My Gut Says He’s Right

I have been trying to put a respectable effort into Twitter and Facebook. I think I must be a born recluse, because I am incapable of getting excited about these services. And it disturbs me when someone I know “retweets” someone I don’t want to follow.

I am giving it the old college try, regardless.

Today on Facebook, someone asked if I was sorry to see Oprah’s show go off the air. Something like that. I had to vote “no,” partly because she promotes a professional antichrist by the name of Eckhardt Tolle.

There have been so many antichrists and gurus of real quality, it’s hard to believe people fall for this one. I could understand thinking Krishnamurti had the answer. Or Buddha. But Tolle is to antichrists as The Weekly World News is to Investor’s Business Daily. If the Dalai Lama is Olivier, Eckhardt Tolle is Yogi Bear.

Today I saw a real gem from this guy. Some poor lost soul wanted to know if it was okay to eat meat, and Tolle told her (I’m sure it was a her) to ask her body. It works like this: you think of the food, and you feel one of two things. Your body tries to open up to the food, or it contracts away from it. If your body opens up, it means the food is good for you, because “The body knows more about food than your mind ever will.”

Try this right now. I did. Apparently I should be living on pork sausage, pizza, ice cream, biscuits, country ham, and Tootsie Rolls. That’s just the list so far. If my body is right, medical science has made some terrible mistakes.

My body will open up to all sorts of stuff. Scotch. Cocaine. Ritalin (I loved that stuff). Caffeine. Premarital sex. Opiates. Even fruit-scented shampoo; when I smell it, a part of me wants to drink it. My body is getting all excited, just making this list.

My body is a moron. It probably thinks Eckhardt Tolle is the savior of the world. If my body called the shots, I would be worshiping either Naomi Campbell or Ronald McDonald.

It has to be a bummer to for a guy with Tolle’s pride to be severely outperformed by a third-tier science fiction writer who said our troubles were caused by dead people sent here in DC-8s by an alien named Xenu. And Tolle is also eating the dust of a convicted con man who pretended to read ancient Mormon mysteries off a pile of impossibly heavy gold plates contained in…a hat. And who claimed an Egyptian papyrus depicting mummification techniques was actually the collected works of Abraham.

If you’re going to fall for something, at least fall for something plausible. Don’t worship a toaster or the number 15 or a guy who shares Oprah’s private pantheon with Dr. Phil and a physician who has nearly succeeded in trademarking the word “poop.”

I wish I had some Pop Tarts. My brilliant body is really open to them right now.

Pounds and Pounds of Pleasure

The pork sausage I made is filling my life with joy.

God miraculously delivered me from gluttony. That means these days I just don’t want as much food as I used to, so I eat less. But the custom of having three meals a day is a threat. I’m not all that active, and three real meals–even if small–can be enough to prevent weight loss or cause gain. That means I have to quit eating a lot at at dinner, which is a meal I don’t particularly want to begin with. So I’m shifting the calories to earlier meals.

I’m not hungry in the morning or at night, so I think I’m going to shift the focus of my food day to lunch. That means I need to eat a respectable lunch. This is where pork sausage fits into the picture. I haven’t been able to have a good breakfast for the longest time; it just doesn’t make sense to stuff myself when I’m not hungry. But now I can have breakfast for lunch! I can use my gorgeous antique skillets, which make the best-tasting eggs imaginable! I just had two fried eggs, two sausage patties, and two pieces of toast, and I even let myself have butter!

That sausage is the bomb. It has no gamy smell, the seasoning is perfect, and it seems like the quality lard I used to bulk it up makes it fry up better than store sausage. It’s funny how simple foods can be better than fancy-shmancy dishes served at expensive restaurants. If you can make a really good cheeseburger, you won’t have the slightest interest in mastering complicated cuisine.

Maybe one reason we overeat is that our food is so unsatisfying.

Hmm…I used to overeat when I was eating really good food. Well, it was a fun theory for the ten seconds during which I entertained it.

I can’t wait to make sausage with apple juice in it. I can do that as soon as I eat the…ten and a half pounds of sausage I already have.

Argghh.

Oh…oh…turducken made with pork sausage made with apple juice instead of sugar…oh…

I need to breathe into a bag for a sec.

Let’s Move it Out of the Basement

On Friday and Saturday, I participated in the Men’s Encounter at my church. It sounds like a left-wing touchy-feely fest where men cry and admit they like to do needlepoint, but such was not the case. It was a surprisingly well-structured boot camp for charismatic Christian men who needed to be shown the way into the Holy of Holies. That’s a good way to describe it.

I left for church at about 4 p.m. on Friday, got home late, woke at 6 a.m. yesterday, and got home at 9 p.m. So you could say I had a busy couple of days.

Unfortunately, each of us had to sign a promise in which we said we would not disclose what went on. Were that not the case, I could tell you more about it. But the first rule of Faith Club is: you do not talk about Faith Club.

I guess I can make a few general remarks. We learned about forgiveness, repentance, purity, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, among other things. And the approach the church took made it clear that these things are weapons. The speakers also helped us understand that if a family or a city or a society is to change for the better, men have to lead. That’s a Biblical principle. When women or children are forced to lead–or choose to do so out of rebellion–it means things are going very badly. Men are supposed to rise out of their selfishness and protect and provide. That’s the way the universe was designed.

