Not Found in Stores

Wondering why people become home machinists? Take a look at what this guy built: LINK.

Isn’t that a beauty? He says it’s legal, too. I think this would be a great thing for dads to show young men who show up to take their daughters out.

Eventually They Have to Let me Up

I have a question. How long do you have to be on Nyquil before it stops being medicine and starts being heroin in a bottle? I’ve gone through two jugs of Nyquil and one bottle of disgusting Tylenol warming cold stuff, and I’m now on Nyquil jug three. If my sinuses were clear, I’d probably dry it and snort it. I can tell I’m developing a tolerance. It takes one and a half of those little cups to get me to sleep now. Soon I’ll be making Nyquil daiquiris and sucking them through a straw.

I’m like 92% cured, but the remaining 8% is very frustrating. I would describe the symptoms, but they would ruin your breakfast.

It’s amazing how being ill interferes with prayer and other aspects of my relationship with God. I don’t get up early any more, because sleeping longer seems to damage the illness, so my whole morning prayer routine is on hiatus. And I feel like the distance between me and God is greater. Concentration is part of prayer, and illness ruins it.

Perry Stone says hindering spirits come our way when we make progress for God. I’ve seen spirits, and I know people who have seen or perceived them in other ways. I have no doubt that he’s right. I feel like I’ve been shoved onto the sidelines for two weeks, and things were going great before I got sick. This is one of those times when a wife could be handy, to take up the slack. Very often, when you fall, you can pick yourself up. But it’s better to have someone else help you. If any of you want to remember me the next time you talk to God, I would appreciate it. I have my weekly prayer group on Saturday, but that’s two days off.

I know I sound kooky when I talk about the spiritual realm, but I have been drawn into it my entire life. When I was three and four years old, I used to wake up and see hideous creatures crawling up and down the walls and across the ceiling and bed. Night after night, I dreamed the same white-skinned, grinning demon was after me. One night I felt something put its hands on me while I was in bed. I think these things happen to kids more than adults, because the enemy knows no one listens to kids. When you get older, you will doubt what you saw. We can talk ourselves into disbelieving what we know to be true.

We, ourselves, are spirits attached to flesh. Why should we find it hard to believe that other spirits exist? It’s crazy, if you think about it. Even if you’re not a Christian, you probably don’t believe you’ll cease to exist when your body dies. If you can exist without a body, why can’t God? Why can’t a demon? Seems like no one ever asks this obvious question publicly.

People choose to believe that God and other spirits don’t exist, because if you accept their existence, you have to accept the notion of sin, and that means giving up your dirty movie channels, weed, drunkenness, greed, pride, and casual sex, among other things. It means you have to admit you didn’t generate your own wealth and accomplishments. If you choose not to believe, you can convince yourself you’re not going to be held responsible for what you do or don’t do. You’ll be wrong, but it will ease your mind and help you avoid change, and avoiding change is one of our biggest motivations.

In that sense, every human being is an addict. We enjoy things we know or suspect are bad for us, and we know that if we admit they’re bad for us, we’ll have to give them up, so we cover our eyes and ears and persist in defeating God’s efforts to help us realize our potential. We’re afraid to take the red pill. I certainly am. When I turned to God, I knew I was giving up friends and opportunities in exchange for a bundle of unrealized promises. I have to renew that decision all the time, and it’s not always easy. I think this is one of the purposes of communion. Which I haven’t taken in several days.

Christianity means emptying your hands of pretty, shiny garbage so God can fill them with lasting treasures. To get the treasures, you have to be willing to suffer with empty hands for a time. Generally, you’re not going to get the good while you’re holding onto the bad, because God requires us to have faith, and if you never lack, you never have a chance to use faith.

Something very good is waiting at the end of this illness. All I have to do is keep breathing until it’s over.

Plus Frozen Dough

Time to bless you with more pizza information.

A week ago, I was interrupted while making pizza. I took the risen dough and wrapped it in foil and stuck it in the freezer. Today I needed lunch, and I remembered the dough. I thawed it out and used it.

In the past, I’ve noted that dough improves with age, but I was too lazy to experiment and give definite results. This week I experimented accidentally, bypassing laziness. And the results were excellent. The crust had more flavor and a better texture than my usual one-hour dough. So I’m going to do what Mike does. I’m going to make a pile of dough portions and freeze them. This will make pizza more convenient and less messy, since I’ll only use the food processor once.

I plan to freeze the dough in disks, not balls. A disk will thaw faster, and it takes less work to turn a disk into a pizza. Mike uses balls. He also hits them with microwaves for about 45 seconds to thaw them. That probably won’t work as well with disks, because they have thinner parts which may overcook. I went 40 seconds today, but that was as far as I was willing to take it. I had to leave the dough out for maybe an hour and a half before I could turn it into a pie.

The dough was coated with olive oil twice. First, when I made it. I put it in a Pyrex dish with a light coating of oil, and I let it rise. Then I was interrupted, and I froze it. When I took it out today, I applied a little more oil to keep it from drying while it thawed. It worked great.

It seems like pizza dough gets better and better the more it rises. If you go too far, you can always punch it down.

I think I made this pie with bread flour. I can’t remember.

Second thing: I have new information about improving bad cheese. I’m using Gordon Food Supply’s mozzarella/provolone mix, which is fairly good but too low in fat. In the past, I’ve added a small amount of butter to improve it. This keeps it from burning, makes it chewier, and prevents it from tasting like vinyl. Today I added butter to one half and olive oil to the other half. I used between a teaspoon and a tablespoon of fat for four ounces (weight) of cheese. Just enough to coat it. I didn’t use a real measuring spoon, but I would guess I used two teaspoons per four-ounce half, and it was ample.

The olive oil side was better. Butter can make the cheese too rich. The olive oil added flavor without making the cheese too greasy. And the cheese laid down better when it melted. So I highly recommend it. Just don’t overdo it. This will be a lot easier than driving to Costco to get their flawless mozzarella. I have a feeling it will also work on supermarket cheese.

This pie was truly excellent. I think I got my mojo back.

I may also divide my sauce into two-ounce portions and seal it in vacuum bags. It’s almost a month old, and it’s going to go bad if I don’t do something. Those gallon cans are so wasteful. The Stanislaus people should wake up and start selling small retail cans.

