Costco Gets Even Better

I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it. It’s too good to be true. If I believe it, it will turn out to be a hoax, and then I’ll be crushed.

A news story says PRIME BEEF IS SHOWING UP AT COSTCO.

No. It’s a cruel joke.

I am absolutely crazy about prime beef. This is one reason I love rib eyes so much. A choice rib eye is nearly as good as the prime version of some other cuts. I don’t buy a lot of prime beef, because it’s so expensive. Once in a while, I’ll get a prime rib roast, age it, cut it into steaks, and freeze them. But I haven’t done it in a while. Even I feel strange, paying over $150 for one roast.

I still laugh about the “green bag” the store gave me the last time I bought a prime roast. It’s really stupid. The greenies, in their hysteria, are moaning about a nonexistent landfill crisis caused by grocery bags, so the store decided to reward people for big buys by giving them reusable cloth bags. I paid $162.50 for a huge hunk of corn-fed prime beef, so I qualified for a ridiculous hippie green bag! I love it.

Now maybe I can get a jump on the prime beef game. According to the Wall Street Journal, the economy is hurting steakhouses, so the beef they usually buy is going to grocery stores, and the prices are low.

Did I just wake up in a dream? Don’t pinch me.

I don’t understand why prime beef has always been so hard to find in some areas. Mike lives near DC, and you would think there would be an awful lot of spoiled, narcissistic people up there who would be willing to buy prime beef which they are unable to appreciate. But he has a hard time getting it. Maybe the people who eat prime are generally willing to go to restaurants to get it.

Big mistake, if true. My steak dinners blow the steakhouses away, and yours can, too. You have to be nuts to waste money on Ruth’s Chris or Peter Luger’s when you can eat better food at home, cheaper.

I guess I was noticing a fortunate trend when I saw prime rib selling at the local store for $12 per pound last week. That’s not bad at all. It means I can get five mindblowing 2″ rib eyes for $120. If they have prime at Costco, I can do even better, although they’ll probably cut out the bone.

To me, the ideal dinner is a rib eye, a big baked potato with sour cream and butter, homebrew, and a killer dessert, like homemade blueberry cheesecake or a big apple pie. That is as good as food gets. I would guess that the ingredients for an entire cheesecake run about $10, if you downsize my recipe to make it more practical. Add $48 for the steak and maybe five bucks for the potato, and you have a dinner that will kill two people, for around $65. Why would you go to a restaurant and pay more for inferior food?

Costco charges about $5.50 for choice rib eyes. Some dude in the story I linked to says they charged him $9 for prime steaks. And Costco rib eyes are always boneless, so while I prefer bone-in, the price is even better than it looks. I would almost buy another freezer to nail that deal down.

I was thinking of filling my second beer cooler with frozen food, to make Obamanomics less frightening. I guess I should do it.

I shouldn’t be glad. People are suffering. That’s why the cheap food is turning up. In a year or so we’ll probably see many, many things dropping significantly in price. Businesses that benefit from high markups in good times have to slash their margins to survive in recessions. Prices will fall, but many people will still be unable to buy. I’m assuming Obama’s efforts to devalue our money will turn out to be weaker than downward pressure on prices.

I got a crazy deal on my milling machine. It would have been a deal at full price, but they reduced the price AND threw in a variable-speed head. I suppose they were thrilled to make a sale.

Man, I hate being on a diet. I get 1800 calories on a typical day, so I can’t fit a real meal into my schedule, even if I only eat once a day. You can get 3000 calories in a high-fat feast without really stuffing yourself. A rib eye is probably over 1500. My only decent meals come on Saturdays, when I drop the restrictions. So I only get to cook good food a couple of times a week. And this is how I plan to live from now on. Maybe I can get some relief if I make smaller portions of good food.

I guess if I can get boneless Costco prime rib eyes, I can cut them thin enough to make them fit into a normal day. When I get bone-in rib eyes, I can’t cut them any thinner than 2″, because that’s the distance between ribs.

It’s rough, writing about this on a day when I had oatmeal for breakfast.

Costco mission this week.

Life Imitates Star Wars

Am I the only one who sees a creepy kinship between Michael Jackson and Darth Vader?

It just occurred to me. They both appeared godlike to their minions, and both made use of impressive costumes. But underneath…pale, sickly, grotesque bodies with lots of scars and damage.

Now I’ll be thinking about this all weekend.

I never understood the Jackson phenomenon. “Beat It” was a pretty good pop song, but his other stuff was awful. “Thriller” was just plain stupid. And although he danced well, he didn’t do his own choreography.

Some pop giants make sense. Sinatra was amazing. Elvis was overrated, but pretty good. I always thought the Beatles sounded like a bunch of tipsy middle-aged British spinsters singing along with the telly, but I realize they were talented. But Michael Jackson is like Madonna. A craze in search of an explanation.

It’s funny; some people who are truly talented never achieve great success. Other people become huge stars and then, in retrospect, appear mediocre. If you become a popular idol, and then afterward, when viewed objectively, your work seems forgettable, haven’t you traded your life for nothing? Didn’t you chase a mirage? Weren’t you cheated?

The end of a thing is better than the beginning. The Bible says that. Unless it was Shakespeare. I forget. But it’s true. No matter how good your life seems while you’re caught up in it, if it’s not based on something solid, it can turn sour in an instant. Faster than you could imagine, you could come to the realization that you traded your life for a bill of goods. On the other hand, a change for the better is always worth it, as long as you have breath in you.

