Try Bacteria

I took a bunch of Tobago seasoning peppers, pureed them, stirred in a spoonful of yogurt and a little pressed garlic, and put the mixture in a container on the kitchen counter. A smart person would have nuked them first to kill whatever exotic bacteria were clinging to them, but you know me. I smirk at death.

After a week or two of fermenting, they smelled fantastic. But I couldn’t figure out what to do with them. Today I plopped a load of this stuff on a sub, and it was fantastic. Much better than banana peppers.

I didn’t make this idea up. They do it in the islands. Some people leave it in the sun to rot.

It would be even better with Home Depot cayenne peppers.

Give it a shot.

Will Our Grandchildren Know What a Hurricane Is?

Dan from Madison is upset that I haven’t mocked the Global Warmers this year. Usually I put up a hurricane frequency chart and then gloat about the utter wimpiness of the season.

Here is the chart:

As you can see, it peaks and centers at September 10. This is October 3, and a rough guess, by eyeballing, says 3/4 of this year’s hurricane probability is gone.

I will try to be a nice person and not gloat, but I think I should remind everyone how certain the Gore groupies were that we were going to die in a wave of killer storms. There was no room for doubt. It was a sure thing. Then we had four weak seasons in a row. This year has been the weakest yet. It’s as if hurricanes are becoming extinct.

If they were wrong about the consequences of global warming, why would they be right about global warming itself? By the convoluted logic of the left, global warming (and chiggers and leprosy and the McKinley assassination) was somehow caused by the election of George Bush, whom they all hated. Anything that tended to discredit Bush got them excited, so global warming had them doing cartwheels. This means their opinions on global warming were so colored by bias that they were essentially worthless. If George Bush had been tied to waffles, naked liberals would have been out in the streets demanding laws banning them, and liberal scientists would have linked waffles to everything from trout infertility to Down Syndrome.

Now that I think about it, back in 2004, one candidate was tied to waffles. But it wasn’t Bush.

Man does all sorts of bad things, but he is not capable of changing the weather. Not yet. God is not ready to hand that power over to us. And judging by the hurricane situation, he seems bent on proving it.

Even if we could increase the temperature by a couple of degrees, we would simply be going back to a state that has existed within the last thousand years, and if my meager knowledge of history serves, it did not destroy all life on the planet. In fact, it extended growing seasons and made winter less miserable.

Often, what a person says depends on what his reward is. This is a good thing to keep in mind when you come across nutty arguments purporting to explain things that otherwise might be considered acts of God. Rational beings have an unlimited capacity to rationalize and deceive, and they often use these tools toward evil ends. The Bible tells us that toward the end of time, we will see earthquakes, famines, perversion, wars, and signs in the heavens. Weather anomalies fall in the last category. Someone is at work, trying to explain them away. And I don’t mean Al Gore.

Last night I found I had a new Robert Morris on the DVR. His show has been featuring a series on the Holy Spirit. Wonderful stuff. This guy seems to be right on the money. Last night he explained that the Pentecost phenomenon the disciples experienced after Christ’s ascension is for every Christian, even now. He dismantled the “it only happened once” argument.

I was a little sad while I watched it. He said something that occurred to me years ago: the first mass baptism of the Holy Spirit was presaged by the confusion of tongues in the story of the Tower of Babel. Jesus has a pattern of undoing bad things that happened in the past, such as the fall of man. In the tower story, man tried to make himself all-powerful by his own efforts, and the rewards were failure and disunity, and the disunity was imposed via linguistic barriers. In the Pentecost story, men submitted to God’s will in their quest for the power to serve, and they were united and empowered successfully, and the evidence was a new common language. The connection is obvious. I knew that a long time ago, but the information was of no use to anyone but me, because I didn’t do anything with it.

Some people claim the gift of tongues is exclusively for corporate worship, and that it is always accompanied by interpretation, but that’s an assumption. The Bible does not say that. Some say the fact that the foreigners who heard the disciples heard their own languages means that the gift of tongues always manifests itself in languages already known, but that, too, is an assumption, and it contradicts the references to “unknown tongues.” Jesus himself referred to the gift of tongues when he told the Samaritan woman at the well about “living water.” The first psalm mentions it, when it prophesies that believers will be like trees planted by rivers of water. The twenty-third psalm refers to the baptism of the Spirit, using oil as a symbol: “Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.” I think Zechariah referred to tongues prophetically when he wrote about Zerubabbel (“seed of Babel”) having a big role in reforming Judaism. The seven-bowl menorah in the Holy of Holies, fueled by oil (symbolizing the Spirit) is a reference to the baptism of the Spirit.

