How to Get Attention at Home Depot

I am trying to organize my brain so I can get out of here and do stuff. This strikes me as a great time to procrastinate. Which I have done, by playing with my new Gerber Gator II knife.

Two things: the action was a little stiff, so I blasted it with dry silicone lube. Seems to work. Also, it turns out you can open the knife by flicking your wrist while you hold the knife in your hand. Good to know, if you feel like freaking someone out. More impressive than a switchblade.

Looks like a nice knife. Gerber used to make stuff that was uniformly great, but my Cold Steel knife is way better than the last plastic-handled Gerber I bought. I give Cold Steel props; you can carry one of their knives every day for years, and it will always look like you just bought it. But a Cold Steel knife this big would have been so expensive, I would have kept it in my pocket to avoid damaging it.

BBQ in Space?

Interesting story on Drudge today: space smells of fried steak. Suits worn in space come back carrying the smells of steak and hot metal. Kind of makes you wonder

Yesterday I was thinking about the temple in Jerusalem. They sacrificed a huge number of animals there, and many of them were cattle. And–correct me if I’m wrong–a lot of these animals were eaten afterward.

So wouldn’t going to the temple be a lot like going out for barbecue? It must have smelled wonderful in Jerusalem, all the time. Seriously. How could it not have, with all those cattle and sheep being roasted?

Space is in the heavens, and so is that fried-steak smell. Here’s a question for you religious scholars: is this where the aroma from the temple ended up?

NOT

Today just feels right. I feel like I am mutating back to my old self, except for having it more together with regard to religion. Actually, I was headed this way back when I went to Israel, so maybe this is where I was supposed to end up. I will spare you the Jonah metaphor.

I just moved two big but sickly pepper plants to the yard, where they will surely benefit from not having to depend on me and the watering can. I am wearing my crappy Old Navy cargo shorts with the concrete-patch smear on the back pocket. In one front pocket, a loaded Glock. In the other, a brand-new Gerber Gator II. My shoes are IDF commando boots. My sunglasses? Non-nouveau, anti-yuppie Ray Ban aviators. And I am wearing wool socks in Miami. If I were any less appropriately dressed, I would be Walter Sobchak.

Everything here has to be difficult. You would think moving two plants would be a cinch, but when I dug the holes, I came up with a lot of oolite rocks. Several pounds. They make digging impossible, because they stop the shovel. Landscapers and builders here love them. I think that’s because they’re free, and because leaving the rock in a yard, just below the topsoil, saves work. Every time you build a house, you have to remove enough oolite to put down dirt for a yard. And you have to haul it away.

I have not been checking up on Mish Weiss the way I should. This is her last day of chemo and radiation before her bone marrow transplant. And she is having a bad time, as you can imagine. Hair loss and fatigue and so on. She will rest a few days. Then they’ll shoot her full of donor marrow, I guess. Don’t quit praying.

Her friend Uri covered for her on her blog today. His parting sentence: “Sorry my English is very bad and they make me post.” I guess Mish is still pretty tough.

I found my old Israel photos this morning. Me and Aaron, in the Promised Land. The other day I emailed my old kibbutz and asked if they still accepted older volunteers. I got nowhere with that. The site is in Hebrew. For all I know, it says, “Send an email to this address, if you love Ahmadinejad.” I absolutely have to go over there again.

I am going to the hardware store to buttonhole whoever smells the most like manure and make him tell me how to kill my St. Augustine grass.

I Think I’m Recovering From a Long Illness

Because I’ve been fooling around in the yard so much, and doing so much with tools, I came to realize I could no longer get by with my little Cold Steel Voyager pocket knife. I had to upgrade.

I went to the Sports Authority. No knives, except for fileting. Figures. Those wimps have completely caved to the forces of wussdom. I went to Home Depot. Nothing there that a sane person would buy. I finally had to give up and go to Bass.

The selection was not phenomenal, but it was good. I got me a big honkin’ Gerber Gator II. It’s heavy as lead, but it should be tough enough to handle manure bags and so on, and it’s not so expensive I’ll be afraid to use it. My last couple of Gerbers were not wonderful, but then this is a yard knife, so who cares?