At the store yesterday, I saw the gossip rags. Half of it is about Jackson. It’s as if human maggots are coming out to feast on him. To destroy whatever it was that he built up during his life. As if to spite him. To make sure that wherever he is, he realizes he got nothing in exchange for his years.

Someone help me understand all the news anchors I’ve seen, claiming they have Ipods full of Michael Jackson music. I didn’t realize people actually listened to that stuff. I thought they just watched the videos and built shrines to him and had plastic surgery so they could look like him. It’s hard for me to believe that relatively normal people were Jackson fans. I always thought his fans were more like the alienated kids who dress up for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Fringe nuts. But I guess that can’t be true, given the number of albums he sold.

I wonder when I’ll be able to wear black loafers again, without people thinking it’s some kind of tribute.

Body Armor Would not Help

I get up in the morning, I make my wonderful, satisfying, minuscule bowl of oatmeal, I sit down at the PC to see what’s happening, and I get this from Marv:

Marv: Marv! Marv! WHOOoooo! Cluck. Cluck. Are you okay? WHOOooo. Mornin’, bird!

How am I supposed to concentrate on email and the Drudge Report? At least Maynard is considerate enough to sulk quietly.

Oh, great. Now he’s starting up. “What are you doing? What are you doing? Maynard bird!”

Birds always make things difficult. I have to take them out of the cage one at a time, or else Marv will be eaten. Night before last I took them out while I watched a DVD. Marv insisted on standing on my pillow, behind my ear. Last night I noticed a spot on the pillow. I wondered if I had some kind of medical thing going on. No, do not be alarmed. It was bird poop. Of course. And I had slept on it the night before. Rubbing my face in it. And my hair.

He was out for half an hour, I made him go at least four times on a newspaper during that time, and he still managed to plant an Improvised Poop Device. I don’t know where it comes from. It’s like he generates it from nothingness. At will.

And I watched him the whole time he was out! I checked the pillow! I knew he was going to do his best to nail that pillow! How did I miss it? It’s like he has a poop cloaking device.

The CIA should train Marvin and turn him loose to poop on bin Laden. He’d find him for sure and get the job done. If he thought there was a peanut in it for him. Then we could follow up with a daisy cutter.

Now Marvin is screaming in Maynard’s voice.

Speaking of bed-related issues, I have learned more stuff about preventing nighttime congestion. It helps if you take out your kitchen trash every night before bed. Unbelievably, stuff that grows in a can far from your bedroom can interfere with your breathing while you sleep. So I guess my once-a-month trash schedule is going to have to be stepped up.

Last thing this morning: please do me a favor and say a prayer for my sister. She’s going in for a medical procedure. Something with her lung. Looks like it’s not all that serious.

Thanks for the help.

Cheap Meat!

I paid a visit to the grocery store to get some wings for dinner. By the way, this is one of the great low-carb feasts of all time. Add salt, pepper, and garlic. Bake at 425 for one hour on a broiling pan. Serve with a mixture of Frank’s Red Hot sauce and butter. Simple.

Anyway, while I was there, I noticed they had beautiful prime rib for $12 a pound. Not choice. Prime! I trembled with desire. This is only 20% more expensive than choice.

It’s funny, but meat seems cheap right now. A couple of years back, I paid $12.50 for prime rib, to age and cut into steaks. Then the price went up. Now it’s down. And the store was packed with cheap chicken. Costco’s meat prices are down, too. Thanks, Fannie Mae and Barney Frank! I wish everyone could benefit from the low prices.

I had to call Mike. A meat-bargain sighting is no fun without someone to share it with.

I thought he was coming down this weekend, but he’s really busy. Might make it a week later.

I would appreciate it if people would include him and his family in their prayers. I’m hoping all four of them end up attending church regularly, and that they start to see the blessings flow.

I can tell I’m going to have to have prime rib soon. Or age a roast for steaks. I only have two aged rib eyes in the freezer, and they’re choice. That is unacceptable.

Still no milling machine.

Give Them What They Asked For!

I skimmed today’s Drudgebart-linked article about Obama’s health debacle jacking NYC taxes up to about 60% on successful citizens. I think it’s FANTASTIC.

Seriously; these people voted for Obama. They need to suffer so they can learn. It’s only right that they get hit harder than the rest of us. I knew this guy was a socialist and a mediocrity from the word “go,” and so did millions of other Americans. If New Yorkers and other blue-state suckers had listened to us, we’d have the slightly less liberal John McCain in the White House. That would be bad, but what we have now is catastrophic.

It’s 2009, and there are still people who think socialism works. Forget the gulags. Forget the collapse of the USSR. Forget the prosperity lower taxes brought us. Turn a blind eye to the fact that capitalism saved China from ruin. No, none of that matters to the adherents of the religion of socialism. They are convinced that if we do something incredibly stupid correctly, we will have success. All the people who tried it before us did it wrong. That’s the problem.

Please, please, let this happen. I want to see what happens to limousine liberals when they lose their limousines. I want to see productive people flee New York and rail at the messiah who disappointed them.

Obama has already managed to alienate part of his base. Some American Jews are finally realizing he’s hostile to Israel. If he wrecks our richest city, maybe he’ll offend more devotees, and the scales will fall from their eyes.

I don’t expect it to happen. I’ll be honest. I think Obama’s supporters are utterly blind. When his simpleminded policies bring pain, the sheep will find a way to defend the shepherd. The rats will protect the piper. “He inherited this problem.” “It didn’t work because he didn’t get everything he wanted.” “George Bush snuck into his bedroom and put a chip in his brain.” Or maybe the explanation will simply be “Dick Cheney!”, combined with a knowing nod. If anything, the suffering Obama causes will make his worshipers cling to him more tightly.