The scriptures refer to tongues over and over, both explicitly and prophetically. The reason Christians fight it is that the enemy is terrified of the Holy Spirit. After all, the Holy Spirit is what enabled Samson to slaughter a thousand idolaters in one day. It teaches you what the scriptures mean. It frees you from habitual sin. It improves your character. It tells you the enemy’s secrets. The enemy would rather face weak Christians who are not connected to the power supply. Better yet, teach that weakness is righteousness and defeat is success. Teach that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is heresy. So when you are weak and you fail at what you were intended to do, you have the crazy idea that everything is going according to plan. Our successes are supposed to outnumber our defeats, by a huge margin. You may be martyred some day, but you’re not supposed to lose consistently, over the course of your life.

Anyway, a long time ago, a few things were revealed to me, and I was probably intended to go out and spread the news, like Robert Morris, but I left the church and wasted two decades walking in circles. When you don’t do what you’re asked to do, someone else gets to do it. I wonder how much better my life would have been. This guy has a magnificent church. The music team is beyond belief. He has a wonderful mission. I think he’s doing it right.

Age is Ruthless

Val’s dad is having health problems. A few years back, he was a strong septuagenarian. He was active. He worked at his welding. Now he’s having serious problems with arthritis and diabetes. He just can’t do what he used to do. I know how tough it is to see a father age.

You prayed for my sister, and things are going as well as they possibly could. Can you pray for Val’s dad, too? You might mention Val and his wife Maggie, too. This has not been an easy year for them.

I’m trying to drag them to church, because I know it works. Maybe this will be the weekend.

This is Not What a Leader Does

The four-year-long amateur hour at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue continues. We thought we had elected suave, surefooted Stefan, but in fact, it was plain old Steve Urkel. The guy whose life is a never-ending wedgie. Even prominent leftists have started complaining about the incompetence and inexperience of Obama and his staff, and the same liberal members of Congress who claimed his experience didn’t matter are now snubbing him right and left because his juvenile mistakes have wrecked his political capital.

He is living up to the sobriquet “Carter II” by involving himself in minutiae. Carter used to insist on deciding who got to use the White House tennis court; he made up the schedule while he should have been thinking about the country’s problems. Obama has flown to Denmark, at huge expense, to try to bring the Olympics to Chicago. Can you imagine George Bush insisting on handling something this unimportant? Oh, well. Once a bagman, always a bagman. When you build a career by flunkying for machine bosses, it’s probably not easy to stop running errands.

Where is the outrage over Obama’s third vacation? Every time George Bush left the White House grounds, the liberals at CNN, CBS, and the other mainstream outlets screeched about his penchant for vacations. He never took a vacation; he just moved his office from time to time. Hopefully, that is generally true of Obama as well. In any case, it didn’t matter to the Bush-era press.

Obama blew a king’s ransom on a trip to New York. He holed up in Martha’s Vineyard. Now he’s flying to Denmark for a trip which is clearly primarily recreational. And it’s only the beginning of October, in his first year as President! And the press doesn’t care, any more than they still care about mounting military deaths in Iraq, which they portrayed as a major crisis before the election.

It’s almost as if there were a TOTALLY HYPOCRITICAL DOUBLE STANDAND.

Almost.

It would be a tragedy if Obama seemed to succeed. Appearing to succeed while doing the wrong thing is worse than failure. It assures that you will continue doing the wrong thing in the future. So when I see Obama do something dumb and sure to fail, it encourages me. I want to see the US prosper because we behave responsibly and please God, not because we robbed our children’s piggy banks to pay for a heavily leveraged plateau in our slide toward weakness and defeat.

