I Made Lumber!

I guess I must be the greatest tool expert who ever lived. I don’t see how there can be any doubt, because today I installed a WIXEY DIGITAL READOUT on my planer, and I used the planer to joint and thickness a mahogany board!

Bask in the light of my greatness, tiny unimportant people.

I ordered a set of indexable lathe tools. The case they came in was mashed. I had a bunch of mahogany I had rescued from a trash heap. I decided to make a new case. To do that, I had to have finished wood. To get that, I needed to install the readout that had been sitting on the dining room table since the Bush administration.

It’s pretty cool. I like digits better than the tape-measure-type scale that came with the planer.

I really enjoyed myself. I installed the readout, and then I planed a short board to 0.930″ (that was the thickness when it finally got flat on both sides). I squared one end of the board on the table saw, made a makeshift jig, and jointed the edges of the board. Then I squared the other end and resawed the board on the bandsaw. After that, I planed the results. Now I have two bookmatched mahogany boards. They’re gorgeous, too.

Problem: the wood is not really seasoned. It bowed a little when I resawed it. I don’t really care; I’m cutting it to such short lengths, the bowing will probably be too slight to amount to anything, and it’s just a crappy box to hold some tools.

I stuck it on a table with some junk mail under it and books on the ends of each board. Hopefully that will reduce the bowing.

Tomorrow I get to cut the pieces, rout out holes for the tools, and turn the results into a box. It should be a blast.

Things worked out well. You have to plane a board in order to install the DRO, and a DRO is a nice thing to have when you thickness a resawn piece of wood, so one project fed into the other.

That mahogany is going to be amazing. Some day. When it’s really ready.

No pictures. Too lazy.

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One reason wood warps when you resaw it is water. Wet wood likes to be big. Dry wood likes to be small. The wood I resawed today was not very far into the seasoning process. Presumably, the inner parts were wetter than the outer. That would explain why it bowed away from the saw cut. The wet sides expanded when the saw released them, and that made them longer than the dry sides, so they took on a curve toward the dry.

I hoped that when I took it into the air conditioning, the wet sides would dry and contract, and the wood would start to straighten. And that is exactly what’s happening. One board is nearly straight now.

The question of the moment is, will it stop when it’s straight, or will it keep going until it bows in the other direction?

Arf

Couple of things.

As expected, the Obamas demonstrated remarkably bad taste in choosing their dog. They chose the Portuguese water dog, which, whatever its positive traits may be, is a remarkably ugly creature. I have never understood people who buy hairy dogs that gather drool, snot, and eye secretions in their face hair, like mops.

The shocking part? They chose a working breed.

If I had to have another dog, I think I’d look for a Shepherd mixed with something else to tone down the inbreeding and avoid the hip problems. And now that I think about it, those are good considerations to keep in mind when choosing a wife.

I don’t know why they bought a dog. Liberals and dogs don’t mix, except in the sense that liberals often have to be pried loose from the jaws of watchdogs and dogs belonging to the police. Liberals are supposed to own cats, who, like the people who vote for liberals, consume wealth and attention and in return, provide nothing but scorn.

Here’s a fact for people who think George Bush is dumb: he was smart enough to choose a dog that bit reporters whenever possible.

Second thing: I notice that a tennis player named Federer has married his “longtime girlfriend.” Ladies who choose to live with single men (every man who is not married is single), let me tell you what it means when your live-in boyfriend proposes after a period of years. It means he gave up and decided you were the best he could do. If he had thought you were a catch, he would have married you sooner, to keep someone else from getting you. Or it could mean he hates being with you less than he hates dating.

Felicitations. You are a reserve parachute. Who says romance is dead? Get down on your knees and thank Gaia no one better showed up.

Buffett Orders Chinese

Stocks are diving today because GM is going to declare bankruptcy. But I think they should be diving for another reason. A Drudge-linked article just exposed the tip of the iceberg that will probably sink America’s auto industry. Warren Buffett just bought 10% (as much as he was allowed) of Chinese automaker BYD.

I have been harping on this for quite some time. Liberals are worried that union workers in the US might be reduced to a mere 200% or so of the daily wage they’re actually worth, as a result of our domestic woes. That’s silly. Our real problem is the huge, highly motivated, highly capable Asian labor market, which is going to make cushy American union jobs a fond memory. If Obama were competent, and if our Congress were not dominated by effete liberal kooks, we might have some chance of fixing our internal problems. But how are we supposed to stop the Chinese and the Indians? We can’t. They’re smart, they work harder than us, they work cheaper than us, and there are over two billion of them. And protectionism, our only remaining weapon against them, has proven ineffective and destructive.

Take a look at this quotation about BYD’s founder, largest stockholder, and CEO:

Wang entered the automobile business in 2003 by buying a Chinese state-owned car company that was all but defunct. He knew very little about making cars but proved to be a quick study. In October a BYD sedan called the F3 became the bestselling sedan in China, topping well-known brands like the Volkswagen Jetta and Toyota (TM) Corolla.