Falling Faster Than Support for Global Warming Hoax

It’s under 50 degrees. Wow. For Miami, on a sunny day, that’s freakish. All over Florida, ill-designed central heating systems are failing at their jobs. People are wearing bizarre cold-weather ensembles that look weird because Miamians don’t know how to put the look together. I guarantee you, if you drive around Miami this morning, you will see at least one person wearing a wool hat, a heavy coat, and shorts.

I wouldn’t mind the cold weather at all, but for the fact that I’m recovering from a viral illness, and one of the symptoms is a low body temperature. Every night I pile on three blankets and crank the heated mattress pad up. Last night, it was merely adequate.

I’m one of the few people who has witnessed snow in Miami. When I was in high school, we had a really nasty day, and while I was standing in what we called “the quadrangle” (a yard surrounded by school buildings), I looked up and saw a few flakes in the air. I guess everything is okay as long as that doesn’t happen again.

I talked to Mike this week, and he predicted dead iguanas would be flopping out of trees. I guess that will happen. And some of our fish will float up to the surface of canals.

I wonder if the pythons will suffer. We have loads of them out in the filthy bug-infested ugly swamp majestic Everglades. They come from India and Burma. I don’t know how cold it gets there.

There are worries about the citrus crop. I don’t know if there is any point in trying to save Florida citrus. There is a new disease out there, and many people think it will end Florida citrus (maybe all commercial citrus growing) permanently, or at least until resistant trees are developed. It’s called Citrus Greening. A bug from Asia bites your tree, and that’s the end of it. I have several trees that aren’t doing well. I’m going to have to kill them. Limes and grapefruit seem to be immune, but everything else is looking bad.

I don’t know what to plant to replace the citrus. Mameys are okay. Mangoes are a reliable standby.

Citrus is in trouble, and there is a banana blight out there somewhere. I don’t think it has hit Florida yet, but experts fear it will wipe bananas out. They’re all descended from the same ancestor, and they don’t have enough genetic diversity to develop resistance. Supposedly.

Imagine not being able to order orange juice in a restaurant. Some people think that day is coming. They think orange juice will only be available in small quantities, as a mixer. I think we’ll have resistant trees. But until they show up, we’ll have problems.

I can’t believe the diseases and bugs we have here. You can’t have a tomato plant. You can barely grow peppers. Beans get rust. The Jamaican Tall coconut palms are long gone. The banyan trees and ficus hedges are dying. If it weren’t for poison, no one in South Florida could keep the ants and roaches at bay; cleanliness doesn’t do the job. Now we’re losing our citrus. In a couple of years, we’ll be eating MREs.

Why can’t the diseases hit fruit nobody cares about? I wouldn’t miss Surinam cherries. They’re disgusting. Guavas are very overrated. Papayas smell like dog poo. Loquats…a lot of people don’t even know what a loquat is. I’ve only eaten about eight longans over the course of my life. Sea grapes are pretty useless. The dates here don’t get ripe because of the climate. Take that stuff. Leave the tangelos.

I don’t know what to do with my papaya trees. They’re big, and they produce, but the fruit smells like dog excrement. It seems like you can avoid the smell by picking them early, but that practice hasn’t proved reliable.

Time to move to southern Tennessee. That’s the ticket. Tomatoes grow just fine there. Corn. Potatoes. Apples. Tasty pigs.

I’ll bet yankees are going to the beach today. This is one of the funnier things about living in Florida. People who spend money on vacations are so determined to get what they paid for, they’ll subject themselves to incredible suffering. They go to the beach when it’s 50 degrees. They go fishing in six-foot seas. They literally blister themselves on their first day here, and then THEY GO BACK AND LIE IN THE SUN THE NEXT DAY. That’s so horrible, I don’t even like typing it. Have you ever seen sun poisoning? It’s painful just to be near it.

When it comes to traditional South Florida pursuits, I’m no fan of the cold. If the water is under 80 degrees, I have no interest in swimming. If the air is below 72 degrees, count me out of the fishing trip. Cool weather is great for yard work and barbecue, but you won’t see me near the water.

If you’ve never had a pool thermometer, you probably don’t know how cold 75-degree water is. It sounds pleasant, because 75-degree air is pleasant. But it’s pretty cold. Water has to be much warmer than air to have the same feel. I’ve seen canal water hit 94 degrees here.

One of the interesting things about cold snaps is that they’re the only times we have cold running water. The rest of the year, we have hot and warm. The cold water tap comes out at about 80. It does a very poor job of cooling beer when you’re homebrewing.

If we ever had ice, there would be bodies all over the streets. Miamians can barely drive when it’s dry and clear. They are the least skilled drivers outside of Asia. Italian driving philosophy combined with Chinese ability and Somali judgment. If there was anything to slide on, the feds would have to bring refrigerated trucks in to hold the dead.

When I was a kid, we had a place in North Carolina. A lot of people from Miami have invaded that area. They make people crazy, because they can’t drive on hills. They have no idea what low gears are for. They ride their brakes until they give out. They creep along in terror, with long lines of better drivers behind them. I learned to drive in Kentucky, so I don’t have the local disease. I still remember my mother cursing at them.

I would never want another place in North Carolina. The whole point is to get away from Miamians, and they’re already there. It’s like the scene in Alien where Ripley finds out the creature stowed away with her on the shuttle. It’s not fair! Go be rude and loud somewhere else! If I wanted to see your Lord of the Flies kids running around screaming in restaurants while you yell into your cell phones and pretend not to notice, I would have stayed home!

Maybe it’s time to cut back on caffeine again.

Warding Off the Prince of Persia

I am trying to figure out what to do for the next 40 days.

Every year my church has a 40-day thing. You can fast for 40 days or make some other sacrifice during this time. You’re supposed to sign up. I was sick all week, so I forgot about it until I went to church on Sunday. They had a form to fill out, and there was no way I was going to come up with something during the service, so I held onto the form. I guess I can turn it in this weekend.

I decided to spend one hour in prayer every afternoon until February 12. That’s a good one. This illness has wrecked my prayer routine, and I am desperate to get it back in shape. Mid-day prayer is very powerful. But that still leaves the question of fasting.

