Here is a bummer for you. I went to Bass and got me a sling, scope rings, and a rifle bag. And it looks like the rings and sling may have to go back.
The scope I bought has a 42mm objective lens. I bought rings that were supposed to work with a lens that size. But when I put them on the rifle, the scope rested on the barrel. DOH.
I just checked the Burris page. Guess what? Burris uses bigger lenses than other makers. How they can do that while still calling it 42mm is beyond me.
Now my head hurts.
I assume they mean 42mm is bigger than the lens on a competitor’s product with the same specs. And maybe the thick barrel is the problem.
I took the sling out of the bag and noticed something funny. It only has one swivel. What the hell? The gun has two studs. Do I attach the sling to the one stud with a cable tie? I happen to have a swivel I’m not using, but I’m not totally sure the sling can be opened up and inserted in it. Guess I’ll figure it out.
They don’t even sell Eezox. It’s a weird store. In some ways, they seem almost ashamed of their shooting products. At least I enjoyed the giant saltwater aquarium. I always stand by it for a while and imagine myself killing all the fish.
I sure hope there is nothing wrong with the bag.
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Cheer yourself up by reading about the otherPresident Jefferson. Moxie met him at a fundraiser held by Jackie Treehorn.
My new scope is here. I am just about ready to try out the Savage .17 HMR. I’m pretty excited about it, since all my other rifles have little problems that make it hard to distinguish my bad shooting from error caused by mechanical booboos.
I went outside and aimed it at the construction guys across the street, to see what the optics were like. Needless to say, I did not bring the gun with it. Even I am not crazy enough to aim an empty rifle at neighboring yards.
I need rings, and apparently, I really, REALLY need something called Eezox. Someone in the comments recommended it, and Varmint Al says the company that made some of his barrels recommended using it before shooting for the first time.
I looked it up. It seems to be some kind of dry lubricant. I wonder if it would be better than Hornady One Shot, to keep powder flowing smoothly in a powder measure.
Guess I better head for Bass. I know of no other local place that will have the little items I need.
If you’re not near a TV, let me give you the news. John McCain hasn’t picked a running mate yet, or at least he won’t say who it is. He was supposed to tell us today at 11 a.m. The problem? Barack Obama made his announcement by text message. John McCain chose Pony Express.
The waitresses and bartenders appreciate your tips, folks.
I couldn’t resist.
I’m completely creeped out by Obama’s weird Acropolis stadium set. Have you seen this thing? They put phony Greek columns up at Invesco Stadium, and I guess Obama is going to come out with a bronze sword and slay Polynices.
Does anybody remember Wag the Dog? I don’t. But I recall this much: it was about a President in trouble, who tried to save himself by hiring movie people to fake up the news. Do you get the feeling the Obamas may own the DVD?
I guess it makes sense that Obama is promoted like a movie star, and that he’s surrounded by actors and musicians all the time, while McCain is lucky if he can get Pat Boone to send him a non-alcoholic beer on Facebook. We are gradually learning that there is a conservative entertainment counterculture with more than a few prominent members. Problem is, if they go to Minneapolis, they’ll all end up unemployed. Because Hollywood and the music business want to be diverse, and as we all know, “diverse” means “free of conservatives and Christians, regardless of color.”
As I have noted before, if you take a group of white male liberals and add a black female conservative, the group actually becomes less diverse. It’s like conservatives and Christians are the antimatter of diversity. Or something.
Condi Rice is a white man. Get used to it. Colin Powell used to be white, but since he turned on the Republicans, he has browned up nicely.
As a Christian, I continue to be bummed out by two things. The right’s abandonment of Christian (or Judeo-Christian) values, and the anti-Christian undertones of the Obama phenomenon. This guy runs around with an idol in his pocket, and the idol just happens to be a demigod which has been characterized credibly as the Hindu Antichrist.
For a long time, I’ve believed there are people who succeed beyond reasonable expectations, simply because dark spiritual forces help them. Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Oprah may be examples. Also Hitler and Castro. By the way, if you think I’m picking on Oprah, find out what she’s up to. She has hitched her wagon to a pop-culture faux Messiah named Tolle. And she says there are all sorts of paths to salvation, not just the one which Christians accept. That’s anti-Christian. Take the hyphen out, and what do you get? Furthermore, “anti-Christian” contains the letter “T,” which rhymes with “P,” which stands for “pool.”
I never saw an obscure reference I could resist.