Not exciting? Look again. He didn’t beat the incompetents at the Big Three. He beat TOYOTA, and our homegrown companies are to Toyota as Chuck Wepner was to Muhammad Ali. And he did it in half a decade. He also stomped Sony and Sanyo; he produces batteries cheaper than they can. Not cheaper than they do. Cheaper than they can. And the secret is cheap Chinese labor. China is the Wal-Mart of human beings. The supply is high, and the cost is low.

BYD has an electric car. Here, let me save myself the effort of paraphrasing:

BYD has also begun selling a plug-in electric car with a backup gasoline engine, a move putting it ahead of GM, Nissan, and Toyota. BYD’s plug-in, called the F3DM (for “dual mode”), goes farther on a single charge – 62 miles – than other electric vehicles and sells for about $22,000, less than the plug-in Prius and much-hyped Chevy Volt are expected to cost when they hit the market in late 2010. Put simply, this little-known upstart has accelerated ahead of its much bigger rivals in the race to build an affordable electric car.

Isn’t that special? The Big Three take eons to get anything to market, and when they do, it’s often disappointing. But this Chinese nobody appears to be able to put competent innovative products on showroom floors, and he has only been making cars–not just electric cars, but cars, period–since 2003.

What’s the quality like? It doesn’t matter. Two reasons. First, the price is so low, the quality would have to be abysmal to affect sales, and it’s probably not abysmal. Second, the quality is getting better. I don’t know that because I checked. I know it because I’ve seen the trend in Chinese products AND I’m not a moron.

It looks like we may be headed in the sad direction of electric cars and other depressing little poverty jalopies. We are told that these machines are “progressive” and “green,” but that’s leftist lipstick on a very big and smelly pig. In reality, they reflect our decline as a nation. They are symptoms of failure.

The Chinese ride bicycles to work. It’s green as hell, but that’s not why they do it. They can’t afford cars. We’re headed in that direction, and they’re headed in ours. The Chinese will upgrade from bicycles, and we’ll downgrade from real cars that provide safety, comfort, and jobs. So there is probably a bright future in BYD’s silly little half-cars. And if there isn’t, they can make ordinary cars and still beat us like rag dolls. There is no law that says they can only make nutty little Urkel vehicles. The Japanese started with econoboxes, and now they sell big belching land yachts.

The sense that I get when I look at the world is that God doesn’t bless the US the way he used to, but he continues to bless individual believers very powerfully. I continue to believe that our rebellion–our disgusting behavior and attitudes–have cost us our role as the world’s leader, and that we’re never going to get it back. China and India aren’t going away. Neither is Russia, which sabotages us and assists our enemies whenever possible. When I read stories like the BYD article, it confirms what I have suspected. It’s time for individuals to put God first and work to get his blessings, because the rising tide that used to lift all boats has disappeared. In the past, anyone could make it in the US. In the future, you’ll have to make it on your own merit.

I read another article recently which bolstered this notion. Some guy who used to be a stockbroker was delivering pizzas for a living. He had a huge house, and his income had been as high as $750,000 per year, and he was working for a pizzeria to feed his family. That’s a great example of what I’m talking about. I know utterly ordinary people who have gotten rich simply because the US was a prosperous country where even the most unimpressive human being could get lucky. Some of these people credited themselves; that’s human nature. But the fertile, friendly environment in which they worked is what made them. God provided that.

I’ll tell you what qualifications you need to be a stockbroker. None. You do not have to be a financial expert. You do not need an IQ above 90. You do not need any talents. You don’t need to be able to predict what the market will do. All you have to do is persuade other people to buy and sell securities. Period. Bottom line. End of story. That’s it. If you can sell a TV at Best Buy, you can be a stockbroker. It’s a fantastic job for someone who isn’t bright and doesn’t have a postgraduate degree. A chicken can do it. And jobs like that used to be a lot easier to come by, because of America’s wealth. Now they’re drying up, and people who thought they were successful because of their innate superiority are finding out how lucky they really were.

If you don’t believe any of this, get in your car and go talk to three brokers. While you’re there, ask how they did on the SAT. Give them a crossword puzzle, and tell them if they can do it in an hour, you’ll give them your retirement money. Good luck.

The pizza job is not the anomaly, here. The anomaly is an ordinary person with pizza-delivery-grade skills, making $750,000 a year in commissions. It’s so easy to be greatly blessed and not realize it.

I say the Chinese will dominate the US auto market within ten years. And the Big Three will be gone or bought out. I’ve been told I’m wrong, because the Japanese used to be in this same situation, and their labor costs went up. Are labor costs going to go up in China, where they have almost a billion and a half people who need work? Compared to the US, Taiwan has low labor costs, and they pay about eight times what the Chinese do. EIGHT. I think there’s still a lot of headroom in the Chinese cost structure. I’m no expert, but I don’t think Chinese manufacturing expenses are going to increase fast enough to help the Big Three. It didn’t happen in Taiwan, and China is in a much better situation.