Some of the testimonies were amazing. I guess I can mention two, since they were revealed later at the regular church service.

One guy showed up because a friend–a talented singer who tears up the stage every weekend–invited him. He didn’t buy into prayer in tongues, but he still took part in the session in which people were baptized with the Spirit. He said that in his heart, he was sort of mocking the pastor, not expecting anything to happen. Then something rose up inside him, and he started speaking. And unlike the vast majority of people who get baptized, he understood what he was saying! Very odd.

During one part of the Encounter, I heard a real commotion going on not far from me. I won’t describe it, but I think it’s okay to say I witnessed it. In church, we heard a testimony which appeared to explain it.

A 14-year-old boy decided he was an atheist, and he told his parents. He said he would keep going to church in order to make his mother happy, but he didn’t believe any of it. Somehow, his father got him to go to the Encounter. The kid was planning to get high with his friends when it was over.

At one point , he was praying with his head down, and he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned, and no one was there. But he saw a shadow on the floor. The shadow of Jesus. As he continued to pray, he saw shadows of evil faces on the floor around him, and they faded out and disappeared. I wish I could tell you what happened after that, but I can’t. To say he was affected emotionally would be putting it lightly.

It’s easy to conclude that Christian testimonies are nonsense, because they take place in churches that are imperfect. Every church has some error and some sin in it. Some churches are just plain silly. But God told us he uses foolish things to confound the wise, and it’s true. And he does astonishing works through people who are not only imperfect, but sometimes, seriously flawed and even embarrassing. It’s a hard thing to get used to. It would be nice if Christians were all super-dignified models of maturity and wisdom. But we are not.

If God can use Nebuchadnezzar, surely he can use you.

Today I turned on the PC and looked at my email, and I found an incredible testimony from a reader who asked for prayer. I didn’t get around to posting her request. I prayed about it, and I planned to blog it when I got the Encounter behind me. But God didn’t wait. He did something I can hardly believe. If she’ll allow it, I’ll blog it.

It’s impressive when I post a prayer request and something good happens, but it’s not a great shock, because so many faith-filled people read this blog. That there would be power in their prayers is not surprising. But it’s startling when the result comes before I can post the request. God still does wonders, every day.

A few weeks back, we had a women’s conference, and they had to use the entire sanctuary. This time, they used curtains to shrink the seating area, and we only had about 250 people. That shows how men are letting God down and exposing society to every possible kind of attack. We are something like forty percent of churchgoers. And we’re the ones God wants to use to reach everyone else! Every week my church is overloaded with women, because the men who should be there can’t be bothered to show up. They’re sleeping it off next to floozies or just doing their own thing. I used to be one of those men.

The Encounter is worth going to, even if you don’t go to this church. It’s open to everyone. I believe they’re having another one in a few months. I hope other churches are doing the same thing. A church without men is weak and headed for trouble. We shouldn’t let our selfishness imperil the women and children around us.

More

I got permission to blog the other testimony. At the end of a November 19 email, a reader wrote this:

“If you think of it, pray for my husband. I married him in 1970. He was 21. He soon started drinking. He has been drinking ever since then and is drunk every day. Very drunk. He is still functioning at work and all like that, but its not much of a life. His name is _____.

I appreciate all your writings and your present course especially. May God continue to bless you and your family. I know he has wonderful things for you.”

I usually put requests like this on the blog, but I was busy with the Men’s Encounter, and I was going to blog this one today. I did pray however. And here’s what she wrote at 1 a.m. on November 21:

“Steve,
did you pray for him or something? WHile he was sleeping it off today he saw in him mind’s eye a beer can and “heard” the statement that he was giving his whole life to alchohol. Uh, wowie.
Don’t let up and I won’t either.

He was pretty sober when he woke up and I was friendly and told him that that well, you got a pretty clear message.

Amazed,
_____”

How about that? God didn’t even wait for you guys to pray. Sometimes his kindness is too much to comprehend.

Your Eggs Will Thank You

I could not resist frying up a piece of the sausage I made yesterday. It turns out it’s excellent. The lard I added made it fry up properly. The seasoning is mild but balanced. I suspect that store sausage relies on heavy applications of sage to kill the gamy smell of cheap pork.

Here’s what I’d suggest, if you want to try this. I highly recommend an electric grinder, or you could have your butcher grind the meat.

INGREDIENTS

10 lbs. pork (shoot for 40% fat)
3/8 cup brown sugar
3 tsp. pepper
2 tsp. cayenne
2 tbsp. sage
1/4 cup salt
1 tbsp. paprika

You can increase any of the seasonings if you want. Test the sausage by frying test pieces after you mix it. If you can it, remove the sage and crank up the other hot seasonings.

I screwed up by underdoing the fat content, but the lard was my salvation.

Try not to get gamy cuts. Brining in a 16:1 solution of water and baking soda will fix it, but it’s a lot of work.

I really want to try this with apple juice concentrate substituted for the sugar. I think I’ll get some frozen juice and reduce it as much as possible before adding it.

Tune In

One of the wonderful things about being connected to the Holy Spirit is that he constantly confirms his presence. One way he does this is by revealing the same thing to different believers, independently.

Last night I was watching Perry Stone with Marvin, and he talked about the items found in the Holy of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem. One such item is a huge seven-branched menorah.

