

A Telecaster has a bolt-on neck. “Bolt-in” is more like it. Okay, “screw-in.” It doesn’t actually have bolts. You make a rectangular pocket in the front of the guitar, and you put the end of the neck in there, and you use four big screws to hold it in place.

I received a neat Dewalt 611 router for Christmas, and I decided to give it a whirl. This is a very small hand-held router similar to a Bosch Colt, only better. It has a sweet plunge base.

I clamped the template to the front of the guitar body, using Irwin Quick-Grip 12″ clamps. These are newfangled one-hand clamps with silicone pads on the gripping surfaces. They’re great for quick clamping.

The router worked fine, and walnut seems to like being routed. But I had a major FAIL. As I was routing, I noticed that the template was a tiny bit off the centerline of the guitar. I assumed I had screwed up when I was attaching the clamps. I kept routing, figuring I would finish and see what the damage was. Then things went completely weird, and I ended up with a pocket that extended about 1/4″ to the left of its proper location. The clamps caused the problem. They’re so weak, you can’t use them for template routing. They let stuff move.

I had been using double-sided tape for routing, but I got this crazy idea that clamps would be less trouble. Wow, was I wrong. So if you decide to make yourself a guitar, take it from me: you don’t want Irwin Quick-Grip clamps. They’re too weak for gluing slabs together, and you can’t trust them when you’re using a template.

Now I have to figure out how to fill in the giant neck pocket and start over. I could just trash the body and make a new neck, but this body was intended to be a learning instrument, and now it’s giving me a chance to learn how to do inlays, so throwing it out would be stupid.

Yesterday I practiced using templates with the small router and my nifty new glue gun. I made a straightedge template from a piece of plexiglass, and I made two more from hardboard, and I used hot glue to fasten them to a scrap board in a way that formed a shape like a neck pocket. Then I went to town on it. I noticed a few things.

1. Pine is actually harder to rout than walnut, even though it’s soft. Sometimes it just refuses to let the bit go through.

2. If you use separate pieces to make a template, they have to be the exact same thickness in order to give you the best results. Otherwise, the router jerks when you move from a lower surface to a higher one, and I suppose it can tilt, too. You want the router base to be absolutely parallel to the workpiece.

3. Hot glue tears up hardboard templates and is not easy to remove from the workpiece. I had been cautioned that two-sided tape might tear up the wood, but the glue is worse. I suppose I have to learn how to heat it and soften it without messing up the work. But you can’t do that to glue that’s between a template and the work. I don’t think so, anyway. It’s easy to use heat to get the glue off the wood once the template is off, but by then, you’ve already torn up your hardboard template. Plexiglass, on the other hand, is stronger than glue and won’t be harmed. I have a heat gun, but it gets the work very hot very fast, so I was hoping I would not have to use it.

4. Small templates are just plain bad. You want the template to be as big as possible so it supports the router and prevents tipping.

5. When using a template, it’s probably best to use a bushing before you use your flush-cut bit. The bushing will give the template and workpiece complete protection while you use the router to remove over 90% of the material. Then you have a much easier job left for the flush-cut bit. It will also allow you to use the template when cutting at a very shallow depth. You can’t do that with a flush-cut bit, because you have to sink the bit all the way in to get the bearing in contact with the template, unless the template is very thick. I wonder if the rings on my router table will accept bearings. That would be cool.

I think I’m going to go back to the table router. It requires a lot less skill. I was concerned that the dubious flatness of my router table would cause problems, and maybe that’s true, but that will only matter at the bottom of the neck cavity. I should be able to get 90% of the way there using the table, and then move to a handheld router to finish it off.

Woodwork is great, but I hate the dust. Every time I use the router or sander for more than a minute, I have to take a shower. I’ve learned that router dust control is a fantasy. You can limit it sometimes, but even the professionals use the shop-vac for most of their sawdust.

Anything you do with tools has a price. With woodworking, it’s the danger of the machines and the unmanageable dust. With metalworking, the machines are much safer, and there is no dust, but you get splinters, and fluid goes all over the place.

I managed to machine a guitar bridge from 360 brass. I wanted a gold- or brass-colored half-ashtray bridge, and no such product exists. I had a round brass bar I bought to make bathroom drawer knobs, so I cut a length of it out and turned it into a rectangular chunk, and then I hollowed that out, giving me a box with one side missing. If you Google “ashtray bridge” and imagine what you see with the pickup part cut off, that’s what I have, except that I still have to put a few holes in it for screws.

