I Nearly Threaded

It is a bit frustrating, having a weird lathe with no clutch or brake and no lead screw. Or is it feed screw? One of them is not there.

I am trying to figure threading out. I have two sources of instruction. First, my Lathe Learnin’ DVDs from Adrian Pendergast. Second, my rented ATI DVDs featuring Darrell Holland. I haven’t looked at the ATI stuff yet.

Pendergast threads without moving his compound slide. I do not know why you would want to move the compound slide, since I have never been taught that way, but it is my understanding that it’s the standard method. I’m sure I’ll find out about it when I see the ATI disks.

My lathe has a belt drive, a quick change gearbox, half-nuts, a sliding gear (?), a back gear, a VFD, and power feeds. Plus a lead screw direction lever. Since I have that lever, I guess I have a lead screw but no feed screw. Whatever the deal is, there is no screw to disengage when I thread. I’ll put it that way.

Forgot: I also have a selector knob that determines the lead screw speed. It has three positions labeled A, B, and C. And of course, B is the fastest. That makes perfect sense.

To get the thread pitch I want, I have to select the lead screw speed, threading gear, motor direction, and slide gear position. Am I forgetting anything? Maybe.

To make the machine thread, I turn it on, position the tool at the right depth, and engage the feed while watching the threading dial. I’m supposed to do a light scratching pass to see if I have the pitch right.

I have had to figure out which of the controls affect the pitch. Some do, and some don’t. It looks like the back gear isn’t relevant, but I decided to use it anyway. It may be a good idea, because it allows the motor to turn faster.

I looked at the machine’s threading chart today to find the pitch I wanted. I was trying to thread the hammer handle I started working on a while back. I needed 11 threads per inch.

I got everything set up more or less right and took a light pass. The threads were like a 64th of an inch apart. Totally wrong. I started adjusting things. I moved the sliding gear knob. I fooled with the lead screw speed. You name it. Finally, I made a brilliant observation. You can’t thread using the power feed lever. You have to use the half-nut lever. They do exactly the same thing, at different rates. I had them mixed up. I’m not sure why the machine needs two levers that are nearly redundant, but I guess there’s a reason. Maybe it’s impossible to gear it up so the same lever will give feed speeds that are good for both threading and power feeding.

I totally ruined the part while I was doing this experimentation, but I think I finally have it figured out. But because my machine has no clutch, I have to be really alert to keep from running the threading tool into the chuck. I have to hit the half-nut lever instantly, when the tool moves off the area I’m threading. If I just shut off the motor, the tool may keep going for a while.

Now I have to get knurling under control. I watched Darrell Holland do it, and it didn’t make much sense to me. I don’t understand how you get the knurls to go into the same marks over and over as the piece turns. You would think there would have to be a constant integral ratio between the diameters of the knurls and the work, but his knurling looked great. He set his lathe up to move the knurling tool .015″ per turn, to push it down the work. I can’t figure out how how you can make a knurl go sideways without jumping out of the marks it’s making. And how did he know .015″ was the right amount to move the knurling tool on each turn?

I’m sure I’m missing something obvious, because he didn’t worry about any of this stuff.

I think I’m going to take my handy Home Depot Chinese dowel and try to learn knurling on it. It’s cheap metal, so I don’t care what happens to it.

It’s fantastic having a TV and DVD player in the garage. I have the AC running, and I sit out there in a state of total bliss, watching my DVDs.

Maybe I can get that stupid dowel knurled. Then I guess I’ll have to cut some more 304 stainless and try making the hammer handle again.

I have to put all the stuff I’m learning into the instructions I’m writing. The lathe manual is pathetic. It’s not intended for pinheads who play with lathes in their garages. It’s for people who don’t need a manual at all.

If I create anything useful, I will announce it here in big bold type. Don’t hold your breath.

Babies are Solid Waste

As you know if you read Drudgebart.com.tv, the wildlife people down here are trying to arrest some goofballs who tried to sell a nurse shark to a store. One of the charges is “improper killing and disposal of an animal.”

Is PETA running the world now? Do we seriously have to worry about being charged with crimes when we off primitive creatures that barely know they’re alive?

When I was a kid, my friends and I killed fish right and left. We were real idiots. Maybe it was because our fathers didn’t spend much time with us and didn’t teach us things, but we had no grasp of the notion that you should only kill things you can use. We gigged every fish we could hit. We would have gigged whales if they had come close enough. And we almost always threw out the meat, because virtually none of it was worth eating.

I remember the time we gigged a cownose ray. I think Mike was there. It was about three feet wide, and it was stupid enough to swim near the seawall where we used to hang out. That amounted to suicide. We lugged it to a friend’s house and performed an autopsy. Our medical conclusions were that if you poked one of the things inside a cownose ray, green stuff would come out, and if you poked another thing, you would get something that looked like thousand-island dressing.