I considered doing a “Daniel fast.” This means you cut out bread, flour, rice, meat, wine, sweets, and all beverages other than water, for 21 days. It was tempting at first, but the more I think about it, the more it sounds like a giant bummer. And I don’t have a lot of faith in partial fasts. I got fantastic results with a water-only fast this summer. I was relieved of some self-control issues, including a lifelong tendency to overeat. But would I get that kind of payback from a Daniel fast? Not sure.

I already have regular fasts built into the month. Maybe I should add one day a week.

Fasting with no particular goal seems like a dubious practice.

Maybe the prayer-hour thing is enough. You can make yourself crazy with unnecessary asceticism.

In my opinion, this stuff means nothing unless accompanied by prayer. Perry Stone seems to agree. He says that when you fast, you’re not supposed to lie around watching TV, waiting for the day to end. The point of the exercise is to enhance your communication with God, so I guess it should be obvious that the prayer part is more important than the fasting part.

Now that my illness is fading, I’m going to get back on track. I’ll be able to get up earlier and resume my morning prayer routine. That will set me up great for the afternoons.

My Fein Multimaster arrived. I have no idea what to do with it. It was really just a way of avoiding letting credit-card points expire. I should find an excuse to plunge-cut some holes in something.

I guess it was a reasonably smart buy. There is no way I would have spent actual money on this thing, so this is the only way I would ever have gotten one.

I’m taking a break from sight-reading practice. I think I finally figured out how to practice correctly. I should have listened to my piano teacher. He said he would open books of sheet music at random and just play. I tried software and sight-reading books instead. For the timing, the programs and books are fine, but they don’t work for note-reading. Why? Because they’re repetitious. Sight-reading is playing music at sight, which means “not by memory.” If you play a sight-reading exercise twice, the third time, your memory kicks in. That renders the exercise useless. You need a continuous supply of unmemorized material. That’s why random sheet music is better.

Boy, was I stupid. I didn’t understand the importance of what he was telling me. I don’t think he did, either. When you’ve always done something right, maybe it’s hard to guide people who do it wrong.

Memory doesn’t seem to interfere with timing practice. I guess it’s easier to memorize pitch patterns than time patterns.

If this works, I won’t have to break the piano up for kindling. I’ll be able to use it. That would be a dream come true. I am hoping God will help me become a competent musician so I can make use of my gifts. Wasted potential is an ugly thing. It would be a thrill to compose some decent songs. I’d love to be able to write music fluently instead of one note every five minutes.

I was insanely gifted at languages when I was a kid. I barely worked, but I won prizes. My college French instructor asked if I had lived in France. Then I got old and my memory weakened, and memory is a big part of it. If I can get my memory working halfway right again, I should regain a lot of my ability to learn symbolic systems. And music is a symbolic system, very much like a language. Maybe ability will trump old age to some extent. I seem to be picking sight-reading up pretty quickly now. Tonight I found myself skipping pieces because they were too simple. These were really easy pieces, but still.

I’m hitting the B1 and sleeping long hours and losing weight. I memorize psalms every day. I can’t think of anything else that might help, except for gingko biloba, and I’m afraid to take it because I have no idea what it does.

You can’t cry about lost opportunities. You have to strengthen what remains and keep moving. I managed to do a good job of maximizing my writing ability. That’s worth something. A lot of people would be happy to do one thing well. Maybe some day I can find a young person who is wasting his talents, and I can kick him in the rear end until he realizes what he has. If you can’t be a success, you can be a warning to others.

I make a great cheesecake. When I question my self-worth, I can always remember that. And maybe music will still pay off.

Start Here

Someone asked me to post my pizza recipe. I am getting rusty, but I think this will work.

CRUST

1 cup flour
1 tablespoon dry yeast
4 oz. water
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil

Warm the water to make the yeast happy. Dissolve the yeast in it. I usually dissolve half a teaspoon of sugar in it to give them something to feed on. When the yeast foams up, you’re ready to make dough.

Put everything except the water mixture in a Cuisinart with a regular blade. Turn the Cuisinart on. Dribble the water mixture in until the flour forms a single big glob. Continue to process for one minute. For bigger amounts (over two cups of flour), you may want to use the special dough blade.

At this point, you should have a dough that is squishy enough to work, but not sticky. If it’s too sticky to work, blend a little flour in. If it’s too dry, add water.

You can use ordinary all-purpose biscuit or bread flour. If you love gluten, you can use bread flour and add a spoonful of gluten flour. If you hate gluten, use biscuit flour.

You don’t need fancy 00 flour, but there is no reason you can’t use it if it makes you happy.

You don’t have to put oil in the dough. If you don’t, however, it may be impossible to toss, because the outside will dry and crack while you work it. This doesn’t matter if you roll it. A tossed crust will usually be a little better than a rolled crust, and it’s easier to get the flour off of it.

Form the dough into a disk. Coat the disk with a thin layer of olive oil. Put in a covered dish to rise. I oil the dish lightly. When the dough has at least doubled in size, it’s ready to form into a pizza. This amount of dough will make a thin 12″ pie with a half-inch lip. Toss it or roll it. Put it on a pizza screen.

If the dough holes while you’re working it, you can smoosh the edges of the holes back together and keep going.

SAUCE

4 oz. Stanislaus Super Dolce sauce
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2-1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon white vinegar
dry oregano to taste
1-2 tablespoons olive oil

Add enough water to the sauce to make it loose enough so it won’t form peaks. This is probably more sauce than you need for a 12″ pie, but you don’t want to err on the light side. Put enough sauce on the dough to make it red, but don’t bury it. The best tool for spreading sauce is your fingers. They are less likely to weld the dough to the screen.

Almost all supermarket tomato products are bad.

Use 6 ounces (weight) of Costco shredded mozzarella. You can also use sliced whole-milk mozzarella from the deli counter at a grocery. If you want to go all-out, find a place that sells Grande brand cheese. When the cheese is on the pie, sprinkle about half a teaspoon of oregano on it.