We usually use the term “antichrist” to describe a unique person we think will rule in the future. But I believe there are lots and lots of people who are “anointed” by evil to prosper in this world and influence people negatively. Is that crazy? I know I’m not the only one who believes this. And I worry that Obama may be one of these people. He’s a nobody, with no qualifications for the job he wants. And he had very powerful competition for the job, in the form of Hillary Clinton. But he squashed her effortlessly. On top of that, the press is so giddy over him, you can’t help but wonder if something spiritual is clouding their judgment. Chris Matthews said Obama made a tingle run down his leg! Is that something a person says, when he’s in his right mind? THREE network anchors went on a press tour with Obama. How can a thing like that happen, without generating a wave of firings? It’s inconceivable. But we all saw it.
He also spent twenty years at an anti-Semitic church. I don’t differentiate between anti-Christian and anti-Semitic. To me, it all seems to come from the same place, whether you’re talking about Pharaoh killing the Hebrew firstborn or Muslim fathers murdering their sons for accepting Christ. Increasingly, events bear out my impression. The same people who hate Jews, now hate Christians and America. Like I always say, these days, we are all Jews.
Even Christian churches are anti-Christian now. Many of them tell us to divest from Israel. Many say God is just a pleasant idea that will help us behave. Crazy. We have moles in pulpits.
The Greek Obama motif is bothersome, because in the past, the struggle between Jehovah-worshippers and the rest of the world has often been characterized as a struggle against Hellenism, or against Rome. To a person like me, who sees everything as a symbol, the Greek set is like a punch in the face.
Of course, we have to be fair. When the actual Parthenon was built, John McCain cut the ribbon.
Sorry. I see why Jay Leno does this. It’s so easy.
I don’t think people who are promoted by evil know what’s going on. I don’t think Oprah wakes up every morning and thanks Satan for a chance to send more people to hell. And I would be amazed if Obama had bad intentions, beyond the usual desires for wealth, adulation, and power. I doubt that religion means much to him. When he was young, he knew he wanted to be a politician. So he did two things politicians have to do. He got married, and he joined a church. Much as many conservative politicians have done. But his meteoric and unmerited rise to prominence is freakish, and I don’t think things like that happen without supernatural action.
I am afraid Obama will hurt Israel, by weakening support. I am afraid he will strengthen judicial attacks on Christianity by appointing far-left freaks to the federal bench. And I fully expect him to push us in the direction of socialism, which is a system that has always been anti-Christian. He’ll probably do what he thinks is best, most of the time, but he’ll be completely wrong.
Sometimes I get the impression that this is a pivotal election. It’s as if God is giving us a choice between a fairly normal politician with relatively old-fashioned values, or a guy who represents humanism, immorality, and pride. More obviously than Bill Clinton did. It has the smell of a test.
I think John McCain will be President this time next year. I don’t think we’ve gone crazy enough to elect a man who has never held an executive position, and who pals around with anti-Semites and unrepentant terrorists. My guess is that once the ads start running full-force and people learn what Obama is all about, McCain will be in position to win by four or five percentage points.
But it disturbs me that Obama could get this close to the Oval Office.
I pray for the McCain campaign. If this is a spiritual battle, we have to fight it on a spiritual level. That’s how I see it. I would suggest you do the same. The Bible says God chooses the king. So cast your vote.
Swell news today. I picked up my latest adopted baby. A Savage 93R17-FVSS. In case you haven’t memorized the entire Savage line, I’ll inform you that this is a .17 HMR bolt-action rifle with a heavy stainless barrel and no sights. The scope is still on the way.
I also have ammunition. I ordered it from Midsouth while I was waiting.
Looks like a nice little gun. Seems very light, to have a barrel like that.
I can’t wait to get to the range and see what it will do. My earliest chance is Friday, but I don’t know if I can swing it.
I think I should have done this two years ago. Or earlier. I’ve had fun with the PSL and the K31, but I really needed something with fewer idiosyncrasies. Something I could take out of the box and shoot. This looks like a good choice. It should be ridiculously accurate at a hundred yards, and the ammunition is cheap, as was the gun itself.
The PSL has a trigger problem. The K31 needs scope shims. My Nylon 66 just doesn’t seem to like scopes. The new gun shouldn’t have any of those problems. Now, when I miss, I’ll know who to blame.
The ammunition is just plain weird. Tiny little miniatures of high-powered rifle rounds. And each one has a red plastic insert in the bullet’s cavity.
I don’t know what accessories I need. I have the Boresnake, and I’ll be buying a bag for the gun, but after that, who knows? It has studs on it for a strap. Maybe that would be a good idea.
Now I feel like I can quit looking at rifles for a spell. This one should be a dream to shoot, so I should be able to learn a great deal from it. I certainly hope so. You never know when your city might be invaded by chipmunks.