It’s remarkable that Obama and his blunderkind advisors thought the Olympics trip was a good idea. Several cities are vying for the games, so the odds that Obama will lose are high. If he had stayed home, no one would have imputed the loss to him, but now it will be an Obama failure. On top of that, the trip confirms his image as a lightweight. You would not send Ronald Reagan or Abraham Lincoln to beg for an Olympiad, any more than you would send them to pick up the Secretary of State’s dry cleaning. But Obama? It fits.

I’m guessing that none of Obama’s confidants, nerdy though they are, were members of their high school chess clubs. They are incapable of strategic thinking. That’s just swell, given that America is fighting two wars right now. I suppose it explains his decision to abandon missile protection for our loyal allies in Eastern Europe, at a time when Russia is resurging as an enemy and Iran is developing long-range nuclear weapons.

What Obama gaffe DOESN’T it explain? He alienates a new sector of his base every week. Doctors. Cop unions. Car unions. Jews. When health care craps out, he’ll alienate blacks. Prior to the election, the big media outlets actively suppressed negative coverage (even more than they do now), so Obama never learned to think ahead. When you live in a bubble, you need no immune system. Now that criticism is increasing, he has no one to protect him from his own fecklessness.

I don’t recall the press and the entertainment industry (same thing, really) doing much to help Carter, once he started circling the drain. SNL made his embarrassing health problems weekly fodder. Stories about the sad state of the country filled the airwaves.

While he was running, the press treated him like–wait for it–a messiah. I recall that clearly. They adored him. Then he became an embarrassment. Did the networks stand up for him? If so, I have no memory of it. Once Obama’s incompetence is established beyond dispute, he’ll fare no better. Sooner or later, we’ll see video of him smoking cigarettes. The liberal press will discover Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko. They’ll finally take notice of the other kooks he has hired. They’ll realize he’s unfair to Israel. These are my predictions.

Is he smoking cigarettes in our White House? He must be. He’s still addicted, and you don’t make the President stand outside when he has a nicotine fit. There must be ashtrays in the White House again! Either that, or he flicks the ashes on the floor. When did we last have ashtrays and cigarette butts in the White House? Was it under Ford? Nixon?

I always pray for him and his wife and the Bidens to humble themselves, acknowledge God (the real one, not the Jew-baiting Jeremiah Wright straw god), and start leading us in something resembling righteousness. I also wish he’d quit carrying that Hindu idol around and get rid of the big gold-plated one the Indians sent him. But an ego like Obama’s is tough to penetrate. And he does not admit fault. A leader takes responsibility for the things his underlings do. Obama throws them under the bus immediately. He does the same thing with his associates, like Wright and Blagojevich and Ayers and…well, I don’t want to make a long list. When Obama’s regime crumbles, one of the worst things about it will be listening to the whining and excuses.

He’s the Michael Jackson President. He surrounded himself with people who tell him he can do no wrong, and he believes them. Therefore his life is decadent, and he has no judgment. He does things no shrewd or mature person would do, and unless he changes, he will fail.

He’s in for a fall. And then we’re stuck with him for three more years. As anyone who lived under Carter during his humiliating tenure can tell you, a permanently hamstrung President is hard to live with. Pelosi and Reid will rule the free world, and our enemies will walk all over us.

God Hears

My sister’s cranial MRI was clean! I know people have been wondering. When I prayed, I felt by faith that it would be so, but it’s still a great relief. Thanks for all the prayers. I would have told you sooner, but I just found out. I told her my readers were praying, and she thanks you all.

After You Put Them in a Hydraulic Press

Okay, I just found out what “it fits” means to the folks at Crutchfield. It means the product you bought can be installed in your vehicle without using a plasma cutter, in a professional manner worthy of Jethro Bodine.

I got the speakers today, and I figured I’d put them in, since they would be easy. WRONG. For reasons too boring and complicated to mention, they were not right for my existing screw patterns. The adapters Crutchfield supplied worked for the front doors, but not the back. The Crutchfield guy I talked to said they didn’t actually look at the speakers when they decided whether they fit. They just go by outer dimensions. Swell.

It turned out Alpine supplied some adapters in the bottom of the box. They worked fine with the front speakers, and after modifying one with the milling machine–no joke–they can be used in the back. I now have two speakers installed, but no tweeters. They didn’t bother explaining that the tweeters were separate. I have to buy a 2″ hole saw and cut holes in the inner panels of my doors.