Get ready for your first Chinese car. It’s coming.

Short One

Someone I know appears to be having some sort of psychological crisis. I hope some of you will take the time to pray for her and her marriage. Thanks.

Hindsight Can’t Save God’s Enemies

I will never understand why my family didn’t make a bigger fuss on Easter when I was a kid. For some reason, my sister and I always received chocolate rabbits and baskets of candy, and that was nice, but I don’t recall Easter having the kind of religious significance Christmas had. Even now, it sort of slips by me.

That’s a shame, because Easter, or more accurately, Passover, is what made Christianity possible. The crucifixion and resurrection are the events that made it unnecessary for human beings to pay for their sins.

I think the second psalm is a great thing to read on Easter, because it reveals the true nature of the events that took place over that fateful Passover, two thousand years ago. I do not mean this in an irreverent way: the crucifixion was a trick. Were it not for the terrible suffering and ugliness, you might almost compare it to a practical joke. Religious people tend to think of spirits as brilliant beings who know all sorts of things about the future, but the truth is, God has a long, long history of making fools of them. He encodes his plans in prophecy, and his enemies can’t figure out what it means, and then he brings things to pass, and his enemies are caught flatfooted. That’s what the second psalm is all about. It was written about a thousand years before Jesus, but it clearly describes not only the crucifixion and resurrection, but the fact that the spirits who rule this world will not understand it and will be unable to prevent it from ruining them. Take a look.

1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying,

3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.

6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

7 I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

10 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.

11 Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

The Bible often has multiple meanings woven into its text. For exampe, “kings of the earth” might refer to some of David’s enemies, and “his anointed” might refer to David. But to a Christian, it’s pretty clear that they also refer to the spirits that rule this world, and Jesus, respectively.

This isn’t just about nations that are hostile to David. It’s about spirits that oppose God. They fought Jesus, and they believed that by putting him to death, they were destroying his power. Instead, they magnified it and spread it to humanity, even beyond the Jews. To “the heathen” and “the uttermost parts of the earth.” “Holy hill of Zion” refers to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Jesus referred to his own body as God’s temple. He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” His body is where the kingdom of God, on earth, inside men, began.

This psalm ridicules the non-human powers that have the foolish pride to fight with God. It shows God can take their most promising plans and use them to skewer them. He can delude them into destroying themselves with their own weapons. And he can reveal it all in advance, to human beings to whom he has given ears to hear. The second psalm is a perfect picture of what God intended to do, if you’re able to perceive it.

I wish we would give up our ridiculous traditions of moving Easter away from Passover and referring to it by a disgusting pagan name. The parallels between the first Passover and the one that included the crucifixion are overwhelming, but we have obscured the connections by turning Easter into a bizarre day that celebrates rabbits that lay eggs. And if you can’t see Passover in Easter, you probably can’t see Shavuot in Pentecost, either.

Anyway, happy misplaced Passover. Whatever you choose to call it.

Disco Garage

I got the stereo shelf up. I had a couple of little shelves for the speakers, but it turned out there was room on the TV shelf. I realize this is not the best position for good sound, but these speakers reek. And they don’t seem to bother the TV.

It turns out the stereo’s tuner is on the part I destroyed and threw out, so it looks like I’ll be buying a cheap receiver. I can’t complain. So far I have about thirty bucks invested in this.

Stereo!

Things are getting worse in the garage, AKA the site of my future intervention.

Yesterday I installed a TV on a shelf. But it had no working remote, and it wasn’t hooked up to cable or a DVD player, and I needed to add a radio tuner. So today I was forced to go to Home Depot and get a universal remote (eight dollars more than I budgeted, but it looked cooler than the cheap one), six shelf brackets, and a bunch of screws. I’m going to take my mom’s old JVC shelf system (what remains after I gutted the CD part in order to rescue Mahalia Jackson), stick it on the wall, and add my much-loathed Panasonic DVD changer.

I looked at stereo receivers online, figuring I should be able to find something I could get delivered for fifty bucks, but the cheapest new ones were all at or above a hundred bucks. Then I realized I hadn’t checked the old modular shelf system for inputs. Praise be, it has RCA sockets for a VCR. I am cooking with gas.

I dread the installation. I have to cut and install three shelves in a very congested area, and I get to breathe lots of concrete and wood dust, for which I’ll pay the price later. Respirators may keep you from overloading your lungs, but they’ll let you get enough crap into your body to make you congested.

I also scored two jugs of kosher Coke from the grocery beside Home Depot. So I have that going for me.

Life will suck for the remainder of the day, but at least I’ll get that miserable DVD changer out of my bedroom and get the old stereo off the garage floor. I don’t know who designed that changer, but the remote is one hundred percent counterintuitive, and you actually have to keep the manual nearby in order to use it. It’s a horror for regular use, but it will be acceptable in the garage.

The Coke is chilling. It’s time to go out there and suffer.