I felt so great at Bass. They had bass boats and flats boats and weird ATVs on display. They were playing country music. There is a whole lot of bad country music, but still, it’s nice to hear it again once in a while. I am not kidding when I say walking into Bass is like walking into church. I wonder if the company has any Christian connection.

On the way home, I had to pass a guy who was driving really slowly, and I got irritated, and then I realized his car was probably acting up. I felt like I should stop, but I had absolutely nothing I could use to help him. And it occurred to me that as much as I enjoy the T-bird, a pickup would be a much more responsible choice. I could keep a few tools in it, and I could actually be of some use to humanity on occasion. I remember helping build my old church. Try hauling plywood in a T-bird.

Geez, I want out of here. I think I’ve milked this town for all it’s worth. I want to go to bed and hear absolutely nothing through my windows, except the inevitable nature sounds. I want to be able to kill anything on my property that bothers me. I want room to walk around. I want to burn my Italian suits.

I am going to work on it for real. Maybe the Good Lord will give me a good opportunity.

Here is the fish tank at Bass. Not a great photo. I altered it to bring out some details.

Man, I wanted to murder those fish! The big ones in the middle of the window are yellowtail snapper, and they’re the size of salmon.

There is Life Before Noon

I know you’re dying to find out how applying epsom salts to my plants worked out. This sort of news fascinates you. I am completely convinced that is why people come here every day.

Yesterday I bought 150 pounds of cow manure, plus 6 pounds of epsom salts. I buried my banana and plantain trees in manure, and I hit pretty much everything with the epsom salts. Sadly I put some on my sage, which I have now learned is a mistake. Oh well.

Epsom salts–I have to quit using the plural. Maybe it’s a Southern thing–are supposed to help plants grow bigger and greener, especially in certain parts of the country. And my citrus has been looking yellow, and so have my peppers. Which I have neglected. I need to move them into the ground so they won’t have to rely on my daily visits.

It looks like this stuff works. Big time. Today my tangerine and lime trees have a bunch of dark green leaves on them. It’s weird; some leaves are still yellowish, but some have greened up overnight. My older banana trees look dark, too. Maybe that’s from the fertilizer I applied a couple of days ago.

I believe the banana guy said the manure was supposed to produce something called humic acid, which kills nematodes. Whatever. I’m just glad to be done handling it. Cow manure is remarkably pleasant and inoffensive, as manure goes, but on the whole, I would prefer not to spend my days begrimed with it.

It may be time to consider composting. I hate doing anything hippies do, but Acidman used to do it, and he was no hippie. Although now that I think about it, he had certain hippie characteristics.

Supposedly one of the best things you can mulch live banana trees with is dead banana trees. And that’s convenient, because they only live a year, and they’re big, and you have to do something with them when they die.

It looks like the pups from my first pair of trees are going to be enormous. The first trees were maybe eight feet high, including everything. I have one now that’s considerably bigger and hasn’t even produced that thing at the top the bananas hang from. If they’re the variety the banana dude thinks they are, they’ll be anywhere up to 14 feet high. I may have to move one cluster; they’re getting so tall, they hit the tree above them, and they’re getting more shade than they should. Luckily, moving a banana pup is a ten-minute job.

He said that when banana trees are young, they look around to see what the deal is, and if the nutrition and water and sun are right, they decide to produce a lot of fruit. Otherwise, you get a long doodad with a few hands of bananas on it and then a big empty bit that hangs down below it.

I guess I sound like a banana fanatic, but I’m really not. It’s just that they’re cheap, easy to grow, very productive, and extremely useful. And they don’t take up much room. So why not have a few trees?

And talk about good for you. If, like me, you hate getting up in the morning and eating a big wad of refined carbs, but you want your fiber, bananas are a great thing. Without being too descriptive, let me just say they get the job done, and they don’t seem to give me the blood-sugar bounce and hunger rebound I sometimes get from cereal, and they’re way lower in calories. And yard bananas are much better than store bananas, which are mealy and low in flavor.

I’m not as excited about the health benefits of plantains. The ripe ones are pure sugar, and the green ones have a way of sitting in your stomach like a potato. But they’re very useful in the kitchen, and timing the ripeness of the ones from the store is hard, so it’s worth it to grow them.

