Mark the Man Who Memorized Psalm 37, for the End of That Man is Peace

Marv and I have fantastic news. I finally got through Psalm 37. I more or less made it last night, and this morning I sharpened it up. I think by Monday I’ll have it in the bag. I guess it’s time to pick the next psalm. I can’t believe how long this one took. It just refused to be memorized.

The surprising thing about the Psalms is how useful they are. So much of the material is prophetic; I have to wonder if the psalmists even understood what they were saying. Simultaneously, they referred forward in time to the Crucifixion and backward to the first Passover: “He keepeth all his bones; not one of them is broken.” They wrote about the final judgment: “The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment.” “For the Lord loveth judgment and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved forever, but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.” “When the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.” “The enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs; they shall consume. Into smoke shall they consume away.” They described the effects of the baptism in the Holy Spirit: “The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide.”

A lot of the material spells out God’s promises to the righteous. “The Lord knoweth the way of the upright; their inheritance shall be forever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time, and in the days of famine, they shall be satisfied.” “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.” “O fear the Lord, ye his saints, for there is no want to them that fear him.” “The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him and delivereth them.” One of my mother’s favorite verses: “I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.” Another good one, also from Psalm 34: “Commit thy way unto the Lord. Trust in him also, and he shall bring it to pass. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light and thy judgment as the noonday.”

How about this: “The wicked watcheth the righteous and seeketh to slay him. The Lord will not leave him in his hand nor condemn him when he is judged.”

I may have the punctuation wrong; I haven’t memorized that. They did some funny things back in 1611. I think I got the words right. Thanks to memorization, I now have all this stuff ready when I need it.

Psalm 2 seems to describe the trick God played on his enemies during the Crucifixion. “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree; the Lord hath said unto me, thou art my son. This day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”

So far I have 1, 2, 4, 23, 34, 37, 63, and 101. That’s only 8, but there is a ton of useful stuff in there.

It’s notable that Jesus quoted the Psalms when he faced challenges. Truthfully, I think a lot of the material in the Psalms is encoded so it will be useless to God’s enemies, but believers will be able to understand and use it at the right time. It sounds like pleasant, flowery poetry, but it has a serious purpose. Reading this stuff, I feel like Indiana Jones. Except this is real, and Indiana Jones is pulp material.

I would like to find out what other Christians think about all this. I think I’m right, but I’ll be sure if I see that other Christians are getting the same ideas.

Hocks and Greens Age Better Than Sophia Loren

It looks like I am going to have to spray my peppers and fruit trees with copper about once a week in order to keep them alive. The fungus down here is as persistent and unreasonable as Bush Derangement Syndrome. I applied copper today, as well as a foliar mineral spray for the citrus. I fertilized the fruit trees, too. Now I have to go buy iron.

What do you eat when you work like a farmer? Farm food, i.e. leftover ham hocks and cornbread! I nuked a hock and a pile of collards, and I followed up with the cornbread, and I buttered the bread, sliced the second half of yesterday’s tomato, added more Vidalia slices, and I was in business. Well, okay, I was in business after I also poured myself an Inca Kola.

Miami has to be the world epicenter of weird foreign soft drink importation.

The things that happen to ham hocks and greens after a day in the fridge are marvelous. All the flavors mingle and intensify. I didn’t even need Texas Pete when I ate the fat off the hock.

I guess I’ll be ready if it turns out a socialist President can’t revive our socialism-ravaged economy with more socialism. I can eat for three days on twenty bucks.

South Carolina Priest Forces Choice

Here’s something to think about.

Sarah Palin was accused of believing Africa was a country. People bought this ridiculous story, even though Governor Palin is a college graduate and an accomplished governor with a high approval rating. Now the story has been proven false; a prankster made it up and presented it to the ever-gullible American media.

Barack H. Obama, on the other hand, DID say there were 57 states. And the press immediately dismissed the error, saying it was caused by fatigue.

How come the press explained the Obama gaffe away, yet assumed the Palin hoax was true?