I Shake my Cane at You

I have an edict, and it goes out to every McDonald’s manager on earth.

Henceforth, five times a week, you are to gather your employees and tell them to STOP INTERRUPTING PEOPLE WHILE THEY ORDER. Of course, you’ll have to tell them seven times, because they’ll interrupt.

“I’ll have two McMuffins, one hash brown…”

“You’ll have two Egg McMuffins?”

“I’ll have two McMuffins, one hash brown…”

“Three Egg McMuffins and eight hash browns?”

“I’ll have two McMuffins, one hash brown…”

“What do you want to drink?”

“I’ll have two McMuffins, one hash brown…”

“Nineteen hash browns and one McGriddle?”

Thanks to the amazing people who man the drive-thru, I have now become the Old Guy Everyone Dreads Waiting On. I ask them when they’re ready to listen. I tell them to quit interrupting. I say, “I already told you that.” Next, I’ll be carrying one of those ridiculous change purses that you squeeze to open, and I’ll pay them in pennies while the people behind me lose their minds, and I’ll demand to know why the manager won’t force the cashiers to honor coupons from other restaurants.

At least I’m not a woman. They’re the worst. “What kind of pesticide do you use on the lettuce?” “Were the tomatoes picked by union workers?” “I need to write a check for my McNuggets.” “Which is better for me? Three salads or one Big Mac?” “Please go find me a nutritional information sheet so I can memorize it to protect my yammering larvae.” “I need you to put the onions in a separate bag, make sure the lettuce is above the tomatoes, see that the amount of pickles is a prime number, and if it’s not too much trouble, I want to come inside and watch so I can make sure you don’t apply too much mustard. And I want to open my sandwich and inspect it before I leave the window.”

Here’s how to run the cash register at McDonald’s. I’ve never done it, but I think I have it figured out. When the customer orders something, you push the button with that item’s picture on it. Then when they order something else, you push that item’s button. When they’re FINISHED, you tell them the total, and you wait for them to look at the video list a foot and a half from the car window, so they can make sure you got it right. And you don’t argue with them about what they ordered. If you think about it, this is a subject they know more about than you do.

If you can’t do this, keep voting for Democrats, because you are eventually going to be considered absolutely unemployable, even with affirmative action, and even if you work for the government. But I repeat myself.

Here’s another tip. When a customer says “thank you,” it’s not okay to snub him just because you’re furious that you ended up flipping burgers for a living. If you think about it long enough, and you won’t, you may eventually realize your status in life is not entirely the customer’s fault. It’s completely possible that you, yourself, may deserve some of the blame. Sounds crazy, but it’s true.

There’s a kid who works the register at the nearest breakfast joint, and he is so professional, I feel like he shows me up as a customer. This kid is going to end up owning the whole strip mall. He looks me in the eye and says, “Thank you for your business, sir. Come back soon.” At this point I usually drop my squeeze change purse and my handful of expired Arby’s coupons, and I shuffle out feeling completely outclassed. Why can’t McDonald’s find people like that? Actually, they did have one. The middle-aged German lady who always smiled and called me sir and ordered me to have a nice day whether I felt like it or not. She’s gone. She probably saved her money and bought a private island. Now I have to deal with her successor, Unpredictable Hypersensitive Interruption Girl.

The breakfast kid is black. I hope the entitlement pimps don’t get ahold of him and corrupt him before he becomes a self-made millionaire and starts sponsoring conservative candidates.

I think I’ll pull my white socks up and go find some kids to glare at.

Another Piece of Mediocre Carpentry Finished

I have a few pointers for people who want to challenge my greatness by putting TVs on shelves in their garages.

1. Do not assume your garage walls are square to each other or even close to it.

2. When you have to use a hole saw to drill UP through plywood, the time you spend looking for the face shield will not be regretted.

3. When Home Depot puts $5.00 brackets on sale for half price, there is probably an excellent reason.

4. Never mount a television 80″ above the floor in a crowded corner if the remote “ON” button has gone dead.

More advice as it dawns on me.

Also, Glenn Beckside has a vital Twitter update.

Except Maybe for Al Franken

Okay, I have a new Glenn Beck theory, and it’s starting to worry me. I hate to think my idol may be a total fraud, but I have to go where the evidence leads me.

1. He started the 912 project.

2. Half of 912 is 456.

3. The number 456 is divisible by 3.

4. If you divide the devil’s number, 666, by 3, you get 222.

5. Room 222 was a popular TV show back in the Seventies.

6. The star of Room 222 was Michael Constantine.

7. Constantine was the leader of the Holy Roman Empire.

8. Roman Polanski is a pedophile.

Don’t shoot the messenger. All I did was connect the dots. Let me know if you can help me with the last leg of the puzzle. I’m trying to connect this to Kevin Bacon.

I really hope Keith Olbermann doesn’t take credit for this.

