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.

Book Says Yes

Hope everyone is having a fine Sabbath. If you’re Jewish, pardon me for being a day late. It’s a magnificent day here. Sunny and bright, even though we have a high chance of rain. The best sunlight comes from inside, but the regular kind isn’t bad, either, especially during an unusually rainy October. Usually, June and September are the rainiest months here, and we get some relief in the fall. You wouldn’t know it from the way it has been coming down all month.

As mentioned in an earlier post, my sister surprised me by giving me a book and some sort of home Communion kit. I know how weird this is, given the the bitter nature of our relationship over the last decade; I don’t want to go back over that. I’m just glad to see the burden of our estrangement lifting, and I hope things continue to improve.

Anyway, she also gave me a book by a minister named Perry Stone. The book is called The Meal that Heals. I haven’t finished it, but I know enough to tell you that the premise of the book is that communion is something Christians are supposed to experience privately as well as in church. I know many of my readers are Christians, and I thought I’d throw it out for discussion, to see if anyone knows anything about it.

Stone is a Charismatic. That can be good or bad, in my opinion. The Holy Spirit has been systematically excluded from Christians’ lives over the centuries, and I am fairly sure private prayer in tongues is legitimate, and that it builds a believer’s strength. I’m a hundred percent positive the fruit and gifts of the Spirit are real, regardless of whether I’m right about each one of them. On the other hand, Charismatics and other Protestants are subject to horrendous doctrinal deviations and excesses, and sometimes we swallow utter nonsense, to our great detriment. I have been there.

I am also confident that I am right when I say the traditional churches, for all their strengths, have done a wonderful job of putting God behind a wall of glass, as though lay people were not qualified to approach him. For example, they have provided scriptures and services in languages believers can’t understand. They have also put clergymen in charge of actions ordinary believers should be performing for themselves. We should all pray every day. We should all share our knowledge with other believers. We should read the Bible for ourselves. And so on. You can’t expect to know God when you rely on middlemen to perform your religious obligations. That should be obvious. The ancient Jews relied on priests to do a lot of the work for them, but the Temple no longer exists, and Christianity is not ancient Judaism, as the events in the Upper Room demonstrate. The New Testament is full of believers who approached and worked with God one-on-one, in addition to the activities they performed at gatherings.

I think what I said in the last paragraph is true, but that doesn’t mean we should be taking Communion on our own. But I can’t dismiss the possibility.

Look at the way churches have gotten away from the truth. Take baptism. It began as a Jewish purification ritual. Jews immersed themselves in ritual baths (“mikvahs”), or in running streams. Somehow, some churches ended up replacing immersion with a few drops of water on the forehead. Does that make sense? How is that equivalent to sitting in a mikvah or being dunked in a river? It’s not even remotely similar. Some churches did away with baptism altogether, which is even stranger. The importance of baptism is indisputable. If it’s meaningless, how can you explain the career of John the Baptist, or the continued emphasis of baptism after Christ’s assumption into heaven? Remember the eunuch who insisted on being baptized? That wasn’t in the Gospels. It came later. And the eunuch was traveling in a dry country; surely he had a container of water with him. Yet he did not ask to be baptized until he saw a substantial body of water in which he could be immersed. He didn’t try to get by with a sprinkle. And Peter pointed out that the Genesis flood was symbolic of baptism. The flood was more than a few drops.

If baptism is messed up, and it definitely is, maybe Communion is messed up, too.

Stone believes private Communion somehow increases the power of God in your life, and that it may bring benefits such as healing.

We get the Communion concept from the Gospels. I just looked it over. The descriptions are not identical, but it’s clear that the Last Supper was a Passover seder, and that what we now call Communion occurred during the course of the meal. And the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians tells more, suggesting that early Christians celebrated Communion as a meal, as well as a ritual. So the tiny crackers and the sip of wine we see today seem inadequate to me. It seems clear that it wasn’t a typical meal, because Paul cautioned people who were truly hungry to eat at home. But the sense I get is that these people “broke bread” together in the usual sense of the term, which means they sat down and shared some food and drink.

If that is true, is it something you would only do at church? That would be a little odd. I wouldn’t want people eating and drinking while a pastor tried to teach. It would be chaos. Is it possible that Jesus was just telling the disciples, who were Jews and therefore obligated to observe Passover, to think of him during future seders and understand the significance of the wine and matzah?

I don’t know what the answer is, but it seems that we are now in the process of re-learning things about our Jewish past, and it only makes sense that some of our traditions are going to be shattered and corrected.

I Googled Stone to see what kind of person he is. I can’t find any scandal or any meaningful criticism. I see no record of private jets or mistresses or fur-lined Bentleys. Maybe he’s okay. There are some sites that criticize him, but they are…odd…to put it kindly.