I can’t believe how beautifully brass machines. The feeds and speeds are just like 6061 aluminum, and you can omit cutting fluid if you’re brave. It polishes up in a hurry, and when you work it, it almost seems to want to cooperate. It’s no wonder brass has been so popular throughout history.

I’ve decided I need an offset wrench for my router table, so I can remove the collet nut without scraping the table. But no one makes a 24mm wrench for a Bosch. They used to make them, but not any more. I think I’ll try to machine one out of steel. I have a bar that might work, but it may be too narrow to make the working end of the wrench. If that’s so, maybe the answer is to cut it out of a piece of scrap angle iron. With the bar, I could machine a couple of 90° angles into it for a very sharp offset. That would be nice.

I may also get a Jawhorse. I’ve been watching router videos, including one made by router expert Pat Warner, and I noticed he uses a special bench for a lot of his work. Most of it is what appears to be a two-by-eight, at waist height, parallel to the ground, with wide sides horizontal. He has a big C-clamp welded to it, to hold workpieces on it while he routs. If I had a Jawhorse, I could make a jig that would work about the same way and put it in the Jawhorse’s clamp. If you don’t know what a Jawhorse is, look it up. It appears to be an incredible tool. It’s a three-legged steel sawhorse type of thing with a giant clamp at one end. It does all sorts of stuff, and it has a workholding welding attachment that looks like a godsend.

Last night, I realized something about tools. I’ve always said tools end frustration and remedy helplessness. Last night I realized that working with tools is great for your character. Much better than sports, which teach you to crave attention and sex, and that women are disposable toys, and that you’re so wonderful, no one will ever make you pay for the bad things you do.

When you use tools and begin to see success, you will develop a sense that you are able to cope with problems. You will learn that creativity, perseverance, and prayer pay off. It will help you to realize that the failures you’ve experienced in the past are not predictive of your future, because you can defeat your challenges if you use your brain and refuse to give up.

It costs a lot of money, but then so do worthless pursuits like golf. And in the end, you (and your descendants) will have things you can touch and handle, to remind you how you overcame, and how to overcome in the future. To me, a nice handmade guitar would have a lot more gut impact than a trophy or a newspaper clipping or a diploma. It’s even better than cooking food that makes people’s eyes roll back in their heads. Food disappears in a matter of minutes.

Any effort you make to develop skills and accomplish things will help your character, but there is something special about tools. Perhaps it’s because the concept of tools is so fundamentally, inextricably intertwined with the concept of ability. A tool is an extension of your body and mind, intended to enhance you in the most direct way possible. It’s almost a prosthetic. When you have a tool you know how to use, you are augmented. You are more than you were without it. To acquire and learn to use tools is to redesign and improve yourself, and it will improve your confidence in other areas of life.

Get Out and Push

From Heather:

I had to bring Penny to Baptist Corbin this morning. The tests are showing that she has had a mild heart attack yesterday and that she has a bad bladder infection and her blood is low. Also her core temperature was 94 degrees. They will be moving her to the ICU shortly.
Please pray-
-for the Lord to drive this infection from her body
-bring her temp, kidney, and bladder functions back to normal.
-that any blood products that have to be used are safe.
-for her heart to be healthy and strong
-for the cancer to be driven from her body.
We love her and we need her.
Thank you and God Bless,
Heather

More

My friend Celeste passes this on, via Facebook:

The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing. Zephaniah 3:17

Follow-Up Glory

I know your prayers are working. They have been able to get Penny’s heart calmed with medications. Her body temp is coming up. Please keep praying, be sure to ask that the infection is controlled and she doesn’t get sepsis.
Love to all of you and God Bless!
Heather

Simple Woodworking Project Threatens to Penetrate 2011

With the good Lord’s help, this will be a Telecaster soon. The bookmatching is not all that great, but I think once the bridge, neck, electronics panel, vibrato, and pickguard are on the guitar, the lack of perfect symmetry will not matter much.

It looks bent, and it looks like the joint is big and sloppy. Those are illusions due to the shapes of the slabs I joined and the mysterious effects of digital photography. It’s like flat glass, and the joint is as tight as a liberal’s purse during a charity drive.

Don’t even ask how hard it was to get this far.