Scamorza cheese is also good, and you might enjoy a blend of mozzarella and provolone. Be careful about using part-skim cheese. It may burn too fast. If you end up with cheese that doesn’t have enough fat in it, you may be able to save it by tossing it in a tablespoon of melted butter before you put it on the pie. You can add flavor by adding grated cheese.

Almost all shredded supermarket cheese is bad.

Dump the pizza on a stone in a 550-degree oven. Cook for four minutes. Using an aluminum peel, remove the screen and leave the pizza on the stone. Bake for 2 1/2-3 minutes.

That’s it.

This may not be your favorite type of pizza, but it will give you a safe place to start. If you can stand to make dough a day in advance and refrigerate it, it will probably be better. You don’t have to use a screen, but it’s easier than using semolina and a peel.

Cheese pizza is the real test of a recipe. Any pizza tastes good when you cover it with crap. While you’re trying to get your recipe right, your best bet is to make cheese pizza over and over before you use toppings.

Enjoy.

Salvation Through the Side Door

Day 12 of the mystery illness portends to be the beginning of an uptrend. I don’t feel as weak as I did yesterday, and I can breathe nearly normally, and the things that go on in my sinuses are considerably less frightening.

I went back to the doctor yesterday because I wanted to be totally sure I didn’t have strep throat. He said he did not think I had strep, and he essentially told me to go home and man up.

This is what I get for buying health insurance. Before I had it, I used to avoid doctors, because I never knew what a visit would cost. I figured it was better to die suddenly with money than to he healthy and broke. Now that I’m shelling out tons of cash every month and my expenses have a ceiling, I feel obligated to go in whenever I have a problem. A forty-dollar copay…that’s cheaper than dinner and a movie. It’s not just medical care. It’s affordable light entertainment.

I found out the doctor isn’t an MD. He’s a DO, which means “Doctor of Osteopathy.” I had to look that up. I was afraid I had wasted my money on a glorified chiropractor. I have no respect for chiropractors. Any medical school you can complete in six months has to be a con job.

It turns out osteopaths are real doctors. They’re just weird. I guess he can handle swollen tonsils. If I get a brain tumor, I’ll probably want a specialist.

This morning I’m reading up on John Hagee, the popular televangelist. He has a strange theory that Jews can go to heaven without accepting Jesus. Many Christian authorities, notably Jesus, disagree. I’ve been trying to find out what Hagee’s reasoning is without actually buying one of his books, but most of the sites I’ve found spend more time reviling and insulting Hagee than explaining his odd new doctrine.

Hell exists, and you can only avoid it by accepting salvation. When it comes to hell, that’s about all I’m sure of. The Bible describes hell as eternal, but it’s not clear to me whether that means hell will exist for eternity or that unbelievers will be tormented for eternity. The Jews don’t believe in eternal punishment because it seems wasteful. On top of that, eternity is a really long time, so no matter how evil you are, you would eventually suffer infinity times the amount of suffering you caused, which certainly seems unfair. After a trillion years on the rotisserie, even Stalin would have a legitimate gripe. After a trillion trillion to the trillion-trillionth power years, well, it would be even worse.

The Bible says Satan and his bunch will be incinerated in the Lake of Fire. I have no problem with that. These guys are really evil, and I their unsuitability for rehabilitation is pretty obvious, and incineration is humane and fleeting, compared to the misery they’ve caused. And no one will miss them; it will be a great relief to see them burn. I also have no problem with the permanent destruction of incorrigible human beings; there is no point in keeping them around. But eternal torment? Seems inconsistent with the nature of God.

I don’t claim it doesn’t exist. Scripture seems to suggest it does (although it isn’t as clear as people claim). But I would not be surprised to learn that it does not.

Whatever hell is like, I know it exists, and the New Testament is not ambiguous about the only means of avoiding it. If you accept Christianity as valid, it makes no sense to say some people don’t need Jesus. Christianity is exclusive in its nature. Certain exceptions are obvious: people who have never heard of Jesus, people who are disabled and incapable of understanding the Gospel, people who died before they could make a decision, people who died before Jesus was crucified…you can’t very well expect these people to be held to the same standard as everyone else. But people who knowingly reject Jesus are in trouble.

I’ve read silly claims that everyone who ever lived has somehow been made aware of Jesus. That’s just idiotic. Some Christians claim that even if you were born in a rain forest and never met a Westerner, God has somehow made it clear to you, deep in your heart, that you need Jesus. So if you don’t accept him, you go to hell. Please. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s facially stupid; there should be no need to explain why it’s wrong. If it were true, there would be no need for missionaries. They’d show up in the jungle, and the natives would say, “We already know about that guy, but we still want the mirrors and beads.” In fact, they’d be sending missionaries to us. That doesn’t happen. There are a few weird stories about remote people having strange revelations, but the general rule is, unless a missionary shows up, no one has a clue. It’s amazing that myths this stupid ever gain credence among people who can read and write. This is one of the outrageous beliefs that make Christians seem dumb. It is not helpful.

The Apostle Paul was flogged repeatedly and also stoned because he insisted on preaching to Jews. And it wasn’t his idea; he wanted to preach to heathens. God sent him to the Jews. If they didn’t need the message, what was the point? God moves in strange and mysterious ways, but he isn’t crazy.

I don’t know what John Hagee is thinking. It’s bizarre for a prominent Christian to make a claim that contradicts the most fundamental and essential tenet of Christianity. If he had said Mary wasn’t a virgin, it would not be a big deal. If he had said there was no rapture, it could be overlooked. The Bible doesn’t say you have to believe in Mary’s virginity or the rapture to be saved. But forgiveness after rejecting the Gospel? No; that won’t work.

Hagee is affiliated with Larry Huch, author of The Torah Blessing. I wrote about this book a while back. It’s pure Judaizing and legalism. Huch says we’re supposed to worship on Saturday (unlike the early church under the Apostles) and that we have to wear prayer shawls and light sabbath candles. These guys are both wrong, and badly so, and you don’t have to be a scholar to know it. The scriptures themselves make it clear.

It’s funny; Huch wants us to do too much, and Hagee would ask Jews to do too little. There’s plenty of error for everyone. Pick the path you like best.

I have much more respect for a rational Orthodox Jew than a Christian who blatantly contradicts his own faith.