A long, long time ago–maybe twenty years–it occurred to me that the menorah represented the post-resurrection baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is available to all believers. In the Bible, olive oil often represents the Holy Spirit. The Bible says there are seven Spirits of God. Light represents illumination, and the Holy Spirit illuminates, explaining things to believers from within them.

Perry Stone confirmed this in the DVD! He said the menorah represented the Holy Spirit, and he mentioned the seven spirits. That was neat. I’ve never heard any other Christian say those things, but God said them to me during the Reagan years.

He added some other interesting information. Jewish accounts tell us that God used to communicate with the Jews in the Holy of Holies, through the menorah and the 12-stoned costume the priests wore. Hebrew letters on the costume would light up, and so on. The Old Testament is full of symbols of things that came to pass in the New Testament. It makes sense to say that the communications the priests received are like the things the Holy Spirit tells Spirit-filled believers by supernatural means.

Yesterday a commenter mentioned the practice of asking the Holy Spirit for guidance. We should do this dozens of times every day. It actually works. For example, some believers think there is a spiritual gift of “discernment” which helps them tell whether a teaching comes from God or elsewhere. I think that’s probably a little off; Robert Morris says there is no gift called “discernment,” but that there is a gift called “discerning of spirits,” which means the ability to detect the presence of spirits with your ordinary senses. I’ve experienced that at least twice, including the time I got a good long look at a spirit on the wall of my house. I think what some people call “discernment” is actually either the word of knowledge or the word of wisdom.

The word of knowledge means God tells you a fact you could not have learned through natural means. Example: Jesus tells the woman at the well she has had five husbands. The word of wisdom means God gives you supernatural understanding, more or less. I think everyone knows what “wisdom” means.

It makes sense that a doctrine denying true discernment of spirits would arise. Ordinarily, evil spirits are invisible. Surely they like it that way. It would be odd if they didn’t fight the notion that they could be exposed. Also, people like to make excuses for God when the things he promises don’t seem to be materializing. If God says we’ll be able to see spirits, and then we don’t see them, it’s human nature to decide he said something else. But I’ve seen them, so it doesn’t trouble me to say this gift exists.

Robert Morris also says every believer can exercise each of the nine spiritual gifts, and that it’s a mistake to get the idea that you only get a certain number of them. I suppose that’s right. Like he says, you wouldn’t want a situation where a believer needs a certain kind of help and can’t get it because another believer with the needed gift has wandered off somewhere.

Anyway, a Spirit-filled believer can ask for guidance and receive it in a hurry.

God reveals the same things to different believers at different times and in different places, and one good conclusion to take away from that is that you should be humble when the Spirit works through you. If God tells you something, it’s not because you’re wonderful or because he needs your help. It’s because he’s wonderful and you need HIS help. God can reveal his mysteries to a chair or a rock if he feels like it. If he tells you something, you have nothing to be proud of. It’s no reflection on your or your brilliance or your super righteousness.

It’s natural to feel important when God works through you, and it’s natural to admire people through whom God works. But “natural” is bad. We’re not supposed to be natural. Apes are natural. Like Rose Sayer said in The African Queen, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put in this world to rise above.”

Pride is a tough thing to fight, because it’s so sneaky. It takes so many shapes, it’s not always easy to spot. I think many of us are going to get humbling lessons at judgment, when we find out how little we earned, after lifetimes of doing impressive things via God’s power. It’s impossible to know who is really making God happy, or whom he will reward. I think many of the people at the top of the list will be nobodies who barely got noticed at their churches. I don’t think the list of notables will be heavy with mega-church pastors and TV preachers.

God told me some stuff. He told other people the same stuff. I didn’t deserve it, and it wasn’t my stuff. It didn’t come from my mind. It was all handouts and alms. I try to remember that I am a welfare case.

Today I was working on my latest psalm, which is number 32. I thought I understood it pretty well when I chose it, but now I see that I was wrong. It’s largely about the necessity of being honest with God. People complain that their prayers aren’t answered, when they’re holding onto worldliness and sin and rationalizing what they do. If you want God to do what you ask, you should confess everything you can think of (in addition to making sure you’re not asking for stupid things like a pony or a closetful of Jimmy Choos). Paul made it clear that holding onto sin and iniquity (the inclination to sin) could result in the destruction of the flesh. You can become very miserable and physically sick from it; this is why communion, with real confession and repentance, are important. It’s why you have to forgive.

The fifteenth psalm says you have to speak the truth in your heart if you want God to give you a victorious life.

This is important to me because I know a couple of people who have terrible problems and who need to forgive and repent, yet who are pretty far from the turning point. I’m trying to be honest with God in my own life, for fear of earthly misery. It happens. It’s not a joke. This stuff is like pus inside a wound that has only healed on the surface. It will break out over and over. You have to debride the wound and get the garbage out.

Now that I think about it, this was the main subject of Perry Stone’s DVD. He was talking about the things Christians do that give Satan legal access to their bodies, minds, and spirits. He’s right. Running around claiming your rights won’t work, if you’re still rebelling. The notion that faith, all by itself, will keep you safe is not correct. If it were, you wouldn’t have much incentive to keep growing and improving.

We’ve promoted a lot of dumb “name it and claim it” ideas that put our desires above Matthew 6.33. Above God’s desires. “Believe for” a Bentley all you want. You only get what God thinks you should have.