I decided to cancel the jointer/planer I ordered. I have to think about that decision, now that I have a relatively easy way to edge-joint boards.

Some day I’ll have a drum sander. But I have not gone that crazy just yet.

Stuff is Happening

I made my pineapple upside-down banana nut cake, and I wasn’t that happy with it. A lot of the pineapple sauce leaked out, so it needed more, and I was out of pineapple stuff, so I was stuck. Also, I was not totally pleased with the way it went with rum raisin ice cream.

I thought it would be fantastic served hot, and when it wasn’t quite fantastic, I figured the sauce was the problem. Then I stuck it in the fridge, and later, I tried a cold slice. It was magnificent! Very odd. You would think hot would be better, but this cake definitely has to be served cold.

I didn’t get a chance to try it cold with ice cream. It was too good to keep. I had to throw it out. I could have given it to friends at church (in fact, I got hollered at for failing to do so), but I don’t know if I could have avoided eating it before I got a chance to deliver it.

I used a 9″ springform pan. That was a mistake. I can’t remember why I used a springform pan in the past. It’s not a bad idea, but the cake is too tall, and 9″ is the wrong diameter, because you can only fit 4 pineapple slices in it. And you have to have extra-wide foil to keep the sauce in the pan. Next time I think I’ll go to 10″ and use wider foil.

In other news, I changed my oil today. “Big deal,” right? Well, it IS. First of all, it looks like vehicle dealers have universally adopted a strategy of jamming oil plugs so they’re impossible to remove. I think they do it to force you to come back for help. I had this problem with the Harley, and today I had a tough time getting the plug out of the Dodge. An impact driver had no effect. I finally put a half-inch socket wrench on it and basically military-pressed it open. I would guess I put over a hundred pounds of force on the wrench. There is no reason for an oil plug to be that tight.

I had a lot of fun dealing with almost 3 gallons of dirty oil and removing the air inlet hose to get to the filter. The truck is so tall, I have to stand on a box to work under the hood. On the up side, there’s tons of room under it.

Anyway, by the time I was done, my arms were pretty much black from the fingers halfway to my elbow, and I had blood on my shirt from a cut I still haven’t found. It ought to be worth it, however, because I can go 37,500 miles before my next oil change.

I used Amsoil and an Amsoil filter, for the best possible performance. That meant changing the oil myself, because I couldn’t find anyone around here who would do the change and just charge for labor.

I also had fun moving my spare tire back to the storage doodad under the truck bed. I got up on the side of the truck and started to shove the tire toward the back, and I felt a horrible sensation in my side. I still don’t know what it was. Now I have a sore spot between my ribs. And to make things even more pleasant, this happened before I did the oil change, so I got to enjoy feeling the soreness increase while I was struggling to drag myself around under the truck.

Once you get past a certain age, you can hurt yourself badly enough to justify an ER visit, just by breaking wind without warming up.

I’m trying to get the garage fixed up. I threw out some of my beloved scrap items. A big box of Cat 5 wire, spools of copper wire, the steel frame from a desk, and so on. I know I’ll need all of it ten minutes after the garbage truck comes by, but I have to de-clutter. If only I had a shed…no, TWO sheds…and a barn…with a lean-to…and a blimp hangar…

I have been going nuts trying to build a Telecaster-type guitar from six slabs of walnut, and I finally decided to accept reality and order a jointer. I got my planing sled to work, and I even put feed tables on my wonderful DeWalt planer, but you know what? It still sucks. I pretty much solved the planer jointing problem, but I just don’t care. It sucks.

I watched a woodworking video last night, and the old guy doing the work grabbed a piece of wood and tossed it on the jointer, and BANG, he was done. In about seven seconds. I wanted to strangle him.

I started thinking about the horror of mounting wood on the planing sled, lifting the planer onto a table, using duct tape to cobble together a dust collection scheme, and then fighting snipe, and for a time, I went insane. I found out it was possible to use credit card points to get the price of a jointer down so low they almost paid me to take it, so I gave up and pulled the trigger.

This is one reason I need room.

I decided on a Rikon 10″ jointer/planer combo. Wait! Shut up! Don’t lecture me! I know it’s not a classic 8″ Powermatic, and I will even admit that some nutcase just sold a like-new Powermatic for $500 on the local Craigslist. But I needed something small, and I wanted to be able to joint wide stuff. The Rikon is a blatant copy of an old machine made by Inca, and people still love the Inca machines and pay high prices for them. I feel sure it will work for my needs, and it has a neat stand with wheels, and it doesn’t weigh three tons or whatever the Powermatic weighs, and it doesn’t have a forty-foot wingspan.