I’ve realized something, and it will offend most people when I point it out. Most Americans do not care about freedom. Remember those Star Trek episodes where Kirk tried to make the aliens understand that human beings were unique, because they couldn’t be happy in cages? That was all a fantasy. It was absolute nonsense. Nothing could be further from the truth. The majority of us will gladly submit to totalitarianism in exchange for a steady supply of food pellets and fresh shavings. Most of us are either liberal or swing voters, and these are the people who vote for increased government control of our lives. Taxes equal control. Entitlements equal control. Gun-grabbing. “Hate crime” legislation. TARP. Coercive green legislation which affects our most private actions. This is us, begging the government to dominate every detail of our lives. Most of us think it’s swell.

Our soldiers fight and die to protect rights which are only important to about a third of us. It’s amazing when you think about it. How has the Constitution lasted so long?

I think Nanny Obama’s warm fuzzy government is like a sweater and mittens that are going to get tighter and tighter until we can’t breathe. I expect it to get worse and worse. We had freedom, and we used it as license to become arrogant, ungrateful degenerates, and now we’re going to lose a lot of it. We’re like the British before they faded. I see almost no hope for America the nation. I believe that from here on out, the nation as a whole will wane, and instead of blessing us corporately, God will look after individuals within the nation. And those individuals will become targets.

It must have been a little like this in Cambodia, Vietnam, Nazi Germany, Cuba, and other nations devastated by mindless personality cults. We’re not as extreme yet, but the same paradigm is in play. An inept leader much of the population finds charismatic, as though he were anointed to deliver us. A captive, fawning, obsequious press. Destructive legislation presented in such a way that anyone who opposes it is considered not merely wrong, but evil. They’re not lining us up beside ditches and shooting us in the head yet, the way leftists have done in so many nations, but the same mindset is at work. Those Eastern-bloc-style posters of Obama staring toward the horizon…they are positively creepy. We never had anything like that for the Bushes, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, or Nixon. Ordinarily, this type of icon only appears in dictatorships or in a religious context. They show that we are crossing the border between support and idolatry. And for what? A former bagman who has toed the line and opposed change his whole career. A lackey who made good. The opposite of a leader.

The Jews are paying the price. Maybe New Yorkers are next. The canaries are coughing. Eventually, the rest of us will smell the fumes.

My advice is to remember the true source of all prosperity and protection. You want a messiah? Fine. Look to the genuine article.

Poisonous Charity

It’s strange, how Ruth Ginsburg’s remark about abortion hasn’t been a bigger story.

Most Americans believe abortion is wrong. Polls prove that over and over. But we keep casting votes that keep it legal. Why? Because we believe in choice? No. If we believed in choice, there would be no such thing as the DEA. Liberals would not have tried to ban breast implants. The FDA’s budget would be slashed by 90%; prescription-only drugs would not exist. Overwhelmingly, Americans believe the government has the right to tell us what to do with our own bodies. It has been a very long time since we could make a credible claim that we believed in choice.

The reason abortion is legal is that the majority hopes that “undesirable” segments of the population will use abortion so enthusiastically that they will significantly reduce their own numbers. Were it not for this hope, abortion support would be very limited. Americans want to prevent the births of “unwanted” babies, and generally, “unwanted” means “black.” And our policy is working beautifully. Black women are much, much more likely to have abortions than white women, and over 16 million black babies have been destroyed. You can read all about it at Blackgenocide.com. This is the chief reason the percentage of black Americans has remained stable. Margaret Sanger’s racist hopes have been fulfilled.

Here is what Justice Ginsburg said:

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them.

It’s much like what Don Zaluchi said in The Godfather, about selling drugs: “In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people, the coloreds. They’re animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.”

Notice she doesn’t say “populations of people who don’t want to increase their numbers.” She said “we” didn’t want “too many” of them. In other words, she acknowledges that the desire to limit growth is not in the hearts of the people whose babies are being aborted. It’s not about THEIR choice. It’s about the majority’s choice to take advantage of their willingness to commit suicide as demographic groups.

It’s like setting out roach motels. For people. Black babies go in, but they don’t come out. At least not through the front door.

Black Americans have an unfortunate tendency to fall for conspiracy theories. One such theory says that Church’s Fried Chicken contains chemicals that make black men sterile, and that Church’s puts its stores in black neighborhoods in order to control the numbers of blacks. In this fantasy, the chain is owned by the Klan.

How crazy is that? Planned Parenthood is actually doing what these innocent purveyors of fast food are falsely accused of. They are reducing the black population. They put about 90% of their mills in minority neighborhoods. Planned Parenthood was founded by a racist and classist who openly admitted she wanted to reduced the numbers of blacks and the poor. Why is it that blacks patronize Planned Parenthood with no qualms, while muttering slanders against a company that sells chicken? If I were black, and I were likely to impregnate women to whom I wasn’t married, and I believed this nonsense, I’d just eat the chicken. It’s cheaper.

I have often complained that black people persist in believing that white people are out to get them. But I was only half right. It’s true that the impact of overt racism is exaggerated. If anything, being black will help you get a job instead of hindering you. White people are pretty good about avoiding overt discrimination. But when it comes to abortion, we really are out to get them. Not by denying them access to opportunity, but by providing them with a bad choice. We build the clinics. We subsidize the abortions. We help pay for the ads. By so doing, we kill two birds with one stone. We pander to our own racist fears of being “outbred,” and we manage to make ourselves look generous. We are killing minorities and the poor with charity, or rather, we’re helping them kill themselves. What better way to commit genocide than by preventing your enemies from being born? This is why the Nazis experimented with sterilization in the concentration camps.

