Chow Delivered

I just dumped a bunch of desserts off at church. I didn’t get to try a single one! All I got was a couple of tablespoons of batter and such. I hope the food is okay.

I don’t know if it was smart to make chocolate flan. I like it, but not everyone is crazy about the combination of chocolate and burned sugar, and in any case, it will look sad among the cheesecake, brownies, and coconut flan, which are all bona fide blockbusters.

They have decided to close the church’s cafe until January, because people will be out of town, and the place is dead. So I won’t have to cook on Monday. I have time to plot.

I still have to fix stuff this weekend. The cast of the Christmas play will need food again. Last week I made macaroni and cheese and chili. I’m not sure what to make this time. Maybe people familiar with my cookbook could recommend something. I was thinking maybe doro wat and rotis.

Rotis are kind of a pain to make. You have to roll them out on a dining table or something. You need a lot of room.

People are buying the book this month. As a Christmas gift, it’s a natural. Everyone knows some fat guy who cooks. I guess it will sell at Christmas time for the rest of my life, or until it becomes dated.

I’m pooped. Try making two flans and two batches of brownies in one day, while making goop and putting berries on top of a big cheesecake. I don’t plan to cook at home any more. It’s just too much aggravation. And of course, I left my pans at church again. I hope they don’t walk off.

People steal at church. If there is a faster ticket to hell, it’s hard to think of what it might be. If you think there is no God to punish you for stealing, why are you in the building?

I’m wiped out. This is what happens when you do work that doesn’t feel like work. You’re too caught up in enjoying it to realize you’re tired.

I have half a mind to make a pizza.

Hey, it’s for the glory of God.

Desserts

Busy morning today.

I have to finish the strawberry cheesecake I started making yesterday. The danged thing cracked on top, as always. I have no idea why that happens. I cooled it slowly, and I was careful not to overmix it. Doesn’t really matter; after one bite, no one cares what it looks like. They want to marry it.

I have to make two flans and some brownies. I may do two trays of brownies. That would be pretty easy.

Let’s see. Twenty-eight servings of flan and cheesecake. Forty-eight servings of brownies. That makes 76. There will be 125 guests. So 39 people (at least) will get nothing. More, if the women charge the table and grab multiple servings.

Oh well. We need a loaves-and-fishes moment, and supplying those is above my pay grade. Perhaps someone can pray to Obama and he can redistribute someone else’s desserts to us.

I think I may make lasagne for Monday. It’s easy and good. Not the best thing I make, but still, beyond reproach. It’s hard to make bad lasagne.

Calculating ingredient amounts will be hard. Okay, it will be impossible. I can probably come close, however.

Power is Already Rotting my Brain

I ran down to church to see what kind of help they needed in the cafe. The upshot is this: I will have dominion over a small arsenal of commercial cooking equipment every Monday from now on. Now no one is safe!

They have one other volunteer who can cook. The rest are grunts. I will break them and indoctrinate them and mold them into mindless culinary shock troops. You got to make de food first. Den when you get de food, you get de power. Den when you get de power, den you get de womengs. Oops, I’m channeling Scarface.

Okay, I take back “grunts.” I mean the rest are not ready to bring in recipes, plan meals, and cook stuff from start to finish. But they are nice people who want to do what they can to help, and I am lucky they are offering. And they will give me someone to blame if I screw up.

I had to look up “shock troops” just now. I realized I had no idea what it meant. It just sounded good.

If I understand the picture, it works like this: they have a certain number of items they can throw in the fryer and slap onto a plate without much effort. But they need a daily special and a couple of sides. About forty servings. I can handle that. I usually make twenty when I’m cooking just for myself. More or less.

They’re having some kind of function on Thursday, with 125 people in attendance. I had to demur on that. I’m sufficiently intimidated by a six-day lead and forty servings. I don’t need to deal with a giant crowd on two days’ notice. I would rather fail on a small scale.

They’re thinking of getting a pizza oven. They’re in real trouble if they do that. I am totally ready to be a pizza warlord. They want to get one of those jobs with a conveyor belt, which is fine by me. They seem to work great, with very limited attention.

I stopped by Gordon Food Supply on the way home and looked over the merchandise. They have boneless picnic hams for $1.55 a pound. That has potential. Big time. I can turn them into caja-china-style pork very easily, and I can crank out yuca and moros on the side. But I have to find out if the quality is there.

I could not resist getting some pizza sauce and cheese at GFS. I think I’ll donate it to the church and wangle an opportunity to make a couple of pies. If they go as planned, they will cement my position as chief principality and power of the kitchen. I could also make a calzone or two. Maybe a pan con lechon calzone. Man, those things are good. I wish I hadn’t thought of it.

I hit a normal store and picked up some stuff for cheesecake, brownies, and flan. I plan to bombard the Thursday function with desserts, since I can’t cover the main dishes. Coconut flan, brownies, chocolate flan, and strawberry cheesecake. I guess there won’t be enough for everyone. We’ll see how well their holiness holds up when they have to play musical cheesecake. This will be a test that would have humbled Job. The goats will feed, and the sheep will have to wait for their reward in heaven.