Three

I have an email I need to acknowledge.

We got some really good news the other day, and I have still been trying to gather my thoughts to send an email to everyone.
Mom had a colonoscopy on Nov. 3, it went wonderfully-the cancer had not spread to her colon, only one small polyp that the doctor felt sure would be benign when it came back from pathology, and a very mild case of diverticulosis which can be managed with more fiber, and bleeding internal hemorrhoids causing her anemia.
This week on Monday Nov. 9, we went to see her radiation oncologist. She examined mom and said that the cervix was pink, healthy and soft. The tumors were getting very small. We told her that we gave the credit and the Glory to the Lord.
So that’s all we know for now.
Just keep us in your prayers.

That’s from Heather.

Also, reader N5 has mentioned his desire to get help getting off booze. He is interested in finding a church in his area. My pastor has been looking for one to recommend, but he’s so busy he barely has time to breathe right now. Maybe some of you would like to hold N5 up in prayer.

If it were me, I’d spend at least a day in fasting and prayer, and I’d repent of addiction on my own behalf and that of my family. And I’d cast it out. Jesus said fasting and prayer would enable us to cast out demons in his name.

Another reader wants prayer for an employment problem, but he hasn’t given me permission to mention his name or Internet handle yet. I have a feeling God will know who you’re referring to if you pray for him.

Workout + Food

I learned a few things about making sausage today.

1. Sausage has sugar in it. Or at least it can.

2. If you use a hand grinder, you have to get the ring that holds the grinder together on as tightly as possible. Otherwise, the blade will fail to cut long fibers of meat as they pass through, and the grinder will clog.

3. Do not use a hand grinder unless you are a masochist or in need of bust development.

4. Picnic hams appear incredibly fatty when you grind them, but they’re actually too lean for sausage.

I took my brined hams and ground them up (nightmare), and then I used this recipe:

INGREDIENTS

10 lbs. pork
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tsp. black pepper
2 tsp. cayenne
1 tbsp. paprika
1/4 cup salt
2 tbsp. sage
1/2 lb. El Cochinito brand lard

I added the lard because the test pieces I fried made almost no grease, and that’s unacceptable. I guess next time I’ll find a way to get more fat into the meat. Maybe I should buy pork loins at Costco and mix them with plain old fatback. Costco loins are cheap, and the quality is great. The picnic hams are okay, but they’re hard to cut up, and I suspect the meat is not as good for sausage as loins are. I’ve never had a gamy loin chop, but picnic hams are hit and miss.

The recipe I started with contained no paprika, and it only used two tbsp. of pepper. I thought the first test piece was a little bland, hence the pepper. I would cut the brown sugar to 3/8 cup next time. A little garlic wouldn’t hurt. I think powder would be better than fresh for this use.

I wonder if I could substitute frozen apple juice concentrate for the sugar. That would rock.

I ended up with 11 pounds of sausage. I intended to can it, but I couldn’t make myself make sausage without sage in it. It seemed immoral somehow. And you can’t can it if it contains sage. I shaped the sausage into 11 one-pound loaves and put them in the freezer to firm up. When they’re hard, I’ll seal ten of them in bags and freeze them. The other one is for immediate use.

This stuff will be much better than store sausage, mainly because of the paprika. When I made the first test piece, I thought it was a little sweet, and I thought it needed more pepper, and I knew there was something else missing. I concentrated hard, and then I knew the answer. I made two more test pieces, with paprika in one piece. It turned out to be exactly what was needed. This amount of sage is fairly light, but I didn’t mind that.

If I were going to can this stuff, I’d jack the cayenne and black pepper up by at least one teaspoon each, because I’d have to remove the sage, and that would make the sausage too mild.

It’s sad that the sausage is better than store sausage, because now I’m spoiled. Oh well.

No Thanks

I quit reading Larry Huch’s The Torah Blessing. I wanted to give it a chance, but the more I read, the more I felt it was not for me.

These days, charismatics are very interested in Christianity’s debt to Judaism, so we love learning about it from any source that will teach us. We are obsessively supporting Israel, and we worry that the US is going to be punished for the way it has betrayed her. And we want to know where our faith came from.

The danger here is that we will end up Judaizing the church. This is something Paul fought. Certain Jews in the early church tried to force circumcision and other parts of the law on non-Jewish believers, and Paul made it clear that this was wrong. The Mosaic law has never been imposed on Gentiles. To this day, Orthodox Jews think it’s absurd to talk about Gentiles observing halaka. Judaism is not like Islam, which is so intolerant its adherents in the Middle East and other parts of Asia feel entitled to sponsor murder in non-Muslim countries because far-off infidels have disobeyed Mohammed.

There are Messianics all over the US, and like the Orthodox, they don’t believe in Judaizing the rest of us. It makes no sense to take laws that God clearly intended to set Jews apart, and apply them to people who are not Jews.

I had a funny experience a couple of weeks back. The word “tikkun” kept rolling around in my head, and I could not remember what it meant. I Googled it, and I came across a Messianic website which belongs to Tikkun Ministries. The rabbi who runs it is named Dan Juster. I didn’t look closely at the site. I just wanted to find out what “tikkun” meant, and once I had accomplished that, I moved on.