The babies that have been aborted were unwanted; that’s for sure. They were unwanted by the majority. They were unwanted in country clubs and in upscale neighborhoods. Prospective adoptive parents…they wanted them. They still do. But what they want doesn’t matter.

The nutty thing about the term “unwanted children” is that no one points out that the people who want these children least are not the people who conceived them.

Minorities need to wake up. They need to ask themselves why white people drive in from the suburbs to cheer and smile as they open new abortion mills in poor neighborhoods. Let me ask you this: do you think white people would support fertility clinics in black neighborhoods? Seriously.

Planned Parenthood offers treatment for infertility, purely to preserve the fiction that “family planning” is their purpose. But for every infertility patient, it performs over 300 abortions. Do you think Planned Parenthood would continue to receive donations if that ratio were suddenly reversed? They’d have to shut their doors.

I’m glad Justice Ginsburg slipped up. No one listens when conservatives tell the truth about abortion. It’s different when it comes from the left.

In the Bible, there is a recurring theme of infertile women pleading for God to give them children. When those children arrived, they were considered gifts. And we are told that God knows us before we are born; we are not just clumps of meat. Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, felt her baby move in her womb in response to the proximity of the unborn Jesus. It’s so strange, living in a time when mothers–even married ones with good jobs–consider conception a curse. They view it almost as a disease; an affliction to be cured with medical treatment. And it’s almost always something they risked deliberately; they bring it about by choosing to be sexually active. Only a tiny percentage of abortions are the result of coerced sex.

Life has gotten so shabby and mechanical. Where is the satisfaction in a life in which you see yourself purely as an animated object with no connection to anything beyond this grubby physical realm? Where is the hope? What is the point in getting up every day? This is not how we were intended to live. Human life has special significance. It has purpose. It isn’t something we should destroy simply because we find contraception inconvenient, yet that is the primary reason abortions occur.

A human being shouldn’t live like a rat or a goat. We ought to be more than that. Even–forgive me for saying it–the poor. It matters whether they live or die. It matters whether their children are allowed to be born. Intelligence and income do not determine the value of a human being. Ruth Ginsburg may not want “too many” of these people, but who is she to make the call?

The ancient Canaanites used to kill their firstborn sons, pickle them in jars, and put the jars in the walls of their homes. The idea was that this would insure their prosperity. God preserved the memory of this barbaric custom with irony, in the curse Joshua pronounced on Jericho (Joshua 6:26):

And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the LORD, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.

It’s hard for me to see how aborting a child for financial reasons is any different. Either way, you are trying to build your prosperity on the dead body of your offspring. If there is no God, fine. You were smart. You saved money. But what if he exists and he has the power to determine how your life turns out? How will he see your prayers for help, when your child’s remains are always before him, in a sewer or a landfill? If you won’t help the poor, that’s bad. Isn’t it worse if you refuse to provide nine months of life support to a helpless, innocent child you created? The Bible says God treats us the way we treat others. It says a husband’s prayers will be hindered if he mistreats his wife. What could be lower than refusing to bear your own child?

Life is so simple for atheists. At least until it’s over.

I know this kerfuffle will die away, but I thought I should say something about it while it was still fresh.

My New Mini-Bike

My phone is annoying.

I had received some requests for photos of the Moto Guzzi, so tonight after a ride, I took a quick snapshot.

Here it is. Full size.

When I put the phone in my pocket, the buttons push themselves, and apparently, they managed to push themselves in just the right order to shrink the photo size.

So get out your magnifying glass. This is the best I could do.

SALE!!!!!

I got an email from Enco today. They love sales and promotions. This one is pretty good. Free shipping, plus 10% off. How am I supposed to get anything done, with a temptation like that rolling around in the back of my head?

Let’s see. What do I need right now? A square. Definitely. Micrometers! The ones I got from the guy who sold me my lathe are useless. And with Enco’s sale, it’s all nearly FREE! FREE! FREE!

Okay, I’m breathing into a paper bag. I guess I don’t actually have to order anything.

This weekend, my dad needed to fix the latches on some cabinets on the boat. I went with him, looking for stuff at local stores. It’s amazing, how these cabinets manage to be incompatible with almost everything out there. Yesterday I realized that if I had a MILLING MACHINE, I could fix this problem pretty easily. For that matter, the band saw would also do a good job.

I’ve discovered the problem with having tools. When you have them, you develop an unspoken obligation to MAKE STUFF for people.

I wonder what state the mill is in right now.

It Haunts Me

Guess what I still don’t have?

A MILLING MACHINE.

I’m starting to wonder if it really exists. Maybe I imagined it.

I have a powerful suspicion that the mill will be easier to use than my lathe, which means I might actually be able to make something useful with it. I would really like to put this hunch to the test. But I haven’t heard anything from the seller or riggers or importer since last week.

The positive side of all this is that I haven’t had any metal splinters in several days.

I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but every time I use the lathe, I have to spend five minutes over a magnifying lamp, trying to find tiny yet extremely painful splinters that have lodged in my hands. These things are so small, sometimes they’re nearly microscopic. Yet somehow, they’re big enough to hurt. You find them when you move your hand past something, and the splinters catch on it. Like using a towel, or putting your hand in your pocket.