By the way, I’d appreciate it if someone could identify the lube Olbermann uses to coat his hair, face, and eyeglasses. It looks like it would be great for machine tools.

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I have an alternate theory.

8a. New York is the Empire State.

9a. The French word for “state” is “etat.”

10a. Louis XIV said, “L’etat, c’est moi.”

11a. In the opening run of Camelot, the song “C’est Moi” was sung by Robert Goulet.

12a. Robert Goulet once locked his wife in a car trunk.

Man, this one gives me chills.

Only for the Chosen

People, this is amazing. I think Glenn Beck is trying to send us secret messages. Using knowledge I learned from hearing Madonna talk to Whoopi Goldberg about kabbalah, I have extracted vital information from a blurb on his webpage! Begin at “START” and read in the direction of the arrows. Just the circled stuff. The spelling is a little off, but he was probably in a hurry.

Start decoding the messages now, before the IMF and Skull and Bones create an artificial aluminum foil shortage so we can’t protect ourselves from Rachel Maddow’s lesbo-fascist mind control beam!

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Readers say they’re fed up, they just can’t take it any more, they can’t stand any more of the lies, and they’re going to take back my blog, if I don’t blow the photo up and make it easier to read.

For Liberals, it Started in November

Here’s a funny question. Has anyone noticed how American troops stopped dying in Iraq after Obama was elected?

Seriously, when was the last time you read about “mounting death tolls”? When was the last time you saw a journalist quote the latest figure? We know journalists are honest and fair, so the only possible explanation is that Americans aren’t being killed any more.

I’ve also noticed that global warming has slowed down, the planet is no longer running out of oil, and crazy government spending is no longer a bad thing. When Bush spent billions, it was very, very bad! Bush was a bad man! Now Obama spends trillions, and we all realize it just makes life better for kitties and puppies and flowers and baby ducks, which is what government is supposed to do.

Hold it, I have to throw up.

I’m back.

Here’s another question. Has it ever occurred to anyone but me that if Bob Seger had turned his music five degrees in another direction, he’d be in the same genre as Christopher Cross and the Captain and Tennille? Just wondering. Same goes for Jimmy Buffett. Will I get in trouble if I say I think it’s weird that people compare him to Hemingway?

Not that this is a flattering comparison.

Yesterday I was bummed out because my lathe tools arrived, and the plastic case was mashed. But the guy gave me a partial refund, and now I’ve realized I have an excuse to make a box for them out of my garbage-pile mahogany. You’re supposed to season wood for a year before you use it, at least, but I think you can bend the rules when you’re making a crappy box to hold tools in your garage.

I’d appreciate it if everyone would shut up about Joe Biden lying. Yes, he lied. But it’s not a big deal. First of all, he’s a Democrat, and Democrats think morality is stupid, so in a way, he’s actually being consistent with the ideals he preaches. Second, we already knew he lied all the time. He had to bail out of a Presidential bid because he stole Neil Kinnock’s patronizing, maudlin ramblings about coal miners playing football. Hello? Earth to electorate: this is not news.

Finally, Glenn Beckside has posted an important update. Read it before “Them” sabotages the server!

It Shoots Itself

Last year for Father’s Day, I decided to give my dad a concealed weapons class. And we put it off until today. I took him to Ace’s Indoor Gun Range in Hialeah and got him fixed up. This is probably a better present than cigars or brandy.

While he was taking the two-hour class, I put in some range time. Trail Glades is where I usually shoot, and they won’t let you use buckshot, and I needed to try out the Saiga 12 and laser with my new police loads.

In a word, this gun is fantastic. The recoil is negligible compared to a high-powered rifle. And sighting the laser in took about three shots. At 50 feet, the pellets go right where the green dot is, and they make a pattern you can cover with your fist. How can you top that? This has to be the ultimate in semi-automatic home protection. A halfway decent shot will put all nine pellets inside your burglar, and after that, they all go in different directions. And you have eight shots in the magazine, plus one in the pipe. And you can replace a magazine in three seconds! Once you get it fitted right, I mean. The magazines are plastic, and sometimes they need a little filing.

I only shot it 9 times. I apparently dropped a shell into the bag I took with me, and I didn’t see it until later. You don’t really need to practice with this gun. At household distances, missing is nearly impossible. I just needed to be sure it cycled okay, and I had to adjust the laser. Now I’m ready to cut it up and turn it back into an AK.

The Vz 58 is hard to discount. It has the same easy short-range accuracy, the recoil is even lower, and it holds 30 rounds. Maybe when you add in all the factors, it’s the better choice. You can shoot it folded; that’s a big deal. It will also shoot through both sides of a car, and it will defeat some bulletproof vests. Although those qualities probably won’t be required in a home invasion defense.

Either gun will make your house one of the worst places a criminal can imagine being.

I don’t know which is best. I’m just glad my biggest home defense problem is deciding which gun to grab.

My next project should be a nice safe.