Sometimes you have to compromise.

Jet makes combo machines for much less, but nearly everyone who reviews them says leprosy is more fun than getting a Jet to work, so I couldn’t make myself face the risk. Seriously, the reviews are like little treatments for brief horror films.

I made myself a router fence so I could do edge-jointing on the router, but I started thinking of the geometry-based ramifications my project would involve, and I realized it would be a torment straight from hell’s pit, so there’s another reason to throw in the towel.

Making the router fence was surprisingly hard. The table saw is the tool from paradise. It does everything with microscopic precision and drug-fantasy ease, and it made the parts in no time at all. But putting them together…not fun. It turns out you can’t screw into the side of 1/2″ MDF, even with pilot holes. I had to go with all-glue construction, and I had to make the fence parts perfectly square. I don’t know if glue is strong enough to hold this thing together under stress, but there is no other way to do it. We will see.

I have an idea for combining angle iron and scrap wood to make a dynamite router fence that will slide on my Biesemeyer rails. That would be beautiful. I could just order a short Biesemeyer fence, but that would cost a pile. It’s impossible to buy a pro fence, by itself, used.

I now have a spiffy restored vintage Stanley No. 6 plane (cheap!), but I have to learn how to use it, and I don’t think I’ll regret getting the jointer. It has become clear to me that I need to learn to use a bench plane and a shoulder or rabbet plane, in order to have any type of respect for myself as a man. There are too many problems they solve quickly. You can’t witness them in action and then not lust for them mindlessly.

I may still be inept, but I continue to strive. Success, or at least the comforting illusion of success, comes incrementally. It’s sort of like socialism in the USSR before it all went down the toilet and the whole country got a reality check from the back of Reagan’s hand.

Now if I could only find my tape measure…

Best Viewed Through Smoked Glass

Got a sick project in the oven. I’m making banana nut bread with my homegrown Orinoco banans. But there’s MORE! I got a tip from Mike, and I replaced a lot of the eggs with mayonnaise. And it’s not a loaf. It’s a BANANA NUT BREAD PINEAPPLE UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE. Made with fresh pineapple.

Even worse: a side of Haagen-Dazs rum raisin. I plan to serve the cake hot, with ice cream beside it.

I can’t wait to see what this is like.

Half-Day Job Only Takes Weeks

On the theory that people are morbidly fascinated by tales of inept woodworking, I thought I’d post an update on my continuing efforts to create six pieces of walnut suitable for assembling in a slab which can be turned into a Telecaster body.

Tonight I resawed a new chunk of walnut, stuck the pieces on my new, shorter planer sled, and face-jointed them. It actually worked, although I got a tiny amount of snipe on both boards.

Initially I figured my tools were 98% to blame and I was responsible for the other 2%, but it has gradually become apparent that those numbers needed to be reversed. Ignorance, lack of technique, and sheer stupidity were causing most of my problems.

I have learned that good technique can almost eliminate snipe when I use the planer sled, and improved shimming and a more manageable sled are solving my other problems. The infeed tables I ordered should make things even better. The orbital quarter-sheet sander I bought yesterday does an acceptably quick and effective job of fixing my jointing errors. I now have six 18″-24″ pieces of usable wood, and I only had to buy nine feet of walnut to do it.

I guess I won’t have to buy a jointer right away, although the little Rikon 10″ looks really enticing and may end up in my garage anyhow.

I look forward to the arrival of my restored Stanley No. 6 plane, so I can put the sander and maybe even the planer away.

By the way, here’s a great tip I came up with tonight. When using a shop-vac as a passive receptacle to catch planer dust, don’t connect the hose to the shop-vac’s blower side. Don’t ask me how I got so smart. You wouldn’t understand. It’s a gift.

Chilly!

It’s 57° outside, and it’s almost one p.m.! I LOVE IT!

I get so tired of sticking to things.