Here’s a thought. God delivered me from overeating in August. Now suddenly I have been asked to help run a restaurant. Could I have survived this a year ago? No way. It would have killed me. But now maybe it will work.

Coincidence? Another one of those remarkable coincidences that seem to happen EVERY SINGLE DAY when you’re a Christian?

Must be.

If I can have pizza stuff in the house without going Jabba in a week, I can do anything.

Stuff That Has Worked for Me

Yesterday I pointed out that I was going to launch a big prayer offensive this week. It’s nothing radical. I’m setting time aside every afternoon for concentrated prayer. I fasted yesterday, but I don’t plan to repeat that unless an angel appears between me and the TV and knocks the doughnut box off my belly.

I am already seeing results. I wish I could go into details about the problems besetting my family, but I think that’s a bad idea. I can say general things, though. I am suddenly seeing more peace and compassion and cooperation.

I don’t think modern Christians understand prayer very well. I am trying to learn how to do it right. I can tell you some things that have been helpful so far. I think they’re probably sound, but I am no expert.

First, the more time you spend praying in the Spirit, the better off you will be. We are supposed to have the fruit and gifts of the Spirit, and if I read the Bible correctly, prayer in tongues acts like a weight routine. It somehow magnifies the power of the Spirit within you, the way watering a plant every day makes the plant bigger. I believe the first psalm refers to this metaphorically. Lots of Old Testament stuff which had a literal or a primary symbolic meaning to the ancient Jews has a secondary and different symbolic meaning to Spirit-filled Christians.

My morning prayer routine was getting to be a little bit of a drag, but recently, I got an idea that helped a great deal. I absolutely hate jumping out of bed when the alarm goes off, even if I feel good and have things to look forward to. And once I’m up, I can’t manage more than 15 minutes of praying in the Spirit. But if I start as soon as the alarm goes off, without getting up, I can go 30 minutes, easy. And during that time, my body comes to grips with the fact that I have to get up. I also feel strengthened and energized (better than coffee). Then later, during my regular morning devotion, I can omit this part, making things easier.

This isn’t costing me anything, because I used to spend this time trying to convince myself to get up.

Second, when you have a problem you can’t shake, it’s a great idea to set aside time and seclude yourself and hit it with prayer until you feel a breakthrough. And this is what you’re supposed to do when you fast. Don’t sit around watching TV, thinking God will help you just because you’re hungry and miserable. When I fast, prayer is the last thing I want to do, and I think that’s because something that fears fasting is trying to get me to ruin the experience by failing to pray enough.

Third, don’t make yourself crazy declaring a long fast in advance. Instead, fast until you get your breakthrough, and then quit. I think I’m going to start taking this approach instead of going 36 hours or 60 hours or 84 hours, which is what happens when you skip entire days at the table. Dinner to breakfast is roughly half a day, and then breakfast to breakfast is a day, and that adds up to a day and a half. That’s a long time, and it only makes sense if the misery is accomplishing something. If you get where you need to be by 2 p.m., why suffer until the next morning?

Fourth, use a prayer list. Praying without a list is like doing a different workout every day. It’s a very bad idea. You should keep hitting the same targets over and over until you get somewhere. Jesus said, essentially, to keep pestering God until we got what we needed. He said we shouldn’t get into “vain repetitions,” but judging from the rest of the New Testament, he was not referring to praying repeatedly about the same thing. He probably meant we should not babble rote prayers as though they were magic spells, without connecting to God in the process.

Fifth, try to have time when you just talk to God, without asking for stuff. Just relax and socialize with him in a respectful way. This seems to be very helpful. You will find yourself concentrating more on him and less on needs. Prayer shouldn’t always be a chore.

Fred Stone says that when we are told to “pray without ceasing,” it means to talk to God throughout the day. That sounds believable to me. The more I do this, the less I have to worry about finding that I have been far from God’s addictive and satisfying presence for too long a time.

Sixth, spend time praising and thanking God. Praise is a strange requirement, and it may seem forced at first, but eventually, you will find you have an urge to do it.

I can’t swear I’m right about all this, but it’s working, so I don’t think I’m far wrong.

Ecce Porcus

If the subtitle is wrong, it’s no surprise. I got a “D” in Latin.

This is a momentous week. One of the pastors from my church contacted me last night. They have a cafe, and because of the bad economy, they had to let the chef go. Guess what they want me to do?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. My campaign of global food domination is finally launched!

They need some people to show up and cook, and they need recipes. I’m somewhat afraid I will kill half the congregation with arteriosclerosis, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

Mmmm…eggs.

All kinds of warped ideas are rolling around in my head. I have a few dishes that are so good they will bring people to church just for the food. Maybe I can get those onto the menu. If I can get Trinity Church to sell my cheesecake, flan, and pizza, I’m sure the people in the neighborhood will notice. There is no good cheesecake anywhere on earth, and good pizza is rare in Miami. Good flan is not that hard to find, but good COCONUT flan, which is what I make, is another matter.