There are things in the box that must be crossovers. I assume it goes receiver-speaker-crossover-tweeter. If not, there will be explosions and fun.

What does installation cost? Sixty bucks? What a bargain. Seems that way now, anyhow.

Dr. Visit Confirms Hysteria
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I only have two regular physicians. Fortunately for me, one is a dermatologist. The wound on my ankle seems to be resisting Neosporin’s efforts, so I’m going in to see what the doctor can do for me.

This is somewhat different from my customary doctor visits. Generally, it works like this: I respond to some horrible thing that happens on a Friday night by 1) going to the ER, 2) waiting four hours, and 3) paying $5000 for $100 worth f treatment.

More

I guess my doctor thinks I’m the biggest wuss on earth. First I went in to see if a freckle was melanoma. Now I’ve paid for an office visit for a scrape that wasn’t infected.

A few years back, I read that infected wounds turned yellow, with red borders. That’s what I have going on right now. And the wound has been giving me pain since it got inflamed on Tuesday, so I figured something was not right. Now the doctor tells me he doesn’t think it’s infected. He still gave me a better antibiotic. It’s called Mupirocin. How can an inflamed wound that leaks yellow fluid not be infected? I need to pay more attention when I watch House.

I guess I seem hysterical, but Miami is full of horror microbes because of immigrants from places like Haiti. I know a guy who got MRSA from a little injury on his ankle. Can you believe that? How many people in Indiana or Nebraska know someone who had flesh-eating bacteria? People here get drug-resistant TB. This is not a normal city. I got scraped in a church full of Haitians, so I was nervous.

I never know how to react to medical problems. I had a kidney stone, and I stayed home and did nothing, and it worked out fine. Then I had this ankle thing, and I decided to go in, and it appears to have been a waste of time.

I could have been spending my time learning how to park the truck. I believe I’ve managed to hit the center of one parking space out of twenty or thirty tries. This thing doesn’t have a turning circle. It has a turning arc that never becomes a circle, because there isn’t enough room.

A bunch of stereo junk arrived from Crutchfield. I could go put the speakers in the truck. The stereo in the box is going back, and the new one won’t be here until tomorrow. I look forward to installing the rear-view camera. I want to have some inkling of what goes on behind me, and right now, I don’t have one.

Parking is the only drawback to this truck. Other than that, it’s a dream vehicle. Comfortable. Relatively quiet (inside). Capable of absolutely anything that doesn’t require turning. Efficient. Powerful. And it scares Miami drivers even more than an INS van. It would be nice if it were three feet shorter and a foot lower, but you can’t have everything.

“Mr. Sluggo Needs Your Help With the Scenery!”

Can I tell you what a delight my leg injury has been?

On Sunday, I went to my church to help dismantle a set. I was in the way the whole time, and I achieved nothing. But someone managed to drop a set on me from behind, removing a whole lot of skin from my ankle and leaving a marvelous 3″-square raspberry on my lower back.

I began treating the ankle by hosing it with Bactine once a day and then applying gauze and soft tape. Let me say right now that I’d like to punch the ad guy who made up the lie about Bactine not stinging. It’s like pouring hot sauce and lemon juice on the wound. Before doing these things, I washed it in the shower with a washcloth. That was pretty awful, but not as bad as the Bactine.

I started smearing it with Neosporin before taping it up. I developed some soreness, so I thought it might be getting infected. Now I’m changing the dressing twice a day, and I’m starting each change by rubbing the wound with alcohol, to clean the crap off. WOW does that open your eyes. First that, then the horrible Bactine, then Neosporin.

I have to keep up with this thing, or it will take forever to heal. Guess I better hit the drugstore and get supplies.

Don’t let anybody drop anything on you. Spare yourself this misery. I can’t even imagine what a big area of road rash would be like. This is the same sort of thing, but it’s only a few square inches.

“The Little Speck in the Window is Waving at Us”

I am hopeless. I wanted to get a cheap stereo for the truck, but I ended up going for a DVD rig with navigation.

I know I’m an idiot. I have no defense this time.

It’s not as bad as it sounds, though. I realized the CD receiver I had ordered was not going to cut it with a rear-view camera, and I really REALLY want a rear-view camera. These cameras are stupid when fastened to ordinary cars, but my truck practically needs tugboats. I can’t see a thing when I look out the back window.