I’m glad my dad will have a permit. The biggest benefit for him, in my opinion, will be having to worry less about being hassled by the cops for violating Florida’s bizarre firearms laws. We have strange rules about how you can carry in your car and so on. You can’t leave it on the seat, the way you can in Kentucky. You can put it in your glove compartment, but only if you do it a certain way. It’s a pain. Once you have a permit, all you have to remember is concealment plus the list of places where you’re not allowed to take a gun.

Rasmussen Proves It

My Chinese (of course) carbide indexed cutting tools arrived yesterday. The price was great. But the lid on the little plastic case was smashed. The seller took the whole mess and shoved it in a Priority Mail envelope instead of a box, and naturally, something got crushed. He didn’t even sandwich it in bubble wrap.

I complained. Carbide tools are brittle, and you’re supposed to store them in a way that keeps them from touching other tools. One way to do that might be…a plastic case! It’s important. Granted, I can throw out the case lid and rig something up. But I shouldn’t have to.

What do you think? Am I being too picky? This guy could just as easily have used a box. Priority Mail boxes exist.

No response to my complaint yet. I can’t see giving someone a negative over this, but a neutral might be in order. If you’re going to ship people things, you should make some effort to pack them correctly.

Yesterday, unfortunately, I found something interesting on Craigslist. Another lathe. Wait! It’s not as bad as you think. It’s a little bitty lathe. Like Otisburg. The company that makes it goes as small as 4″ by 8″, and I think their biggest model has a 10″ swing. I’m not sure which model it is, but the description makes it sound really small. It’s a good lathe, too; not Chinese. And it has tooling. And the price is too good to pass up. Dang it.

It would be pretty cool to have a tiny lathe I could store in the closet, for very small parts. I could teach Marv to run it.

He’d make a lot of bells, I suppose. Bells are his bag.

Two disturbing items in the news today. First, only 53% of Americans told the Rasmussen pollsters that capitalism is better than socialism. And 30% of Democrats think socialism is better. Big surprise there.

It looks like the liberals have won the education battle. Socialism has caused the deaths of tens of millions of people, and it has never produced a good standard of living anywhere, and it is the greatest evil mankind has ever encountered. But a fair number of Americans, especially those who were “educated” after our school system was destroyed by liberals, think socialism is…pretty rad. No work! Free beers! Che T-shirts! If you want to be a lazy, flabby slouch all your life, socialism is the bomb. A lot of people are content to live that way. Clip your own wings and belly up to the trough.

This is how the killing fields in Cambodia happened. People didn’t know, or ignored, the clear and obvious lessons of history. They thought they could take something that had never worked anywhere and somehow make it succeed. And they ended up rounding up educated people, lining them up beside big holes, and machine-gunning them to death.

Here is the lesson conservatives should have learned from the last three elections, especially after seeing the impact of swing voters. The stupid are incredibly dangerous. The stupid make totalitarianism possible. Our kids are stupid, and they’re getting more stupid every decade. Look out.

The poisonous harvest of our most toxic decade, the Sixties, is a bizarre notion that the young are smart. In truth, the young are generally fools. I certainly was. But back in the Sixties, the left managed to seize on one or two things the old had been wrong about–things like racism and reckless pollution–and convince the young that the old were wrong about EVERYTHING. Since then we have been producing insolent, unprincipled, overconfident, weak children who think their tiny brains hold the keys to a bright and happy future where everyone eats tofu and and smokes free dope and has sex with no consequences.

It’s amazing; a human being will generally get smarter with age. But our nation, composed entirely of human beings, has gotten dumber. And we’re going to pay. Stupidity is an extremely expensive luxury.

I wasn’t raised very well. To some extent, I am part of the problem. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to my parents, and I don’t blame them for my failings, but they made mistakes. When you have kids, you should give them the same kind of effort you put into your job, at the very least. There should be a plan. There should be discipline and oversight. I didn’t get everything I needed. Thank God, I am able to perceive the existence of the problem, so I can work to improve myself. But many people are not as lucky as I am. They think the neglect they experienced as kids was freedom. They’re grateful for it. They think it allowed them to grow up without the “backward” ideas that made their grandparents so silly. They don’t understand that restrictions can be great blessings. Rules aren’t like shackles, intended purely to deprive you of liberty. They’re like frames that guide tomato plants and help them produce more fruit.

Presumably, every book of the Bible has a purpose. I believe that one purpose of the book of Proverbs is to help people like me. There are lessons my parents failed to teach me. And I’ve absorbed a lot of counterproductive ideas throughout my life. Where do people like me go for guidance? Pastors don’t have the time to provide it. You can’t expect your friends to fill the need. You can’t just think it up on your own. The book of Proverbs can be very helpful. It’s like a frozen bone marrow transplant, waiting to be infused into lost generations, to heal them of the cancer of savagery. Wisdom is supposed to reside in human beings, but sometimes it misses generations, and it has to be stored somewhere so people raised without exposure to it can be reinoculated.