Help Out

From a reader:

Hi Steve. XXXX here, longtime reader, occasional commenter. I’ve noticed that you take prayer requests from time to time. I started to detail what it is I wish you would join me (and others around me) in praying for…. but it’s so long and convoluted that I think I’ll just say this: my mother is in danger from my father. Last week, in a fit of rage, he had her by the throat and pointed a gun at her head. Now they both behave as if nothing happened. (he doesn’t know that I know about this – I got details from my aunt, his sister, but this is not out of keeping with his behavior since my childhood) My mother refuses to leave, and he refuses to get help. And so the cycle goes as it has for decades, but the involvement of a gun strikes me as a critical escalation of his behavior. I love my mother and my father, but this situation is untenable as it stands. I would like you to pray for safety for my mom and for peace for my dad. Right now, there is nothing I can do if neither of them will ask for or accept help. I feel helpless and afraid. I have told them about your blog in the past; I don’t know if they read it, but if you do put a prayer request out, please keep the details vague for everyone’s safety. I don’t mean to put a caveat on how you choose or do not choose to pray – it’s just a safety consideration. I have been wanting to send this to you for a week now, but have hesitated because its difficult stuff to talk about, and I don’t know if you would want to be involved or not.

Telecaster Thoughts

I tried to get my garage cleaned up enough so I could work on a Telecaster body. It took me an hour and a half to do about 30% of the job. I guess you could say I let the place get away from me.

My big problem is that I work until I’m tired, which means I don’t set time and energy aside for cleanup. It’s sort of like swimming out to sea until you feel like swimming back. By that time, you’re too far out to make it home.

I do not understand Telecasters at all. It’s a board and a stick. It’s not even a pretty, curvy board like a Les Paul. It looks like a half-eaten popsicle, and what is the story with that stupid little headstock? It looks like Leo Fender ruined his original design by slipping with the router and then carved the current crappy design in order to save the neck he was working on. On top of all that, the Telecaster has only two pots. You can’t adjust the pickups independently! In spite of all of this, the guitar plays anything you want it to, it feels good in your hands, and it exudes kitschy American style.

When it comes to style, sometimes I like to try to imagine what Mickey Rourke would choose. This is one reason why I wear French cuffs with sportcoats and blazers. It’s one reason I bought a Thunderbird instead of a Boxster. I think Mickey Rourke would probably go with a semi-restored circa-1960 Cadillac, but I’m not made of money.

If Mickey Rourke could play the guitar, I think he’d pick a Gretsch, a Telecaster, or an ES345. Either that or a tobacco burst Les Paul that had been used as a murder weapon.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to get a slab put together for a guitar body. I’m shooting for bookmatched walnut, and if I can pull it off, I’ll inlay lighter-colored strips of some other wood around the edges.

“But I’m With the Band!”

I got some interesting insights into God’s mind this week. I hope they came from him and not me.

I feel like God uses my dealings with other people to teach me what his life is like. This is a fairly obvious thing. For example, God gives us children and makes us participate in creation so we can understand what it’s like to try to teach and improve people, and what it means to love someone more than you love yourself.

I’ve noticed that there are times when people do things for me, in a way that is not a blessing. They come up with ideas that seem good to them, and they go forward with them, even if I discourage them. They may put in a lot of time or money or effort, and then I get the result, and they expect me to be thrilled and to reciprocate, and of course, I am not thrilled, and I do not reciprocate. What they’re doing is not generous. It’s manipulation. They do it for themselves, not me. There is a certain amount of love in it, but it’s buried in selfishness and stubbornness.

I don’t feel guilty about refusing to get sucked into the game, or about hurting their feelings. Sometimes you need to have your feelings hurt, and if it doesn’t happen, you’re actually cheated. Christianity is not about being nice. It never was.

Seems like God uses these people to teach me how he feels when we do what we want, in his name. I believe this is what “taking the Lord’s name in vain” means.

Jesus said people would come to him–probably at the Rapture–and point to the things they had done for him, and he would tell them to get lost, because he had never “known” them. They would not be permitted to attend the wedding feast in heaven; instead, they would have to suffer the Tribulation.

The word “know” means “know” the way men know their wives in the Bible. Presumably, he meant the wedding rejects had never become joined to him as parts of the Body of Christ, executing his will instead of their own. A man and woman are supposed to be one flesh. Christians are supposed to be united with Jesus, as his flesh on earth. If you’re off doing things he didn’t tell you to do, you’re like Dr. Strangelove’s arm, doing things the owner does not intend.