The banana guy says my bananas are cooking bananas, so while you can eat them raw, they won’t fall apart when you heat them. He says they make great tostones. So I’ll have to try that again.

Okay, I just looked it up, and it turns out plantains have about 50% more carbs than bananas, per unit of weight. I guess my stomach does not lie. The fiber is comparable, but bananas have an edge. On the other hand, plantains have twice as much vitamin C.

Man, those cooking bananas may be the answer to a prayer. Not literally, but I may be able to make single-portion-size patacones with them, with less carbohydrate.

It has been an hour and a half since I checked the plants and trees; I was out there at something or other past eight. And I had been up for quite some time. I am training myself to get up early and prepare for the day, so I’ll be ready when the rest of the world comes to life. I may as well tell you about it. My Christian readers will like it.

My sister–I still cannot get over the fact that we’re getting along–turned me on to Perry Stone and his ideas about having private communion every day, and I gave it a shot, and I really enjoyed it. Some Christians think it’s a stupid idea; but at worst, it’s an excuse to spend time with God. It can’t possibly be a sin. If–when–I join a church, I’ll be doing it there, too, so I won’t be substituting wrong for right.

For a very long time, I’ve been spending an hour or so in prayer every morning, as soon as I get up. Literally lying in bed, because when I wake up, I always feel like I am fastened to the mattress. That’s not satisfactory; it’s no way to live. In the morning, you need to get your butt vertical. And a reader left a comment that made an impression on me; he said he knew a disabled woman who took communion every morning, and that it meant a great deal to her. So I thought maybe I should start rising early, doing communion, doing some study, and praying. In the quiet hours before the world can decide how, on a given day, it’s going to try to kill me and generally ruin my existence.

It’s a good deal all the way around. For one thing, I have to go to bed earlier. And in my opinion, nothing worthwhile happens after ten p.m. If you think about it, a lot of temptations and problems happen when people stay up late. If you don’t go to bars or clubs, and you don’t sleep around, and you don’t lie in front of the boob tube like a dead person, with your brain absorbing garbage, what are you doing late at night? Probably sleeping.

I believe today is my third day on the new schedule. I am determined to start getting up at 6 or 5:30; so far, I’ve managed 6:30. You really have to organize the last part of your evening if you want to get to bed early, and I haven’t gotten on top of it yet. Maybe tonight.

After my religious obligations are taken care of, I fix up the birds and go out and check the plants. My mother always said parrots were like babies; at their best in the morning. That’s when they want to talk and socialize. Plants are definitely at their best in the morning. It’s cool, and everything is fresh, and you get your first look at the changes that have taken place since the previous day.

It reminds me of Israel. I used to get up at 5 and get dressed and throw my grapefruit bag on my shoulder, and then I’d walk to the dining hall and hop on the wagon, and the tractor would start, and they’d take me and the other grapefruit guys on a winding ride to the fields, where we would find our ladders where we had left them, lying in the cool grass. And in the spaces between the rows of trees, the cubic-yard boxes we were to fill that day. Three per picker.

Now that I think about it, I have a grapefruit tree now! Not really the same, though. It’s five feet tall.

I better post this. It has been sitting on my screen for what seems like forever.

The IRS Loves You

Can I tell you something crazy, since it’s Tax Day? I actually enjoy paying my taxes. I mean, sure, I like money. But America does a whole lot for me, and I like contributing. Somehow that’s true, even though I know taxes are too high, and that they are killing productivity and leading us to socialism. When in doubt, I deliberately overpay. I just hope they took my money and spent it on really big guns.

I don’t mind the government having money. I wish it could pull in ten times the amount it does now. But I also wish they would quit spending it on stupid things, and that they weren’t leaving so little for us. And those wishes don’t go together too well.

Writing the check is not that bad. What I hate is the work, and the knowledge that if I screw up AND someone in the government figures it out, my life will be hell until the situation is resolved.

Plants Dosed

Home Depot sells magnesium sulfate for eight dollars, and the container is smaller than a liter Coke bottle. I went to CVS (chain drugstore), and they had a bag containing about six pounds, for four dollars. Plain old epsom salts.