I don’t know where that ray ended up. On another occasion, we tossed a stingray into a neighbor’s pool.

I told you, we were idiots. Sometimes I wish I could travel back in time and take a belt to myself.

Let me say that I have reformed. I don’t fish for worthless creatures. But sometimes I catch them anyway, and the sad fact is, a lot of them get killed in the process. Do I have to worry that a couple of years down the road, PETA nuts will be riding along with the Marine Patrol, yammering at me for not being nice to moray eels and other trash fish?

I very much doubt that nurse sharks are protected. They’re supposed to be very tasty, but very few people know that, so they get thrown back. I would imagine that their numbers are copious. If they are protected, I suppose the doofuses who killed this one should be fined. But the bit about improper killing…that is disturbing. It sounds like it’s unrelated to the species killed. If we give random animals the right to life, we’re going to have to get permits to kill rats and ants.

Not babies, of course. Don’t worry about that. It will always be open season on unborn human beings, and, if Barack Obama gets his way, on human beings which have been born in spite of efforts to kill them.

Did you know Barak (no “C”) was the name of Mohammed’s horse? Interesting. It was the white horse Mohammed allegedly rode to heaven. Muslims like white horses a lot. Christians, on the other hand, see the white horse as a symbol of the beginning of the Tribulation. I think. See the sixth chapter of the Revelation.

The inconsistency of the animal worshipers is puzzling. Right now, we have a problem with a group of Cubans (I am assuming, with good reason) killing and butchering other people’s horses. People are outraged. Because of the theft? No, that would make too much sense. They’re upset because HORSIES are dying. No one cares about pigs and cows and chickens, thank God, but when you kill a horse (which is about as intelligent as a chicken), people act like you shot the Pope.

I have been told that we have a law in the US, banning the slaughter of horses. If you want to make a jacket or a pair of shoes or a baseball out of horsehide, which is a wonderful leather, you have to wait until a horse drops dead. Can someone explain the logic? If I felt like it, I could buy 50 pigs tomorrow, kill all of them, and have a huge barbecue. No one would care. And pigs are smarter than dogs. But a horse…that would be a sin. It’s crazy.

The reason I think Cubans are killing the horses is that no one else will eat them. Cubans eat salted horsemeat, which is called tasajo. More power to them, I say. The stealing part, I’m against. But the life of a horse is no more important than the life of a turkey. I don’t care if they open a restaurant called The All-Tasajo Cafe and hang dead horses in the main dining room. They hang hams from the ceilings in Cuban sandwich joints. It’s the same thing.

I have two horsehide jackets, one pair of horsehide pants, one horsehide belt, and four pairs of horsehide shoes. It’s all leather to me.

I think it’s wrong to kill a pet, because it does great harm to the people and other pets who are attached to it, and because there is something sick and sociopathic about killing an animal that trusts you and loves you. But apart from that, as long as the harvest is humane, I see nothing wrong with killing an animal you can use. The life itself has little or no value. And I don’t know why some animals are sacred and others are not. I don’t get the hysteria about whales. I’d buy a whale steak in a heartbeat, if I could find one. Just to see what it’s like.

Actually, I do understand why some animals get more protection. Generally, it’s because they’re cute. Horses are cuter than pigs. Baby seals…don’t get me started. Never mind the horrible standard of living in the areas where they have seal hunts. Let the humans starve! Just don’t kill those cute seals! If I were making the rules, I’d weigh in on the human side. I think I would require them to quit using clubs, but life is hard in the Arctic Circle, and I can’t imagine outlawing the hunt. Who am I to sit in an upscale suburb and tell the Indians they can’t supplement their income by selling fur? Maybe the Indians should dress up like Hello Kitty when they club seals. Fight fire with fire.

If unborn babies looked like baby seals, the abortion picture would be a lot different. And it’s a lot easier to kill something you never see. I always say that abortion is legal because it’s like peeing in a swimming pool. When it happens, you can’t see it. Every time you go to a public pool, you know half the people there are peeing in it, but you swim anyway, because you can’t see them doing it. Imagine how different it would be if they all peed in the pool while standing or squatting on the edge. The quantity of pee would be the same, but there is no way you’d swim.

Similarly, abortion would be less popular if they had to remove the baby from the womb and cut its throat on the table, in front of the mother. Partial-birth abortion approaches this standard, but they keep the head concealed while the killing is done.

It’s kind of odd that you can arrest someone for dumping a dead shark in the street, while we have no problem putting several thousand babies into incinerators every day. They used to go into dumpsters, but then that got exposed, so now they burn with the rest of the medical waste. An excised appendix, a quart of liposuction fat, a diabetic’s gangrenous toe, your unborn son or daughter…same thing, in the eyes of the law.

