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.

Creativity Forbidden

I’m all bummed out because I learned a sad fact about home canning.

Before I got into it, I read stuff on the web, and I got the impression that I would be able to can my own recipes. I put up seven pints of chili. Then I learned that using your own recipes is a huge canning faux pas.

I thought home canning was a technology that had been perfected in basements, by millions of mothers and grandmothers. But it turns out there are food laboratories that put recipes together. They put temperature probes into jars full of food, and they process them, and they record the results. Then they come up with approved pressure and time guidelines for the recipes they use. If you deviate substantially from those recipes, you may not heat all areas of your jars enough, and then you get botulism, which takes months to go away. Meanwhile, people tell you how much younger you look.

This means you have to find USDA-approved recipes and use them. What good is that? If I wanted other people’s bad recipes, I wouldn’t waste time putting together my own wonderful recipes. Imagine how badly food scientists cook.

I’m going to see what I can do to work around this. Sometimes it’s possibly to use an approved recipe and then add your own stuff when you open the jar. But if the approved recipes are so bad they can’t be fixed, that won’t work.

My chili has cheddar cheese melted into it, so I’m sure it has much more fat in it than the USDA recipe (which is probably boring and bland). Adding fat can throw off processing times. I have to study up on this and see what I can do.

Luckily, pork sausage is approved for canning. For some reason, they don’t tell you to cook it through. That seems odd. Maybe it cooks through when you put it in the canner.

I also read that if your canner drops below the required pressure, you have to start over. You have to raise it to the right pressure and set the time to zero again. The processing you did before you lost pressure doesn’t count.

Here’s good news. You can destroy botulin by boiling your food for ten minutes. I’ve also seen twenty minutes mentioned, so take it for what it’s worth. Never trust me when it comes to food safety.

I stuck my remaining chili in the fridge. I’ll get rid of it fast enough to avoid problems. It’s probably fine, but botulism sounds like it’s no fun at all, so I’m not ready to take a chance.

I found out what killed my pressure canner. The gasket has a tiny hole in it. I’m going to have to go to Goodman’s and get a couple of new ones. Didn’t see this coming.

Today I’ll check out my picnic shoulders, and if they smell okay, I’ll go ahead and make sausage. If not, I’ll brine them in baking soda to kill the stench. Boar taint is the thing that ruins pork sausage, and you don’t have to tolerate it.

Hmm…will this upset the canning schedule because it reduces the acidity? Probably not. I don’t think meat is acidic enough to retard the growth of anything, so treating it with baking soda probably won’t matter.

Please Overlook our Founder’s Little Faults

This morning I was reading Larry Huch’s The Torah Blessing, and I was somewhat startled by some quotations he produced.

Martin Luther said the Jews were “full of the devil’s feces … which they wallow in like swine.” He also said, “We are at fault in not slaying them” for avenging the crucifixion.

“Avenging”? We’re supposed to punish them for the single most beneficial act that has ever occurred? An act God himself put in motion? An act for which every sinner (including Martin Luther) bears responsibility? Maybe we should also “avenge” the parting of the Red Sea or the provision of manna in the wilderness.

I will never understand this idiotic line of reasoning.

I don’t know why the Lutheran church continues to use the name “Lutheran.” Surely it’s obvious that this man was not worthy of honor. Isn’t uniting in his name a little like putting a sign in front of your church which says, “We hate Jews”? If I were a Lutheran bigwig, I’d be agitating to drop his name from the church. The church is the bride of Christ, not the bride of Martin Luther the Jew-hating loony.

Why don’t Christians talk more about this? This twisted, corrupted character should be unceremoniously removed from the pantheon of honored Christian thinkers. A certain amount of error can be excused, but saying we are sinning by not exterminating the Jews is beyond any realistic hope of rehabilitation. Maybe he was right about some things. But then Hitler was right about Volkswagens and superhighways.

The problem with defending this miserable, benighted person or hiding his faults is that we’re the only ones doing these things. I’m sure the Jews are highly aware of his bigotry and hatred. I doubt they run around making up excuses for it, the way we do. How can we build bridges between Jews and Christians if we’re not willing to let embarrassing idiots go?

To me, this is like the Confederate flag. I’m a Southerner, and I used to think the flag was neat, and then I thought about what it represented: a regime that supported slavery. Whatever the merits of the Confederacy might have been, there is no way to excuse resisting abolition. You can’t say, “Well, it’s okay that we flogged the flesh off other human beings, bought and sold them, broke up families, and held them captive…because we also wanted tax reform!”

So I’m on the side of people who want to take that stupid, shameful flag off of state buildings. If you’re determined to celebrate your Southern-ness, make yourself a flag with Elvis on it, or maybe a bucket of chicken.