How can error this obvious still be a problem in 2010? I guess that’s a dumb question, given that Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Scientologists are thriving. Human beings can swallow absolutely any story. It’s tempting to think of people as rational–as though they had a baseline level of common sense–but they don’t. Remember Jonestown? Actually, you don’t have to look that far back. Just think about the people who believed the real estate bubble was going to last forever. You could disprove it in fifteen seconds with sixth-grade math, but executives at big investing firms still invested their careers in it.

Here’s another question: how can Christians still support John Hagee? Sure, the rest of his stuff may be great, but that little thing about denying the core belief of all Christians…isn’t that problematic? When a preacher says you can go to heaven WITHOUT Jesus, shouldn’t a little bell go off in your head? Isn’t that pretty much the one thing no preacher should ever say?

I’d love to believe it. I’d also love to find out that fornication and gay sex were acceptable, so I could approve of everything other people do, and I’d love to know that God will bless me no matter what I do. But I don’t make the rules. I want everyone to be happy and healthy and rich and have washboard abs and a weekly orgy and a Ferrari, but I’m not in charge. Near as I can tell, it’s Jesus’s way or the highway.

I was a Fool to Believe

Does it make sense to use the word “disappoint” when you’re referring to something that fulfilled your low expectations? Doesn’t disappointment necessarily include surprise?

Whatever. The Domino’s pizza I ordered was not good, and I guess I’m not disappointed, because I’m not surprised.

Here is the rundown.

1. Cheese. Seems like the old cheese to me. It was a lot like vinyl, and it was browned in many places, suggesting it’s too low in fat.

2. Crust. Still soft and flavorless, like Wonder Bread. But now it has a fishy-tasting, salty coating of grease on the edge. I can’t figure that out. The fishy taste suggests canola oil is involved; canola is naturally fishy-tasting. But maybe there was some kind of anchovy contamination at the local store.

3. Sauce. Can’t tell the difference between the new and the old.

I wanted to like it, but it’s just not good. They need to get real cheese with fat in it. They need a crust that has a little yeast flavor in it; the main reason people like pizza is that it tastes like fresh bread. They need a sauce you can taste. And that fishy grease has to go. I don’t even understand that stuff.

Maybe they were trying to imitate Pizza Hut’s spray-can butter. That’s a mistake. It does not take a genius to realize that butter was never meant to be an aerosol.

If you want to make pizza with very low risk of failure, use Grande or Costco cheese, Stanislaus Super Dolce sauce, and a simple crust made from flour, yeast, water, salt, pepper, and maybe a little olive oil. This business of hiring dubious chefs and rounding up focus groups is not the way to go.

I wonder why the pizza was so much better back in the Eighties. The new ingredients must be processed industrial waste from China. There has to be an explanation for a decline this steep.

Domino’s Gives it a Shot

Finally, something interesting in the news. Domino’s has decided to improve its pizza.

I worked for Domino’s about a thousand years ago. At that time, the pizza was very good. I saw the ingredients as they were delivered, and it was all good stuff. Real cheese. Real meat. Quality dough. The pizza wasn’t the New York style I prefer, but it was satisfying.

I don’t know why it got so bad after that. I suspect lawyers are part of the reason. The last time I had a Domino’s pizza, the crust was a lot like Wonder Bread. Spongy. Too easy to chew. I couldn’t figure out why they would ruin it by making it soft. Then a bell rang. Liability. Somewhere, someone has probably sued Domino’s because their dentures came out when they bit into a slice. Another possibility: a lot of food companies intentionally make their products bland and wimpy because that way, they offend the fewest customers. Consider Budweiser. It’s a pathetic excuse for a beer. It’s basically sweetened water with carbonation. But the lack of flavor makes it easy to drink, provided you keep it very cold. And it’s cheap.

Don’t ask me why the sauce went downhill. When I worked at Domino’s, they told me Tom Monaghan himself had created the recipe.

Now Domino’s says it’s sorry. They claim their new pizza is worth eating, and they even have a sale going, with a guarantee.

I have to try this. My policy is to try any new pizza restaurant that shows up near me and any restaurant that makes a significant change.

I have a feeling I’ll be disappointed. Good cooks are hard to find; traditional hiring strategies tend to locate people who are aggressive, hard-working, or connected. Those characteristics have nothing to do with good food. The fact that a person got A’s at cooking school says absolutely nothing about his ability to make food you will want to go back for over and over.

In my mind’s eye, I picture a bunch of enthusiastic but talentless corporate types, doing “trust exercises” and fire-walking and singing the company song and so on, when they should really be looking for someone who can cook. Screaming “WE’RE NUMBER ONE” really loud at corporate meetings doesn’t actually improve your pizza.

I’m disturbed that they say they added cayenne to their sauce. Pizza Hut makes spicy sauce, and it’s a mistake. Italy is not Mexico. But I can’t issue a ruling until I try it. I think I’ll order a pie for dinner.

I feel like Charlie Brown, running up to kick the football again. Will Lucy pull it away at the last moment? Probably. But if you don’t do the research, you don’t find the best pizza.

Japan Enters Cookware Fray

The Internet is an endless source of vital information, provided you are a seasoned Boolean-logic miner. Today I found some good news concerning cast iron cookware.

First, the current status of my collection. I have Griswold large-logo skillets in sizes 6 through 9, although I haven’t been able to make myself season and use my #7, because the bottom appears to have been damaged by sitting liquid. I have three Benjamin & Medwin skillets from Target (a set). I have a couple of big Lodge skillets. Other than that, I have a Dutch oven and some other irrelevant items.

The #9 is the ultimate breakfast skillet. Eggs slide right out, and they have that “cast iron fried egg” taste.

I wanted to complete the Griswold collection, but it looks like that won’t be possible. Sort of. I like the skillets without heat rings, because they sit directly on the range top. A heat ring lifts the skillet up a fraction of an inch. I just looked in my Griswold and Wagner reference book (why are you staring at me?), and it turns out my skillets were never made in sizes larger than 10. So I can get a 10, but that’s about it. I have no interest in the smaller sizes. I can’t figure out what they’re for.

If I want to go bigger, I’m going to have to pick a new brand, and it looks like Wagner will do. Their skillets sell a little cheaper, but they’re just as good.