I had a couple of choices. I could get a CD receiver and a separate camera and monitor, or I could get a DVD receiver and a camera. The price would not have been much different. With the separate systems, I’d have two installations to do. I’d have more hardware. And I wouldn’t get the added bonus of easier MP3-folder navigation, which comes with the bigger screen. When I found out I could get a GPS, too, toy-lust kicked in. And Crutchfield had an open-box deal which saved me another 60 bucks.

A GPS is one of the dumbest things you can put in your car, unless you’re going senile. But the fun factor is impossible to ignore. It will be useful. No doubt about that. But I seem to survive without one every day.

I will also be able to hook my cell phone up to the stereo, so I can have more accidents. There is no way I’ll do that. My big goal, as a chronically absent-minded person, is to learn to turn the cell off whenever I get in the car and then turn it on when I get out. Hooking it up to the stereo is like paying people to rear-end and sideswipe me.

I should make up my mind. Do I want a thumb drive, or do I want to put my old 40-gig MP3 player in the glove compartment? I think the drive is a better option. I’ll never fill a 16-GB drive, and a drive doesn’t require power, and a drive will never crash. At least I don’t think it will. It would take a burst of electricity, wouldn’t it? No moving parts.

The only thing I’m sure of is that I’ll never use this receiver to watch DVDs.

I still need nerf bars and maybe an engine tuner. I think that will cover me. Dang. Forgot the bed liner. I better get that before she rusts out.

Keeps Passing Tests

Today I got up and did my usual prayer and communion thing. I have been trying to learn to hear from God. One thing I’m trying is asking for guidance as to which scriptures I should read in the morning.

Weird things happened last week. Let me see if I can remember the facts. One morning, I asked what I should read, and I heard “Josiah.” But there is no book of Josiah. So I read Jeremiah. And it turned out the part I was reading was about Josiah, the last good king of Israel. Score one for God.

The next day, I tried again, and I heard “Rehoboam.” There is no book of Rehoboam. But I looked Rehoboam up, and once again, the scriptures I was looking at referred to Josiah. Three hundred years before he was born, a prophecy named him and said he would be a reformer.

That makes two.

A day or two after that, I wanted to read about the temptation of Christ. My mind said, “That’s in Matthew 4.” I don’t know the gospels that well. I know John 3:16, but I don’t know which book or chapter goes with which story. But I opened the Bible anyway, and there I found Jesus, refusing to jump off the temple. And he cited the psalm I was in the process of memorizing, which is number 91.

Almost creepy.

Today, I heard “Malachi 3:11.” My first thought was that I hoped Malachi had a third chapter. I didn’t know. But I looked. Here is what I saw:

And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts.

Dang.

I’ve heard that verse a lot. It’s very popular among prosperity preachers, both good and bad. It expresses a concept which has been on my mind lately, because I think my family has been under a curse. But I didn’t know the chapter and number!

I felt like documenting it.

I’m wondering if I should have gotten a DVD receiver for the truck. Why? Because a DVD receiver will accept a rearview camera. My truck is so big, I have no idea what’s going on behind it. Also, a DVD receiver will have a bigger screen for navigating folders and finding music.

I can send the new CD receiver back to Crutchfield. Thoughts?

MRI Blessings

My sister had her cranial MRI tonight. This is to determine whether the cancer has spread to her brain. They’ll interpret it tomorrow. Do me a favor and pray.

New Bomb Method Plumbs Depths of Depravity

I guess I should call Line-X today. Day before yesterday I looked at the truck bed after a rain, and you could have used it to raise goldfish. I hope there is no rust under the drop-in liner.

Black appears to be the way to go. I thought red would be neat, and it would be more comfortable to deal with in the burning sun, but I’m positive it will be pink after a year.

I am going to upgrade the stereo a little. I am not a boom-car guy, but the factory radio is not inspiring. One problem: I can’t get below 70 Hz without a sub, and if I put it in the back seat, it will take up precious floor space. How am I going to hear Ray Brown? I may have to cave on this issue. I don’t expect great sound in a vehicle, but when notes are completely absent, it’s bad.