I apologize for asking such hard questions so early in the morning. I know this will be a tough puzzle to solve. Why would the press assume a Republican was abysmally stupid, while reflexively excusing a Democrat? I just can’t imagine. Maybe if I had a six-figure grant, I could come up with the answer.

I just read another Obama-related story, linked by Drudgebart.com.tv. A South Carolina Catholic priest is refusing to give Communion to Catholics who voted for Obama, who is not only pro-abortion, but in favor of withholding medical care from babies born alive. My response: why did this take so long? I suspect that Catholics have been brainwashed with liberalism for so long, their clergymen just could not force themselves to take a moral stand against a prominent Democrat. Am I wrong? How else can you explain this?

Catholicism opposes divorce. It opposes every known type of fornication (and some things which may not actually be fornication). It preaches unselfishness, sacrifice, and compassion. How can you twist the church’s positions into a platform that supports or even tolerates convenience abortion? I guess once the seminaries filled up with gay men who engaged in sex acts in their spare time, this kind of moral erosion was inevitable. I have been told by Catholics that this kind of thing goes on in seminaries; if I’m wrong, I apologize.

Maybe it’s a crisis of confidence. Catholic churches are losing members and money. These days, no church wants to alienate members, so instead of sticking to their guns, they tell us whatever we want to hear.

I know I’m insane and nothing I say should be taken seriously, but let me tell you the nutty idea I have about churches. I actually believe…no lie…that lay people should get their moral guidance from churches, and NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. If not, they should change the way churches are built. They should have a whole bunch of pulpits and only one single-seat pew. Then on Sundays, a preacher or priest could come and sit in the pew while the congregants yell at him from the pulpits.

This priest is a hero. A real leader. A…a maverick. Yes, I said it. You can’t buy his kind of integrity for all the money in the country of Africa, and to find it in America, you have to scour all 57 states.

Pre-Obama Salad Days, Only Without Salad

This is what every man’s dining table should look like.

You’re looking at a ham hock, collard greens, Vidalia slices, a hothouse tomato, cornbread made with bacon grease, and fried apples.

I should lie and say that’s Red Rose tea, but it’s not. I ran out yesterday. It’s GATORADE.

Still.

Here’s how to enjoy a ham hock. Eat the meat parts as is; they taste fine without help, because they’re ham. Eat the fat with a little hot sauce on it. It’s good without sauce, too, but variety is nice.

It seems like the Roegelein’s bacon scraps have a somewhat more subtle flavor than the strips. The cornbread–made with grease from the scraps I bought–tasted almost refined. I kind of prefer the stronger taste of the strips.

That tomato was surprisingly good, for a store tomato.

If you’re not from the South, you may wonder why I have a disassembled rifle on the table, and why I would eat that odd-looking food.

More

Here’s a closeup of the greens and hock, so you can see the lovely, delicious pig grease.

Dinner Question

I have a poll for you.

This Stuff Tastes Offal Good

I went to Winn-Dixie and got some huge ham hocks and a…wad…of collard greens. I don’t know what else to call it. It’s not a head. It’s not a bunch. It’s a wad. It was so big, I couldn’t put it in a produce bag. So it got grocery germs all over it before I got it out of the store, and I had to wash it pretty well at home.

I have a pot which probably holds six or eight quarts, and I figured I would use that to make the greens and hocks. Wait until you try to jam an entire sliced wad of collard greens into a pot that size. No way. I ended up putting the hocks and some water in it, and I put as much greens in as I could, and I got it boiling. As the greens wilted, they sank, and I managed to get the whole wad in there. I’ve added garlic and pepper. Three hours from now, I expect to be in paradise. I considered adding a piece of habanero. I may still do so. I think a squirt of key lime juice would be good in greens, but it’s too far-out for what I’m doing today.

I just looked at a site about ham hocks. They claim “soul food” comes from the “abhorrent tradition of slavery.” Please. What a crock. How long are we going to be subjected to this myth? Soul food is just Southern food prepared by black people. It comes from the abhorrent tradition of not wasting good food, which was shared by all races. What white Southerner in his right mind would look down on ham hocks? One who wanted to starve, I guess. At least until LBJ saved the world with welfare checks. When my parents were kids, people had to be frugal with food. They slaughtered hogs and let nothing go to waste. They didn’t throw out the hocks and jowls or the other “soul food” ingredients. Why would they? They taste fantastic.