I was considering fly-cutting the insides of my Lodge skillets to make them as good as my old Griswolds. They heat unevenly, and they’re rough. I may still do it, but it’s a perilous enterprise. I have no idea how uniform a skillet bottom has to be to conduct heat evenly, so I don’t know what I’m shooting for. I’m not sure how flat the undersides of the skillets are, either, and if I used the fly cutter, the undersides would be my references (think about it), so if they’re screwed up, the machining will also be screwed up. Even more aggravating: I have no tools suitable for measuring skillet-bottom-thickness.

Lodge skillets are just no good. I’m sorry. It’s that simple. I’d give mine away if I knew anyone who would want them. I only have two, plus a Dutch oven. I guess the oven is okay, since the finish is not as critical. Also, I never use it.

Oddly, the Target skillets seem okay. I had to polish them with a drill and an attachment, but they seem to work all right. Maybe they were made in a nicer part of China. Unfortunately, only one is in a useful size. One is really small, and the other is just barely wrong for cornbread. If you make cast iron skillets, you should know 9″ is standard for cornbread.

Speaking of the Far East, it turns out the Japanese make excellent cast iron pans. If you root around on the web, you can find a company called Iwachu. Like, “You better not shoplift in my convenience store, because Iwachu.” Or something. They make skillets. One size, as far as I can tell. I haven’t seen one up close, but people on the web say nice things about them.

I found another Japanese company called Nakedpan that makes skillets.

The Japanese make very high-quality cast iron. Big shock there. You can even get fancy teapots. Girly stuff. Very nice, if that’s what turns your crank.

I also checked Wagner’s site. They still exist, and they sell crappy Chinese (I assume) skillets. But wait! All is not lost! A few years back, I bought a new Wagner polished skillet. They take the crappy skillets and mill out the insides. They’re not as smooth as a Griswold, but the one I have has performed perfectly. It’s a #6, and I use it for cornbread.

I wanted to get more of these, but there was some reason why I didn’t. I think they only offered one size, or their website went down. I can’t remember. But now the site is up, and they offer skillets up to 13.5″ across. I’m inclined to get a couple. They won’t increase in value like Griswolds, but they may actually work better, and I won’t care if I destroy them, and I won’t have to sit watching Ebay for nine months to get a good price.

Here’s why I think they may work better. New cast iron is thick; that’s good, because it means heat retention and, maybe, better heat distribution. Old cast iron is thin. That’s good, because it reflects the high quality of the castings. The new stuff is cruder. My theory is that a new skillet that has been machined will have the heating qualities (and maybe warping resistance) of a new Lodge, with the smoothness and uniformity of an old Griswold.

I think it’s worth fifty bucks to find out. That’s what a big Wagner costs.

I wanted to tell Mike this important news, but for some reason he is wasting his afternoon cooking dinner for his family.

I came across a cast iron know-it-all on a forum. He was telling everyone what iron to get and how to treat it. He seemed to know absolutely everything you could want to know about the subject. He talked about polymers and other things I know nothing about. Interesting thing: his conclusions were pretty much identical to the ones I’ve come to via trial-and-error, bullheadedness, and pure ignorance. That happens to me a lot.

1. Season iron at 450, not 350.
2. Lodge is no good.
3. Pork fat for seasoning. He also recommended Crisco. He did not like light oils.

He also said you can’t remove seasoning with soap and water. That may be true, but you can definitely wreck the nonstick qualities, so it still seems like a bad idea.

He said the finish you get at 350 degrees isn’t even seasoning. You have to burn the fat to get the kind of molecules that make real seasoning. I guess the 350-degree finish is more like varnish. It certainly smells like it. It gets rancid when you don’t use the skillet.

Okay, to sum up:

1. Mike has ridiculous priorities.
2. Wagner polished skillets seem okay.
3. I am right about everything that matters.

Must be the Hash Browns

I feel wonderful today, but I can’t figure out why. Is it because I’m getting over the virus that has slowed me down for a week? Is it one of those mysterious Christian things? Or is it the fact that I just had a MAGNIFICENT MCDONALD’S BREAKFAST WITH REAL COFFEE INSTEAD OF DECAF????

Cynics will move directly to the third option.

This virus is extremely odd. It makes one part of my body sick. Then that part of my body gets well. Then another part gets sick. It’s as if every part of my body has to develop its own resistance. I know that makes no sense. It started out in the upper part of my throat, and then that went away, and night before last, it went to the lower part of my throat. Now that’s breaking loose. It spent some time in my nose and sinuses, too. Where will it go next?

When I was in law school I had a bug like this, and when it got done with the rest of me, it made stuff come out of my eyes. I mean, come on. Give up, already. You lost. Get out. This is starting to seem like pettiness.

When I was a kid, my mother passed on a helpful tip from my great-grandmother. Her remedy for colds and the flu was to wrap up in quilts and sit by the fireplace, roasting her feet. I think this probably works, although I have dismissed other old Kentucky remedies, such as drinking sheep manure tea to make chickenpox pustules break. For several days, upon waking up, I’ve been cranking up the heat in the electric mattress pad and lying there until I get uncomfortably warm. Seems to make for a much better day. This is as close as I can get to roasting my feet by a fireplace. Maybe I could roast my feet by the plasma cutter.

I feel better today, but the improvement is mostly emotional, not physical. My symptoms have improved a lot, but I would not call myself well.

Whatever it is, I’ll take it. It’s better to feel happy than well.

I have to get off my butt and go to church today. I missed all sorts of stuff this week. I could have spent two days looking after a big-time Christian musical act while they visited the church. That would have been great. I missed the New Year’s services. I missed my prayer group this morning; I wanted to go, but it was 50° outside, and I was afraid I would be inviting a relapse by getting up too early and driving to Hallandale with wet hair. And I figured I’d give the bug to the other guys in the group, as well as the nice waitress who takes care of us. Then she’d be dead, and we’d be banned from Denny’s.

I considered going to the doctor today just to make sure what’s happening to me is normal and harmless. Then I remembered something. I saw a mezuzah in his office. Do I really want to see a Jewish doctor on Saturday? Wouldn’t I be contributing to the delinquency of a backslider, or something? The last time I saw him, it was on Saturday, and I didn’t even think about this.