It turns out CD changers are obsolete. The Crutchfield guy I talked to confirmed it. He said you can hook a thumb drive up to your stereo and get the same effect. Granted, you may lose some sonic perfection due to compression, but car sound is car sound. I doubt I could tell the difference with the motor running.

I was thinking I might burn music DVDs and put them in a changer. But it looks like CD changers don’t play DVDs. That’s stupid. A single DVD can hold an insane amount of music.

Let’s see. A DVD holds roughly 5 gigs. A thumb drive–I better check before I make a fool of myself–16 gigs. So a changer holds less than two thumb drives, and it costs more than they would. Talk about “duh.” A changer would be a bad idea even if it read DVDs.

I have a 40-gig MP3 player I rarely use. I could stick it in the truck. It’s a hard-drive player, so it’s going to poop out eventually. Might as well get some use from it.

Crutchfield was great. They gave me good advice, caught me when I ordered too much stuff, and gave me free junk to move an old stereo to my dad’s Explorer. Thumbs up on that deal.

I’m thinking about going to an empty parking lot and spending some time practicing my parking. I keep missing spaces by 50%. I need to get it together. I won’t always have the Thunderbird to fall back on. I need to polish the remarkable head-out parking skills I learned in law school. Not sure if this will make things easier on the way in, but getting out will be less traumatic.

Miami has horrible parking lots with tiny spaces. I’m getting used to parking far from stores, where there is more room.

I love these polite Miami drivers. Where were they hiding back when I was driving a small car? They’re so eager to get out of my way, even when it’s their turn to go. I feel terrible about all the bad things I’ve said about them in the past.

Most interesting item in the news? The Al Qaeda butt bomber. I’m sure you’ve read about it. He stuck a cell phone and a pound of explosives in his rear end, approached Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and blew himself up.

The obvious ramification…unpleasant changes in airport security. Backscatter scanning reveals your private parts to bored TSA screeners, and you have to take off your shoes, and you may have to be checked with a metal-detecting wand. But as far as civilians know, there are no precautions that will weed out bombers with explosives in their rectums. A butt bomb could easily depressurize a jet. It could bring it down, so we can’t ignore the threat. Something is going to be done to counter it. And it will not be fun.

Maybe they’ll start ultrasounding random passengers. Won’t that be fantastic? I’m assuming ultrasound can detect machinery that has been concealed anally. Not something I know a lot about. If not, guess what? STRIP SEARCHES.

You have to wonder. Will this be the final straw that forces the government to acknowledge that terrorism is perpetrated almost entirely by Muslims? Can we finally admit that profiling the group of people that produces terrorists is a good idea?

How many blue-eyed, freckled, Christian grandmothers have we humiliated, trying to bolster our ridiculous contention that terrorism isn’t an Islamic phenomenon? We smiled and put up with it when they were merely feeling us up and making us take off our shoes. Will we be as patient when they’re stripping us naked and ramming instruments up our behinds in rooms full of strangers?

And for once, let’s be as creative as the terrorists. Let’s not be limited by tunnel vision. Let’s admit that airplanes aren’t the only targets. Imagine a flash mob of twenty butt bombers at the New York Stock Exchange or at a Presidential speaking engagement. Think your stocks are in the toilet now? You haven’t seen anything yet.

I can’t say it enough. Anyone willing to eat a piece of pork at a boarding gate should be allowed to bypass security screening. And we should make airline seats from pigskin, and airline passengers should carry lard with them. No bomb? No pig-molecule contamination for Mohammed’s servants. How can they object?

I think we need to start popularizing pork-based skin creams and cosmetics. Lard is a marvelous moisturizer, provided you refine it and remove the scent. We’re not even allowed to say “swine flu” because the intolerant among us can’t stand the word “swine.” We need to let them know they don’t make the rules. Lard-based lipstick. Lard-based hair conditioner. These things would make a glorious statement.

It’s not intolerance. It’s a response to intolerance.

Swine, swine, swine, pig, ham, bacon, Hush Puppies. Get over it. Somebody make me a T-shirt that says “Bacon is the Bomb” in Arabic.

Think how useful a little tube of lard could be in a hostage situation. You sneak it around to the other hostages, everyone smears it on, and then you tell the Muslim criminals. “Touch me, and you touch lard.”