I think it’s safe to say most white Southerners don’t eat fried chitlins (I may be wrong), but they have always eaten sausage skins, which are supposed to be the same thing. I’m assuming chitlins are the small intestine. It’s confusing. No one in my family eats them, so I can’t ask them, and Internet “authorities” differ. Some say it’s the large intestine, which is pretty gross, because the large intestine is where feces come from. If it’s the small intestine, fry it up and I’ll eat it. I’ve eaten piles of them already, stuffed with sausage, so what’s the difference?

Right now, I can get in the car and drive two miles and sit down to a plate of grilled cow chitlins at an Argentinian barbecue joint. Oh, save me from oppression.

It must be the small intestine. A health site says chitlins are dangerous when “contaminated with feces.” All large intestine meat is poo-tainted. The Wikipedia entry on chitlins appears to be full of…wait for it…misinformation.

Anyway, the idea that soul food came from slaves in the South is just plain stupid. The word “chitterling” comes from England. I guess they had cotton plantations back in Chaucer’s day.

My mother used to tell me scary stories about the parts of animals she used to eat. The stuff of nightmares. She said that when my grandmother killed chickens for chicken and dumplings, she would separate out the ovary or whatever it is that makes the eggs and serve it on the side, with half-formed eggs in it. Slaves! My mom and her family must have been slaves!

Goooo downnnn…Mo-ses…

Sorry, I got carried away.

In a few hours, I expect to be dining like a king.

Or a slave.

Life is Hard

For some reason, my visit to Wayne Cochran’s church has me thinking about Southern food. I have half a mind to get myself to Winn-Dixie and obtain some collards and ham hocks.

Oh boy. That would be good. Collards, ham hocks, a tomato, a sweet onion, and cornbread.

I can’t plan my menu with Marv yapping at me. He says, “Can I rub your snout? C’MERE! What are you lookin’ at?” His new word: “Well?”

I’m glad I have inadvertently become a master of cheap cuisine. I guess it was inevitable, because I cook a lot of hereditary peasant food. My grandmothers and great-grandmothers didn’t cook this stuff just because it was good. It was cheap. I like cooking Cuban food, and it’s the same way.

If the economy keeps tanking and we all end up eating low-end food, I’ll never know the difference.

I just saw something on the web, where some person is complaining about hard times. The complaint mentions being forced to make a meal of ham hocks, collard greens, and cornbread.

“Forced”?

Back to Church, After a Two-Decade Hiatus

As mentioned in earlier posts, my sister and I decided to start checking out churches together. First on the list: Wayne Cochran’s Voice for Jesus Church, up in Hialeah. We went last night.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you the devil doesn’t know when you’re trying to get to church. While I was getting dressed to go, I managed to fall down the stairs. I’m talking about a set of wooden stairs with a grand total of three steps. I have a pair of shoes with tacks in the heels that aren’t seated quite right, and I forgot all about them. Sometimes when I put my foot down just right, I slide on the hard tacks until something catches. Last night I put my right foot down at the top of the stairs, and it kept going, and the left one went right after it. And they didn’t stop on the next two steps. I went down and nearly broke my entire rear end.

I somehow managed to hit my left elbow very hard, and a lot of my considerable weight came down on my right thumb. If I had hit a little harder, I would have been injured pretty badly. My thumb was pulled upward, putting a lot of force on my wrist. My right hip hit the top step, and somehow I ended up with a pain in the left side of my back, too. After I got up, I checked my elbow, and sure enough, it was bleeding through my nice custom-made dress shirt. The only dress shirt that was ready for me to wear. I put a bandage on it and reached for a blazer. Somehow or another, dust and crud had accumulated on the one I wanted to take. I couldn’t get enough of it off to make it presentable, so I found another one.