Maybe the answer to the seal problem is to teach the Indians to get baby seals by aborting them in the last trimester. The hippies could never object to that.

I plan to keep the next nurse shark I catch, just to find out if it’s as good as I’ve heard. I hope they don’t put me in a gulag.

Newest Wild Guess

Here’s the latest news on the milling machine. It is officially, definitely, probably going to arrive in town on Friday.

Who wants to place a bet?

Pina Coladas Can be Considered Painkillers

It looks like Obamacare is dead. Thank God. In order for the plan to live, lots of Americans would have had to die. So the way I see it, it was aborted to save lives. That’s pro-choice, isn’t it? And if you believe, as I do, that Obama got elected by accepting money from China and Muslim nations, then the pregnancy was also the result of rape.

It’s odd, but I can’t remember anyone suggesting that caregivers just charge the poor and uninsured less. As it stands now, the poor get all the treatment they need, but then they get charged huge bills they can’t or won’t pay, and the rest of us (the ones who take bills seriously) end up subsidizing them. Why not just admit that we overtreat and overcharge people? Let’s give the poor and uninsured good but not excessive treatment, and let’s charge what the treatment is actually worth. Maybe some of them would actually pay, and that would bring prices down for the rest of us. And the poor would be more likely to go to doctors.

Whenever I think about health care prices, I think about my first kidney stone. Like all medical emergencies, it happened on a weekend night, so I had to go to the ER. They gave me a totally unnecessary scan that cost several thousand dollars. They doped me up and kept me on a Gurney all night, and then they sent me home on Saturday morning–still containing a stone–with enough Percocet to get me through one day. Because clearly, I was a drug-seeking patient, and I had magically generated a kidney stone in order to get enough pills to last until Monday.

In the end, they charged me around six grand. That includes a few hundred bucks for my urologist, who actually provided useful treatment.

What did I really need? I’m not a doctor, but I know what doctors have done with millions of other people with tiny kidney stones. They x-rayed their abdomens (or not), gave them painkillers, and waited for them to pee the stones out. You can do this, including drugs and a follow-up x-ray, for maybe six hundred bucks. Apart from the pointless scan, this is the treatment I received.

The second time I got a stone, I called my urologist’s office, and I got his unbelievably nasty receptionist, and I was so offended, I decided not to get treatment. And a couple of days later, I was fine. Total cost: $0.

Now I lay off the calcium antacids, and I go easy on tea. And I definitely don’t take calcium antacids WITH tea. No more stones.

Apologists can say, “You could have had cancer! You could have been on the verge of death! You should thank God you got that scan!” And my response is that you could say the same thing about someone who went in to get a pimple squeezed. You can mistake cancer for a pimple. Or for hemorrhoids, or for any of a huge number of other trivial ailments. The fact is, the odds that I had a serious problem were incredibly low, and if I had turned out to be seriously ill, it would have become obvious with or without a scan.

The purpose of the scan was to make money. And it worked.

Have you ever gotten sick overseas? It’s a very different experience. The care you get is likely to be nearly as good as the care you get here, but it costs much, much less, and it comes with fewer bells and whistles. For example, I knew a kibbutz volunteer whose appendix went crazy while he was visiting Jerusalem. The same day, he went to a charity hospital in the Old City, and they yanked his appendix out, and they sent him back to the kibbutz when he was ready to travel. Didn’t cost him a thing, because the Catholics paid for it. But if he had been charged, it would still have cost much less than American care, because they didn’t generate 3,000 pages of documentation and give him fifty things he didn’t need, and he didn’t get a private room with cable.

I sliced my finger open in the Bahamas. Did a real number on it. There was no doctor on the island, unless you count the vacationing Americans who were lying drunk on their yachts. I went to the local nurse, and she ran a giant needle up through my fingertip and out of the nail, and she tied it up and bandaged it and sent me home. I was fine. In an American ER, they would have given me a bone scan, an EKG, three caviar enemas, and a grief counselor. I didn’t pay her a dime, but even if she had charged, it would have been dirt cheap.

I’ll bet this would have been a $500 injury in the US. If you’ve paid to have a minor cut stitched, leave a comment and tell me what they charged.

The other big excuse is that lawyers force doctors to overtreat. Yes, I’m sure the added profit is no incentive at all. Because nobody ever went into medicine to make money. Everyone knows lawyers screw life up, but they’re not the whole explanation for our medical costs. Doctors proactively look for ways to charge more. My dentist now has a racket where he tries to charge you for an oral cancer exam, and if you don’t buy it, you have to sign a release. That’s so blatant, it’s nearly a scam. And the obvious inference is that if you don’t pay, and he sees a lesion anyway, he’s not going to tell you. I hope that isn’t the case.