Guess which one I bought.

My plants will be green, and if need be, I will have instant regularity.

What a Deal!

Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong with buying excrement?

Think about it. Money is a reward for time spent working. So whatever your money is worth is also what your time is worth. What does it mean if you take your money and buy excrement for it and consider it a good deal?

I just bought 150 pounds of excrement. My grandfather, who raised cattle, would be turning over in his grave.

The guy I bought my plantain and banana trees from said compost was important for plantains. He said horse manure was the way to go. Darn the luck. My horse is constipated. No, it’s even worse than that. I don’t even have a horse. Unless you count my motorcycle apparel, cordovan shoes, and A-2 jacket. I checked Marv’s and Maynard’s cages. They do what they can, but I just don’t have that kind of time.

The guy said cow manure was okay, too, so today I went and bought three bags, and I just distributed them under my trees. Not just the plantains. Bananas, too. They’re nearly the same thing, so I figured it could not hurt.

I wore my Israeli commando boots. I was looking sharp out there. I didn’t want to experience the all-too-familiar sensation of noxious gardening substances falling in the gaps between my socks and tennis shoes.

While I was at the store, I noticed they had MAGNESIUM SULFATE! It’s supposed to cure yellowing leaves, which can be a problem here. I thought I might try it. Only eight bucks for about a pint and a half! Wow!

Wait. Isn’t magnesium sulfate epsom salt?

I’m fairly sure you can get a half gallon of epsom salt for about a dollar. Good for your plants, and I guess it could also help with the situation I mentioned above. If you’re not shy. Maybe the drugstore is the better option.

I guess I could get tons of free manure for nothing, if I knew where to find it. We have race tracks, but they’re not close by.

I continue to be fiercely envious of the banana guy’s life. Not just the room and the greenery and the peace. I envy him, having a business which is so morally neutral. It’s tough to practice law without damaging society, and writing has its temptations. It would be fantastic to grow plants, put up a website, and sell them. You would never have to ask yourself, “Gee, was it right to sell that guy the musella lasiocarpa?” I suppose every person who works has moral issues to worry about, but some jobs are less troubling than others. I’d sleep better growing alfalfa or running a hardware store than doing plastic surgery or practicing tort law.

I hope this work pays off. My plants have many problems, and I am tired of watching them languish.

I still want to kill those squirrels.

Jackson Exposes the Agenda

Here’s a big DUH for everyone who supports Obama. Especially Jews.

Jackson is especially critical of President Bush’s approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“Bush was so afraid of a snafu and of upsetting Israel that he gave the whole thing a miss,” Jackson says. “Barack will change that,” because, as long as the Palestinians haven’t seen justice, the Middle East will “remain a source of danger to us all.”

“Barack is determined to repair our relations with the world of Islam and Muslims,” Jackson says. “Thanks to his background and ecumenical approach, he knows how Muslims feel while remaining committed to his own faith.”

Yes, what we really need is to see to it that the world’s 12 million Jews quit bullying the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims, who are actively financing terror around the globe.

Liberals will say Jackson doesn’t speak for Obama. No, but he’s part of the same crowd, and according to Jackson, Obama is very close with Jackson’s boy. And Obama spent twenty years in an openly anti-Semitic church, and he was very close to the pastor, whom he called on to officiate at his marriage. Jesse Jackson didn’t pull this notion out of thin air. He knows Obama better than we do.

Go look at black forums on the Internet, and you will discover something America’s Jews don’t know. There is a very serious problem with black anti-Semitism in America. It’s very common. There is no shame or repentance connected with it. It’s vicious. And it’s not just the Muslims. Get out there and look; don’t trust me. For that matter, you can look at the records of prominent black leaders, such as Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson, Crown Heights riot-inciter Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright, and Wright crony Louis Farrakhan.

American journalists ignore it, because as far as they’re concerned, criticizing the bad acts of a minority member is equivalent to racism.

You may think Obama is above pandering to the anti-Semites. But is he? Has he yet found a population segment to which he is not willing to pander? You have to realize something. He’s getting over 90% of black votes. If he’s elected, he’ll need those votes again. There is no way he’ll give them up. And he will risk losing many of them if he supplies Israel with unwavering support.