My sister has a 335i, and she insisted I drive so she could have something to eat; her day had apparently been unusually frantic. I am not a fan of BMWs. This thing treated me like a prisoner of war. You have to have a Ph.D. to start it, and it has one of those satellite hookup things that allow BMW employees to yell at you while you drive. But I managed. Naturally, there were accidents on the Palmetto Expressway. Ordinarily, a bad time for this run would be about 45 minutes, but we managed to stretch it to over an hour.

We finally sneaked in and sat down. Wayne Cochran was off somewhere, but an assistant named Jose filled in, and he did a very good job. I was impressed.

One of the big problems with Holy-Spirit-centric Protestant churches is that they go off on worldly tangents and tell people crazy things. I quit going to church largely because I was put off by their seeming insistence that every believer had to be rich and free of problems, and that God was a sort of vending machine. Pay ten dollars in, get a hundred out. Wayne Cochran is affiliated with some of the people who offended me in the past. But Jose taught a very solid message. He said it’s not about asking God for stuff; it’s about seeing yourself as an ambassador of the kingdom, and doing whatever you can to advance God’s agenda in the world. The other things will come as they are needed; you can’t expect anything if you show up in church just to get goodies.

You don’t hear this message often from this kind of church. Or at least you didn’t in the past. Maybe things have changed for the better.

One thing surprised me. A yarmulke. A guy a couple of rows in front of me was wearing it. I didn’t know what to think. Had he been dragged there by a Christian wife or girlfriend or relative? Was he a Jewish believer? I guess he was a member, because when they looked around for new people, they didn’t pay any attention to him.

I don’t know all that much about Jewish converts. It’s my understanding that many of them don’t use the term “Christians” to describe themselves, because they reserve that word for Gentiles. And some of them continue to observe the Jewish laws, seeing themselves as plain old Jews who have found the Messiah. You wouldn’t expect an observant convert to hang out in a Christian church as a member. I suppose there is a lot of confusion in this area. I know this: you wouldn’t have seen a yarmulke in a church back when I was going regularly.

This church is not too far from North Miami Beach, which has a big Jewish presence. I suppose it’s very convenient for converts. Just hop on the Palmetto, and you’re there in ten minutes.

I thought the “ambassador” message was great, because it’s an idea I have had in my head for a long time. I think Christians have been wrong to assume “kingdom of God” refers to heaven. I think you can be part of the kingdom of God right here on earth, and because that kingdom isn’t an earthly government, this makes you a sort of foreigner, and your body a kind of embassy. Property and part of the kingdom, regardless of your current location. I had never heard anyone teach this until last night. If different Christians are getting this idea independently, maybe God is behind it. Some things in the Bible don’t make sense unless you understand the phrase “kingdom of God” to have this meaning.

We were planning to visit again on Sunday, but my sister now wants to take a look at Rich Wilkerson’s church, up in Miami Gardens. She has been there before. She says it’s wonderful.

Here’s one of the weird things about all this. In the past, I used to hope that one day, I’d be able to take my sister to church. But she took me. How about that? I figured she would have to be ethered and carried in on a stretcher.

A nice thing about this type of church is that it draws different kinds of people together. This is especially remarkable in Miami, where racial and ethnic tensions are always very high. The guy who did the teaching was probably Cuban. There were a lot of black people in the crowd. There were the usual run-of-the-mill white people. Of course, there were Hispanics. And then there was the guy in the yarmulke. Nobody talks about it, but spirit-filled churches are very good about uniting people. I’ve never been to a spirit-filled church that didn’t have members from all segments of society. As I looked around, I realized this was something Barack Obama, in all his glory, could never achieve. Leftists try to force unity on us from above, but unity, unlike prosperity, is a thing that has to trickle up. You can’t Astroturf it with busing and affirmative action. Of all the pretend messiahs, Karl Marx is the worst and the least effective. He is the Jimmy Carter of messiahs. No, the Windows Vista.

Wow, I didn’t mean to be that harsh. Is it okay to compare a fellow human being to Windows Vista?