I have a new friend; she works for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. She sometimes sends me interesting links about Israel and Christianity. A few days after my Googling experience, she emailed me an article written by Dan Juster! Very odd. Here is an excerpt:

First I want to firmly counter a false theology that has grown up, mostly among Gentile Yeshua believers who believe that the recovery of Jewish roots requires that they embrace the Jewish dimensions of calling rooted in the Torah and reject Christian tradition. They attack the Church because they worship on Sunday and celebrate the resurrection on the “wrong” day of the year. As I argued in a past article (see, Calendar Confusion, March 2009), finding the exact right day for celebration was much harder than most suspected, even within ancient Judaism. The point here is that while God has ordained specific days of rest and celebration for the Jewish people, He has not required any specific days of rest for the nations: neither the seventh day Sabbath nor the Feast days.

You can find the rest here. What he says makes perfect sense to me.

Larry Huch recommends that Gentiles pray wearing Jewish shawls. He says we are to observe the Jewish (Saturday) Sabbath, including a traditional Sabbath dinner. We’re supposed to light candles and put an alms box on the table and do a lot of other things Jews do on Friday night. I don’t know what else he recommends; when I got to the stuff about the Sabbath, I felt I was not going to benefit from reading further, so I stopped. I think he’s wrong, and I think his interpretation of “supporting” scriptures is erroneous.

What he’s asking is way too much. Judaism and its practices and observances are eternal, and every Christian should learn about these things, but I’m not about to buy tefillen, give up pork, invest in an eruv, stop wearing shorts in public, wear a yarmulke, grow sidecurls, observe a yeast-free Passover week, build a booth on Succoth, or learn and observe the 613 commandments. I am not a Jew. Being a Jew is a lot of work; I have enough on my plate. Pork included.

What Huch teaches seems like legalism to me. He gets around this by saying we’re not “required” to do all these things, but that they please God and provide “points of contact” and such so our faith can be turned into results. I don’t buy that. The difference between saying something is mandatory and saying it’s something God likes us to do is nearly meaningless to a Christian. We don’t live under the law; many things we do for God could be described as discretionary, but we do them as though they were commanded. When you tell a Christian God likes it when he does something, it’s nearly the same thing as making it a commandment.

Here are the things that seem important to me: get salvation, get baptized in the Spirit, pray in tongues long and often, study the Bible, give offerings and alms, repent every chance you get, fast, take authority over evil spirits in order to overcome your chronic sins, do good things for others, pray with your understanding (including simple conversation with God), and support your church. That’s most of it. Don’t worry about finding a red heifer or avoiding shrimp. I can’t speak for Messianic Jews, but if you’re a Gentile, God could not care less about those things. Why keep sending checks to the bank when someone else has paid off your mortgage?

I’m afraid Judaizers will fall into disfavor, as they should, and that the fallout will splatter on non-Judaizers who provide beneficial teachings about the Old Testament and Judaism. Perry Stone is such a teacher.

People are not all that bright; that’s a fact of life. Most human beings will have a hard time seeing the distinction.

Last night I watched a wonderful Perry Stone video about depriving Satan of the authority to enter your “temple,” or your body, mind, and spirit. He presented it at a conference in Dalton, Georgia a few years ago. He had large models of items from Solomon’s Temple on the stage, and he explained the symbolic significance of each. I loved it. I would recommend it to anyone. He didn’t say we had to sacrifice bulls or burn incense or bake shewbread, however. He wasn’t wearing a prayer shawl or a yarmulke, and he didn’t dip hyssop in a bowl of blood. I am one hundred percent behind this kind of teaching. The Judaizing stuff…not so much.

I Will Adorn it With Crosses in Honor of My President

I got my Saiga-12 fixed up. I haven’t machined the receiver for the new buttstock, but I got the new trigger guard and fire control group installed. The buttstock will be very easy compared to this other stuff.

I learned a lot from the people at Saiga-12.com. They are extremely helpful and patient.

Some tips for people who do their own conversions:

1. Go to the forum at Saiga-12.com for help. Those guys are fantastic.

2. Don’t forget to take out whatever is retaining the trigger and hammer pins before trying to tap them out of the receiver.

3. Use a center drill (Google it) to start the holes when you drill out the rivets on the Hillary-style trigger guard and the old trigger group. Use a drill press or milling machine to start the holes on the trigger guard rivets, if possible.

4. When you take out the bolt hold open lever and spring, make sure you sketch the location and orientation of the parts. They make no sense, and if you look for pictures online, you’ll find stuff that’s misleading.

5. When you put the gun back together, install the safety lever first. Trust me.

6. If you have a Tromix fire control group, the big V-shaped retaining spring for the hammer and fire control group pins should be oriented with the point of the V toward the back of the gun. If it won’t click into place, open the loop at the point of the V slightly and try again.

7. When you install a Tromix fire control group, the hammer goes in backwards.

8. To reinstall the BHO lever and spring, do this. Drop the trigger in. Put the pin in it. Make a 1/8″-long (or shorter) bend in the short end of the spring, so it catches the little projection on the lever. Drop the spring into the receiver. Run the pin through it, into the far side of the receiver. Drop the BHO lever in. Make yourself a tool from a paper clip (don’t use a dental pick). Straighten the clip and make a tiny hook at one end, just big enough to hold the spring wire. Make a bigger hook at the other end, big enough to go around a screwdriver shaft. Catch the spring end in the little hook, put a screwdriver in the big hook, and use the screwdriver shaft as a handle to pull the spring end toward the muzzle of the gun. You should be able to drop the spring end onto the projection on the lever. This tip is worth its weight in gold. You don’t need the BHO lever, so you can throw it out if you want.