Obama will want to hold onto Jewish voters, too. They make up about 2% of the electorate, though. And many Jews are self-haters who will go along with a turn against Israel. Blacks and Muslims pack a much bigger punch at the ballot box. If he has to make a choice–and he will–who is he going to capitulate to?

This nation is already helping destroy Israel. We are partial to Israel, but we and the secular Israeli government have nonetheless embarked on a strategy of appeasement. We’re taking big chunks of God-promised land and handing them over to Muslims who use them as bases to attack Israel. And there is no possibility that it will bring peace. The Jews are interested in peace; the Muslims are not. They have proven it time and time again. If they were, they would stop the shelling and the suicide-bombing. Israel is not getting a return on its rebellious investment.

What’s going to happen to us if we elect a President who is partial to Israel’s enemies? What if Obama accepts and acts on the Western European notion that the world’s problems can be solved by abandoning Israel? This country would be punished horribly, and we would deserve it.

All of Obama’s promises regarding Israel have been weasel-worded to prevent them from obligating him to do anything. You can’t say that about John McCain. He says Jerusalem will not be divided, and he wants to put an embassy in Jerusalem. Obama has admitted that he is willing to cut Jerusalem up. Warning bells should be going off in every Jewish home in America. Regardless of how safe America seems at the moment, Jews have only one refuge in times of trouble. And it’s not Skokie or Manhattan or Miami Beach.

We ought to be grateful to Jesse Jackson for jumping the gun. Maybe Jewish voters will wake up and remember who their real friends are.

Finally Something I Can Grow

I have been to Homestead and Redland, which is where most of Dade County’s nurseries are located. I went to Going Bananas and got me two plantain trees and a dessert banana tree.

Let me continue to amaze you with tales of my life. Before I went, I decided to call my sister and see if she wanted anything from that area. She said she wanted to go along, to get some vines. So off we went.

The guy at the banana place was very knowledgeable and helpful; he told me what I’m doing wrong with my current trees. I gave him one of my bananas (which I brought along for research purposes), and his best guess was that the variety was Orinoco. He said there are three kinds of banana-like fruit. Eating bananas, cooking bananas, and plantains. The Orinoco is a cooking banana. It tastes great raw, but apparently there is something about it that makes it suitable for cooking. My guess is that the firmness of the flesh is the secret. Ordinary bananas dissolve when you heat them.

What a spread this guy has. Beautiful fruit trees as far as the eye could see. Which was not far, because the trees obscured the outside world. Mameys, papayas, mangoes, bananas (obviously)…he even had what appeared to be a prig ki nu bush. And he had a classic Florida ranch-style house in the middle of it, with a big screened-in porch. If you’re going to live in South Florida, this is the correct way. Peace, quiet, low crime, acreage, and beautiful plants. I was inspired. I wish I knew enough about plants to make a living that way, because I’d do it in a heartbeat.

He was a former Miamian. There are very few native Miamians in existence. Many of them left when life in Miami became hectic and disagreeable.

There may be one more reason he left. My sister was wearing a T-shirt with a verse from Colossians on it. Apparently, it was one of a line of T-shirts. He noticed it and said he had one, and that he found it very comfortable.

Back when I belonged to a church, I knew a guy who ran a nursery in that area. Wonderful guy. Owned half a plane, with a non-Christian buddy. Had every kind of tool imaginable. Or at least it seemed that way to me. I remember the church needed angle iron cut and welded up for some reason, and a bunch of us drove out to his business, and he had some kind of a shear permanently mounted on a bench. I was impressed beyond words. You just put the steel on it and pulled a handle, and it cut whatever lengths you wanted.

He and his wife made a great living, selling plants. He said it was basically a matter of “finding the right Mexican.” He didn’t mean it in a racist way. He meant that they hired a guy who answered the phones and ran the place, and he took a lot of the work off of their shoulders.

He was a machinist in Vietnam, I believe. Kept fighters flying.

I just planted my trees. I got a Nam Wa banana, a PHIA 21 plantain, and a French Horn plantain. And I bought 50 lbs of special banana fertilizer.