Wayne Cochran is a wonderful speaker. He wasn’t around last night, but they had free CDs of his testimony, and I listened to one. He made it just as he was beginning his ministry. Listening to it, it’s hard to believe he hadn’t been preaching for years. As a Southerner whose parents came out of pretty much the same culture, I felt I understood it particularly well.

I don’t know where I’ll end up, but I am now a churchgoer. That is progress.

Youtubes

I got a comment saying the results I’m getting with the PSL/Romak III are as good as they’re going to get, because the gun is intrinsically inaccurate. I find that hard to believe, not because I have faith in the gun, but because I have little faith in my own ability to shoot well enough to take the gun’s accuracy to its limit.

He said I was focusing on the target instead of the reticle, which is true.

I said I would post a video of a guy shooting the PSL and getting better groups than mine. The video guy uses some sort of Bulgarian crap ammunition; I use 7N1 Russian ammunition, which everyone raves about. Here is the video.

Needless to say, this guy only fired 5 shots after sighting the gun in. If I had stopped after 5 shots, my results would be better than his. I was popping a lot of rounds into a pretty small hole. What does this mean? I do not know.

Here is another video, where he shoots at 600 meters.

It occurred to me tonight that I had completely forgotten to think about where my finger was contacting the trigger, so I am sure I was all over it. I also had a problem with the scope fogging up from time to time, which ruined some shots.

They say these things open up when they get hot. Mine was certainly getting hot when I shot the last bunch of rounds.

Eastern Bloc Rifle Would Make Comrade Obama Proud

It looks like the new trigger has fixed up the PSL/Romak III/FPK/Whatever. The gun cycles and shoots, and the trigger feels great and has a very light pull.

When I got to the range, my shots were completely off the paper, but after I searched for a while, I found the black. I had to move to 50 yards to do it. Here is what happened when I finally zeroed the scope:

The upper shots were made before a scope adjustment. I realized I was not going to learn anything at that range, so back I went. Here are a whole bunch of shots at 100 yards.

That was pretty exciting. Unless I am mistaken, that is a very nice group with some flyers caused by shooter error. It looks like there is nothing wrong with this gun that a new owner won’t fix. It appears to be highly accurate.

I shot another 20 rounds, but by then I was pooped. Here they are:

I think fatigue explains the difference here. I don’t think it’s the gun.

Here’s what I don’t get. I see people saying they get 1″ rifle groups with iron sights. I can’t do that with a 4x scope, because the error in my aiming is that big. The scope doesn’t magnify the target well enough for me to find landmarks on the target and hold the POA accurately. Add the error of the rifle and the error induced by trigger pull problems, and 1″ accuracy is impossible. So how do people do it with iron sights? My guess: the usual explanation applies. They lie their butts off. Or they shoot all over the paper, circle the three closest shots, and call them a group. To me, if it’s not 15 or more shots, it’s not a group, and it means nothing. Anyone can put three consecutive bullets in a one-inch circle by blind luck. If you can’t do it with 15 rounds, shut up.

I figure the aiming error with this scope is about 1″, meaning that even if I pull the trigger perfectly and the rifle is 100% accurate, I should still expect a 2″ group. The trigger error is probably about the same size. So I’m pretty happy with these targets, because they’re not much worse than that. If I’m right, this rifle will reliably put bullets into a circle the size of a quarter. You just have to hire a robot to fire it.

I think I may have a bum magazine. The magazine disengages when you push a lever in front of the trigger guard. It is getting harder and harder to push. The upper end of the lever has to slide on the metal of the magazine, and I think it’s getting rough with age. I have to find hard objects to press against it; it’s nearly impossible using my thumbs.

I am tired of this scope. I don’t see how I can exploit the rifle’s accuracy with 4x optics. I guess I can find a 9x online.

Am I wrong about this? It seems like a bigger scope is always better. With these little ones, you can’t really tell where you’re aiming, and you can’t see the bullet holes, so you have to have a spotting scope (which I did not have today). I love the 14x scope on the .17 HMR. The 4x Russian scope is dandy at 50 yards, but at 100, you just can’t tell what’s going on.