A while back, I revealed something I thought would benefit people. I mentioned one of the reasons I believe in Jesus Christ. It was something I had kept to myself, except for few times when I mentioned it to people close to me. I used to think it was a waste of time to tell people about it, but that was before the Internet. It may be a waste of time to tell people one-on-one, but if I put it here, it might reach someone who will get something out of it.
Again, as I have said before, the best reason to believe me is that I don’t profit by telling the story. If a TV preacher tells a story about a supernatural experience, you know he’s getting paid to do it. I don’t receive a thing for my trouble.
I’m thinking about this, because I happened to flip to a religious channel tonight, and I saw a guy interviewing people, asking if they had seen or otherwise sensed God. They all said no, and even though he appeared to be some sort of clergyman, he said he hadn’t, either. I thought that was a little weird, since so many people say they have physically sensed God’s presence. It occurred to me that maybe I had a duty to talk about the things that had happened to me. If such experiences are rarer than I once thought, maybe people who have them are supposed to tell other people about them.
Last time, I told about an incident that took place while I was driving. I was on my way from Milwaukee to Kentucky, in the dead of winter. And I had a terrible feeling of dread come over me. I was positive I was going to die that day, and I had no explanation. My life was okay. I hadn’t suffered any emotional trauma. But I still felt that way, and I couldn’t shake it. I pulled over and prayed, and suddenly, I felt a warm, loving presence in the car with me. It was just to my right. It was full of peace and reassurance and love, and these attributes seemed to have a pressure that drove them against me like a hug. It wasn’t visible, but it occupied an identifiable space on the seat next to me. After it showed up, I was okay. And I was sure it was a visitation from Jesus.
I have had that same experience on at least one other occasion. It was in the mid-Eighties. I was becoming more religious. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the best role models or teachers I could have asked for. But I was improving, compared to what I had been in the past.
One night I was lying in bed, fully awake, about to drift off to sleep. And I felt the strangest sensation. I can describe it in a way that will help you to understand it, to some degree. Imagine you’re wearing a blindfold. You can’t see any light at all. And someone across the room from you trains a spotlight on you. If they moved the spotlight so the beam played over your body, you’d feel the beam as it moved over you. Where the beam struck, you would feel warmth, and the rest of you would be cooler. I felt something like that, in that dark room. I felt a warm beam playing over my body, but it wasn’t a beam of light, and it wasn’t physical warmth. It was emotional and spiritual warmth. And of course, powerful love. The same thing I felt when I had the experience in the car, except that instead of a more or less ball-shaped presence, it seemed more like a beam, coming from above.
This will sound crazy, but it’s absolutely true. Everywhere this beam touched me, I felt happy and secure. The crazy part is that when it hit my legs, for example, my legs felt warm and safe and content, and the rest of me felt less so. The same applied to my arms and my chest and the rest of me. You may not believe you can feel emotions in your legs or your arms, while the rest of you feels something different, but you can. You can probably have one toe that is happier than the rest of your body.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. If it happened now, I think I’d get out of bed and worship, to be on the safe side and show respect. But that didn’t occur to me. And I had had a few other supernatural experiences, so I didn’t get all that excited. Besides, the nature of the beam was such that it was impossible to be disturbed by it.
I was sure this was a manifestation of Jesus. Just as I was sure the first time, in the car. I don’t know why I was sure, but I was. I expressed my gratitude and so on, but beyond that, I didn’t know what to do. And I fell asleep, believe it or not.
People tend to think that if they see or hear or feel something miraculous, they’ll run up and down the street proclaiming it, but the truth is, you may take such things calmly. I think most people convince themselves their supernatural experiences didn’t happen, so they won’t have to react to them. That’s the easiest thing. I didn’t do that, but I was calm enough to sleep.
As soon as I drifted into that funny state between sleep and waking, I woke up, and I found myself flat on my back. My arms were extended in front of me, with the palms up. They were just there; I have no memory of raising them or of turning onto my back. And I heard a sound like arcs of electricity pouring into a pair of electrodes. And I felt a buzzy sort of sensation in my palms, as if some kind of energy was pouring into them, from a place beyond the ceiling. I didn’t see anything. I just felt it. And my arms stayed up for a little while, and then the sound and the sensation disappeared, and that was the end of it.
I would love to tell you that when I got up the next morning, I ran around the neighborhood using my magical palms to heal people of cancer, but nothing like that happened. I never did figure out the significance of the event. But it happened; that’s a fact.