I find it amusing that “BHO” stands for “bolt hold open” as well as B. Hussein Obama.

9. Don’t worry about scratching the finish on the gun, because it’s no good and will need to be replaced. Use aluminum oxide 120 grit to blast the old crap off, and then coat the gun with Norrell’s moly resin or Brownell’s aerosol equivalent. You can use Norrell’s on the inside of the receiver, because it’s too thin to interfere with moving parts. Not sure about Brownell’s. Glass bead blasting will result in a finish that falls off.

That’s about it. I learned some of this stuff from experience and some by begging and Googling.

Now it’s time to relax and have a healthy dinner of ham hocks, fried apples, and mustard greens.

Pre-conversion:

Post-half-conversion:

Mr. Kalashnikov’s Latest Must-Have

Last night I finally got to work on my Saiga 12 conversion.

For those of you who are behind the Bible-and-gun-clinging curve, the Saiga 12 is an AK-47 12-gauge shotgun. It’s magical. Low recoil, a clip instead of a tubular magazine [someone tell me the right name for “clip” and I’ll put it in, but “magazine” obviously doesn’t work], and AK reliability and simplicity, plus you can get one for 500 bucks. Hmm…way over a thousand for a Gucci semiauto that holds fewer rounds and has a lame tubular magazine, or $500 for an AK that shoots buckshot? Real hard choice there.

For reasons too boring to go into, the government makes the Russians put a bunch of pansy parts on the Saiga, in order to make it resemble a sporting gun. Picture yourself hunting ducks with this thing. Insane. As soon as you buy one, you’re supposed to buy other parts to make it work properly. You move the trigger forward, add a pistol grip, and get rid of the silly Elmer-Fudd-style buttstock. You can also get magazines holding up to 12 rounds, but for some reason, the 8-round jobs are favored.

You have to drill out rivets and mill off unneeded tabs and so on. I got my parts a long time ago, but I didn’t have machine tools, so I put off doing the conversion. Last night I decided to attack.

The milling machine made the work a lot less nerve-wracking. I got the rivets out without damaging the gun. Putting the new fire control group (“trigger and stuff”) in the gun was a horror. The Tapco parts I ordered did not come with instructions, so there was a lot of painful trial and error. My fingers are sore today, but I got the parts in there. I still have to add everything up and make sure the result is legal.

Now the trigger spring needs to be bent. Kalashnikovs come with strange springs made of twisted wires, and they’re sloppily made. The one I have isn’t bent correctly. It didn’t matter with the old parts, but the new parts don’t like it. Only one arm of the spring is doing anything, so there isn’t much pressure on the trigger, which means it can release the hammer with very little provocation. As a result, when you cock the gun, it doesn’t stay cocked. The hammer falls when the bolt goes forward. I would guess that if I tried to shoot it, the result would be rapid fire, followed by hilarity with the range officers and the power-mad goons fine public servants at the BATF.

I wanted to ship the gun to a smith who does conversions, but thanks to Obama, they are backed up until the year 3000.

The finish on this gun is horrible. It’s a crinkly black coating which flakes off when you look at it hard. And the area that used to be covered by the old trigger guard is bare. I’m going to have to put something on it. I’ll take a look and see if the professionals are still backed up. If not, I’ll send it off. If I can’t do that, I’ll have to use one of the coatings they sell for home use. That will require blasting the parts. What a pain. On the up side, the sight of me doing this in the front yard will have a positive effect on the attitudes of my neighbors.

In the meantime, I guess I can cover the bare areas with Super Blue.

I still have to mill some stuff off. It makes me nervous, putting the gun in my machining vise. I put wooden shims beside it and paper towels under it. Seems to work.

It looks like the Jacobs chuck I got on Ebay, trying to save money, is a piece of junk. With a small drill bit, the runout nearly exceeds the bit’s diameter. With a large bit, the chuck keeps falling off the arbor. I don’t think the arbor is the problem. I can indicate it and see. My used Albrecht chuck is perfect; I just assumed a Jacobs chuck that looked good in photos would be okay. Wrong.

My father is all interested in Martin County, which is up the coast a ways. He wants a waterfront place. I would much prefer inland. I want land around me when cling to my reactionary paraphernalia and grow food and can beans. A waterfront house on half an acre costs more than a mansion–that term is no exaggeration–on five or ten acres farther inland.

The older I get, the less boating does for me. It’s a lot of work. The boat always has mechanical problems which I have to fix (or fail to fix after hours in the sweaty, greasy bilge). I invariably get sunburned. I can’t get my friends to learn to do things for themselves, like tying knots and rigging baits, and they often show up hung over. Also, Miami boaters are even ruder than Miami landlubbers, which is saying a great deal. They make fishing unpleasant. My dad enjoys it tremendously, though, so that makes it worthwhile for me. It appears that it will negatively affect our choice of properties, however.

Given the giant differential between waterfront and inland real estate prices, coupled with the collapse of the Florida real estate market, I suppose there is no reason why I couldn’t get some land of my own, not too far from our compound. That would mean paying for additional razor wire and land mines. And of course, a second pair of Rottweilers trained to eat Jehovah’s Witnesses, Omaha Steaks representatives, and mimes. And burglars and murderers, I guess, although they don’t disturb me nearly as much.