All I have to do now is sit out there in a lawn chair, stare at the trees, and wait for bananas.

Weather Oppressive

I am dying to leave the house. This weather is driving me nuts. For the last three weeks, it’s been as if the entire world had been sat on by a fat guy in damp grey pants.

Where is my October relief? Wasn’t it supposed to quit clouding up and raining two weeks ago? Who do I file my complaint with?

I’m still messing with the site design. Eventually Phin will send me the new theme, and then I’ll have to start over. I put a flag on the header, as well as an ichthus or “Jesus fish.” It’s my understanding that no one can be saved unless he has the fish. It’s in the New Testament somewhere. Trust me. I’m busy.

Get me a Therapist

I am still consumed with bitterness and ire over the plantain trees that turned out to be bananas. You cannot imagine my fury. They’re pretty tasty, but I want what I was supposed to get. Dang it.

It turns out there is a nursery down here that specializes in bananas in plantains. The name of the business: Going Bananas.

Another thing to be enraged about, to the point of mouth-foaming: they’re a lot cheaper than the place the phony plantains came from. Twenty bucks a plant. That’s a great bargain. Once you have a plant in your yard, you’re set for life. They reproduce by throwing out new plants from the roots. And boy, do they bear.

I think I’ll get a couple of new trees. I have a big hole where a papaya used to be.

Papayas are really disappointing. They produce, but there is something about the smell of the fruit that reminds me of dog poo. Must be the soil. The ones from the store don’t smell.

…What Month is it in Afula?

Yesterday, I happened to learn that the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has a 16-month 2009 calendar for sale. It features some very nice photos of Israel. You might enjoy one.

I keep finding out stuff about Israel. One of the Perry Stone videos I watched was about the Dead Sea. I got pretty familiar with it in ’84, when I spent the night on Masada. Evidently, it’s disappearing. I guess they’re diverting a lot of the water from the Jordan watershed these days. Stone says it now consists of two bodies of water.

He said there was a kibbutz nearby, where they were trying to grow shrimp on a government grant. He said the kibbutz had an “owner.” I’m not sure he’s totally familiar with the kibbutz concept. Wouldn’t a single owner make it a moshav? Anyway, they are trying to do aquaculture over there now. When I was there, my kibbutz (still think of it that way) grew odd-looking barbeled fish in ponds, and they fed them chicken manure. But that was freshwater.

I want to go back so badly. I just don’t know what I’d do. I wonder if Marv and Maynard would forgive me if I applied to do a month on the kibbutz. They used to accept older volunteers. Maybe they still do. A month in the grapefruit (or blood oranges, which was their new thing in ’84) would be great.

I used to giggle at the tours. Buses would unload, and tourists would pile out, all wearing identical hats, and they would mill around like geese. But maybe a tour isn’t so bad, when you really want to learn. Maybe I could put in a month on a kibbutz and join up with a tour later.

I suppose it’s different now, with all the land cessions and terrorism. Back then–we were told–terrorism inside the country wasn’t that bad. I wonder if there are places I can no longer visit. I think Jericho is in the West Bank, and I understand most of the Christians have abandoned Bethlehem. Which wasn’t much of a destination anyway.

More

Let me try something wild. I’m going to post the Google Earth coordinates for the building I lived in when I was on the kibbutz, and you can go see it for yourself.

32°34’6.37″N
35°22’17.82″E

Rough Night

Mish Weiss had her bone marrow “mini transplant” yesterday, and the radiation and chemo have made her very sick. Please keep her in your prayers. They specifically asked people to pray for strength.

As I understand it, a mini transplant is a limited transplant suitable for a person who is not well enough for the real deal. She explains it on her blog. The hope is that the new stuff will defeat the old stuff, more or less.

Not Sure I Care

I have been working on my new site. What a mess.

I had a huge number of posts before I moved. Not all have been republished. The last six months are up, and there is some 2003 stuff. That’s about it.

I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll get the other stuff working. It’s a tremendous amount of work, and to be honest, there are a lot of old posts I just don’t care enough about to republish. And there are old posts that seem inappropriate in view of the changes in my life and outlook.