Sometimes I think it was the baptism of the Holy Spirit. There was another event in my life which I had taken for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but maybe the encounter with the beam was the real thing. I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll ever know, during this life.
I don’t know why I was the person it happened to. It didn’t happen because I’m a wonderful guy who deserves such gifts; I can swear to that. I didn’t earn it. Do me a favor and don’t even suggest it happened because I’m a good person. I know better than that. And no one I have told about it has ever become a Christian as a result. In fact, at least one person has completely forgotten it, as though I had never mentioned it.
I sometimes wish things like that would happen to everyone. But then I remember the parable of Lazarus and Abraham. And I remember the Hebrews following Moses, unwilling to trust God even after they saw Him in a whirlwind and saw the Red Sea stand up in vertical walls so they could pass. People believe what they want to believe. If Jesus came down to earth in person and took people by the shoulders and ordered them to believe, most people would say he was a fraud or decide it had never happened or assume they had hallucinated. That’s the truth. That’s no exaggeration. If you’re alive when He returns, you will see people try to explain Him away. Our ability to believe what we want is one of the great mysteries of human nature. Even though the things I reveal here happened to me, and I’m positive they happened, sometimes I have to remind myself I didn’t imagine them. And I’ve spent a lot of time living as though they had not happened. I never pretended they hadn’t, but I didn’t act the way a person of faith should.
I’ll tell you another strange thing about my experience in the car. You may remember that I’ve been reading Brother Andrew’s books about evangelizing Muslims. I also took a look at some online testimonies, including Youtube videos. If Brother Andrew and a whole slew of Muslim converts are to be believed, many Muslims are coming to Jesus because of visions and dreams. The other day I watched a video which was supposedly about a true story. A young Muslim man had had an experience very much like what happened to me in the car, only his experience was more vivid.
He said he was lying in bed, awake, and he felt something pin him down, and he saw a figure approach him. And it somehow communicated the knowledge that it was going to kill him. Although he was a Muslim, he had been learning about Christianity from his brother, and he began wondering if Jesus could save him. And when that thought entered his mind, he was released and the figure left. But he was delivered, just as I was, from something that had convinced him he was about to die. Later that night, he sensed the presence of Jesus in the room, and he felt a sensation he described as “aggressive peace.” Much like what I felt that day in the car.
The parallels are remarkable. I realize this guy could be a complete charlatan. In the past, I’ve been burned because I believed other people’s stories of supernatural experiences were as true as my own, so I don’t assume anything. But it sure sounds like he and I got a dose of the same thing. I wish everyone could feel it. It’s really something, being exposed directly to God’s true personality. You would not believe how much He loves us. I know life is full of suffering, but I felt that love, physically, as surely as I feel the keys I’m using to type this entry.
Here’s the video:
One message I have derived from my reading and study is that I have to quit being so obnoxious to Muslims. It’s fair to say they’ve shown great cruelty and bloodthirstiness and ruthlessness, but I shouldn’t insult and antagonize them gratuitously, just to express my anger and frustration. I criticize Ann Coulter for being so nasty to liberals she prevents them from hearing the conservative message. Well, if everyone is as nasty to Muslims as I have been, there is no hope we’ll ever succeed in acquainting very many of them with Jesus. And Jesus is the only force that can change them. It’s fine to send the military to hold them back by force, but I remember what Paul said: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” That’s from the book of Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 12. While we have to resist evil with physical strength, the truth is, human beings are not the primary enemy, and any earthly effort that is not supported by spiritual effort is wasteful and likely to fail. I’m not saying God will turn all the Muslims into Christians, and there will be peace on earth and free cupcakes for everybody. But things would be better than they are now, and countless people could be turned into friends and saved from destruction. It really happens.
I think I’ve said this before: I wonder if we pray for Muslims as much as we pray for cheaper gas.
The world is like a Japanese bunraku play, in which black-garbed puppeteers stand on a stage and manipulate dolls that represent characters. We see the people in the world, and we see their actions. But the dark forces that drive them are more obscure, as they desire to be. And often we attack the puppets and ignore the puppeteers. That is what I’ve been doing.
I did not make my stories up to get attention. I will never earn a dime from them. They will not help my writing career. I’m telling the truth. I almost hate to ask people to believe, because we have all believed so many things, only to find out we’ve been lied to. I hate to ask anyone to try one more time. But I hope someone out there will consider the possibility that I’m not lying and will be inspired to pray that God will help him or her find her way. I can’t defend God or tell you why life isn’t easier. I can’t explain the fact that you can’t have Him the way you want Him. I’m not a preacher. I do not have the answers. But I can promise you that He exists and that He cares, and that sometimes He takes dramatic steps to prove Himself to people. If the deal seems unfair to you, try to have faith that God knows better than you do. You better take what’s offered and be teachable and make the most of it, because if God is really God, there is no Door Number Two.