Have you seen the Omaha Steaks people? Them and the other food truck guys? It’s very sad. The companies that sell this dubious food convince them to blow their savings on refrigerated pickups full of things no one wants, and here is their sales secret: knock on the door, start backing up toward your truck, and say you want to show the mark something. If you want to freak one out, don’t budge. The natural human instinct is to follow someone who says he wants to show you something. If you don’t move, it ruins the pitch.

You never see those guys twice. I guess they all go out of business. It’s awful to con someone into investing in a business you know is almost certain to fail. Especially when it involves sales, which is full of psychic trauma to begin with.

If I were going north by myself, I’d be looking at northern Georgia and southern Tennessee. I love Eastern Kentucky, but it’s a depressing place. People just don’t do well there; it’s as if the land rejects them. And the corruption, racism, and unnecessary ignorance wear me down. It’s bad enough that I have to hear the word “nigger” in rap music pouring out of car windows. I don’t need to hear it from people I know, in my own living room. One of the great things about charismatic churches in the South is that they’re destroying racism. It would be nice to live in an area where charismatics are big.

Some areas of Appalachia are more blessed than others; that’s the simple truth. Maybe I could find one. I keep thinking about the area around Chattanooga. Check this property out: CLICK. How about that? Room for a garden! It also has a basement for MACHINE TOOLS. The price is $265,000, so call it 250. Down here, that gets you a 2-bedroom shed in Little Havana with a Cuban-style paved yard. And this house is in an area full of holy rollers, so I’ll fit right in. “The Lord told me I needed a surface grinder and a Barrett .50-caliber rifle.” “You TOO?” “I got a couple I’m trying to sell.” “My mom is believing for a new AR-15.”

Somebody I believe to be honest and in touch with God claims the US is headed for a famine. He says this has been revealed to him. I wonder if it’s true. So many Christians are bugging out.

I can’t relate to the desire to be in a big flashy town. I have always been disgusted and bored by social climbing, and I cook so well, I have little enthusiasm for restaurants. Cultural offerings tend to be pretty sordid these days. I don’t go to movies or concerts. I have never had any inclination to support a sports team associated with a city; I find the concept perverse and tiresome. There is a kind of shallowness associated with a desire to be in big, well-known cities. I would rather live among nice people, with a little ground around me. Hopefully God will see fit to find the right place for me.

First Hurdle Cleared

I’m sorry to keep everyone waiting. The oncologist was not able to find any cancer on my sister’s scan. This is the best result she could have hoped for. Thanks for praying. Only God could have done this.

He sat her down and told her the statistics, and he gave her his advice on cranial irradiation. This took the shine off the good news, so she’s not feeling great. But she got an A+ today; no two ways about it.

News Later Today

It looks like I was wrong about the timing of my sister’s scan results. She is with her doctor now, and he’s giving her the interpretation. It may seem strange that she would be there by herself, and that I would not know exactly what was going on, but that’s how it has been much of the time for the last few months. It has been very difficult to stay engaged and informed.

My father and I are going to try to get her to let us take her out to dinner.

Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. She thanks you, too.

Hard Week

Today my sister is going in for a scan. I believe it’s a CAT scan. The purpose is to find out whether chemotherapy and radiation have put her in complete remission. This doesn’t mean “cure.” It means the cancer is too small to be found. Sometimes people in complete remission are cured, but that’s not the rule.

The sad fact about cancer diagnostics is that negative test results mean very little, while positive results are highly conclusive. When doctors fail to find a cancer, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. When they do find it, barring unusual circumstances, it’s definitely there.

If the cancer is still there, it’s a big problem. There is a limit to what chemotherapy and radiation can do. I’m not sure if it would be possible for the doctors to continue trying to destroy the tumors. I know that it won’t work very well in the future, should she have a relapse. This cancer develops a resistance to treatment, so the first try is the only real shot you get.

If the cancer can’t be found, she’ll be a candidate for prophylactic cranial irradiation. This means they’ll irradiate her brain to prevent brain tumors, if she accepts the risks of the treatment. The best possible outcome is that, combined with the earlier measures, this will completely cure her of cancer. The only reliable test is time. If she’s here a few years from now, she’s probably cured.

We should have the results tomorrow or Thursday. Do me a favor and pray the scan will be clean, and that God will help her to improve her relationship with him.

Ham for the Holidays

I decided I needed a ham. You know how that is. So I went online to look for one.

My cousin Wade says Col. Newsom’s hams are the way to go, and the one I bought back when I was writing the cookbook was jim-dandy. That’s why I recommended Col. Newsom’s. But their prices are out of whack now. They want $89 for a ham.

I found a couple of interesting options. First, I looked at a Tennessee company. When it comes to ham, I like Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina. I know Virginia is famous for ham, but I’ve never had any Virgina country ham that I thought was worth eating. Tennessee, I have no problems with.

The company is called Benton’s, and they have a very tempting offering. They sell two types of hams. First, relatively young hams. Second, hams aged until they get a little funky. This is what real country ham is. A ham aged six months or less is a fake. It won’t have the complex flavors and the acidity an old ham has. Benton’s sells hams aged 12-18 months. They run around 15 pounds, and they cost $65.