I’ve figured one thing out. If you have to have metal splinters, you want steel. Because it will eventually rust and disappear. Aluminum and stainless are forever, unless you find them. I think.

I have just about everything I need to start milling. The cutters are here. The oil. The vise. The 1-2-3 blocks. Parallels. A VFD. I even have a huge chunk of steel. I may still have to cut into one of my 220 circuits, depending on how short I want the power cord to be. Other than that, I think I’m ready.

I have no PROJECTS, of course. Let’s not talk crazy.

I hope this thing arrives this week. There is nothing like the satisfaction of realizing a dream, even if, like mine, it’s a silly dream.

Evangelist’s Confusing Itinerary

Here is something new and weird.

I like watching Perry Stone and reading his books. Sometimes, maybe, he looks at scriptures and events a little too hard, in his determination to find meaning. But overall, I like what he does.

He sells recordings of appearances he does while traveling. Sometimes these things are really good. Yesterday I looked at his website, and he was selling a new CD set…from the incredibly obscure town where I was born.

It’s hard to explain how unimportant this place is. As far as I know, nothing whatsoever happens there. I wouldn’t describe it as a farming town. On the other hand, with a population of under 17,000 people, it’s not large enough to be a big city where rural people go to shop or get medical treatment. Lexington, which is almost a real city, is just 18 miles away. My grandmother used to drive by without stopping, every week, to shop in Lexington.

It has no personality. It has zero importance to history. Daniel Boone lived there, but not while he was doing things historians care about. In all the time I’ve spent in Kentucky, I can’t recall having any reason to go to this town, except for a brief period during which I worked at a local roadhouse. If you ever visit, you’ll have the same thought I’ve had: “Why did they put a town here?” Yet somehow, Perry Stone (who lives in another state) thought it was a good place to have a series of meetings.

I can’t figure it out. Why didn’t he just go to Lexington?

Curiosity got to me. I ordered the CDs. I have to find out what he said there.

This is even weirder than having a President who was a member of my class at Columbia.

Stephanopoulos, I remember. He lived across the hall. Obama? A cipher.

I keep trying to figure out what God wants with me. There must be something. He is going to so much trouble to keep my attention. What a great thing that is. Talk about feeling special. And as far as I know, he is willing to treat every believer this way. Can we all be special? I guess so. Maybe this is the feeling we are trying to replace when we stupidly strive to get attention from other people. The life of an unbeliever is an endless, frustrating process of filling holes with the wrong things.

Church was a little boring last week, but I learned something good anyway. I already knew it, but I hadn’t been thinking about it enough. The guy who spoke talked about making offerings in response to blessings. For example, say your kid has a medical test, and it turns out negative. To acknowledge it, you do something for God. It’s impractical to sacrifice animals these days, so money is a good vehicle. Pick a cause you’re sure God likes and give a little something to show you know where the good news really came from.

I’m going to keep that in mind from now on. I think gratitude without works is like faith without works. Wasted and incomplete. Even God should get thank-you cards.

Slap the Man Behind the Curtain

A number of times, I’ve written about the weird “coincidences” that keep happening when I go to church. Here is tonight’s.

On Tuesday, I had to sit through a sales pitch. I wrote about this already.The salesperson was the daughter of someone my dad knows. I wouldn’t call this man a friend. He’s in real estate, and he tries to get my father to invest in things that I think are extremely ill-advised. I can’t warm up to people who hawk risky investments to senior citizens, especially when they go after my family.

The daughter contacted my dad last week, and she asked if she could do a sales presentation. He referred her to me. All she would tell me was that she sold something related to cooking. I told my dad how much I was not looking forward to the presentation, and derider of Christianity that he is, he said it was my Christian duty. I believe God speaks to people through their parents, so at that point, I let it go and decided to suffer through the pitch. It was very out of character for him to say that, so I figured there had to be a reason it had happened.

It turned out she was selling Cutco knives. I didn’t take any; they’re extremely expensive, and I don’t need them, and the quality doesn’t exactly give me goosebumps. On top of that, I felt that buying from her would be perpetuating a relationship in which her family had a pattern of taking advantage of mine. Breaking out of destructive patterns is a big part of Christianity. Maybe I was overly wary, but the whole thing put me on edge.

Let’s move to tonight. The pastor was talking about living life on the offensive. Somehow, he wandered off into a story about a young acquaintance of his who had a new job. And guess what that job was? Selling kitchen knives. No company was mentioned, but obviously, this kid is a Cutco rep. The big differences in our stories are that the kid in the pastor’s story cut himself badly while demonstrating the product, and that the pastor bought some stuff. Okay, maybe he’s a better Christian than I am. On the other hand, I doubt the kid’s father ever tried to get a high-interest loan from the pastor’s dad, to finance a buy at the top of a real estate bubble.

After church, my payoff was that I had a “coincidence” story for my dad. The more of my testimony he hears, the better off he’ll be. Sooner or later, he’ll crack.

The sermon was excellent. He was talking about the necessity of taking the initiative in life. If you’re on the offense, you design the game, and you force your enemy to react after you strike. I listened to this stuff, and I wondered why I needed to hear it. I wondered what I had been doing wrong THIS time. Generally, when I hear a sermon, I find that it addresses some issue I need to work on.

Here’s the great part. After a while, I came to the conclusion that I was doing okay! I think he was talking about an area of my life where I’m doing pretty well. That came as a relief. After hearing so many sermons in which faults of which I had been unaware had been made clear to me, it was wonderful to hear about things I was doing right. I’ve put in a lot of work. I’ve been on the offensive for years now. I started praying regularly in 2001, and I’ve been moving in God’s direction ever since. Maybe tonight it was time for a little harvesting. A break. A reward.