I went through this book systematically. I found that I already believed and applied a lot of it, so I deleted those portions. I put the rest in a Word file. Now I have it to use as a reference. The deletions left me with a targeted version that focuses on my specific gaps. I don’t look at it often enough, but I keep a printout handy. You might give this a try. Wisdom really is power, and it will take care of you.

Sometimes I look at that printout and alight on passages I wish I had read twenty years ago. I think of specific mistakes I have made, and the pain they have caused me, and I wince. That’s the kind of experience parents are trying to spare you when they tell you to pull up your pants, get a real haircut, stop watching MTV, and get your butt to church.

In case any kids are reading this, let me say this. Socialism is a horror, and it will bring only misery and death. And there is no such thing as safe sex. And piercings are generally disgusting.

The other thing that disturbed me today was a ridiculous essay by Juan Williams. Someone sent me a link to it. He comes out and admits he thinks gun ownership should be banned. Like it was in Washington D.C., that peaceful haven where crime is unknown. Unbelievable.

Here’s an incredible quotation:

In fact, in Nebraska there is a big argument in the legislature about guns. It is not about banning them. The debate is whether to allow security guards to bring guns into churches. To my mind the debate should be about how to keep all guns out of churches.

If Mr. Williams had had his way, Jean Assam would not have been able to shoot the man who murdered two people in the parking lot of New Life Church. If, on the other hand, Ted Nugent had had his way, that murderer would probably have been killed much earlier in the day, when he opened fire at another church. A churchgoer packing heat would have laid him out on the pavement. Whose way do you prefer? I prefer Ted’s. When I go to church, I keep a switchblade in my pocket and a pistol in my glove compartment. I’d carry inside, if I had the clothes for it.

Why is there any doubt about a church’s right to have armed guards? We don’t prevent stores and banks from using guns to assure security. Explain why churches should be different. Provide the basis for the state’s right to discriminate against any institution in this matter, based purely on that institution’s status as a religious entity. The disciples would not have been allowed inside a church run by Mr. Williams. They carried swords, on orders from Jesus himself. If Juan Williams ran the Vatican, the Swiss Guard would be ejected from the premises. They carry MACHINE GUNS. Not semi-automatic. Automatic. Most people in the Williams faction don’t know the difference. Their writings prove it every day.

Quite frankly, I find it odd that the Pope isn’t armed. If you require other people to bear arms for you, you are fully responsible for what they do, and you should be willing to do the same thing. If you’re not willing to do that, how are you different from Rosie O’Donnell, who preaches against guns yet pays armed bodyguards? If John Paul II had been armed when Mehmet Ali Agca attacked, he might have spared himself some surgery and prolonged his life.

Says Mr. Williams:

The roll call of death and suffering from guns continued earlier this month with the tragic mass shooting in Binghamton, N.Y. That followed one man killing ten people in Alabama before taking his own life. And that preceded the murders of eight people in a North Carolina nursing home, as well as one parolee shooting four policemen to death in Oakland, Calif.

Excuse me, but how is that “suffering from guns”? Isn’t it actually “suffering from criminals”? And which of these murderers would have obeyed a law banning gun ownership? The laws against murder, which have steeper penalties, didn’t bother them at all. And what do you think would have happened had the first three killers encountered armed civilians? Same thing that happened in New Life Church.

Reading this column, I learn two things. First, Juan Williams is never going to make it as a professional logician. Second, he’s a great target for violent crime. He chooses to be defenseless, and he makes good money. I think that if I were opposed to allowing civilians the means to defend themselves, I’d be smart enough to avoid bragging about it on national television, while working in a city known for street crime. It’s like begging to be mugged.

Williams says no change is in sight. I sure hope that’s true. Barack Obama and his awful Attorney General have done more to arm Americans in the last six months than the NRA could have done in ten years. I’d hate to see that wonderful progress reversed.

Proven Idiot Supposedly Deserves Chance Bush Never Got

I am sad to report a setback in the quest for the ultimate pillow. Night before last I tried a memory foam pillow and slept extremely well, and all day yesterday I felt almost as though I were on speed. It made a big difference. Yesterday I got a second pillow–a fake down product called Indulgence–and I thought my joy would be complete. But I had a little congestion anyway, and on top of that, I couldn’t get to sleep on time. It’s as if the extra energy from sleeping well made me more sensitive to caffeine. So today, no coffee, and I’m drinking my daily ration of revolting green tea as early as possible, to give the caffeine time to wear off.

I still feel much better than I used to.

I just skimmed Camille Paglia’s latest. I never read anything she has written in its entirety. She has not mastered the humane tool known as the paragraph, and she seems to write defensively, the way a lot of self-proclaimed intellectuals do. They’re used to hanging around with people who correct each other and whose big thrill in life is pretending to be much smarter than they really are. They always end up using bigger words than they need and giving unhelpful references to show you how much they’ve read. They do this to discourage other pretentious effetes from finding opportunities to show them up. Yes, Camille, we know you own four tons of books and actually made it through Ulysses. Just write like a human being, okay? Be like Billy Joel, who said he never wanted to work that hard. There’s a reference for you. I’m sorry it couldn’t be Krishnamurti or Ezra Pound.