The nice thing about desserts is that I could make them at home, at my convenience, and bring them in and leave them. You could sell a slice of my cheesecake for two bucks, and there are twelve slices in a cake. They could keep it in the fridge and bring out slices as needed. I don’t know if they’d make any money, but I’m sure they’d break even, and don’t even tell me the women in that neighborhood wouldn’t come back for more.

Oh, baby. Strawberry croissants. Maybe I finally have an excuse to use my recipe. Strawberry croissants and pain au chocolat.

I guess I would not be able to eat much of this stuff, but I would enjoy putting my curious gift to work for God. I am still losing fat, due to his generosity.

Because I cook Cuban food and Southern soul food, I know how to make a number of cheap but excellent dishes. That’s a blessing. I could make congri for pennies a pound. Maybe we could serve it with caja-china-style pernil, which is a pork butt roasted with mojo. I could brine it to take the stink out. It would be excellent, and you can get pork butts for a dollar a pound.

I wonder if they’d let me do ham hocks. I love ham hocks, but some black people have a thing about pork these days. “Slave food” and so on. Of course, most of the blacks at my church are from Haiti and the other islands, so maybe they haven’t gotten all stuck up about pork yet.

The church is putting on its three-part Christmas musical these days, so on Sunday, I brought food for the cast. Macaroni and cheese and my startling Unauthentic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Chili. That’s what got me the call from the pastor.

This should be a blast. I better go meet with him.

Breathing is Nice

Take a deep breath. I’m considering taking the plunge. I may get myself…a DUST COLLECTOR.

The other day while I was doing something stupid on the web (which I no longer recall), I came across a dust attachment for my Dewalt planer. Not a real dust collector. More like a grass bag. Then I read up on dust some more, and I realized dust collection was something I could actually achieve, now that I can’t use the garage for parking. The added room makes it possible.

I have a table saw, planer, router, miter saws, and band saw. Dust generation is not a problem for me. I can fill a car trunk in a day if I put my mind to it. But I hate the post-fun vacuuming. Anything I can do to cut back would be good. The aggravation of cleanup makes me use the tools less, and that is unacceptable.

I keep letting credit-card points expire, and that’s bad. So I’m redeeming a bunch of them for gift certificates. I wish I could use them for a dust collector, but I can’t get a Delta, which is what I want.

I have to put a floor in my table saw so the dust will stop falling out of the bottom. Ironically, I’ll need a table saw in order to do this. I’ll have to cut the MDF I bought. I guess dust will have a couple more victories before I overcome it.

The drill press vise I ordered will be here this week. That will be fantastic. I’ll have everything I need to put the cross slide table and the vise on my drill press. That will get a fair amount of hardware out of my face.

What would you buy, if you had some Sears gift certificates? I think I should get out my book on putting together an amazing garage and see what I lack.

OOH! Worm-drive circular saw!

That’s a thought.

One of the Many Miracles of Beef

You know that potpourri stuff women like? It’s like a pile of dyed wood shavings that makes your house smell like a 50-year-old lap dancer? Forget that. Here is what you need.

Fix yourself a prime rib with lots of garlic. Then save the drippings in the freezer. When you finally get around to packaging them properly for storage, heat the whole mess in a big skillet.

Ahhhhhhhh…

That’s how everything should smell.

My Plan

I just looked at the Rasmussen polls. Obama has a 53% disapproval rating. Perhaps there is hope for America after all.

Perry Stone thinks so. I received a copy of the latest Voice of Evangelism magazine, and he thinks the righteous remnant in the US is big enough to motivate God to spare us.

I’m not so sure. God’s judgment tends to work like the delivery of a baby. You get pain and rest, alternating. Eventually, the big bomb drops, or God chooses to spare the people, as he did in the book of Jonah. Here’s what I suspect: sometimes God shakes nations up temporarily so the righteous will get it together and be prepared when the big collapse comes.

Christians all over the US are frantically preparing for hard times. Others are saying, “This is AMERICA. We are the MASTER RACE. We are TOO BIG TO FAIL.” They think we generated our own prosperity and security, because we’re superior to other human beings. They don’t attribute our blessings to God.

Maybe the US will be okay. Or maybe God-fearing people who are preparing will be okay, and many of the rest of us will live in tent Obamatowns. God spares nations, but as far as I know, he only does it when the hearts of the people change, in significant numbers. People don’t seem to have changed much since 2007.

Stone is highly critical of Obama, as he should be. Obama personifies pride, he is the furthest thing from gracious or grateful, his positions on moral issues are disgusting, and he is not good to the Jews, except for the self-hating Jews he employs. Stone is taking chances with his tax-exempt status by criticizing our disappointing secular messiah, but I don’t see how any man of God can keep silent when someone this odd is leading the country.

I don’t understand why a preacher can’t criticize a politician. That seems idiotic to me. Obama advocates allowing newborn babies to die from deliberate neglect. He believes partial-birth abortion, which is unquestionably murder, is fine and dandy. He wants to use our tax dollars to pay for abortion. He wants to slash our religious tax deductions. He believes Israel–the only civilized nation in the Middle East–has been spoiled, and that we need to be “even-handed” with the neighboring barbarians who are plotting to steal the Jewish homeland and kill as many Jews as possible.