I’m looking at the Kalinka site. Maybe this is a 6x scope.

I didn’t shoot any other guns today. I took the K31, but I left it in the car.

A fellow shooter taught me something. One of my shells hit him, and he complained. I had no idea you were allowed to complain about being hit with hot brass. I get hit all the time, especially on the pistol side. He said things were different on the rifle side of the range. Apparently they provide people with pieces of cardboard to set up on the podiums, to deflect brass. And of course, they don’t tell you this at the mandatory class.

I think this gun is accurate, and I think the Russian ammunition is a bargain, and I need to get more of it, before Comrade Obama starts taking names.

Help me Escape From Psalm 37

I have a new mission in life, and it’s not to create a dessert that will kill you before you leave the table. My mission is to memorize the 37th psalm before I die.

A few weeks back, I wrote about memorizing psalms. I have been working at it steadily. Generally, I can knock off maybe half a psalm a day. But number 37 has been driving me nuts for like two weeks.

I can’t explain it. It’s a long psalm, yes, but that’s not the whole story. The prose has a lumpy, counterintuitive quality that makes it resistant to memorization. In comparison, 1 and 23 are much more fluid. Naturally, faith junkie that I have become, I am trying to see a divine purpose in it.

Today I got up to-what was it?–a couple of verses past “The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide.”

I may have a party when I finish.

A reader inadvertently gave me an idea for a Christian book today. I’m trying to work it out.

Little Guns for Hard Times

We have a gun-grabber headed for the White House, and he is going to appoint gun-grabbing judges at every level, so people are going nuts, buying guns. That will work fine, as long as old guns are “grandfathered” past the fascist laws and executive orders and rulings that are likely to hit us in the near future. Of course, it won’t be as helpful if Obama manages to fix it so existing guns can be confiscated. And that’s a possibility. Gun-grabbers like to use grandfather clauses to reduce opposition from people who already own targeted weapons, but if they ever get powerful enough to come after the guns you already have, they’ll do it, and they’ll melt them down. Rosie O’Donnell is probably salivating.

We Second Amendment supporters like to bluster about “cold dead hands,” but the reality is, nearly all of us will obey the law and hand over our weapons. Would you commit a bunch of felonies, knowing there were people in your community who could inform the cops and the BATF that you own guns? Guess what. In prison, you won’t even be allowed to carry a sharpened toothbrush. On the whole, it’s better to avoid arrest and stay free. Or relatively so.

Have you ever had a couple of beers and told a liberal acquaintance you have guns, just to irritate him? Do you have liberal relatives? Someone outside of your household probably knows enough about you to get you put on a list. You may be on one already. The odds are good that someone out there will have the knowledge and the inclination to send the storm troopers to your door.

I guess it’s a good idea to stock up before Obama starts rewriting the Constitution, even if your purchases won’t guarantee anything. Still, it seems pointless to rush out and buy guns in November. You’re driving prices up, and you may end up settling for weapons you don’t want, because dealers’ shelves are bare. It will take a little time for the new regime to put new policies in place. You have a couple of months left for shopping.

I keep thinking it would be nice to have something handy for short-range encounters, beyond a pistol yet not as hard to use as a big rifle. If you have to defend yourself on your property, you won’t have much need for deer-rifle-size loads that can kill people at a thousand yards, and you won’t want a really long gun that gets caught on things when you try to move around indoors.

One of the guns that caught my eye a year or two ago was the Thompson .45-caliber rifle. You can buy these with removable buttstocks, and you can add hundred-round drums. That’s not bad. It’s a short weapon with no recoil to speak of, and it will shoot a hundred marvelous .45 ACP rounds as quick as you can pull the trigger. Aiming becomes nearly optional. It’s heavy, and I’m not sure how reliable the drums are, and it will cost over a grand, but it seems like a surprisingly nice defensive weapon.

Here’s something else that seems like a sleeper. The M1 carbine with a folding stock.