You Pay Thousands to Get in, and They Don’t Even Bury You
A while ago, I wrote an entry about mountain climbing. I was disgusted to learn that many people who climb mountains refuse to help other people when they get in trouble, even when helping isn’t necessarily dangerous. And I mentioned someone I knew, who died on Mount Everest. I had only heard the story secondhand; there was no information available on the web, either, so I couldn’t learn anything new.
For some reason, I just Googled it again, and there is new information, and it turns out what I was told was right. It happened on a day in late summer, in the Nineties. He and his group were taking what is known as the northern route, without Sherpas or oxygen. He died in what is described as “a crevasse accident,” while climbing alone.
I had heard that his death was caused by his refusal to take advice; that he had wandered off from the group, knowing it was dangerous. But it was just gossip.
I decided to look into the safety rules for climbing. I knew there had to be some. And here is what I found. A nearly endless number of sites repeat the same thing: “never climb alone.” That certainly makes sense to me. People die on high mountains, even when they have plenty of capable companions. Climbing alone almost seems like evidence of a death wish.
What an awful thought. He must be up there right now, mummified in a dark, frozen crevasse, still wearing his climbing gear. He’ll be there as long as Everest stands. And who knows what his death was like? It may have been quick, or it may have taken a day or more. I assume there was no way to help him; the crevasses up there can be extremely deep.
It must be horrible, being in a situation like that, knowing you did it to yourself, and that no one is going to help you, and that all you have to look forward to is feeling your limbs freeze and then passing out. It has to be even worse, if you know passing climbers can help but choose not to, because–you have to understand–they spent a lot of money on their Everest vacations.
The guy that led the group has a website. He puts up cheery paintings from Tibet and Nepal; some from the year of the accident. Looks like he got over it. It has to be strange, making a living in a field where seeing your customers die unnecessarily is a normal part of the job. If I ran a business where customers routinely died on me, I’d probably look for some other way to pay my bills.
I think the rule for helping alpinists in trouble should go like this: you should be allowed to refuse to help another climber, simply because of the money you’ve spent, PROVIDED you go visit his loved ones afterward, face to face, and explain your decision to them. If you can do that, you’re so crazy you deserve to be excused.
I assume a lot of you are familiar with my feelings on high-end audio. It’s a giant load of manure, for the most part. You may remember the time I linked to an experiment which proved audiophiles couldn’t tell the difference when a tester substituted coat hangers for expensive cables. Okay, let’s be fair. Maybe the experiment proved coat hangers make really fantastic cables.
Here’s another funny story. Back in ’01, some French guy gave 57 wine experts a glass of white wine and a glass of red wine, and he invited criticism. And none of them noticed something which should have been obvious. Both glasses contained the same wine. The red wine was the white wine, with dye added. These are the people connoisseurs rely on when they decide it’s okay to spend four hundred bucks on a bottle of Bordeaux.
Here’s a quote about another experiment the guy ran:
The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings.
Dang.
Why are human beings so full of it?
Another amusing thing is that when you expose BS, many people can’t accept it. They actively work to put the BS back in place. I just looked at a piece about research which suggested coffee really does taste better at Starbuck’s, because of the overall atmosphere. I see no reason to doubt it. Food tastes better outdoors, doesn’t it? Why should coffee be immune to similar effects? But some guy–this is actually funny–swooped in, in a comment, to make up an excuse for store coffee. He said stores have machines that heat water to higher temperatures, and that you can’t get such temperatures in home machines. Two things. First, as a subsequent commenter pointed out, water at sea level never gets hotter than 212 degrees, and home coffee makers could certainly achieve that if they wanted to. Second, if you know anything at all about coffee, you know that high temperatures ruin it by dissolving alkaloids that taste bad. This is why you don’t boil coffee in a pan and pour it through a strainer.
A while back, as most of you know, I got tired of listening to people perpetuate the myth that steaks need to be “rested” before you eat them. Restaurants don’t do it, and neither should you. Ideally, a steak would be prepared a foot from your plate, and you’d jump on it before it had been off the heat for more than a few seconds.