Obama can attack the church and its values all day without fear. Why can’t a pastor stand up and tell his congregants Obama is a problem? How is that prohibition in any way reflective of the intent of the First Amendment?

Pharaoh was a politician. So was Herod. So was Hitler. So is Castro. A politician can be an enemy of God. Why shouldn’t God’s servants be allowed to fight back?

This will be an interesting week for me. I’ve decided to have five days of prayer, today through Friday. I want to set aside a certain amount of time every afternoon, to go after some persistent problems. A couple involve me directly. The rest involve people around me.

I love listening to Perry Stone’s father, Fred Stone. I got myself a CD of a conversation between the two of them, and they talked about the power of setting time aside for concentrated prayer. They both said there were times when they had secluded themselves to “pray through” problems. You go off by yourself and get down to business, and maybe forty minutes later, you feel you have found God’s face and gotten the help you needed. I think it’s a great thing to do. The things that happen in the physical world are only reflections of foundations that have been laid in the spiritual world. They are the tip of the iceberg. If you want to get rid of an iceberg, you don’t chip at the top. You have to do something about the part below the waterline.

Fred Stone said there are times in prayer when you push and plead, and finally, “Your faith tells you you’ve got it.” He has been at this for 60 years, so I take his word for it when he says this is the way to go. He also said that when you fast, it’s not always necessary to proclaim a period in advance and then stick to it. Apparently, it’s possible to get your answer during the first day of a three-day fast. He said he had had this kind of thing happen to him. You fast until you get your result, and then you quit. I think that makes sense. Daniel fasted for 21 days, but I don’t think the Bible says he proclaimed a 21-day fast, in advance. The story suggests the fast lasted 21 days because that was how long it took the angel to arrive. I suppose the fast would have been shorter, had the angel arrived sooner.

I hope this will be a breakthrough week. I’m sure it will. The more I progress, the more often I feel God’s presence and his confirmation that he will help me. I keep having experiences where the Holy Spirit just descends out of nowhere, for no apparent reason. It happened to me in the drugstore last month, while I was walking by the refrigerated beverage cases. I could not figure it out. I didn’t know what to do with it. I noticed two college students walking in front of me, speaking in Arabic. I decided to pray for them, since they happened to be handy.

I used to look forward to feeling God’s presence at church, and I still do, but now he shows up regardless of where I am, and I no longer see church as the primary place to feel his power. Fine with me. My church is 18 miles away!

Aside from convenience, there is such a thing as becoming addicted to God’s presence. You miss it when you get distracted for a few hours. You want it back, badly. Talk about a gift. Anything you’re addicted to will be a major part of your life. You will get good at anything you do a lot, so if you’re inclined to do something because of a craving, and that thing is beneficial, you’re very, very lucky.

Sure beats the typical American addiction, which is television. An American who doesn’t run the TV five hours a day is a freak. Imagine what your life would be like if you prayed and studied five hours a day.

It’s very sad that we watch the tube so much. By the time you die, you may have spent twenty years watching strangers play make-believe. That’s what TV is. Play-acting. No more important or real than a three-year-old running around with a towel pinned to his collar, claiming to be Superman. Nice use of your time. A typical person, faced with imminent death, would give anything to postpone it. And then what would most of them do with the added years? TV and the Internet. We are strange creatures.

I will get started on my five-day plan later on today.

Plus Prison Ministry Stuff

Today I went to a class for people who want to help out with my church’s prison ministry. Apart from the pastor running the show, there were five adults present. Not a big group, but enough to start.

We didn’t talk much about the ministry itself. I learned that we’ll have a wing of a local jail handed over to us, but that’s about all I know. We talked mostly about fundamentals. Christians should read the Bible. We should memorize scripture. That kind of thing. Good, solid, essential information.

I don’t know where we’ll go with this, but I’m glad I went. Maybe I can accomplish something worthwhile in my remaining time on earth.

On the way home, going against common sense, I decided to give a local pizzeria another try. My area has two pizzerias that keep going out of business: Riviera Pizza and Cozzoli’s Pizza. In the past, these places have failed over and over, and I believe fake cheese is the reason. I can’t prove it, but the cheese always tasted mealy and disintegrated as I chewed it, and it didn’t really taste like cheese.

This morning I noticed that Riviera was under a third (at least) set of owners, and it got me wondering. My policy is to try any new place in the area, or any place that changes hands, because I figure some day someone will make decent pizza in the South Miami region. Right now we have Domino’s and Papa John’s, which are really bad, and we have Miami’s Best Pizza, which is weird and frequently burned or raw or covered with the wrong stuff. To get good pizza, you have to go to Bird Road (La Dolce Vita) or Ludlam (The Big Cheese), at least.

I decided to be bold this afternoon. I went into the new Gables Pizza and Salad (formerly Riviera Pizza) and asked the owner whether they used real cheese. Why play games? I’m tired of spending good money just to find out someone is feeding me thickened vegetable oil or a quasi-dairy product known almost facetiously as “pizza cheese.” Why not just ask?