Let me know what you think. It’s an interesting issue.

I am easily the coolest person in the universe. Cooler than even Zaphod Beeblebrox. I sort of finished my wiring project.

I put a new cover on an outdoor socket. I rewired a floodlight and sensor. I moved the circuit they were on, off of a 60-amp fuse for a 220 circuit. I ran the circuit into the garage, where I created an outlet. I ran it on into the air handler closet, where I created a 4-plug outlet. I ran conduit to a hardwired wall fixture, and now I have lights in the garage. I converted a dangerous 220 circuit which was just hanging in the closet (bare-ended) to a 110 circuit, and I used it to power the whole mess, and I put a new breaker in at the panel.

I probably should have turned the juice off at the panel before changing the breaker, but I was drunk with power. The kind in your head, not the kind that comes from the power company.

Here’s my impressive Christian story for the day. I had to screw a couple of wires into the back of a pair of receptacles today, and the receptacles were already cluttered. A reader got me all excited by pointing out that there are “stab through” connections in the backs of these things; you just strip a wire, shove it in there, and tighten the screw. Come to find out, these receptacles didn’t have the…blasted…things. And I was counting on them.

I had to put eyes on the wires and stack them on screws that already had eye connectors on them. If you’ve ever done this, you know how hard it is to get the…darn…screws to catch. It’s nearly impossible. And I had to do this with both hands over my head, in a dim closet. I have been trying to remember to pray before doing ANYTHING, especially challenging things, and for some reason, I remembered this time. And all three of the screws I had to deal with went right in! I could not believe it. Be an atheist and attribute it to chance if you want. I was extremely happy, and I say my prayers were answered. I suffered like you wouldn’t believe, trying to do the same thing yesterday. On the same receptacles.

Maybe this will impress you more. When I got home from my daily trip to Home Depot, I found my sister here with an orchid, a pot full of small dragonfruit plants, a Perry Stone book, and some sort of home communion kit. I am completely serious. I don’t know what to think. The Bible says God will give you the desires of your heart, and that is apparently true. Of course, you have to get your desires right. That’s the catch. But it’s a catch I don’t mind.

I think I’ll go stare at the closet some more. I still can’t get over it.

I Know How You Enjoy It

It has been hours since last I blogged about how great I am, so I feel I am way overdue.

Today I have been distracted by web issues, but I am about to get back to work on my electrical project. At last mention, I had fixed the outdoor portion of the job and installed one square box (with outlets) in the garage. Last night I made myself go in and install the other box. Now the job gets easier. Instead of working in a tiny steaming space with poor visibility, I get to work in a tiny cool space with poor visibility. I have to yank the wires from the second box into the garage, attach the second box, install two banks of lights, run stuff to the lights, and attach the whole mess to the outlet box I put in the closet a few days back.

The closet will still be an eyesore. Years of rot from a leaky bath area on the other side of the closet wall have taken their toll. But at least I’ll be able to see when I’m in there.

I have a truly nutty idea. there is a water pipe in there. I plumbed the condensate line on the AC air handler so I could hook it up to a hose and flush the crud out with water. What if I cut into the water pipe and installed a faucet to which a hose could be attached? Man, I’d have the air handler closet from hell. When the crud backs up, you turn two valves, wait thirty seconds, and turn them the other way. No more snaking a hose through the house to a utility sink.

I realize you are all in awe of me. That’s perfectly understandable.

I Can Only Guess at Your Joy

Welcome to the new Hog on Ice. I know it’s pretty spare, but I like it. It’s a new start. MT is great if you’re a code genius with no life, and it handles photos much better than WordPress, but other than that, WordPress is king, in my questionable opinion.

I hate to toss all the great free work Phin and Sadie did for me, but there was no way to move it to WP. Phin says he may have a nice three-column theme lying around, so I can make my site look a little better. As you can tell, I created this site using the same theme I used for my other WP blogs. I made a new theme, but the php was straight from Mars, and I couldn’t figure out how to insert images in it.

I imported six months of old entries. It’s incredibly hard to import big blogs to WP, and Hog on Ice is extremely big, because I cannot shut up. I don’t know if I’ll import the old stuff wholesale or not. I’m thinking I should go through it item by item and only republish stuff people are likely to care to see again. I’ll bet my traffic plummets now; the links to the old crap won’t work any more.

I managed to save my blogroll, so at least I don’t have to sweat about that.

Haloscan comments are history, for the time being. I’ll see how well WP and Akismet work. If I have no problems, I’ll continue using WP’s commenting system.

To get back to the kind of BS I usually write about, let me inform you that I tried a McGriddle today. I had no idea what to expect. I can’t be bothered to read the little descriptions on the drive-thru thing.