Jesus made it clear it was possible to do amazing things, using supernatural power, without pleasing him. He said people would point to worthless miracles they had done in his name. Apparently, you can get divine power before you get divine righteousness. Isn’t that always the way life goes? The legal driving age in most states is 16. Enough said.

We’re supposed to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, and we’re supposed to be cleansed of demons and filled with supernatural righteousness. I think that’s how it works. Jesus got baptized with the Holy Spirit, and he immediately went out and fasted to clear the demons out. Satan himself showed up to tempt him, and Jesus persevered and overcame, and Satan fled. After that, Jesus began using God’s power and doing great things.

It may sound crazy to suggest Jesus had demons assigned to influence him, but of course, it must be true. The Bible says he was tempted as we are, in all ways, and we know demons are assigned to tempt us. They give us addictions and bad attitudes. They drive us to act impulsively. They whisper corrupt thoughts into our minds. Surely Jesus had the same problem. In fact, this is proven conclusively by the appearance of Satan during the fast. Presumably, after 40 days, all of his underlings had given up, and Satan had to go in person to hit Jesus with the heaviest artillery he had.

The prison-like habits and tendencies demons get us to take up are called “iniquities” in the Bible. A sin is an act. An iniquity is a chronic thing. You can prevent a discrete sin by an act of will, but getting rid of iniquities requires supernatural power, which is why we have to fast and pray.

What did Jesus call the people who did false works in his name? “Workers of iniquity.” They were not clean. They were under the influences of demons and the flesh, and they obeyed those influences. An evil influence may tell you to build an orphanage for Jesus, when you’re really supposed to write a book. It may tell you to work a flashy miracle when you’re supposed to stand back and pray. It may tell you to give money to a bum who actually needs to starve until he agrees to go to rehab and repent. It may tell you to build a giant, shiny church and ordain homosexuals and write books about self-esteem and positive thinking, and you may become a millionaire many times over, and when you meet up with Jesus, you may learn that you might as well have been running a brothel.

This is why the church has done so many evil things. People serve demons and the flesh, thinking they serve Jesus. They work iniquity. If Jesus accepted their works, he would be serving Satan. The workers of iniquity are led by Satan, and they do works that please him, so if Jesus goes along with it, he himself serves Satan. That is not possible, so he rejects them.

It makes perfect sense. We are supposed to be the Bride of Christ, and those who are faithful (not all Christians) are to be spared the Tribulation so they can attend the holy wedding feast in heaven. If you serve iniquity, you are unfaithful, like a cheating fiancee. Over and over, even in the Old Testament, those who turn from God’s voice are compared to unfaithful wives. Look at Hosea’s wife. We are supposed to be one with Jesus, as a man and woman are one. Three’s a crowd. You can’t marry Satan and Jesus.

It’s a sobering concept. If it’s correct, most Christians are wasting their time (that part seems indisputable), and they will be left behind in the Rapture. Then they will have to suffer unspeakable persecution, as well as martyrdom. Probably at the hands of Muslims and “progressive” Christians.

I truly believe this is correct. It’s a natural extension of things I’ve learned from Perry Stone and Robert Morris, and it makes sense of scripture, and I didn’t sit down and figure it out. It came to me. Had it been the result of study and conjecture, I would have much less reason to think it was sound. Revelation does not come from the puny human mind. The Bible itself says only the Holy Spirit explains scripture.

In other news, I already received the router templates I ordered, so today I am going to try to work on building a Telecaster clone. I have to joint and plane some walnut and put it together with Titebond and clamps. I think I’ll get a crummy piece of pine for router practice, to use while the walnut sets up.

Yesterday I realized I have already found uses for the upper part of the 24-fret neck on my Telecaster, and I will not be able to reach that area when I play my Les Paul and 335 clones. That’s important knowledge. I didn’t realize upper neck access would be so important to me. I thought those extra frets were a novelty. Now I’m wondering if I can build a double cutaway Telecaster, to make neck access even better. If you look at the design of the Telecaster, you will see why some people think a DC design lacks solidity. Maybe glue would solve the problem. I know of no reason why you can’t combine screws and glue. Matsumoku did it when they made Gibson clones.

Hope this works. It should be tremendous fun, and I think it’s fairly easy, as woodworking projects go.

Delicacy

I got my cranberry sauce, cranberry relish, and pumpkin pies made. I stuck a new ingredient in the relish, and it made a huge difference. I think it’s new, although knowing me, I may have done the same thing last year.