Actually, I could say that as a general rule. But I’m losing weight every week.

Prince Abdullah’s butt bomber is going to father a generation of imitators, unless Islamic extremists have matured a lot over the last year or two. When they discovered the IED, it became an enduring craze. This should be no different.

And here we are, with a PC wimp in the White House. “Carter II” was an understatement.

It’s going to be an interesting fall.

Run the Radio All Night!

I know I am inviting abuse by admitting this, but I didn’t look under the hood of my truck until today. After all, I did pay a mechanic for a six-page report. I checked the oil while filling up. It looks new in there. The oil looks very clean for a diesel. I had a Toyota that never turned its oil dark. Couldn’t figure that out.

One surprise: the truck has two batteries.

Can someone explain this to me? Is it because diesels are hard to crank, or is it just a gimmick to appeal to macho truck nerds? It definitely would have worked on me.

I’m looking at bedliners. The factory drop-in looks okay, but there is dirt under it, and the rails are unprotected. I’m thinking Line-X. I considered getting it matched to the truck, but I don’t trust it not to fade. They say red liners turn pink. Line-X now has a super-duper version that’s guaranteed not to fade, but what if it doesn’t work? Hard to fix. They could spray over it, but if you got a scratch, the red would pop out. Black, on the other hand, attracts heat worse than red.

I’m also wondering about paintless dent repair. The truck has a few dings. Not sure how safe paintless repair is. I don’t want to pull the paint off the truck while trying to fix it.

I think I’m getting about 15 miles per gallon, but I’m not sure. I can’t be certain what the odometer read the last time I filled it up. And I screwed up this time by pumping diesel after the pump went off. I thought it went off early, so I started it again, and I filled the tank higher than normal. This will throw mileage calculations off.

Seems to get better mileage than a typical Thunderbird. I can’t say whether that extends to my own Thunderbird, because I never bothered checking the gas mileage. I didn’t drive it enough for it to matter.

I ordered a wider rear-view mirror. Hope it works.

More

I feel like I’m dreaming.

I just found out the engine on my truck (the whole powertrain) has a 100,000-mile warranty. I was looking into modifications to boost the mileage when I found this out. You can put bigger injectors on it, and you’ll get 50 extra HP at the rear wheels, but you also get better mileage. Problem: it may void the warranty.

I can’t figure this out. Better mileage than my two-seat Thunderbird. Great acceleration. A 5000-pound payload. Four-wheel drive. And a ridiculous powertrain warranty. Where is the catch?

Maybe it’s the hundred-yard turning circle.

Mirror Problem

I’ve had it with the tiny rear-view mirror on the Dodge. It’s too narrow from top to bottom. I’m sure someone out there makes a good replacement for it. Any recommendations? I don’t want one of those three-foot-long jobs that will pull the mount off the windshield. Just a mirror in a realistic size.

Second Effort, With More Grease

I have a big pile of Orinoco bananas, with more on the way. I made banana nut bread to get rid of some of it. My sister is not taking food seriously enough. She seems to think she can turn food down because it’s not exactly what she wants. Not the right approach when you’re on chemo and starting radiation therapy. Who knows if she’ll be able to eat in a week? The banana nut bread ought to be helpful.

Here’s what I’m trying.

INGREDIENTS

3 ripe bananas, mashed (I used two Orinocos)
2 1/4 cups non-rising biscuit flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda
2 eggs
1 stick butter
1/4 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup chopped pecans
pinch nutmeg
pinch cloves
1/8 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla

I think that’s all of it. I mixed it and dumped it in a Teflon bread pan, and I’m baking at 350º for one hour and fifteen minutes. You stick a toothpick in it to see if it’s done.

Last time I added a shot of banana liqueur, but this batter was too wet for that. Maybe if I added another quarter-cup of flour.

I’m hoping this will be moister than the loaf I made last time, which was excellent but not sublime.

I’ll tell you if it’s any good.

More

The bread is very good. I’m not sure 350 is the right temperature, though. It seems a little dark. Maybe 325 is better. Also, I think I’ll omit the coconut oil next time and just use butter. The salt needs to be increased. And I definitely need to get out the PAM and quit being brave. This loaf stuck to the pan.