Luther wanted to confiscate Jewish property. He wrote a book called On the Jews and Their Lies. Continuing to use this nut’s name is a great way to help Jewish anti-missionaries. Without even checking, I’ll bet he is featured prominently in their materials. I’d be all over that, if I were an anti-missionary.

Huch cites other anti-Semitic Christian figures. We need to renounce these buffoons and their poison. Jesus died a Jew, as did the Apostles. Our faith is fundamentally Jewish. It’s strange that some people who claim to be sincere and knowledgeable Christians feel entitled to slander and threaten the root on which we were grafted.

Most non-Catholic Americans don’t really know much about the older churches. We don’t know the more vile and disgusting parts of their histories. We don’t know about their ongoing failures to renounce the disgraces of the past. I feel certain religious Jews know about these things. Those of us who belong to denominations that recognize our debt to the Jews should make an effort to distance ourselves from the bile and excrement certain Christians have exuded or embraced in the past. It’s harder to ask this of people who belong to older churches, but they need to get with it, too. God has told us that in order to approach him, we have to make things right with other human beings. He won’t answer a husband’s prayers if the husband doesn’t love his wife. He won’t receive an offering from someone who deprives a creditor or mistreats a parent. He won’t pay attention to communion if we don’t forgive and seek forgiveness. How, then, is he supposed to work unhindered in a church that hasn’t repented of slandering Jews?

We like to use the words “Antichrist” and “anti-christian” all the time. The Antichrist is a figure who will arise and persecute the church. “Anti-christian” refers to the broader phenomenon of the persecution of God’s people.

This stuff is based in the spirit realm. Satan and his subordinates cause these things to occur. They sow the seeds. They fan the fires.

What most Christians don’t realize is that the same spirits that drive the persecution of Christians drive anti-Semitism. It’s all about thwarting prophecy and preventing God from carrying out his plan. Various Old Testament villains tried to destroy the Jewish race, as did Hitler. Pharaoh tried to prevent the birth of Moses. Herod tried to prevent the birth of Jesus. The Romans murdered Christians as though they were roaches and termites. Sooner or later, someone will try to kill off the Jews so the 144,000 mentioned in the Revelation can’t be born. It’s all the same thing. There is no difference between anti-Jewish hatred and anti-Christian hatred, because to Satan, we’re all in the same camp. The fact that he often gets us to fight each other is irrelevant. That’s just part of his program; it’s always a good idea to get your enemies to save you work by attacking each other.

Christian anti-Semitism is driven by anti-Christian spirits. If you persecute the Jews, a spirit of antichrist is in you. If more of us realized that, we would be a lot less eager to pat ourselves on the back and congratulate ourselves for being clever enough to recognize the true Messiah. What fools we are, to think we are inherently superior. Our forebears conducted the Inquisition. If we’re so smart and so righteous, how did things like that happen?

Thinking we are smarter or more righteous than the Jews, who gave us everything that matters, is shockingly arrogant and moronic. It is completely contradictory to the obvious evidence before us. We’ve done a great deal of evil. We have nothing to crow about. Every good thing we have done happened because the Holy Spirit overrode our natural inclinations, which are as malevolent and misguided as everyone else’s.

I don’t know if I would endorse everything Huch says. I haven’t finished the book yet, and it seems to verge on legalism, but the bit about Martin Luther really grabbed my attention.

Terrorist v. Guerilla

I guess I’m going to catch it for saying this, but I don’t consider Nidal Hasan a terrorist.

To me, “terrorist” means someone who attacks civilians with no justification. This nut shot up an Army base. So I would call him a guerilla, a traitor, and maybe a spy. But I don’t think “terrorist” fits, even though I’ve probably already used that term to describe him.

I don’t want people to get the crazy idea that I approve of his slimy, despicable actions. But Fort Hood is a legitimate military target, even if this attack made no sense from a strategic standpoint. I don’t think it makes sense to compare this attack to 911. I wouldn’t call the Pearl Harbor attack terrorism, either.

Whatever he is, it’s contemptible.

Gasket Troubles

Last night a dreadful thing happened. I had seven pints of chili in the pressure canner, and suddenly, I heard a loud hiss. The gasket wasn’t sealing right.

The pressure began to drop. Not knowing what else to do, I cranked up the heat to raise the pressure, and I kept the chili going for the required time. At the end I could tell some juice had leaked past the jar seals, but they sealed up anyway.

I can’t figure out what’s wrong. The gasket looks fine. When I bought the canner, the manual said to scrub all the oil off everything. The gasket had a lot of grease on it, so I scrubbed it, too. Maybe that was stupid. Maybe the grease helped it seal.

Now I’m experimenting with it. I oiled it with olive oil, and I’m heating the canner. I can’t get a new gasket until Monday.