I have two pones of cornbread mashed up in a pot with sage, salt, pepper, fried onions, too much butter, and some other stuff. It’s so good I could eat it right now, cold and wet though it is.

I decided to use some of my precious shucky beans. I grew these a few years back and dried them myself.

These will be incredible. If you’ve never had them, go get some fresh green beans, remove the strings, dry them strung on threads, and cook them in a few months. These will soak overnight, and then tomorrow I’ll toss the water, replace it, add salt pork, and simmer them.

What a joy it is to have shucky beans on hand! I probably have the only shucky beans within 800 miles.

I thought Thanksgiving would be boring, but it’s starting to look like it will be a fantastic meal.

Youthful Stupidity is Not Cheap

This week I got depressed. That’s interesting, because it’s something that almost never happens to me.

I spent the first thirty years of my life depressed. My family was dysfunctional, and my childhood was pure misery, and it took me decades to outgrow the habit of depression. I still think of childhood as a prison; if I had to choose one thing for which I’m most grateful, other than my relationship with God, it would be my adult status. I have never gotten over the thrill of adulthood’s freedoms. I don’t have to ask people for money. I can get in my truck or on a plane and go anywhere I want. I don’t have to worry about older adults threatening to beat me up. I don’t have to deal with sadistic teachers any more. If someone makes my life unpleasant, I cut them off and never speak to them again. There is nothing like being an adult.

Maybe we feel the same way when we leave the earth behind.

I think my status as a perennially depressed person ended when I started law school. A career in law wasn’t exciting, and law school was fairly dull, but I had a lot of friends, and I had something to do with my time, and things went reasonably well. Since then, I have never been depressed for more than a day or two.

I got depressed this week because my father invited me out for a drink and then started nagging me about getting married.

You have to understand the history. My mother was a wonderful woman, and when she met my dad, she decided he was IT. He may think he caught her, but the truth is, she caught him. I believe this is usually the case in marriages. Men don’t like to admit it, because it ruins their reputations as ladies’ men, but we are much less picky than women, and women usually end up deciding whether a marriage is going to take place. Men like to think they set their romantic goals and achieve them, and that’s probably true when it comes to casual sex, but when it comes to marriage, women make the decisions. I know there are exceptions, and pride will drive men to dispute it, but the rule seems solid.

My dad was in his twenties, and God dropped a great wife on him without requiring any diligence on his part. As a result, he does not understand that life is not like that for all of us. Asking him about romance is like asking Lindsay Lohan about making money. He landed a great lady early without any real effort, so he thinks it works that way for the whole world.

The Bible says a good wife comes from God, not from your own effort. And it will not always happen on your schedule. According to the Jews, even Isaac, who was highly blessed, did not find a wife until he was middle-aged. Some fine people never marry, and it’s not because they didn’t try. There are some things in this life you can’t control completely, and finding a mate is one of them. You can play the field and then settle; to that extent, you have control. But if you’re hoping for a real blessing, it’s like waiting for rain. God supplies it when he feels like it. And the biggest factor in his timing is your progress as a Christian.

If I had stayed close to God back in the 1980s, when I started attending church and changing my life, I would surely have found a wife long ago. But I stepped outside the flow of blessings and into the domain of the enemy, and I got the kind of wages enemies pay. I accept that. Like all human beings, I was born an idiot, and idiots suffer until they recover from idiocy.

God is repairing my life now, but it is not an instantaneous process, and I am not going to saddle myself with an awful woman just because I’m getting old. I enjoy life tremendously, and there is nothing that can match a woman’s potential to cause misery. I am not going to try to force a blessing.

I didn’t enjoy being reminded that I had frittered away my youth. Ordinarily, I don’t think much about it, but parents have a way of pushing buttons. So I was down for a couple of days. I wasn’t looking for a bridge to jump off of, but I’m ordinarily very happy, so two or three mildy gloomy days have a big impact on my perception of my life.

It’s particularly upsetting to get this kind of speech, given the choices my dad would make for me. He means well, but he tries to fix me up with cocktail waitresses and cashiers. He used to try to fix me up with his paralegals. Anyone he thinks is good looking will do.

This highlights the magnitude of the blessing he received when he found my mother. He could have married some sleazy woman who saw him purely as a meal ticket. God blessed him, pure and simple. I could have a wife next week, if a cocktail waitress was what I wanted. And before you start lecturing me, I’m not referring to a nice Christian girl who had no choice but to serve drinks for a living. That should be obvious to any intelligent person.