Sooner or later, she’s going to snap and admit she’s conservative. She’s like Dennis Miller and Ron Silver. She keeps saying the same things about liberals that conservatives say. This is why a lot of liberals hate her. Eventually she’s going to break down and say, “Okay, I’m a lesbian, but I can’t take these hippies any more, and I am just not stupid enough to think socialism works.”

She’s secure enough to get herself in trouble by criticizing the left, but she’s not secure enough to abandon it. Which is all right, I guess, since we already seem to have enough conservatives who want nothing to do with God or morality. I refer to the actual God, not the one Joseph Smith made up.

Today she admits that Barack Obama is an embarassment. Hello? Where was she when he was using a childish gesture to give Hillary Clinton the finger on camera? Where was she when we learned that he belonged to an anti-Semitic church, and that the pastor was one of his closest associates? Where was she when we found out one of his buddies was a terrorist who belongs on death row?

Wake up, lady. Barack Obama has been an embarassment for a long time. And his wife is downright disgusting. You don’t grab the Queen of England with your big Amazon paws and wool her around like a puppy. You don’t go on TV and tell America you’ve been ashamed of it for virtually all of the four decades of your pampered life, which was made possible by America’s misguided generosity and bizarre notions of collective guilt.

Michelle Obama is like the relative you pray won’t show up at your wedding. And now she is the face our womanhood presents to the world.

Paglia says the “major” media has been remiss in not howling over Obama’s horrific bow the to the despotic ruler of Saudi Arabia. No duh. Thanks for pointing out the obvious and expecting people to applaud your remarkable insight. And where have you been, woman? How could you not expect this kind of thing, from a guy who spent most of his life as a glorified bagman for the chicago machine? He’s been kissing the rings of corrupt tyrants for decades; he probably bowed out of habit.

It’s revealing that Paglia admits that the mainstream press is unfair in Obama’s favor, but notice she won’t go the whole distance. She won’t call them “the liberal media.” She’s thinking it, people. This woman has only made it out of one closet. The other one is yet to burst open.

Too funny. Free thinking is good when it gets you attention and lands you book deals, but when it threatens your social life, suddenly it’s SCARY. Ann Coulter appears to be mentally ill, but give her credit. She isn’t afraid to say what she feels like saying, and as a result, she has probably lost more friends and eaten more gay-waiter boogers than anyone in history.

I will never be able to make the kind of clever references Camille Paglia makes, because I pretty much abandoned literature over twenty years ago. I realized that literature was unrealistic; it was written from the point of view of people who had great faith in despair and none in God. The world of literature is distorted, because God doesn’t exist there. Henry Miller said the first thing you scratch down when you start to write is “the cry of the wounded angel: pain.” How right he was. But here’s an equally accurate way to put it. To a large degree, literature is an elaborate form of whining. I don’t think that would have pleased Miller’s readers as much as the angel thing.

Ahab ends up tied to the whale, sort of like a big dead suction-cup Garfield on a white minivan. The savage hangs himself because he can’t find his place in man’s squeaky clean, genetically engineered world. The smelly old Italian guy who hangs out at the whorehouse says, “It’s better to live on your feet than die on your knees,” because there is no divine mathematician up there, balancing the moral equations. My world isn’t like that. Is yours? Why should I read books in which my views will be shaped by unfortunate fictional people who DON’T GET IT? If I want to be pelted with wrongness, I don’t need a book. I can turn on Air America. Assuming it still exists.

Did I get the references wrong? If so, good for me. It shows I haven’t been wasting my time.

Speaking of ways to spend time, I’ve been thinking about the amazing tools I saw over at Practical Machinist. I linked to a thread started by a guy who says he’s a starting machinist. He made his own quick-change tool post set, plus other helpful machining items you would ordinarily have to buy. It makes me wonder if I should try to make a few tools for myself. Example: a Criterion boring head costs hundreds of dollars. The metal used it in can probably be had for two figures. Some people make their own boring heads with little mills and lathes. Maybe I could do that.

I wish I could make a milling attachment for the lathe, but that appears to be a milling job, so like I said in an earlier post, I think you need a milling attachment in order to make a milling attachment.

Someone posted a question here about small lathes, like Sherlines and Taigs. I’d recommend looking at W.R. Smith’s video about tooling up for clockmaking. He says Sherline now provides so much milling paraphernalia for lathes, you can do a ton of stuff without springing for a second machine.

I bought some lathe DVDs. Smartflix is useful, but they’re very slow. I can’t wait two months. Besides, I like to support the people who create educational materials when I can. Some video sets, like the ones from ATI, are obscenely expensive. Others cost a little over twice as much as Smartflix charges to rent them. I can swing that.

I hope more junk arrives today. I can sit in the garage and fondle it until the lathe gets here.