Surprisingly, the owner did not seem happy to have a stranger barge in and loudly ask if he was cheating his customers, which is sort of what I did, but he told me the cheese was real, and that it was not all mozzarella, and that it was 2% fat. I think I have that right. He said he did not use Grande cheese because he thought it did not live up to the price and hype. He’s right about that. It’s very good, but it’s not the only good brand out there.

He claimed he had never heard of fake cheese. He must not be Jewish. Jews who keep kosher eat some of the scariest fake cheese imaginable. They call it “parve cheesy.” Anyway, you can Google and read all about fake pizza cheese. They may call it “non standard” cheese, or they may use the innocuous-looking term “pizza cheese” to describe it, but it’s lame, whatever it is.

I ordered a slice of regular and a slice of Sicilian. The verdict? It’s okay! I guess that doesn’t sound like a compliment, but it is. The other stuff available locally is so bad it’s only worth eating when you’re starving. Gables Pizza makes pretty good pizza, and around here, that’s a big achievement. Making pretty good pizza is very hard.

The cheese seems real. It didn’t make me want to get up and dance, but it tastes like cheese. The crust is fine, although for some reason the Sicilian was a little wet. He uses too much salt. The sauce is acceptable. Personally, I’d make it a little sweeter and tangier, and I’d use a little more than he uses. A small amount of sugar and some white vinegar would improve his sauce a great deal. But he’s as good as The Big Cheese and not much worse than La Dolce Vita. That will get the job done, as far as I’m concerned.

This guy did not want to hear my input on the local pizza market, and that was a mistake, because he is in an area that is desperate for good pizza. I know exactly why his predecessors failed, and I know how he could improve his product and be virtually assured of a steady flow of customers. If he would start using Stanislaus Super Dolce sauce as his sauce base, he’d be a millionaire in three years. But there is nothing wrong with solid B-plus pizza, which is what he’s making. I’ll return and buy more in the future. Everyone pray he makes money, so the dark days of bad pizza don’t come back to torment us.

Quick Post

From Heather, whose mom is battling cancer and a bunch of other stuff:

Steve could you ask your readers to pray for my family?
We are trying to get a trailer placed on our property and the construction isn’t going well. We really need some heavenly intervention on our behalf. We had been promised a move-in date of 12/15 and we aren’t anywhere close.
As an aside-you have written before about the contractors in FL, their incompentency can’t hold a candle to the hillbilly jerks we’ve had to deal with on this. They simply don’t know what they are doing and we have construction equipment stuck in the mud that may be our new lawn sculpture because it’s been there two days and no one has bothered to try and get it out. The worst was showing up today at 11AM and leaving before 3P. I am in the middle of this high-risk pregnancy and being stressed is really taking a toll on me.
Thanks so much!

Dust in my Chips

I just tried woodworking on the milling machine. It was interesting.

The machine has no end of power, so that’s not an issue. But it tops out at 4200 RPM, which is a little slow. And the aluminum cutters leave a finish that isn’t what you would get with a wood router. Also, the vise bends the work! I think you have to clamp stuff right onto the table to make it work well.

Cleanup wasn’t bad. I did it right away, because I was afraid wood dust would hold moisture and rust the machine.

One nice thing: that 3-phase motor is much quieter than most woodworking machines.

I guess I’ll think about this before I try again. I have a piece of mahogany about 4″ square by 0.44″, and I want to get it to a nice flat 0.28″ and cut some mortises in it.

It may be time to think about real dust collection instead of a cheap mask and a shop-vac.

I’ll Watch Avatar When They Read the Health Care Bill

I had to go to the doctor today. I hate that. I woke up at around 3 a.m. with an unpleasant sensation in my right eye, and I was afraid I had aluminum swarf in it. It got much better by the time I woke up, but if there is one rule I have learned in life, it’s “Don’t take a chance on going to the emergency room on a weekend.”

I found an ophthalmologist who was willing to see me in a hurry, and we had a pleasant visit. He said my vision was “fantastic,” which is strange, because it was so much better when I was young. Maybe he meant I have fantastic vision for a fossil. I can see the edible weeds and grubs better than the other stegosauruses.

He couldn’t find metal in my eye, but he said I had some kind of crud accumulating around the inside of my eyelids, so now I have to clean my eyes once a day. My bet is that he found bird dust from Marv and Maynard. African greys and cockatoos generate a fine powder from their feathers, and I wrestle with my birds all the time, so I’m sure my eyes are always full of that stuff. I tried to force myself to bathe them every day, but of course, I wussed out. Now I pay the price. I keep their cages nice and clean these days, so I don’t feel too bad about the progress I’ve made.

I think I need to get serious about eye protection. Yesterday I was wearing a face shield (I used the grinder) plus reading glasses, and I still got burned. Maybe I need to get goggles that close up better. It’s so easy to forget the safety lessons you’ve learned. Now that I think about it, I recall a piece of a wire brush coming around that face shield.