I know everyone makes fun of this round, but think it over. It’s faster than a .357 or .44 Magnum. The bullet weighs about as much as a 9mm round (let’s say “.357,” since it’s the exact same round but sounds better). The Box o’ Truth confirms that it penetrates nicely, regardless of the funny stories about Chicoms in fluffy jackets. And you can shoot it from a pleasant carbine that takes a 30-round magazine. And unlike the Thompson, it will reliably hit things at distances greater than a hundred feet. The sights on a Tommy gun are just plain weird; I shot one, and I had to guess what the POA was. The M1 comes with a nice peep sight.

I checked out Kim du Toit’s site yesterday, and he has a lot of SHTF stuff up. In case that acronym means nothing to you, “TF” stands for “The Fan.” He stores water and dry food, and he even found himself an entrenching tool, which people like me call “a soldier’s shovel.” As I understand it, the entrenching tool is the Holy Grail of survival supplies. It has magical powers non-veterans such as myself cannot comprehend. It’s even better than a towel; don’t listen to Ford Prefect. Guns play a big part in SHTF lore, and I’ve noticed that the M1 is mentioned at times. Maybe it would be a fine thing to have. It seems to combine the handiness of a .22 with the short-range deadliness of a centerfire. Rabbits, squirrels, your starving liberal neighbors who suddenly regret making fun of your SHTF plans…it will take down a wide variety of prey.

Auto-Ordnance makes a nice folding M1 carbine, and it costs less than a good 1911.

Maybe some day.

Oops…maybe some day before the inauguration.

Kim has a nice, brief Veteran’s Day post up. Take a look, and think about the men who bought the rights our President-Elect wants to take away.

Christianity Will be Blamed

I got some information about the Nigerian “child witch” crisis.

I contacted World Vision about it, and they informed me that they don’t work in Nigeria. So there goes that option. But I found a few other things.

First of all, there is an organization called Stepping Stones Nigeria, which specializes in helping Nigerian children. It appears to be a purely secular organization, but they are getting things done.

Second, a Nigerian man named Sam Ikpe-Itauma has started his own charity. It’s called CRARN (Child’s Right and Rehabilitation Network). He began by taking a few kids into his house, and now he has a school and various projects going. He doesn’t have a donation link up on his site, but there are instructions that will allow you to transfer money. Personally, I’m a little leery of letting my bank information get to Nigeria, regardless of the purpose.

Third, Catholic Relief Services and ADRA work in Nigeria (ADRA is the charitable arm of the Seventh-Day Adventists). It’s not clear whether they are doing anything for these kids, however.

This isn’t just a Nigerian problem. It’s a Christian problem. The people behind this mess are Christian pastors. The most prominent is a woman named Helen Ukpabio. She has a big church, and she sells videos, including videos on witchcraft. She encourages people to bring their children to the church to be delivered. I don’t know whether it’s true that pastors are encouraging torture, murder, and abandonment, but they don’t seem to be doing much to stop these things, and their teachings on witchcraft appear to fan the flames. If Nigerian pastors are taking these kids in and helping them, they aren’t saying much about it on the Internet.

If Christians don’t step up to the plate and put a quick stop to this cruelty, someone else will. Once that happens, it will be very hard to defend ourselves from charges that we caused this problem and did nothing to stop it. We will be accused of approving of it. If our enemies succeed in tarring us as nuts who support the torture and starvation of children, we will find ourselves in a situation in which every Christian who comes forward with an honest testimony about witchcraft or demons will be treated like Josef Mengele.

One famous American Christian has already been sideswiped by this disaster. As you will recall, Sarah Palin was criticized because her church hosted a Nigerian pastor known for his opposition to witchcraft. A lot of conservatives and Christians hope Sarah Palin will do great things in the future, but now she has a Nigerian PR time-bomb waiting to go off. Most people didn’t draw a connection between the pastor and the persecution of Nigerian children, but sooner or later, the dots will be connected. Then she’ll be Sarah Palin the Child Inquisitor.

Can I Heat the Oil to Boiling First?

Every day contains the promise of an exciting discovery, especially when you are both ignorant and curious.