I proved it with a Youtube video. I cut a steak in two pieces. I cooked them together. I ate one immediately, and I ate the second one five minutes later. And the first one was better, because the outside was hotter than the inside. Obvious. But people have heads like granite. It kills them to give up their cherished wrong beliefs. It doesn’t matter how much proof you show them; if people are determined to believe fantasies, that’s what they’re going to do. Guns cause crime. Raising taxes always increases revenues. Ethanol is a great idea. Steaks need to be rested. You name the myth; they’ll defend it. Sometimes bitterly. Why a person would get emotional about a steak myth is beyond me, but it happens. Some of my Youtube commenters were furious.
One guy claimed you have to rest the steak in foil, and that the steak would actually get hotter during the rest. Thermodynamics is no obstacle to a good myth. That must be some great foil. I think from now on, instead of wasting propane, I’ll cook my steaks by wrapping them in foil and throwing them on the counter. Where do you store foil like that? If you put it in a cabinet, it would set fire to the kitchen.
The funny thing about the angry Youtubers is that none of them were willing to do what I did. I wasted a perfectly good steak and an hour of my time, performing a well-designed experiment. And I filmed the whole thing. The people who got mad at me just called me names and said I was wrong. Who has more credibility, in a situation like that?
The myth of the super-hot coffeemaker reminds me of the myths you hear about steakhouse ovens. They’re made in Area 51, by alien slave labor. They cook steak with bursts of tachyons, previously known to exist only in theory and on certain episodes of Star Trek. And the steak comes from special steers raised in antigravity chambers in a space station with a cloaking device. And the aging is all done at CERN and Livermore Labs. It’s very technical. You wouldn’t understand.
The fact is, anyone who can find prime beef and turn a gas valve on and off can make the best steak on the planet. It’s not just doable; it’s incredibly easy. Anything that chars a steak well without messing up the flavor will work.
Cigars are surrounded by BS, too. The excellence of Cuban cigars is no myth; they’re wonderful. They’re generally better than cigars from other countries. On the other hand, some marvelous cigars are cheap, and some highly regarded Cubans are only very good. For example, the Cuban Montecristo No. 2 gets raves, but it’s not really that great. It lacks complexity, which is the only thing that really separates great cigars from good ones. On the other hand, I have some smokes rolled by a local guy in Miami–ten bucks for 20–which are wonderful. He passed away. Too bad, for all the people who bought his cigars. I also had a Brazilian CAO which was better than any Cuban I’ve ever smoked. It was the high point of my experience as a cigar smoker.
I know people will argue with me about the Montecristo, but I know I’m right. I’ve had samples from two different batches, and it’s one of the few Cubans I would not recommend to anyone who has to pay for it. Nice cigar, and well worth smoking when free, but not worth the price. A nice aged Bauza pyramid is nearly as good, and it costs about a third as much. After six months in the humidor, they taste like roasted pistachio nuts.
I haven’t tried every Cuban, but if I were going to make recommendations from the ones I’ve had, I’d mention Cohiba Esplendidos, Cohiba Lanceros, Ramon Allones Specially Selected, Ramon Allones Gigantes, Hoyo de Monterrey double coronas, Trinidad Fundadores, Romeo y Julieta Churchills, and H. Upmann Sir Winstons. I can’t say I’ve ever had a Cuban that wasn’t good, but when you spend big, you want to taste what you’re paying for, so you should buy the best.
I don’t know why I’m writing about cigars. I can’t remember my last smoke, or the last time I bought cigars.
Another bit of cigar BS: some foreign vendors who ship Cubans claim they get super-special hand-selected Cubans, better than everyone else’s. It’s not true. They just say that because they operate in countries where taxes make their prices artificially high, and they need an excuse to help them compete with Hong Kong and the Canary Islands.
The worst BS I have personally fallen for is the Japanese kitchen knife BS. They are just too fragile and expensive to be useful. I’m afraid to use mine. And my $20 rust-prone cleaver from China is actually better than my Shun, which sits gathering dust.
Pizza! There’s a BS-filled topic for you. I still have Caputo 00 flour I bought ages ago, because people said it was the best. I think I paid three bucks per pound. Whatever it was, it was obscene. Never again. It was a complete waste of money. Well, that’s not really true. I was paying to find out whether it was any good, and I got my answer. Right now, my favorite pizza flour is whatever bread flour is on the shelf at the store. I like King Arthur brand because I know I can trust it, but for all I know, Pillsbury is just as good. And if I were rolling my crusts instead of tossing them, I’d use biscuit flour because while it doesn’t toss well, it gives a lighter crust.
My last pizza had a crust that would have brought tears to your eyes. Pillsbury bread flour. It was chewy. It blew up nicely in the oven. It had a wonderful yeasty flavor. I get misty remembering it. And boy, do I get good results with Costco bagged mozzarella. I was shocked. But I accepted the truth when I tasted it. You’ll never learn anything new if you can’t see past what other people tell you.