I avoid doctors for the same reason I avoid mechanics. You can’t trust them. You go in for a trivial problem, and while you’re there, they look for other things that can make them money. And unless you’re Superman, they can always find something. Actually, that might not be enough to make you safe. “Hmm…I can’t get this needle into your Kryptonian vein. I better give you an expensive yet inconclusive test for scleroderma. And some type of scan, as soon as Steve gets out of the machine. He has a very ominous pimple.”

If I trusted doctors–if I had not been cheated so many times already–I would be more likely to visit them regularly. It’s that simple.

Here’s another idea. Why not fly the poor overseas for treatment? I know it sounds insane, but it isn’t. You can go to Central America, pay a pittance for top-quality surgery, stay in a resort hospital on a beach, pay for your airfare, and still come out way ahead. If you don’t like arepas, you can go to India and have curry. Or Singapore.

Let’s see. Here’s how it would work. Poor person shows up at hospital. They determine he can’t pay. They diagnose him with a condition requiring expensive surgery. They send him to Belize. He recovers and doesn’t pay. The benefit? Now the hospital can cover his small foreign bill out of money received from paying patients, instead of covering his huge American bill. Sounds nutty, I know, but if it saves money, why not?

I wonder if my medical insurance would cover treatment at a ritzy beach hospital. I would greatly prefer it, wouldn’t you? You’d think they would jump at it, if it saved them money. A 2008 Time article says insurance companies are starting to take the bait.

Speaking of great foreign deals, I still have no Chaiwanese milling machine. The rigger I’m working with just emailed, and he said the shipper called yesterday to ask if he could unload the machine from a box trailer. They were looking for a flatbed and couldn’t find one. This means that as of yesterday, the machine was in…CALIFORNIA. This is amazing. I just checked, and it appears that I ordered this thing seven weeks ago. I hadn’t realized so much time had passed. Twice, I’ve been told they shipped it, and twice it has turned out to be untrue.

The seller says he has a different brand of machine he can sell me; he’ll be getting them in a week and a half. I told him to go ahead and make the switch, if the other machine was still sitting 3000 miles away.

I’ve been waiting for lathe videos from Smartflix, and they arrived yesterday. These are from ATI. I highly recommend their stuff. It’s very methodical and thorough. I guess now that I know the milling machine isn’t going to be here in the near future, I should watch the lathe videos and try to get some things done. It’s tempting to stall when you think a new machine will arrive at any minute. A milling machine would make projects much easier, so I find myself wanting to wait until it gets here. I really don’t understand the guys who claim you can do all sorts of great things with just a lathe. It’s not true. You need to be able to make straight cuts, and you can’t do that with a lathe unless you spring for an expensive milling attachment. Here’s what you can do with just a lathe: you can make a machinist’s jack and a head for a hammer. And you can thread things and cut rods in two. That about sums it up. I’m exaggerating because I’m annoyed, but what I say is true in principle.

Let me close with something useful. Heather’s mom (an actual person) just had more surgery. Stents in her urinary tract. Please offer a prayer.

She probably should have gone to Costa Rica.

HI is Back

Here is good news. Moxie has re-opened The Humor Institute. Learn about Sonia Sotomayor’s new musical!

Not sure what Moxie’s plans are for the site, but at least she’s writing again.

Brilliant!

I guess I am getting serious about motorcycles again (i.e., I plan to ride more than once a month), because I just bought a new garage-door remote. I am tired of taking the other one out of the car and putting it back later.

I took the Moto Guzzi out yesterday. And finally, I remembered to bring ear plugs. I got a little ways up the street, and as I got up to about 40 miles per hour, I started hearing all sorts of strange high-pitched noises. Like something on the engine had come loose. I stopped and started several times, trying to figure out what the problem was. Finally, I decided to take the plugs out so I could hear better. And the noise disappeared.

Looks like I was hearing the wind as it passed over my helmet. The plugs made the engine harder to hear, but they let the higher-pitched sounds through. Another problem solved by Amateur Motorcycle Genius.

I should probably get the tires changed on both bikes. They’re in good shape, but they’re old. In the past, tire age wasn’t something people talked about a lot. Last year, I found out that tires deteriorate with time, so you shouldn’t keep them longer than around six years. I have read that the tire industry kept this quiet because they didn’t want to have to rotate their stock. Pun, if any, not intended.

I wonder where you go to get a motorcycle tire. I’m sure the local Harley dealer will do it, for five times what it should cost. I’ll bet I have to go to Hollywood or Fort Lauderdale to get it done right, at a fair price. There are a lot of services you just can’t get done correctly in Miami.

I should also get some stuff to get me back on the road if I have a flat. It looks like there’s a motorcycle equivalent to Fix-a-Flat. I should put some kind of bag on the Guzzi and keep a few tools and so on with both bikes.

If you have old tires on your car or bike, do something about it. Don’t wait until the sidewalls give out.

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.