I may have put metal in my eye after taking the safety stuff off. It’s possible to have it on your hands if you miss it while washing.

You know how doctors are. This guy talked me into a full-blown middle-age eye checkup. I go in next month. I guess it’s a good thing, although I have no idea what he could have missed today. Vision test, glaucoma test, and microscopic exam.

I tried jowl bacon at breakfast today. I can’t say enough about fried pork for breakfast. It’s quick, it goes great with coffee, and it’s better for regularity than cereal.

The bacon tasted good, but it had a strip of tough material down one side. I gave up on that part. The birds are enjoying it. I don’t think I’d eat jowl bacon this way again, but I can see using it in other dishes. It has lots of fat compared to ordinary bacon, so it’s a little funny, eating it by itself.

I’ve decided to review Avatar without seeing it. Here goes. A young Marine with a disabled body and a gung-ho brain volunteers to have his mind hooked up to a giant blue alien so he can function on the alien’s planet and mingle with the species, which Dick Cheney’s great-grandchildren are trying to conquer so they can make them buy Halliburton stock. The Marine is supposed to be a mole, but–SURPRISE!–he realizes the rulers of the United States of America the earth are evil, and the blue aliens are wonderful, peaceful people who have fantastic sex! He falls in love with a sexy alien who trusts him completely, and he vows to ruin the plans of the Cheneyites and President George W. Bush VIII. He becomes a guerilla and sabotages the whole mess, and then there is a weird plot twist which I am too lazy to guess. Probably something where the blue girl thinks he’s the enemy and decides to kill him, but love conquers all, and she decides taking a chance and letting him live is better than dying alone with a cat. After this, earth loses, and Barack Obama’s body is exhumed and flown to the alien world to apologize. Then a descendant of Al Gore reads a poem so bad the blue people send him to a penal colony.

I may be totally wrong. Maybe Hollywood had an original idea for once, and this isn’t just Dances with the Surrogate Matrix Wolves. But it’s fun to try to guess. If it’s not an attack on the imaginary Military-Industrial Complex, it will be a shock worse than the end of The Crying Game.

Seriously, what point would there be in a movie where the Marine thinks everything is swell, slaughters as many aliens as possible, and then retires to a trailer park? Where is the plot in that? That wouldn’t be good fiction. That would be life.

Some day I want to see a movie about a liberal doofus who goes to work for ACORN because he’s totally brainwashed, recovers his sanity, and becomes a righteous plant for Front Page Magazine. Or a movie about a Marine who gets to know a bunch of blue aliens, decides they’re incredible jerks, and sleeps soundly in the knowledge that he is fighting a bunch of creeps.

I think that in a movie of the Avatar type, the people who look and act most like hippies are likely to be the heroes. Also, they look like cats. And you know how liberals love cats.

This is Almost Unnecessary

Why does life have to be so predictable?

From a review of Avatar:

There is no underlying novel or myth to generate his story. He certainly draws deeply on Westerns, going back to “The Vanishing American” and, in particular, “Dances With Wolves.” And the American tragedy in Vietnam informs much of his story. But then all great stories build on the past

Translation: “I am a hippie and I never get tired of stale hippie myths.”

The story takes place in 2154, three decades after a multinational corporation has established a mining colony on Pandora, a planet light years from Earth. A toxic environment and hostile natives — one corporate apparatchik calls the locals “blue monkeys” — forces the conglom to engage with Pandora by proxy.

Later, Al Franken moves to Pandora and gets himself elected Senator by means of a series of hallucinogen-assisted vote recounts.

How come entertainment-industry hacks are never called “apparatchiks”?

But as Jake . . .

Stop. “Jake”? This is one of the movie names I banned a few years ago, along with “Stryker” and “Devlin.” No Jakes. No exceptions. A court of inquiry must be held. The guilty will be punished with soap and Debbie Boone CDs.

But as Jake comes to see things through Neytiri’s eyes, he hopes to establish enough trust between the humans and the natives to negotiate a peace. But the corporation wants the land the Na’vi occupy for its valuable raw material so the Colonel sees no purpose in this.

“Neytiri”? That’s a name for girl who wears jewelry in her nose and writes “face painter” in the “occupation” box on her 1040. Neytiri is an annoying vegetarian. Bet on it.

The only question is: How will Cameron ever top this?

Maybe he can do something even more original, like a buddy movie. Or how about The Three Musketeers, featuring the Blue Man Crew?

Relief

I got my fly cutter working. Thanks for the help.

Big shock: it was not a mysterious problem. It was just bad workmanship. It appears that the relief on the bottom edge of the tool was not sufficient. It worked in the past, and I did not find any evidence that wear had changed it, but when I ground the tool over again and put a nicer radius on it, it cut beautifully.

I threw my aluminum plates on the mill and resurfaced them. I had intended to get them to 0.500″, as closely as possible, purely for the learning experience, but I had to settle for 0.498″.