The power of BS is remarkable. Challenging BS can get you shot or burned at the stake. Maybe I should learn to go with the BS flow.
While I’m on the topic of what a bad Christian I am, have you SEEN “McCain Girl” from Barelypolitical.com? Oh, man. Obama Girl is okay, but McCain Girl is just too much. I feel like voting for McCain just so she’ll keep making videos.
Last night a commenter took me to task for being supercilious, suggested it was inconsistent with my religion, and implied that bad Christians like me had helped him on his way down the road to atheism.
I don’t want to reflexively defend myself. I have plenty of crabby moments. I try not to be rude these days, but sometimes I still offend people. There is no doubt about it. I am what Christians kindly refer to as “a work in progress.” Sometimes I embarrass myself. What can I tell you?
On the other hand, as I noted in my response, it’s impossible for a Christian to be righteous enough to make an angry atheist happy. It can’t be done. Just as Christians look for reasons to believe, many atheists look for reasons not to believe. History shows us that angry nonbelievers may remain angry even after the Christians who make them angry are torn apart by lions or roasted alive. They even got angry when martyred saints forgave them, or when they refused to renounce God during their torments. It’s always good to try to make peace, but you can’t expect too much cooperation. On top of all that, the less atheists know about Christianity, the easier it is for them to find reasons not to believe.
Some atheists think that if you go to church regularly, you are a Christian, and if you don’t, you are not. I don’t know where that idea comes from. Christians should go to church, but attendance has no bearing on whether or not you’re a Christian. Some atheists think that you have to be good to be a Christian, and that if you’re a well-behaved atheist, you are just as well off as a Christian, with regard to eternal life. Clearly, Christians should be good, but you can behave pretty badly and still be a Christian. And if you think being good buys you eternal life, that’s swell, but Christian doctrine contradicts that notion very clearly. No Christian denomination says you can work your way into heaven. Only heretical post-Christian sects say that.
Being a Christian isn’t like belonging to AAA. It’s not like you get a card and pay dues and therefore belong. That kind of thinking may apply to some denominations, but it’s not universal. Overall, the church isn’t an earthly organization, like a bar association. You belong because you have faith. And hopefully, you try to behave in a way that reflects your faith. And you should have a personal relationship with God, which you maintain by prayer and study. I guess it’s a very hard thing to understand, from outside.
I can tell you another thing. If you want advice on how to be a good Christian, one of the best ways to get it is to disagree with an atheist. They are extremely generous with instruction. It’s not the greatest instruction available, because a lot of it is completely wrong, and most of it is motivated by self-interest, and very often, it’s just an attempt to manipulate you. Sometimes they’re right, though.
If you’re curious about Christianity, my advice to you would be to avoid judging it by the behavior of believers. Sooner or later you’ll see a Christian give someone the finger, or you’ll see some other act or attitude that is inconsistent with the Bible. Bishop Desmond Tutu once told people he disagreed with to go to hell; that had to be a dark day for the church. Human beings will always let you down, and I am a human being. The point of believing isn’t to become as wonderful and perfect as I am.
The depressing thing about all this is that I have never succeeded in persuading a single person to become a Christian, but it looks like I have pretty decent luck turning people into atheists. I must be an even worse Christian than I thought.
I just got back from Costco. Good news: the beef is still cheap. They have boneless rib eye loaf for $5.99 per pound.
Got home and checked out Weather Underground (sounds like a candidate for favorite site of Michelle Obama), and it looks like invest 94L has decided to punish me for making fun of hurricane season. It jumped up to 60 miles per hour today, and it is expected to manage a hard right turn, just for the purpose of getting at me and knocking the plantains off my trees.
One bright aspect of the situation: right now, the projected path is a straight line that puts me right in the north eyewall when the storm hits. That’s good, because these things never take straight lines. Although this one might manage, if it thought it had a shot at me.
The computer models say it won’t be anywhere near me, but the forecasters have decided otherwise, possibly indicating that someone has alerted them to the fact that I ridicule them every year.
By the way, Fay ended up near Pensacola, proving once again that nothing draws tropical cyclones like Ward Brewer. The government should pay him to move to a shack on the Yucatan Peninsula. I kind of wish he were in Denver today.
I don’t think the storm will be a problem for me. But it will probably bring us more rain, just when I was hoping to see the humidity go below 70% for ten or fifteen minutes.