Sorry the Haloscan comments are gone. I don’t think they’re necessary any more. I needed them because of spam problems on the old site, and I’m hoping the same issues won’t arise here.

Phin graciously volunteered to send me a new theme to make the site look better. It will have three columns, a lot like the old site. I don’t know when it will arrive. The nice thing about WordPress is that it will go up instantly, once I upload it.

Aaron says there are ways to make WP more secure, so I’ll be implementing those. When he tells me what they are.

I appreciate all the comments on Communion. Based on what I’ve read, I’m inclined to think there is no reason it can only be done in a church.

I saw something interesting in a video last night. One of the items my sister brought me was a Perry Stone DVD about cleansing your house. As you probably know, in Christianity, “house” can refer to your home, or to your body. Some Christians believe that the presence of certain objects in your home can prevent you from having peace and prosperity and safety. I agree with that. I suppose everyone is familiar with the story of Joshua’s army losing the battle because of stolen treasures.

Oddly, I had been thinking about this idea the day before I watched the video.

Stone mentioned an interesting story. I can’t recall whether it was in the DVD or not. I also watched a couple of his Youtubes. He said he toured Jericho. They’ve been doing a lot of excavating there. His guide showed him a part of the wall, and in the wall, there was an embedded clay jar that had been cut open. The guide told him a baby’s remains had been found in it. He said the early inhabitants of Jericho used to sacrifice their children, and–if I recall correctly–this one had been placed in the wall to make the pagan gods bless the wall and keep it strong. Something like that.

Preachers lie a lot, I am sorry to say. They make things up, to make their sermons and teachings more entertaining. I decided to check this story out, because it sounded a little too neat.

It turns out Stone was right. You can Google “jar-burial” and find out. The ancient Canaanites used to kill their children and put them in jars. I’m sure you can guess which children were most often victimized. The eldest sons. And one item I found suggested that at least one excavated victim died at about ten years of age. Most were newborns, but that was not a hard and fast rule.

Think of that.

These days, we sacrifice the unborn to the god of pleasure and irresponsibility. But we kill them while they’re out of the parents’ sight, and we kill them as young as possible. That makes it easier, not just medically, but psychologically. If women had to see their unborn babies killed in front of them, abortion would be much rarer (and less lucrative). At least I hope it would.

The Canaanites were apparently more “advanced” and “progressive.” They were so cold, they could raise their children and name them and get to know them. And THEN slaughter them and have their bodies sealed up in their homes or other structures.

I think Stone was claiming that the walls of Jericho were, themselves, cursed by the presence of accursed objects, and that that’s why they were destroyed.

We don’t build walls or houses on the corpses of babies any more. But we do build careers and marriages on them. Have an abortion so you can go to school and get a good job. Have an abortion so you’ll have a better chance of landing a husband. That’s the thinking. You have to wonder how safe a life is, when it’s built on a foundation of abortion.

It’s peculiar; the near-sacrifice of Isaac and the actual sacrifice it presaged seem to be righteous parodies of the actions of the ancient pagans. God wanted a servant as devoted to him as the pagans were to their idols, but he didn’t want to permit the sacrifice. Instead, he intended to sacrifice his own eldest son. This underscores the difference between false gods and the real thing. False gods take, but the real God gives. You can give to God, but you can’t outgive him.

A number of times in my life, I have gotten rid of things that I thought were obstacles. I threw out the book Naked Lunch because it was so vile and disgusting I didn’t want it near me. I bought a Koran and started reading it, but after I learned that the Muslims considered it a physical embodiment of God, it seemed like an idol to me, so I dumped that, too. Last night I tossed some DVDs that made me uncomfortable. And a big pile of drawings from art classes I had taken. Maybe forty pounds.

I had been wanting to get rid of the drawings for a long time. I created them back in the days when I hoped to get a comic strip published or to become an animator. I took classes to sharpen my skills. The vast majority were quick, vague sketches of nude models; you couldn’t make anything out, because they were just a few strokes of charcoal. A few were more detailed. I got rid of everything, except for some items that were clearly harmless. Copies of masterpieces and so on.