I decided to get a 4″ cam action fake Heinrich vise from Grizzly. People said a 6″ vise might be unwieldy, and I noticed that the mounting holes were not a great match for my slide table. I also ordered T-nuts and countersinks. I want to sink 3/8″ screws into the bottom of the plates, and I can’t do that unless the holes are countersunk or otherwise recessed.

My dad wants to know what I want for Christmas. I may let him help me out with the VFD or motor for the drill press. I can’t resist a chance to install a VFD. As for his Christmas, all I am willing to say now is this: I was forced to call the BATF and get information about “straw purchases” before I could take care of him.

I’m so glad God has given me a great relationship with my dad. Apart from the things God has done within me, it’s the greatest treasure I have. If you’re on the outs with someone, remember this: as long as there is a sliver of light in them, it is possible for God to reach them (and you) and help you reconcile. Some people are reprobates and can’t be fixed, but others will surprise you.

This week I’m going to start classes for the prison ministry at my church. I have no idea what I’m doing; I can’t believe I’m going. Over the last year, I thought I saw changes in a very headstrong and self-destructive person, and it gave me hope that others could be turned around, so when I found out we had a prison ministry starting, something pulled at my heart. Or maybe it was God’s boot in my rear end. I wonder what it will be like. I fully expect 95% of these men to be completely dishonest and unwilling to change, but surely some will be reborn. Jesus would not have told us to visit prisons if it were a waste of time. I hope I overestimate their unwillingness to learn and change.

I’m having some difficulties right now with someone I have been praying for and trying to help in the walk of faith. Perhaps a few readers would take a minute and say a prayer. God has been so wonderful to me, I want everyone to share in it, but you know what they say about leading horses to water. And it can be very frustrating when a difficult person provokes you to the point where you worry that your own attitude and behavior grieve the Holy Spirit and put the brakes on your development. It’s easy to sound holy on a blog on the same day you told someone off, face to face.

I keep saying I expect to be perfect any day now. I can’t understand why it has been delayed.

My jowl bacon, dried apples, and blackberry jam arrived from Kentucky. It’s almost like being at Granny’s house. I guess tomorrow I’ll fry up a couple of slices. The apples are not as brown and dry as the ones I remember. I don’t know if that will affect their usefulness in dried pies.

Life is good for me. Maybe some day I’ll succeed in helping one other person have it as good as I do. Perhaps this will occur next month, when perfection is finally upon me.

My Future Self

I still have to choose a vise for my drill press. No idea what size to get, or whether a quick-release vise is worth the additional cash. The vise I have right now is maybe 3″ wide across the jaws. The drill press is a 17″ model, so if anyone has a suggestion, I am listening. I’m thinking 4″.

I bought a very good book recently. I think the Christian life is mostly about spiritual warfare, as Paul made clear when he talked about principalities and powers, so I am trying to learn more about how to fight. I want God to teach my hands to war (Ps. 18:34). Luckily for me, I found Perry Stone’s Dealing With Hindering Spirits.

It always amazes me how little mainstream churches talk about Satan and demons and fallen angels (I mention fallen angels and demons separately because I suspect they are not the same things). Jesus mentioned three things he expected his followers to do, and one of those things was casting out “devils.” Fighting a spiritual war by being good, without going after the enemy, is like trying to win World War II by keeping your troops at home and growing a victory garden. It makes no sense.

Evil spirits make us sick, often terminally. They kill us by attacking us physically. They give us addictions. They give us sick behaviors we can’t quit, such as domestic violence and fetishes. They ruin our careers and our families. They make us blind, deaf, crippled, and insane. They prevent many of us from receiving salvation. They cause us to do things that bring punishment and curses on us and our families. They are as common as flies, and they are not trivial enemies, and there is no human being on earth who is not beset by them. Yet somehow we have decided we should not talk about them or fight them. Crazy.

The book taught me some interesting things. Example: it’s probably a stupid idea to get puffed up and tell Satan or another powerful spirit off. There are little spirits we can deal with pretty easily, but there are also big spirits that can make our lives hell if we attack them without preparation. Stone notes that Jesus pointed out that even when armed with his name, we would sometimes have to resort to prayer and fasting to get certain spirits to submit. Look how long it took God’s messenger to reach Daniel, when an evil “prince” withstood him. Three weeks. Not all spirits are pushovers.

The message I took away from that is that I should not go looking for trouble. I think there are certain fairly low-level spirits in the area in which I operate, and I should be content to overcome those spirits instead of inviting bigger ones to go after me and my family. Stone says some ministers will rail against powerful spirits, only to end up with horrible problems in their ministries because they bit off more than they could chew.

He also said a married couple will have more fighting strength than a single person. That’s something that has been on my mind a lot. I’m not constant. Sometimes I’m spiritually strong, but sometimes, I have to deal with earthly matters, and besides, I’m fundamentally bad. So I’m not always focused on my enemies. If there were two of me, I could be on my guard more of the time. The Bible says one will put a thousand to flight, and two will put not two thousand but ten thousand to flight. I see a single person as a house with only two walls. The spouse provides the other two walls, and that closes the house and provides security. You have to clean up your temples and establish armaments and barriers.