This morning I heard several “poink” sounds from the kitchen. I figured my canned stuff was opening up. But when I checked all the jars, they looked fine. I really hope I don’t get botulism. I want to have a nice smile at my funeral.

Still have to make pork sausage. Even if I can’t can it, I can get it ready for frying.

Pints of Pain

In case you’re interested, my chili recipe yields a little over seven pints. I filled seven Ball jars, and I had enough left over for a tiny snack.

I hope this works. Imagine the convenience of having truly phenomenal chili in a jar.

Mike called while I was cooking. He’s all upset now, because he has no canning technology. He wants to make his grandmother’s spicy pickles. I told him about Goodmans.net.

My Ball Blue Book arrived today. It’s the Bible of canning. Well, it would be. If we canners didn’t already have real Bibles to cling to bitterly.

I made these pints mild (by my standards), so I could donate them to my dad. The next seven are MINE, and they will probably melt their own lids.

Accuse Them of Lying to Get Warranty Stuff

I ran down to Northern Tool and got a meat grinder and ordered a new pulley for my band saw. I am not sure they understand how customer relations works. The first guy I dealt with wanted me to pay for the pulley. I told him it was a warranty thing because it was defective. He said, “How do we know that?” I asked him how I could ever prove anything I bought was defective. Maybe I broke everything I ever got fixed on warranty.

Surely Northern Tool doesn’t train people to say crazy things like that. “I realize you’ve bought thousands of dollars’ worth of unneeded male toys here, but I feel entitled to question your honesty because you want a free eight-dollar part.”

“Thousands” is a bit of an exaggeration for me, but not for everyone who shops there.

They’re lucky I shop there at all. Here’s why. They charge more than the website, and if I buy over the web and I have a warranty issue, I can handle it from home. If I buy at the store, they may not have what I want, they’ll charge 20% more, I’ll definitely have to pay sales tax (I do that anyway these days), and if there’s a problem, I have to drive to the store all over again.

I’d shut up with that “how do we know that” business, if I worked there.

Here’s another reason to avoid their stores. They only keep computerized purchase records for three months. After that, you have to produce a receipt. If you don’t have a receipt, you have a problem. I don’t know how long the website keeps records, but I guarantee you, it’s at least three months, and you don’t have to wait twenty minutes while a manager pores over charge records.

Man, I would keep that “how do we know that” to myself. I really would.

I could have ordered this saw and had it shipped free of charge. No driving. Right on my porch.

Oh, boy. Seriously. Big mistake, telling the customer you think he’s a liar.

I may never shop there again, now that I’ve seen my own arguments against it. It seems like a dumb thing to do.

After Northern Tool, I hit the grocery. I got chili ingredients. I looked at chili-canning recipes online, and while I have no intention of using them, I got the information I needed. Seventy-five minutes at 11 psi. This is going to be fantastic. I hope.

Speaking of hope, I hope the grinder is okay. Some people say they’ve had great experiences with it. Others, not so much. Surely it can handle ten pounds of pork without too much trouble.

“We Could Raid the Fat Guy’s House if he Didn’t Have all Those Guns”

Is this the greatest day in the history of the world, or what? It’s 64° outside, I have nine new jars of home-canned sweet pickles, I have new tires on my diesel 4×4, and I’m sitting on what amounts to a small ammunition dump. Plus I’m enjoying big mug of decaffeinated coffee with half and half. All of the pleasure with none of the tics and irritability.

I’m trying to decide what else to can. I was really excited about pork sausage and pickles, but the pickles are done, the sausage isn’t going to be that much of a challenge, and I need to come up with other stuff.

I’m thinking beans. I bought a bunch of dried beans for SHTF purposes, but they become useless after about a year and a half, unless you know how to turn them into flour. They would be much more useful if they could be kept longer. And I just happen to make amazing bean soup. I make soup beans, black bean soup, and navy bean soup. It’s incredibly good.

If I can this stuff, I’ll have SHTF beans that will last much longer than dried beans. I think. I have to find out how long canned beans keep.

Man, this would be great. Pint jars full of tasty soup, waiting for cornbread and greens.

I guess the wet blankets will point out that beans are available in remarkable new inventions called cans. But they’re not as good, nor are they as much fun. I like Bush’s beans just fine, but it’s just plain stupid to compare them to real beans.

I wonder if I could can barbecue beans. I don’t see why not. Oh, man. Yes. What a convenience. BBQ beans plus browned smoked sausage! And I could can chili! My astounding Unauthentic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Chili, with tons of homemade chili powder and exotic peppers. Picture it, sitting in little jars, just waiting to rip the intestines out of unsuspecting wimps. Wow, would that be great. I could can the wuss version plus the manly version, and when I wanted to serve chili to people, I’d be able to keep the versions separate.