It turns out a McGriddle is an Egg McMuffin with Sausage, made with small thick pancakes instead of muffins. And they have somehow injected maple syrup flavor in there.

I don’t think they’re for me. It’s just a little too weird. And the syrup conflicts with ketchup. Still, it beats the daylights out of the scary breakfast deals they serve at Wendy’s.

Usual Suspects

I think this blog will be here until Monday, so: say a prayer for Mish Weiss, who is supposed to have a bone marrow transplant on Sunday. She is really grateful for your prayers.

And don’t forget Leah Friedman, who is recovering from some sort of horrendous chest surgery.

I’m Still Here

My website changes are not taking effect yet, so I’m still here. May as well blog.

Here is interesting news. My sister called, and she was asking my advice on religious charities that benefit Jews. In fact, she was all excited about helping Jews get out of Sudan. I told her what I knew about the IFCJ, and I told her my readers had mentioned some other group that flies Jews to Israel, without the ban on proselytizing.

How did this happen? This is not the person I used to know. Do I see a complete change? No, but I see what appears to be a valid beginning, which is more than I hoped for. Even though I prayed for it every day.

She seems more willing to trust televangelists than I am. She recommends a guy named Perry Stone. I watched one of his shows on Youtube tonight. Not bad. He acknowledges our debt to Judaism. Doesn’t seem obsessed with collecting money.

A while back, I said I was going to start memorizing the psalms. I thought I should follow up. It’s working very well. I’m up to 6. I’ve memorized 1, 2, 4, 23, 63, and 101. The power of the psalms is impressive. I have to repeat them to memorize them, and as I do, the hidden meanings of the words become clear, and I realize how much I have in common with the psalmists. Their experiences and concerns are so much like mine.

Here’s something wild. I often wake up in the night, because I have rude neighbors. I hate to waste time. Ordinarily I use times like this for prayer. Recently I started using them to work on memorization, repeating the psalms to myself over and over. And the results are nothing short of amazing. I fall asleep every time, within a couple of minutes. Without fail. And it’s not because I’m bored. There is nothing boring about it.

Some Christians claim praying in tongues will cure insomnia. That has not been my experience. But the psalms work consistently and quickly. Which, to me, indicates that the real source of my sleep problems is supernatural. Regardless of how my neighbors behave.

It’s funny, the psalms seem cryptic and even meaningless, if you don’t have God to illuminate them for you. So much of Christianity is like that. It’s no wonder people who know nothing about the Holy Spirit think we’re idiots.

One Shot

Here’s a little tool-time tip. Never install two new square boxes, a run of conduit, and a new socket in a corner of your garage in which you have already parked a giant compressor.

And if you do, never squeeze in behind the compressor before you have made a complete list of the items you’ll need and put them within reach.

Man, what a time I’ve had, standing in a tiny, bent space in which I couldn’t stand up, sit down, or straighten my knees. I think this is how the Vietnamese used to break people.

I managed to get one box and the socket installed, but I still have to do the other one. When I came in here to have a drink and take a break, I threw my shirt on the floor, and it made that familiar “WHOP” sound. It’s amazing how much you can sweat while standing still.

Thank God I bought a tubing bender. That will save me twenty minutes of grief, trying to cut tubes to fit and slop it all together and screw it to the wall. Instead, I’ll bend one tube, make two quick cuts, pop it into place, and screw in the support things.

I can’t wait to get the garage part of this done. It’s about 84 degrees in there, with 70% humidity. As soon as I’m done, I’ll be able to work in the air handler closet. Which is small and uncomfortable, but cool.

When this is all over with, I plan to stand in the closet and flip the lights on over and over, for about an hour. Just so I can say I won.

Prepare for Separation Anxiety

I’m making some changes to the site. For one thing, I’m moving to WordPress. I know it’s easier to hack, but no one cares enough about me to hack my site any more, and WordPress is very easy to work with.

The site may vanish for a day. Friday is the perfect time to do it. Don’t be upset. Your old buddy Steve has not quit blogging; life will go on. My older posts may go all funny. It will probably take a long time to fix that.

Not sure how long my email will be down.

I’ll continue to update the <a href=’http://walkenlog.com’target=’_blank’>Walken blog,</a> and none of my other sites will be affected.

Tree Rats are on my Turf

Tonight I called the cops and asked their permission to kill every squirrel I see. I got some PR guy who didn’t really know the law, but he asked everyone in the office, and they were pretty sure it was illegal. So I found the municipal code online, and I noticed two things.

1. There was no reference to squirrels.

2. It turns out it’s legal to shoot an air rifle in Coral Gables, if you have the property owner’s permission. I think that can be arranged.

I have had it with squirrels eating my mangoes. And considering all the fruit they eat, they should fry up nice.

More great news: Christopher Walken and I have come to an understanding, regarding Hershey’s syrup.