Stone wrote about Paul’s thorn in the flesh, and he noted that God told Joshua that if he didn’t clear his enemies out of the promised land, they would remain to vex him. In the Bible, the story of Joshua is symbolic of the story of any given believer. That’s what I believe, and I think it’s what Stone was saying. Crossing the Jordan (water) into the Promised Land represents baptism and salvation. The warfare the Hebrews did inside Israel symbolizes our warfare to get spirits and sin out of our “temples,” meaning our bodies and minds and hearts. We are supposed to fight the spirits using our faith, as the Hebrews did. The walled cities they conquered represent strongholds in our lives. Sins and afflictions we need to defeat. If you don’t get rid of as many as you can, they will remain and vex you. You will have given place to Satan, providing him with his own office in your “building,” and he will have the right to make you miserable, as the Amalekites made the Jews miserable after God’s people permitted them to live.

This is why Christians have to quit sinning, even if they are not under the law. Sin generates defeat and leads to a life of slavery. And then you lose the rewards you would otherwise store up in heaven. We have to be filled with the Holy Spirit and the fruit and gifts of the Spirit, and we have to be changed from inside, and we have to fast and cast down strongholds. I’m convinced this is how it works. Joshua got the Lord to help him destroy Jericho and Ai and other cities. We’re supposed to get the Lord to help us destroy alcoholism, unforgiveness, sickness, habitual sexual sin, drug addiction, pride, hard-heartedness, and other “cities” Satan has built inside us.

We’re supposed to be in constant communication with God while we do this, and we are supposed to walk in faith. The Hebrews wandered in the desert for forty years not because of proactive sin, but because of a lack of faith. It’s as bad as defiant and immoral sins such as idolatry and adultery. The spies looked at the Promised Land, and the ten faithless spies convinced the Hebrews they couldn’t defeat the giants that lived in the land, and God punished Israel for having no faith in his ability to deliver them. Had they had faith, they would have entered the land forty years earlier and been given daily guidance and blessings. They would have lived in victory.

You have to be like Joshua. You have to have a personal relationship with God, in which you seek his will daily, and then you have to do what he tells you to do, even if it seems like it won’t work. Otherwise you’ll wander. You may think you’re doing great, but you’ll eventually find out that you were spinning your wheels. Building on sand. When trouble comes, you will have to crawl back to God for help. You may be blind and poor and naked and not even know it.

That is my take on spiritual warfare, so I am glad to get any advice I can. My family has been subject to all sorts of evil-spirit manifestations since before I was born, and I am tired of it.

On the subject of broken strongholds, I continue to lose weight without much effort. I am down twenty pounds now. Fifteen more would be great, and it seems certain that I’ll keep losing, since I’m not the one doing the work. If God chooses, I’ll make it. I also have more control over sexual immorality and anger-related sin. I hope God will see fit to continue the improvements, because I don’t want my enemies to have any footholds within my walls.

Get Some Swarf Between Your Toes

I’m very excited because I’m going to get to use my fly cutter today.

As reported yesterday, I am trying to mate my cross slide table to the table on my drill press. The best method I’ve come up with involves making two aluminum plates, screwing the cross slide table to the plates, and bolting the whole mess to the drill press table. But in order to do that, I had to make aluminum plates.

I had a 3 1/2″ x 3 1/2″ bar of aluminum. I cut a 6″ piece off the end, and then I put it in the band saw sideways and cut two 5/8″ slices out of it. Now I have to clean them up.

Last night I got started. I stuck a 3″ cobalt fly cutter in the mill and ran one of the plates through it. At first, all was swell, but on later passes, the swarf got sandy and the finish got gritty. I tried going to higher RPMs and slowing the feed, but that didn’t help.

It’s hard to know what’s going on. I’ve determined that the right speed is about 400 RPM (hope I’m right), and I’m going to give it another shot today.

I can see how various things would cause this problem. A fast feed would give you big spaces between the cuts, adding up to ridges and points on the finished product. A shallow cut would result in narrower grooves which would not blend into each other well, giving the same problem. A slow tool speed would make for bigger spaces between cuts, just like a fast feed.

I thought maybe a piece of aluminum had welded itself to the tool, but I didn’t check. I’ll take a look. I doubt that’s the problem. I buried the work in WD40. And I also had finish problems with a piece of steel.

In any case, it’s wonderful to have a little time to make the metal fly.

I could use an end mill, which would be very easy. I can’t help myself. I love watching a fly cutter.

I’ll say this. The mill appears to be in excellent tram. The finish on the first pass was beautiful.

It’s surprising how challenging this job is. The two tables relate to each other in ways that make a simple solution impossible.

The slots in the cross slide table will take 5/8″ bolts, but I can’t believe that kind of hardware is needed. I assume they make big slots in case the tables are used for milling, which exerts lots of lateral force. Surely a couple of 3/8″ machine screws in aluminum will suffice to hold the table down and keep it from spinning. I can’t imagine a small 1-2 HP motor breaking screws this big.

Next, I need to may covers for my mill table. I keep piling junk on it, and I already have one ding. One is too many.