I’m so tired of lame chili. When I make it for myself, I can ratchet the heat up, but if even one other person eats with me, I’m forced to make it weak and silly.

CANNED DORO WAT! OH, BABY! I just thought of that! Canned Ethiopian-style chicken stew! Brutal and satisfying.

Oooh…canned collard greens with salt pork.

I have to hold onto something. This is too much.

If Obama continues working his economic magic, and I’m forced to eat stored food, I’ll eat better than I do right now. I wonder if chili will keep getting better in a jar, the way it does in the fridge.

I’m Googling around, and I see cautious people recommending a 1-year storage maximum, while others say that if the food passes inspection, you can keep it much, much longer. I just read about canned goods found on a ship that sunk in 1865. They were tested in 1974 and found to be okay.

I can tell you this. My grandmother never threw anything out in her life, unless it said “whiskey” on the label.

Stand in Awe of my Cukes

I ran some vital errands.

First, I got me some new canning jars and lids. Now I have enough to make the effort worthwhile. Then I found diesel at the incredible price of $2.68 per gallon. Around here, that’s cheap. If you drive around Miami, you’ll see $2.90 fairly often. Then I got me a bunch of pickling cucumbers. After that, I loaded up with two picnic hams. These are uncured pork shoulder parts. Should be good for sausage.

My plan is to brine the pork with baking soda to kill the taint. Then tomorrow I’ll do my best to make sausage and can it. It should work out to about $1.50 per pound. I guess it would have been smart to find out what ordinary sausage costs. For all I know, it’s less than that. But I don’t care. I want my canned sausage.

I learned something important. Costco is the pork source. Winn-Dixie is supposed to have whole shoulders for 79¢ per pound, but they were out. I can get gorgeous loins for like $1.79 at Costco, so presumably their shoulders are a lot cheaper.

I’m going to put calcium chloride in my pickles to see if it makes them crunchy.

Tomorrow I have to go to Northern Tool and get a meat grinder. I got my jars at Goodmans.net (their warehouse is nearby), and they sell grinders, but they were out of stock.

That place is hilarious. Every canning item in the universe–and most other items–is available there. They have a bank of pretty young latinas who help you with your order. I think they think it’s funny that a grown man comes in and fills his diesel pickup with Ball jars.

I’ll look less silly in the post-Obama wasteland, when everyone is starving and I’m stuffing myself with delicious canned sausage and dried apple pies. I’ll be sitting on top of the world.

More

Let’s see. I bought seven packages with four cucumbers in each. I ate maybe two and a half cucumbers. Now I have about 27 cups of slices. So each cucumber makes about one cup of slices.

Good thing to know, next time I shop for pickling cucumbers. Which should be in 2013, given that I just bought 50% more than I intended. I’m going to have a dozen pint jars full of these babies.

I checked into beans for pickling. The big pole beans were incredibly expensive. Like $2.50 per pound. The smaller green beans just didn’t look suitable.

I don’t know why the cucumbers I bought were labeled “salad cucumbers,” and I don’t understand why people call them “pickling cucumbers.” They taste a lot better than the nasty, greasy, waxed jumbo cucumbers I used to buy. I am all done with those. These are superior.

I can’t stand wax on my food. Think about it. You have some dirty guy in the back of the store, picking his nose and spitting, waxing the cucumbers with a filthy rag. And the wax permanently traps the filth on the food. It’s very hard to remove. And what is wax made from? Is it petroleum? I don’t want to eat that stuff. It’s a fat, for sure. What will it do to my arteries? I can’t even guess.

This is going to be beautiful, but once it’s done, I won’t get to practice again for months. I guess that’s the point, however.

I Feel Like an Old Person Under Obama’s Health Plan

It is 71.8 degrees outside. This is the greatest day of my life. Nearly. It’s supposed to be about 61° at ten p.m.

When you let your yard go to hell, hot weather is okay. When you actually care about maintaining your home, it’s another story. It’s very tough working outdoors in Miami in the months of June through October. Your sunglasses fill with sweat so you can’t see. You have to apply sunblock once an hour. The sweat makes the sunblock run into your eyes. This is why we have illegal immigrants; to them, the suffering is worth it.

I may go out and poison the yard today. It needs weed killer, fertilizer, and imidacloprid. The clouds of buzzing whiteflies are getting hard to see through. Something needs to be done.

I took a look at my plantains this morning. People told me my trees wouldn’t produce in Miami. I don’t know where they got that idea. My French Horn plantain tree seems to be more productive than my bananas. I can’t even guess what I’ll do with a long bunch of one-pound fruit, but I’m glad I’m getting them.

Now that it’s cool enough to do things, it’s hard to decide what to start with.

Maybe the best thing is to think it over while eating pie.

Okay, no pie.