I want to DO something today. I wonder how active I can be without inviting death. I could put the VFD on my drill press. I could try to fix the questionable ergonomics in the garage. Sooner or later, I am going to have to bite the bullet and part with my workbench. I have to get a dust collector, and I don’t need the bench any more, because my table saw provides me with, like, thirty square feet of horizontal surface.

AUUUGHHH I feel liquid running down inside my ear! Is this the virus’s latest attack?

Wait. It’s water from the shower.

Never mind.

Not Everyone Was Miserable

Last night while attempting to gain control of my radioactive doro wat roti with sour cream, I watched a little TV. I noticed people were whining about 2009. What an awful year! They were thrilled it was over.

I didn’t get that at all! Last year was great for me. I joined a fantastic church. I met wonderful people. I got delivered from an overeating problem I had had all my life. I developed a somewhat more normal relationship with my sister. I made real progress on some family problems. I got a lot of garbage out of my life. And I got a lot of neat tools.

Last year was rotten for a lot of people. I will try to remember that, and I will not be smug, because my efforts are not the reason my year was pleasant. But I truly believe that anyone who was willing to give up and draw closer to God could have had a great year.

I was invited to a New Year’s party, but I declined. Had I felt well enough, I would have gone to church, but I developed a cough, so I stayed home.

I don’t miss the parties. This is the lamest holiday of the year, including Groundhog Day. I don’t like staying up late. I don’t get drunk any more. I have never been very excited about dancing. I don’t want to pick up women. It’s considerate of people to invite me out, but I’d rather have my sleep.

I like Christmas; the childhood memories will always guarantee that. I like Thanksgiving because there is food. I like the Fourth of July because there is food. After that, my favorite holiday is the day when we set our clocks back an hour. Or the day after I file my tax return.

Halloween used to be pretty good, but now that I’m all religious, I have nowhere to go.

Getting drunk and staying up late the night before January 1st is like having a bachelor party with strippers on the night before you get married. It gets you off to the worst start possible. I’d like New Year’s parties better if they ended at nine. Why do we have to jump up and down and scream at midnight? It’s not like we’re all getting healed of cancer when the clock strikes twelve. It doesn’t really change anything. Why wait up for it? I say smoke some ribs, have some potato salad, fire a few rockets, and go home early. I went to bed at a reasonable hour, and when I got up, it was 2010 for me, just like it was for all the people who got drunk and ruined their sleep patterns. I didn’t miss a thing.

Maybe next year I’ll have a New Year’s Eve Afternoon barbecue, for other people who are tired of waking up in flowerbeds.

Here’s some things to celebrate. I didn’t hug a dirty toilet last night. I didn’t have to refuse a breath test. I don’t have a headache. I knew where I was when I woke up. I’m not wondering if anyone is pregnant or whether I have an STD.

Any holiday people can’t celebrate with their kids ought to be questioned.

People never seem happy on January 1st. Is that just my imagination? They’re quiet. They seem to feel sheepish. Nothing is moving outside. I feel like The Omega Man.

I got up fairly early, cleaned myself up, and got back in bed to sweat the remaining viruses out. That gave me time for a lot of prayer, which is good, because whenever I get sick, my prayer routine suffers. Now the day and the year have a solid foundation under them. That sure beats waking up in a tuxedo, with a mop bucket next to the bed.

I think the need for wild celebrations is a symptom of dissatisfaction with the rest of your life. When I was in college, I was miserable, and I looked forward to getting extremely drunk twice a week. Drunkenness was the best part of my life. These days, I would be upset by the prospect of getting drunk. It would be a chore and an inconvenience. And being around people who are drinking can be like babysitting.

This is going to be a great year, and 2011 will be even better. I base that prediction on the assumption that I am given the grace to stay on the path I’ve chosen; only God can bring it to pass. I expect things to get better and better, even if I die. I don’t need to get drunk to be optimistic and excited.

Thank you, Lord, for an excellent year. Thanks for a positive trend that will continue even after my life is over.

“Quiet” Tool-Obsessed Neighbor Amassed Arsenal of Lethal Peppers

I decided to torture my virus with more hot food. I hit the store and got ingredients for doro wat. The plan was to make it even hotter than the curry I made a few days ago. I picked four habanero golds plus one big Trinidad Scorpion to season it.

Now I have the stew bubbling on the stove, but it seems like the virus just went away. My head opened up, and I feel much better. Maybe it was the fumes from the burning onions, toasting spices, and minced peppers. Or maybe I’m really cured.

I have to ask myself: do I still want to eat this stuff if I’m not sick?

Of course I do. Let’s not kid ourselves.

I’m planning to make rotis instead of injera. I can’t help it. Rotis are better. And I bought sour cream to wrap up in there with the doro wat.

Tomorrow I may have something that makes a virus seem pleasant.

More

Ohhh…that was amazing. My brain actually melted and ran down my throat. I can’t say I miss it. I haven’t used it since 1996.

Take my word for it. Rotis are ten times better than injera. Dump a big pile of doro wat on one, make sure there’s a boiled egg in there somewhere, add a big blog of sour cream, fold it up like a burrito, and GO.

Ancient Ailment has Only One Cure

I just read about Rush Limbaugh’s health problems. I think he needs to get his personal life in order, but I doubt he has sufficient incentive.

Imagine the celebrating, if he dies. Only a few Republicans danced in the streets when Ted Kennedy died. Fringe nuts and kids, generally. But disrespect, cruelty, and schadenfreude are three of the pillars of leftism, so if Rush died, the situation would be very different. We’ve seen what happens when prominent conservatives die; the remarks from the left could not be more despicable were they written by demons.

Monetary success can be a poison. It’s an especially effective poison, because it convinces you everything is fine, and it makes you dread its own antidote. I was thinking about this today, in connection with addiction. The one thing that will beat any effort to help an addict is money. An addict with money can afford to refrain from working. He can afford to alienate his friends and family. He can buy everything he needs to maintain his necrotic lifestyle. He can pay attorneys to fight anyone who tries to help him.