I found a weird item at Costco. Premade falafel balls. I had to try it. You nuke them. They’re made by some vegetarian company, no doubt staffed by smelly faux-socialist hippies. But falafel is something hippies are actually capable of doing right, unlike brushing teeth, looking for work, or applying deodorant. Still, I don’t recommend them. I just ate a few. It’s not that they’re bad. It’s that they’re not particularly good. They have no spiciness to them. Falafel should have some heat, damn it.
Costco has Frank’s Red Hot sauce in what appear to be half-gallon jugs. Now I know where to go when I want to make wings. Frank’s is one of those moderately cheesy products I like in spite of its cheesiness. If you like weak but fairly tasty hot sauce–a good thing, because you can apply a ton–Frank’s is a fine choice.
I’ll tell you what is depressing about the pickup truck I am trying to convince myself not to buy. It’s like a vanilla ice cream cone. It’s the Pat Boone of trucks.
I live in a place where the sun is insanely hot, due to the angle of incidence. That means anything left in the sun heats up fast. That means you have to be crazy to buy a car in a dark color. A long time ago, my dad was shopping for cars, and I had him stand between a dark car and a white car, with one hand on each. As he noted right away, the dark car was way, way hotter. That translates to a hotter car every time you get in it, and a longer wait for the A/C to start having an effect. So when you run a typical errand, the car may still be unbearably hot when you arrive at your destination.
What does all this add up to? A white or silver truck. For some reason, there are very few color choices for the model I like. It has to be white, silver, or something dark. Whoops, I meant “avalanche,” “radiant silver,” or something dark.
On top of that, I refuse to buy a four-door truck. Why do people who don’t drive employees to job sites get those things? I guess they build them for henpecked husbands. “Look, honey, the whole family can fit! No, no, don’t walk away! Wait! Wait!”
They’re more expensive than regular trucks, they have more parts to go bad, the beds are shorter, and they have lower payloads. Useless. But because so many people buy them, the “King Cab” version (not four-door) is rarer. And I have to have automatic, because I have decided I am secure enough in my masculinity to admit that manual is just plain inferior. And I demand the big V6. I drive so little, I don’t care at all about gas mileage.
Given those constraints, the only white or silver non-four-door Frontier in my area is white. And the interior is tan. Whoops, I meant “desert.” So I would be tooling around in a cheesy white truck with a tan interior. I can’t even find silver.
I don’t ask much in this life. Well, yes I do. Nonetheless, I think I should be spared the horror of a white truck with a tan interior. Can’t I at least get grey seats?
The Frontier is the only acceptable option. The GM, Dodge, and Ford small trucks are hideous abominations. The Tacoma has a payload one third smaller. The Ridgeline is what Harvey Fierstein sees in his mind when you say “truck.” It’s a joke with a bed that barely holds a week’s groceries. The bigger trucks would be hell to put in the garage, and I just plain don’t want to drive a battleship in Miami traffic. I don’t want to park it in Miami’s tiny parking spaces.
White. A white truck. I’d look exactly like Hank Hill, only without the narrow urethra.
The last few times I considered getting a truck, I managed to put it off until the sweating stopped and the urge went away. I hope I can pull that off one more time.
Chris Muir is going pro with Day by Day. That means money is involved. YOUR money. Go over and take a look. If you don’t feel like supporting the only major online conservative cartoonist, that’s fine. No one will look down on you for it or call you a MISERABLE EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BEING. I think you should contribute. You don’t know how hard it was for me to talk him out of becoming a male stripper. And because he already quit that job a couple of times in the past, he has lost all seniority, so he would also have to pick up litter in the parking lot.
Trucks are getting so cheap now, they practically take you to court and force you to take them for nothing. I can get a Nissan Frontier with all the crap I like for around $16,500. Man, it would be nice to have one.
But I don’t think I can bear to part with the T-bird just yet. Ford seems to have fixed the COP problem, and I do love a ragtop.
If I kept it, I would have to park the truck outside, and some idiot in this neighborhood has an egg fetish. I can’t believe how cowardly people are. I must be the scariest guy in Miami. I don’t know if I’ve offended someone, or if the kids across the street are just growing up and feeling their hormones.
It could be the trashy neighbors across the fence, with the junky cars and the green pool and the barking dogs and the loud parties in the middle of the night. I’m sure they hear from the cops all the time. Maybe they go around the neighborhood and egg every property, to make sure they got whoever turned them in.
One thing I don’t understand: people with used trucks are trying to charge 80% of the cost of a new one. Hard to believe, in this market.
I know I won’t buy. But I have to say, the oil crisis isn’t completely bad.