The art world is seriously screwed up. I took a class from a guy at Florida International University, and I remember two things about him. First, he often gushed about total crap, but he sometimes insulted people with real talent. Second, he seemed completely consumed with lust. You could feel it when he came in the room. I think some people become artists largely because it makes it easier to get other people’s clothes off. Maybe this is how this guy got started. I don’t know. Generally, he was a good instructor. But something there was not right.

I took some classes at Parsons, in New York, and I remember a creepy incident. A nude model failed to show up, so the instructor in charge of rounding up models took her place. He stripped from the waist down, and then the model showed up, and there was some kind of confusion, and he had to do some paperwork. He stood at the front of the room for maybe five minutes, working on his papers and talking to students, wearing only a golf shirt. It was obvious he was reluctant to pull his pants back on. So odd.

I’ll tell you something which ought to be obvious. You can learn to draw very well, without studying naked models. In fact, the way cloth stretches and folds and drapes over the human form teaches you a lot about how figures should be drawn. But I don’t run the schools.

I also tossed some Kevin Smith DVDs. He has gotten so gross, and he was so offensive in Dogma, I prefer not to have that material displayed in my living room. In what appears to be desperation, he just made a revolting, nudity-filled comedy about the filming of a low-budget porno. I don’t think that was a smart move. He says he’s a serious Christian, and I have no reason to doubt him, but I think he’s way off track with his strange conviction that filth and blasphemy mesh smoothly into a valid Christian lifestyle.

When I was getting my last book ready for publication, I worked to remove things that I considered problematic, but I didn’t do a great job. I hope I’ll get a chance to revise it.

It occurred to me today that losing so many old blog entries might be a therapeutic purge. I try not to worry about losing old material; holding onto the old is crippling for a creative person. More often than not, the best way to improve an essay is to delete it and start over. Maybe a life is the same way. Strip down and rebuild.

One more interesting thing before I go.

I’m not big on eschatology, because it’s a mistake to try to predict the end of time. It’s better to try to live right and not worry about the tribulation and the rapture and so on. I remember 1984, when a whole bunch of people were convinced the world was about to end. Didn’t happen. Still, I can’t help getting drawn into the subject, and last night, I succumbed.

Perry Stone was talking about signs and wonders. He thinks we have been living in an age ruled by Gentiles, and that it’s the last age before the end of the world. He’s convinced that living believers will be raptured, and that there will then be a seven-year tribulation here on earth. And he says we are seeing signs. For example, he talked about roaring waves and so on. And here we are, in the post-tsunami, post-Katrina era. Post-Nargis.

Do you know what “Katrina” means? He said it meant “cleansing,” but that’s a little misleading. It’s a form of “Catherine,” which comes from the same Greek word that gives us “catharsis.” It means “pure.” Spooky.

He also referred to the passage that says that at the end of time, it will be as it was at the time of Noah. Well, Noah lived before the extermination of a human race absorbed by evil. Aaron says the Jews believe that one of the last straws, before the flood, was the creation of marriage contracts between humans and animals. I had never really thought about the passage relating Noah to the end of the world, but it has to be a reference to evil, because that is what distinguished Noah’s era.

Stone also mentioned Comet Hale-Bopp, which appeared recently, and which last appeared at about the time Noah was commanded to build the ark. I looked it up, and it’s true. And he noted that Comet Shoemaker-Levy, which broke in pieces, began hitting the planet Jupiter on Tisha B’Av, 1994. The most ominous day in the Jewish calendar. The day both temples fell.

Jupiter is the same person as Zeus. People who worshipped Zeus use to sacrifice pigs. A couple of centuries before Christ, a Roman emperor put a statue of Zeus in the temple and used the altar to sacrifice pigs. This was part of the struggle between Jewish ways and Hellenism, which continues today. Only today, the world fights to absorb and defuse Christianity as well as Judaism.

Non sequitur, I guess. Also, Stone claims the reason a herd of pigs was present when Jesus expelled the demons from the Gadarene demoniac was that pigs were raised so Zeus-worshipers could sacrifice them. Zeus was worshiped in the Middle East as Ba’al-Shamayim, the Babylonian sun god.

Fascinating stuff. But like I said, I am not going to waste time trying to pinpoint the end of history, so I can have my credit cards maxed out on that day.

That’s it. I got things to do.