I think regular prayer is an extremely powerful, life-changing way of taking the initiative. Think about it. Isn’t most prayer reactive? You do it as a defensive measure. For example, you get a disease. Your child has an accident. Your husband gets fired. So you start to pray. “Please fix this problem.” Then the problem goes away, maybe, and so does the praying. Or the problem overcomes you, and you stop praying, because you figure there is no longer any point. When you live that way, who decides when you pray and when you go to church and when you behave? Satan. Am I wrong? You’re not making the rules or choosing the playing field. He is. But if you get up every morning, even when things are going great, and you pray, you’re eating into his profits. Hammering holes in his front lines. And he can’t predict it. He doesn’t know the future. He can’t see your punches coming. He has to react as best he can, and he loses over and over, because he is weaker than we are.

I thought about this tonight during church. I’m always mad because I was born into a world where hostile spirits have been attacking my kind since we were first created. It’s like living in a tank full of invisible sharks. They have been harming me all my life. Spoiling my dreams. Ruining my relationships. Taking money from me. Injuring me. They do the same things to you. The Bible refers to these miserable beings as “destroyers” and “devourers.” If you’re a Christian, surely you’ve wished you could have five minutes alone with one, in a locked room, with a blow torch and a broken beer bottle. Well, you can. Sort of. If you take the initiative, you become THEIR destroyer and devourer. You spoil THEIR dreams. You make them suffer. You ruin their plans and humiliate them. You wreck and take away the things that give them satisfaction. And it’s not a symmetrical situation. They can never break even, because in the end, they’re going to be condemned and disassembled before the cheering people they used to torment.

That’s inspiring. I can get excited about that. Revenge is wrong, when it’s directed at human beings. When it’s directed at principalities and powers, it’s far from wrong. It’s our purpose. It’s our duty. We are supposed to do what is right, and doing right is what makes them suffer. We are not expected to forgive them. We are not expected to turn the other cheek. It’s open season. When you pray or you give money to charity or the church, or you do things to help other people, you are like a festering blight in Satan’s garden. I never realized this until today. We CAN have vengeance. We can be to Satan what he has always been to us.

That’s really wonderful. When I do good, I eventually run out of steam. I have a limited amount of love to drive me. But anger…that never runs out. I have seen and experienced too much suffering to ever get tired of punishing the most guilty parties. Looking at it this way, I find it much easier to forgive human beings. If I can get at a vicious and cowardly supernatural being by forgiving a person, I’m happy to make the exchange. For as long as I have been aware that these creatures existed, I have wanted a way to cause them despair and make their efforts come to nothing. I didn’t fully understand that I was already doing these things.

The knife thing really weirded me out. I hope things like that keep happening to me for the rest of my life.

No Fish

I have once again graced the sea with my presence.

Today my dad and I hosted his ex partner, the partner’s son, my friend Pat, and Pat’s cousin Lazaro. All the guests were late, including Val Prieto, who still has not arrived. When we tried to leave the dock, the starter on the port engine refused to work. Lazaro and Pat fooled around, trying an old trick I had not heard of. They hit it with a hammer. It didn’t work, but once they told me where the starter was, I realized I had no excuse for not looking at it. I climbed into the engine room and went around behind the engine, on the port side, and started looking. While I was down there, someone pressed the starter button, and one of the electrical connections got red hot for a second.

I realized what was going on. I got people to pass me tools while I fixed it. One of the power connections on the starter was rusty. It’s probably supposed to have brass hardware on it, but it had a steel washer, and there was rust. When big DC connections get corroded, they heat up. Must be the increased resistance. I took two thick cables off, cleaned everything with a wire brush and a sheet of sandpaper, and put it all back together. And the motor started, and off we went. Being a Christian, I could not help praying for help with it, and I got what I asked for. I think sometimes we overestimate the amount of faith we need to get prayers answered. I’ve gotten good results on occasions when I found my own faith levels disappointing.

I believe God answers prayers about trivial things. Here’s an example that’s so reliable, it’s almost annoying. “Please help me find my hey there it is.” Happens several times a week. Exactly like that.

The part I liked best was when I was still down there, with the engine and two air conditioning units going, and everyone in the salon was talking about how great it was that the motor was running. Like it wasn’t particularly important if I ever got out. I yelled until they started reaching for tools, and I climbed out over a by-now-hot AC condenser, and we went fishing.

All we caught was a big barracuda. There was very little weed, and the dolphin were nowhere in sight. Even the barracuda got off before we could boat it. Which is good, because all we wanted was to get the hook back. You have to be brave to eat a big barracuda from the Atlantic Ocean. Look up “ciguatera.”

I had fun using my GPS. The boat has a huge one, but it needs repair. I took my handheld out, and it helped us avoid wandering around the ocean and wasting time and fuel.

Two members of the crew got somewhat seasick, and the fish were uncooperative, so we eventually gave up. Still, it’s always a privilege to get out there.

I guess atheists will ask why I didn’t pray for fish. Okay, I did. Happy? I still have a good batting average. And I don’t annoy people by filing lawsuits to keep them from praying before high school football games.

I highly recommend Banana Boat sunblock for kids. It’s not the only sunblock I’ve seen that features a claim that it won’t sting your eyes, but it’s the only one I know of that makes good on the promise. With other sunblocks, after about three hours, I start to feel like I’ve been tear-gassed. The sweat makes the stinging stuff in the sunblock run into my eyes, and once it’s there, only a shower and the passage of an entire day puts an end to it.