I thought I might give that a shot, but then I came across Scott Hams, in Greenville, Kentucky. Their hams keep winning prizes at the Kentucky State Fair and other festivals and what not. The fair is held in Louisville, which is practically the same as New York by ham standards, but surely there must be a few people there who have a clue. I called them up, and they told me their hams go a year. They said they would be happy to pack the ham the way I wanted it, which means sliced and bagged, with the hock in its own bag. The ham’s price is $48.50, and that’s a 16-pounder. You can’t beat that deal with a stick. I placed my order. I may try Benton’s eventually, regardless.

I just called them again. I was looking at their site, and they sell good Kentucky sorghum molasses. This stuff is nothing like the nasty molasses most people eat. And they’re selling it for $8.00 per quart, which is very reasonable. I put that on my order.

I just did some Googling, and I learned something interesting. The reason most molasses is no good is that it’s real molasses. The stuff they make in Kentucky is made from sorghum. True molasses comes from manufacturing by-products or something. Stuff they sweep off the floor at sugar mills. It comes from sugar cane and sugar beets. Okay, whatever. I guess what I like is actually “sorghum syrup,” although I have never heard anyone call it that.

Kentucky ham producers have gotten smart and started selling their own versions of prosciutto. I’ll bet it’s excellent.

In a couple of weeks I may have to make me a Kentucky breakfast, with fried ham, redeye gravy, cream gravy, scrambled eggs, bacon grease biscuits, and molasses and jelly. And a big glass of tea. And fried apples. And a portable defibrillator.

I gave up gluttony recently, so I guess I’ll have to find a way to make really tiny biscuits.

More

I unpacked my meat grinder, and it has no impeller! My sausage plans must wait until I can get to Northern Tool.

Cancer is Not Simple

I don’t blog about my sister’s illness much, but it’s a big factor in my life right now. I’ve been trying to help her make decisions about treatment. I’ve learned a few facts that might help other cancer patients. The doctors didn’t explain all this to us, and yours probably won’t explain it to you, either. It must be difficult to treat patients efficiently while simultaneously educating them.

Four things (that I know of) can affect your mental abilities when you have cancer:

1. Chemotherapy
2. Cranial radiation
3. Paraneoplastic problems
4. Brain tumors

Depending on the breaks, you can get memory loss, difficulty moving, hallucinations, mood problems, headaches, blindness, and a lot of other stuff.

Chemotherapy-induced cognitive problems have a label: “chemo brain.” That’s what they call it. It may increase with the dosages you receive. You may forget things and have difficulty concentrating. The effects may last six months, or they may last ten years. You need to prepare for this, and you need to develop ways to compensate. Buy a calendar and so on. I read about a treatment for it, but I believe it involved antioxidants, and if you’re getting radiation, your doctor may tell you not to use antioxidants, because they diminish the effect of the therapy.

Prophylactic irradiation of the cranium (PCI) is an option for small-cell lung cancer patients who go into complete remission as a result of chest radiation and chemotherapy. “Complete remission” isn’t a cure; it means the cancer is too small to be found. If you reach this stage, cranial irradiation will make you much less likely to get brain tumors if the cancer relapses. It will also improve your odds of making it to various time milestones. The improvement is significant but not great. Some people who receive cranial irradiation have memory and other cognitive problems. You have to weigh this against the small likelihood that it will lead to a complete cure, and you have to consider the suffering you will endure if your cancer goes to your brain.

If you combine PCI with chemotherapy, it raises the odds that the radiation will damage your brain. On the other hand, it’s very important to do PCI early in order to maximize the benefit. So once again, you have to balance the risks and make a decision.

Paraneoplastic ailments are problems that arise in conjunction with cancer. Some involve the brain. One is encephalomyopathy. If I understand it correctly, it’s caused by your body’s efforts to attack the cancer. Healthy tissue suffers as well. You may have memory problems, loss of sensation, seizures, paralysis, and a wide variety of other symptoms. It’s somewhat like multiple sclerosis.

In some people, encephalomyopathy clears up once the cancer is gone, but there is no treatment, and it’s usually permanent.

Encephalomyopathy can be detected with a blood test. Most patients aren’t diagnosed until after they find out they have cancer. The mental symptoms are likely to predate the cancer diagnosis.

Brain tumors are a problem for cancer patients, because chemotherapy doesn’t get into the brain the way it gets into other tissues. You can imagine the problems they cause. Any part of your brain, no matter what it does, can be damaged or destroyed. So you may end up blind, deaf, unable to move, insane, or demented. If you get brain cancer, you are likely to end up hospitalized and completely dependent on others during the last months of your life.

I can’t promise you all of this is correct. It’s what I remember after reading up.

If you smoke cigarettes or use smokeless tobacco, you need to know about these possible consequences. You may think cancer is simple, like a wart, and that it’s just a matter of killing it or dying peacefully after months on morphine. It’s not always that easy. I remember walking into the room of a patient who had cancer in his brain. He was playing with his own feces, and he had smeared them on his head, and when he tried to communicate with the nurses, he just made inarticulate sounds. You might beat the cancer relatively easily, or you might succumb without too much suffering, but you might end up like the guy I saw. I know addictions are hard to beat, but God really does deliver people.

I have to call her and tell her what I learned. Pray we’ll work well together and choose the best course.