Here is my latest discovery: petroleum oil.

The county where I live is literally overwhelmed with plant plagues. We have scale insects, several types of thrips, several types of whiteflies, an incurable tomato virus, fusarium, phytophthora, a ficus blight, citrus canker, citrus greening, sooty mold, red algae, aphids, carpenter ants, termites, spider mites, rust mites, citrus mites, hornworms, grubs, and a bunch of other things I am too lazy to mention. And you can forget finding a poison that kills all the bugs or a spray that fixes the diseases. One bug hates this poison. Another bug hates that poison. Some poisons actually make the bugs worse by killing their enemies.

There are lots of organic remedies. Unfortunately, they are expensive and useless. They do absolutely nothing. Most of the time.

It turns out there is a safe remedy that may actually solve a lot of my problems. It’s called petroleum oil. Scott’s sells this stuff; it says “Volck oil” on the label. It’s some sort of highly refined petroleum derivative you spray on plants. It suffocates the bugs. It kills whiteflies, so that means it may be helpful in the fight against the diseases they bring. It kills mites. It kills aphids. I have to try this stuff. So that is my mission for the day. Oil the bugs.

Whoops. Dang. You’re not supposed to apply it on windy days, and today the wind is crazy. So I guess my mission is to buy Volck oil and wait for the wind to die.

In God’s Name, no Less

Before I went to bed last night, I read something that horrified me. Drudge linked to a story about Nigeria’s “child witches.” These are kids who have been abandoned because they have been accused of witchcraft.

In Nigeria, Christianity has been combined with sick local idolatry, and the result is a religion in which people calling themselves pastors bring themselves prestige by exposing people they claim are witches. Many of the accused are small children. When they are accused, they are subjected to torture in hopes of correcting them. Many are abandoned. Some are killed. It is beyond belief.

I know the world is full of suffering. I am not ignorant. But when I read this story and saw these lonely kids sitting in a group, one of them holding a sign reading, “We are not witches or wizard [sic],” I suddenly regretted being single, because it meant there was no way I could apply to adopt any of them. I realize how crazy that sounds. Truthfully, I don’t like being around kids. A lot of single men pretend they adore kids, in order to impress women; I am too lazy to put up a front. I don’t know what to do with kids, and they get on my nerves. It’s pretty unusual for me to perceive a kid as cute, or to want to interact with it. I do not understand the urge people feel to hold other people’s babies. But I know how it feels to be a child who suddenly fears he can’t rely on his parents to take care of him, and to worry about being alone in the world, and I can’t even imagine how much worse it is when those fears pan out. And to have your parents participate zealously in your ostracism and persecution? I can’t think of a way to express my amazement and distress. I think that photo will be in my head for the rest of my life.

I sent an email to World Vision, to see if they would put a link on their site so people could send money to help these kids. I don’t know if they’ll answer.

Another item of interest: I keep thinking about Against All Odds, and the many stories of Jews defeating powerful enemies in the face of overwhelming military superiority. When you read stories like that, it’s easy to be encouraged. You think, “Look what God does for people he favors. This can happen to me.” But last night, I thought about the other side of the sword. What if you’re the Arabs, and you don’t even know it?

Think about those military battles. The Jews had fewer weapons. They had fewer troops. They had every reason to lose. I grant you, modern Muslims are generally sorry soldiers. Nonetheless, they should have beaten Israel by now. They did a lot of things right. They came in superior strength. They used surprise. And so on and so on. And they failed, utterly.

A lot of people, including Christians, are like the Arabs. They live under curses, for one reason or another. They do things right, yet they fail. Over and over. If God can help a few Israelis rout a huge number of angry Syrians, he can prevent you from getting a job. He can keep you from marrying or having kids. He can make your enemies win. The Psalms are full of this stuff. If you want peace and abundance–the lasting kind, not the fleeting or illusory kind some people get in spite of their bad behavior–you have to clean up your life.

I’m going to keep that in mind. I already knew wrong living would bring me problems, but somehow, looking at it like this makes the principle more real to me. Maybe it will be of use to you, too.