The GPS predicted the outcome today. It has a feature called “Hunting/Fishing,” and when you push the button, it tells you how it expects you to do on a given day. Today it predicted “Poor Day.” I don’t know that I want this feature. It’s almost insulting. And how does it know? It’s just an overgrown calculator with a satellite receiver. And what if it says “Excellent Day” and you still catch nothing? What a loser you are on THAT day!

This is like knowing your baby’s sex before it’s born. Some things should remain a mystery.

Imagine the disciples with a GPS.

5 Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No.

6 And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find.

7 And Simon Peter rebuked him, saying, Not so Lord, for verily, the Garmin hath pronounced a curse.

I wonder what features GPS will have five years from now. “Husband Income Predictor.” “SAT Prognosticator.” “Press to See if Your Child Will Grow up to be a Failure.” “First Year Wife Weight Gain.”

Just tell me where the next waypoint is. I can’t handle any more power than that.

Next time, there will be fish. But no loaves. And no, I will not hedge my bets by offering lambs to the GPS.

Get Out Your Credit Card

I did something really dumb the other day. I installed Windows Defender. Have you tried this program? Microsoft released it to try to keep malware at bay. I’m not sure, but I think it may be the same basic thing Vista has, which drives users out of their minds.

Or not. It doesn’t say “Cancel or Allow.” But it does slow down the computer. For days, I’ve been suffering with slow website loading. This morning I finally realized I still had Windows Defender running, after installing real security software. So I dumped Defender, and now all is well. More or less. Some sites still stink. Northern Tool installed something called “liveperson,” which takes about a week to load, every time you go from one page to another. They ought to call it “deadwebsite.”

I Googled to find that Mac ad. Mac people are really annoying; they’re the vegetarians of the computer world. Often literally. But the commercials are great, and Microsoft deserves them. I have lots of software, but when I have a problem, it’s almost always caused by Office or Windows. Funny, how tiny startup companies can make software that works, while big, bloated Microsoft can’t.

“Bloated Microsoft.” Hmm…

These guys need to do a buddy movie.

I’m probably wrong, but my advice is, get rid of Windows Defender, be a man, and spend $30 on actual software made by people who care whether it works.

“Gnocchi, Gnocchi, Gnocchi…”

WHOO HOO! I took the Guzzi out for a spin. Nothing seems to stop that bike. The Harley always requires a new slow jet after I let it sit without fuel stabilizer. The Guzzi will run on sludge. And it has a huge battery that holds a charge way longer than the Harley.

I love both of these bikes. The Harley–people won’t believe this–is refined, ergonomically perfect, and extremely comfortable. The Guzzi is coarse, snarls like a leopard when you hit the throttle, and responds like it’s made of air. When you throw it around, you don’t even feel the weight. And unlike the Harley, it has no footboards to dig into the pavement when you try to turn.

I need new side covers. The ones Guzzi makes are just no good. They press against the underside of the seat, and in time, the pressure tears the plastic, and they fall off. There’s a guy who makes sturdy fiberglass replacements. I need to email him and get it over with. Right now, I have only one cover. Tacky.

I’m still using my old helmet. The visor won’t open, but other than that, it’s as good as it ever was. I guess I can take my time waiting for a deal on a new one.

I have a cover and a disk alarm now, so theoretically, I could keep one bike outside, ready to go. It’s hard to choose. The Harley is a more expensive bike. But the Guzzi is a classic; all Guzzis are, as soon as they’re made.

It occurred to me that I might be able to machine parts for these things. Stuff like foot pegs. Something to think about. Stainless is not expensive, if you look in the right places.

Wish I had more time to ride. You can’t ride in the daytime here and enjoy it unless it’s cool, and in July, that isn’t going to happen. August is worse. I prefer to ride at night, but I get to bed very early these days.

I think I’m going to start riding to church. It’s an evening ride, most of it is highway mileage, and it sure beats quick trips to the grocery. I guess it’s okay. They seem pretty casual up there.

Time for dinner.

“I Meant to Do That”

First up, an important message from former KISPer TC. He sent out an email requesting prayer for a fallen soldier:

Mark’s a good friend. He’s in Landstuhl Army Hospital after being shot in the head in Afghanistan.

Two other Georgia Guardsmen were killed on Monday, bringing the total to 7 KIA so far.

This has been a very costly deployment for the 48th Brigade so far, and it’s only a couple months into their 1 year tour.

Now, to less serious things.

Tyler Youngblood, proprietor of Projectsinmetal.com, noticed my post about the hammer I failed to make using his online plans. He took a moment to write a helpful comment, which I will repost here:

Hi Steve,

I’m sorry you’re having trouble with the soft faced hammer plans, but if it makes you feel any better, I scrapped the project twice before I got it right.

If I may make a few suggestions, maybe I can help. First, 304 stainless is far less forgiving than aluminum, which is what I made my hammer out of. It’s not as durable as stainless, but the hammer could be made fully functional by putting a pin into the head (the threaded head of my aluminum hammer comes loose with vigorous use). Locktite might also be an option. But I’m happy with the aluminum version for “light” hammering, which is what a soft faced hammer is good for anyway.

I didn’t turn the project between centers, but I had the benefit of a taper attachment, so that’s how I got the taper to work. If your compound slide has enough travel, you can definitely use that to put in your taper. Or you can buy/make a lathe dog for use with a proper face plate and do it that way. The only issue there is you mess with the alignment of the tailstock, which I try to avoid.