One of the best things you can do for an addict in your family is to write a will and cut him out. It sounds cruel, but it’s not. Most people don’t have inherited money, and they survive. Refraining from giving someone unearned money is not the same as forcing him to live in poverty. And Uncle Sam is always there to catch him if he falls.

To get back to Rush, he does not seem like a happy individual. He spends his workday criticizing people, and then he goes home to an empty house. His fulfilling hobbies: golf and cigars. I’ve been a curmudgeon and a critic, and I think it leads to dissipation and regret.

My pastor talks about money a lot, and he says the reason he does so is that every time he talks about money, he is crucifying the god of this world. I think that’s true. In the physics of human relations, money is analagous to energy. It’s a protean substance which can be transmuted into nearly anything. Sex. A convincing imitation of love. Shelter. Food. Blessings for your friends. Harm to your enemies. It’s the closest thing we have to pure power. We trust it more than we trust God, because it’s faster-acting and requires no faith or virtue to put it in action. It’s a little bit like the dark side of the fictional Star Wars force. It will get you quick results, but later on, you may find that the benefits it appeared to confer were actually curses.

Money is like the tongue. The Bible says life and death are in the power of the tongue, and that no man can tame it. The things you say and write can do great harm, or they can do great good, and it’s extremely difficult to control your words in order to maximize the good and minimize the bad. The money you spend (or retain) can do great good or harm, and unless you’re fit to have money–unless you have enough character to use it correctly–harm is more likely. Developing that control is a great challenge. I believe it’s impossible without the help of the Holy Spirit.

I belong to a branch of Christianity which promotes the idea that failure and lack are curses. It says we are not supposed to be poor. I think that’s correct. Some of the Apostles had employees. Jesus’s father was a skilled tradesman who had at least six children, and Jesus himself was part of the family business. With regard to wealthy people living in God’s will, Jesus said that with God, “all things are possible.” The Old Testament is full of passages that clearly indicate that God rewards people with prosperity and good health.

I believe in prosperity, but I also believe God doesn’t give us scissors and sharp sticks until we promise not to run with them. In other words, I don’t think God would proactively assist a person financially if he knew the money would be spent stupidly or sinfully, toward the person’s own destruction. I don’t think he would give it to a person who would respond by becoming arrogant or overly independent. We are told that if we ask for good things, God won’t give us serpents and scorpions. Money may seem like a good thing, but to some people, serpents and scorpions would very literally be less harmful than cash. Venomous animals can hurt your body, but they can’t do much to your soul.

If all this is true, I guess you have to ask who gives people monetary blessings that later turn out to be damaging. Is it God? Probably not. Not unless God has a purpose in the damage.

I think some charismatics worry too much about blessings and not enough about becoming worthy of blessings. A blessing is not a blessing if you turn it into a stumbling block. Every blessing comes with obligation and responsibility, and the supernatural improvement in character that makes good stewardship possible is a greater blessing than the blessing of which you are the steward. A material benefit is fleeting. An internal improvement is permanent and continues paying dividends forever. The weirdest thing about all this is that God himself will make the internal improvements, even though he later gives you the credit. It’s a pretty good deal.

Bedeviled by Sean Connery’s Catchy Mantra

Here’s a near-paradox. I love sleep, but I hate rest.

I felt pretty cruddy when I got up today, so I decided to do two things: rest, and stay warm. I think it was a mistake to be active yesterday. And the hotter I get, the better I feel. Except for smelling and sticking to things.

What do you do when you rest? I hate lying around watching TV. I don’t have enough character to do something productive while I rest. This is one of those times when the Internet is actually good for something.

What can I blog about? Here’s something fun. I never, ever redeem my credit card points, and they keep expiring. The stuff you can buy with them is usually not very interesting, so I forget to redeem them, and I lose them.

This year I decided to redeem them for a Sears gift certificate and see what I could find. I decided to get a Fein Multimaster.

This is one of those tools no amateur buys for himself, because they’re insanely expensive for what you get. But when you have a pile of old credit card points and nothing else to do with them, putting them toward the price of a Multimaster seems almost justifiable. It beats not using the points at all.

I have no use for it, as far as I know. Detail sanding, I guess. Cutting things in awkward spaces. That’s about it. I think it’s one of those tools that come into play at random moments, when nothing else works. Like a Dremel.

Maybe I should go lie on my back and listen to religious CDs. I actually enjoy that. If you’ve never had an experience you considered supernatural, this kind of thing can be boring or silly, but when you’ve seen a few kooky things, it’s comforting to hear other people talk about their own manifestations.

What else can I do? No cooking. I’ve gained two pounds. Was it the holidays? Partly. Mainly, I’ve been eating too much because I feel sorry for myself. If I can’t do anything or go anywhere, I should at least be able to eat ice cream, right? That was my line of reasoning. But I am not willing to gain weight, so I had to quit.

I could practice sight-reading, which is like studying Harry Reid speeches while eating liver and waiting in line to have your driver’s license renewed. I’ve decided I’m going to do one of two things: learn to sight-read and give keyboards another chance, or give up the whole keyboard dream. A cousin of mine is married to a famous trombone virtuoso, and she suggested sight-reading as a way of compensating for my deteriorating musical memory. Can’t hurt to try. If I can make myself do it, I might at least be able to compose efficiently, even if I never become a good pianist. Composing was my original goal.

I’m working on improving my memory. I memorize scripture and I am fanatical in my efforts to get enough sleep. And I’m losing weight. I have this idea that being fat is bad for the brain. I’m also taking B1 again.

God gave me a big pile of gifts, and so far, my biggest achievement has been creating the world’s best cheesecake. I realize that’s a major feat which, on its own legs, justifies my elevation to sainthood. But I can’t help thinking I should be accomplishing more. “Cheesecake” makes for a short resume. I hear such beautiful music in my head; surely I was intended to write some of it down.

Christian music was great for a few years, but it seems to be in a slump. Some of the songs they play at my church are so monotonous, you wonder why anyone bothered paying for the copyright registration. If I wrote a song like that, I’d delete it from my hard drive without telling anyone. Christians ought to have quality music again. We don’t want to spend eternity busing performers in from hell whenever we have a party.

I could practice. Or I could go look at YTMND.com for six hours.