My church is full of nice women, but most of them are black, and only a small percentage of black women are willing to marry outside their race. A lot of the women at my church are young, and while a woman should be no older than her husband, I feel a little odd talking to women in their twenties. Quite honestly, I always think, “This girl would be cheating herself.” Some of the women in my church are too old to have kids. That rules them out; I don’t care how nice they are in other ways. I’m not closing that door. It may seem unfair, since it means I won’t date a woman my own age, but then I didn’t make the rules of biology, and I won’t be held accountable for them. God put Ruth and Boaz together, after all. I don’t know of any Biblical stories of young men marrying old women. Feminism is a modern conceit; it has nothing to do with reality.

There are also women who already have kids. There are a couple of problems with this. First, I am not a kid person. I know I would love children of my own, but I don’t like being around other people’s kids all that much, except for really good kids, for short periods of time. And women with kids tend to be overly eager to get remarried, partly for financial reasons, and that causes problems. Second problem: being injected into a prefab family complete with a family court judge, a hostile adult male, and two sets of in-laws does not appeal to me.

Psalm 37:4 says God will give us the desires of our hearts. I have seen that happening to me, and I know it applies to all aspects of life. I’m not going to wreck it by making a desperate lifeboat-style grab for a wife. I have a wonderful life as a single man. Why would I trade that for a miserable life with a woman who was unattractive or unpleasant or lacking in faith? God will provide, or he won’t. I keep my eyes open, and I will make the effort, but I know the difference between carnality and spirituality, and I am not going to let my flesh run the show.

I don’t know if my church will provide a solution. I’ve only met one woman who seemed to have potential, and she’s young, and there are other issues.

I’ll say this for my church: for young people, it’s a marriage factory. I’ve seen a number of great young people get hitched there, and some are also developing good careers. They’re so lucky. They have stayed within God’s protection, and they are getting blessed early in life. Hopefully they won’t have to go through the chastisement and droughts people like me go through.

In other news, I’m planning to build a guitar. I found out how easy it is to build Telecaster clones. A factory neck is a necessity, unless you’re a skilled woodworker, but anyone who can run a router can make a body, and you can get perfect results and great control, without spending much. A Fender American Standard sells for $1000; for that kind of money, you could build the finest Telecaster known to man.

I’d like to make a guitar with a bookmatched walnut top. I already have the wood. I want humbucker-sized pickups and a Bigsby. Truthfully, it would be a Les Paul in a Telecaster shape. It’s very hard to build a Les Paul, and a Telecaster-type guitar would do the same things.

Telecasters are amazing. A Telecaster is a stick and a board, and it only has two pots, but it can still have an incredible action, great responsiveness, and all sorts of wonderful tones.

I’d like to play slide blues, and you need a guitar with a fairly high action for that, and I don’t want to dedicate any of my existing guitars to it, so building seems like a good way to go. For $500, I can make something wonderful. We’ll see what happens.

Last night I had a playing breakthrough. I keep studying theory and scales and whatever, and so far it has led nowhere. I had some ideas for “Sweet Home Chicago,” so I started working on it with no real plan, and before I knew it, I had a complete solo.

This tells me I may be able to do what “natural musicians” do. That would sure be a nice shortcut. Some people play and compose beautifully without getting into theory, and if I could do that, it would make life a lot more satisfying while the theory studies progress.

I know of several ways to approach the guitar. One is to sit around studying theory and scales. Another is to memorize other people’s arrangements note for note and go from there. Another is to hear arrangements in my head and try to write them down in tablature form. Last night I realized there’s a simpler way: just pick the guitar up and play. This is probably how B.B. King did it. I think I can guarantee you it’s how John Lee Hooker did it, because he played whatever he wanted, all the time, and he complained that he had no freedom when he worked with bands.

While I was working with the guitar, I realized I was getting to know the fretboard instinctively: which notes worked and which didn’t. I was finding positions to use. That stuff could be very useful. So from now on I plan to spend a certain amount of time every day, just PLAYING. I think it will work. One of the things I hated about the piano was that I practiced and practiced, but I never played.

I have to go make cranberry sauce, cranberry relish, and two pumpkin pies now. Happy Thanksgiving.

Tragedy

I can’t believe this. I can’t find my recipe for blueberry cornbread.