I’d suggest trying to use your compound to cut the taper. If you only have 2? of travel, change the taper to 2?. It would look different, but that’s fine, its your hammer.

Also, if you try to cut a taper using your compound, make sure to take light cuts. It sounds like you started cutting at the wide end of the taper, and by the time you got to the narrow end of the taper (3? later, up by the threads) you were cutting too much material. Instead, do it the other way. Start 1/4 inch back from the end of the taper and cut 1/4 inch in the direction of the threads, toward the radius. Your cut should gradually get a bit deeper, but since you’re only going 1/4? (and not 3?), the increased depth of cut shouldn’t be an issue. Once you have made that first pass, the rest of the cuts will be parallel to that first pass (thus no gradual increase to your depth of cut). After you’ve made that first pass of 1/4? or so, back your compound away from the part, then back along the axis of the taper you just cut. Your next pass should be 3/8? or so, then 1/2, …. all the way until your last pass takes a finish cut along the entire 3? taper.

It’s hard to explain. I really should make a video because it’s much easier if you see it done. As far as the radius goes, I used a tool with the proper radius to cut the taper, so when the taper was finished, the radius was already present. The radius on the end of the hammer was done with a file while the part was turning (make sure to hold the file backwards, with the tang facing away from you and cut from underneath the part, not on top – that way if the part rips the file out of your hand it will be pulled away from you). And of course, use a file with a handle whenever possible. No handle? Find an old golf ball, drill, and attach to the end of the tang. Tangs are sharp and dangerous.

You’ll need a mill to bore and tap the head of the hammer (where the handle attaches). You could do it on the lathe, but holding the part would require some significant workholding via the faceplate (I wouldn’t try it in a 4-jaw chuck, and a 3-jaw wouldn’t work at all). The threaded portions of the head where the faces attach are drilled on the lathe, but tapped after the larger hole is drilled, bored, and tapped on the mill.

For practice I single pointed the threads on the handle, but they can be cut with much less effort using a die. One of the scrapped handles was due to a mistake I made while cutting the threads.

Let me know if you’d be interested in me making a video of the process. I don’t really need another hammer, but I’d be happy to make a video if you think it would help (and if I can find the time).

Drop me a comment if you run into any other problems. I’d be happy to help in any way I can. I’m still learning too, so I remember how frustrating those first few projects were to master. But once you learn how to do all the steps in the hammer (turn down the dia, turn a taper, file a radius, knurl, single point (or tap/die) threads) you’ve got a very strong foundation and a good understanding of how the lathe works. That’s why the hammer, although difficult, is a great first project.

I’ve got another beginner project (a plumb bob) that uses hex stock, so if you’re interested in that (instead of the screw jack), let me know. Although the plumb bob is meant to be turned out of brass, not stainless. But stainless would work too.

Good luck!

Tyler Youngblood
ProjectsInMetal.com
Seattle, WA

That’s what I call service. I also got some good advice on the Chaski forum.

My biggest problem was trying to make the 3″ taper on the hammer handle. After I posted my whining, it occurred to me that I was probably cutting from the wrong end, and people have since confirmed this. When using a compound to cut a taper, start at the end where you have to remove the most metal. This way, the cuts are deepest as they begin, and they get shallower as you go. That will prevent problems with the cuts getting so deep the lathe throws up or whatever.

I learned a few other things. When trying to make a smooth transition from a straight piece into a taper which is thinner than the straight part, cut from the straight side. Say you have a taper that goes from half an inch to one inch, and you need a straight part one inch thick beyond the taper. You make the straight part too thick, and then you make the taper, and then you cut the straight part down, with cuts beginning at the end of the straight part which is farthest from the taper. The tool will cut off the excess metal from the straight part and then go into empty space as it hits the taper, leaving a smooth transition. At least, it worked that way for me.

I was told to use a file to make the small radii on the tool handle. That sure beats trying to grind a radius tool and then get it to make a perfect cut.

I blew the knurling. I am too lazy to get out my videos and see how it’s done, so I just winged it. No amount of skill can overcome true laziness. I know the knurls have to be perpendicular to the part, and the part has to be centered between the knurls. But I don’t know how to make them go into the same marks over and over as the part turns. I ended up with a surface that isn’t slippery, yet which would never be confused with real knurling.

I may dump this thing and use it for threading practice. It’s still a big piece of metal. There are lots of things I can make from it.

Here’s a photo of what I have. I put Dykem on it to help me line up the knurls.

It’s not good, but I learned a great deal while working on it. And I ran the tool post into the work, and I also ran the carriage into the chuck. No pain, no gain. I just wish I had realized the carriage was blocking the chuck before I took the housing off the lathe to find out what was wrong with it.

Here is the latest news about the milling machine:

Hi Steve,
Sorry, Mark said that he did answer me, I think maybe there was an email problem.
It did ship last week, the driver should be calling soon, he will get the information for me later today, he was not in the office right now.
Thanks again!

Mark is the importer. Man, this is exciting.

I emailed Og for advice about turning parts to specified dimensions. He sent photos of his latest project.

Yeah, I’m sure I’ll be doing this kind of stuff real soon. Notably, he used a crappy board for a base plate. I guess you never get too big for half-assed desperation jigs. I should start photographing the beauties I come up with.

Think I’ll take one of the bikes out and see if the wind blows the swarf out of my clothes. Sometimes I make splinters. Today I made several bona fide Slinkys.