Gables Eatery has the Right Idea

I just treated my father to dinner at an interesting restaurant: Randazzo’s Little Italy, in Coral Gables. It’s a red-and-white Italian joint, which is pretty much the only kind I like. If pink vodka sauce turns you on, swell, but like I said in my book, in my opinion, if a color isn’t in the Italian flag, it shouldn’t be on the plate.

This place has two big-screen TVs playing Godfather movies over and over. The music? Sinatra. Louis Prima. Connie Francis. Too funny. And the menu is consistent with my philosophy. It contains helpful little reminders, like, “This ain’t a health food joint.”

I ordered the spaghetti with Sunday gravy, which means tomato sauce. It came with two meatballs the size of a baby’s head, plus sausage, plus ricotta, and I would guess the portion they gave me weighed about three pounds. No exaggeration. I was hoping to try the cheesecake, but the spaghetti did me in. And it cost me $26, so I should have expected no less.

Very comfortable place. I’d go again. But I would order something smaller.

It’s kind of irritating, knowing how to cook. In the old days, I went to restaurants and ate the food and generally figured it was okay. Now I always find something wrong with it, because I’ve had such great luck with my own recipes. I think these guys should consider putting a little butter on the spaghetti. Butter has magical qualities.

If you’re ever in the Gables, you might want to drop by the place, have some food, and watch Fredo get whacked.

Thanks

For the last three weeks or so, I’ve been highly distracted by a personal issue, so blogging and book publicity have suffered. But it looks like that is over with for the moment–probably for good–so hopefully I’ll be able to get back to doing what I enjoy. Thanks for your prayers. Don’t let anyone tell you they don’t work.

You Can Help

If you want to shoot Linda SOG a few bucks to help her pay for her tumor procedure, Sondra can help. Go to Sondra’s site, donate money via her Paypal link, and put “LindaThon” in the subject box.

Sondra promises not to blow it on thongs. Not ALL of it.

More – Obama School Charity Opens

I just checked the URL for Baldi’s nonprofit. She established it to benefit a Kenyan school Barack Obama promised to help but subsequently forgot about. The site is up, and you can see it here.

Give her a Hand

Via Sondra: Linda SOG has been having problems with a benign brain tumor. And you know how medicine is. You go to one doctor, and he tells you one thing, and then you go to another, and he tells you something else. She just found a guy who says he can destroy the tumor, using a gamma knife, without much risk. That’s a considerable improvement over the treatment she was offered by her other physicians.

Linda is requesting prayers, so you know what to do. Here’s a link to an entry she wrote, explaining her situation.

Sondra said something about raising money; Linda is on the hook for part of the cost, because her insurance won’t cover it all. I’ll let you know when I know more.

One more thing. Linda’s dad is a Messianic Jew, and they have had friction because of it. You might pray that they come to a peaceful and fruitful understanding.

Shhh

Moxie is blogging again. Once in a while.

Maybe if you go read, she’ll keep it up.

Boycott Their Stuff ASAP

Referred to me by reader aelfheld, who heard about it from Barb at Quid Nimis:

I Can’t Stop

I appreciate the positive comments on last night’s post regarding the miraculous wart. I only got one negative remark, and it came from someone who seems to think I just became a Christian. Anyone who has been reading this blog for more than two years knows that is not the case. I’ve certainly been making improvements over the last couple of years, but if you were to look at entries from 2003, you would see that I occasionally mentioned my beliefs back then. I’ve written a lot about the stupidity of sex outside of marriage, for example. How anyone who had seen those posts could refer to me now as a “reformed whore” is a mystery.

I’ve gradually come to realize that some of my attitudes were wrong, and that I wasn’t doing enough. I have made some changes. But the change hasn’t been anything like as dramatic as the commenter suggests.

Back when Huffington’s Toast was up, I got friction from guest contributors because I wouldn’t publish R-rated content. I’ve discarded a lot of material I’ve written because I thought it was over the line. I have opted out of romantic opportunities because of religious conflicts. I have turned down offers of promotion. So I may be sticking closer to the path these days, but I was never completely lost, and I never pretended to be part of the non-Christian world, except in jokes.

Am I bumming people out by writing about religion? When I think about it, I remember what it was like to be uncomfortable when people discussed God. But most of the time, I forget, and I write what I please. If it makes you uncomfortable, you have a problem you need to address. Hearing about the best part of life–the reason you exist–shouldn’t make you uncomfortable. Think about that. Are you uncomfortable when people write about other types of self-improvement? Do you get embarrassed when people write about exercise or therapy? Of course not. That ought to make you wonder.

I don’t care. I’ve always written about the things that interest me. This is my personal online journal. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. When has that not been my attitude? I’ll probably write about God less, in time. Or maybe I won’t. Whatever I do, it won’t have anything to do with trying to please readers.

Perhaps I Exaggerate

Somehow or another I ended up searching Google for documented cases of what non-Christians call “faith healing.” And I couldn’t find much. Maybe I shouldn’t have Googled that phrase; almost no one who believes in God uses it.

In any case, I thought it was depressing. The main reason it depressed me is that I saw a number of sites where people claimed alleged healings had been proven false. One example cited involved a man who got on the stage with Kathryn Kuhlman, claimed he had been healed of cancer, and dropped dead a week later.

The sad truth is, televangelists are generally extremely similar to politicians. The truth isn’t in them. If you get on the stage and stand before the cameras and claim you’re healed, that’s good enough for them. They don’t want to be around a month later, because you might still be sick, and that would threaten their income. I don’t know if Kathryn Kuhlman was for real or not. Nothing would surprise me.

Nonetheless, God does heal people. It happened in the Bible, and there is no reason why it shouldn’t happen now. And it makes sense that documentation would be hard to come by. What percentage of people who receive healing would take the time to have it studied and documented? What percentage of doctors would spend their time doing the exams and writing the reports? If you have a bothersome physical problem, and you pray for healing, and you get it, is your first impulse going to be to go to the doctor and pay him a thousand dollars to prove you’re okay? And what if you can’t prove you were sick to begin with? What if you were healed before you were diagnosed? You’d look like an idiot, going to your doctor and claiming to be healed, when he had never witnessed your illness.

Another problem with healings is that sometimes they’re so trivial, it would be embarrassing to talk about them. If God miraculously heals you of a cavity, are you going to run and tell your atheist neighbors? Of course not. They’d laugh you out of the house.

I’ve had a few healings that were clearly miraculous, but they were so minor, no one would be impressed. I can give an example. I had a flat warty thing on my jaw. My dermatologist didn’t care enough about it to suggest removing it, but it annoyed me, and it was getting bigger. I did all the Christian things, praying and claiming healing and taking authority and so on. And it went away immediately. I don’t mean it instantly disappeared, but it began going away immediately, and in a few weeks it was gone. Who wants to hear about a healing like that? It’s a wart. Nobody cares. No one is going to become a Christian because of my wart.

It’s a funny thing, but little skin problems seem particularly easy to heal by faith. I’ve had more than one. Try it yourself. I realize how silly it sounds. But it’s true. It may not boost your faith to the point where you’re ready to quit your job and become a missionary, but it beats paying to have your warts burned off.

It seems like some problems are easier to heal by faith than others. Don’t ask me why.

I had another healing people will find ridiculous. Twenty years ago, I made a decision to find a church, and I very quickly got a cold. But it was no ordinary cold. It refused to go away. It stayed with me for weeks and weeks. I think it was literally the cold from hell.

My head was full of things I had heard from charismatic preachers; I figured that since I had had supernatural experiences, they were telling the truth about theirs, too. You have to marvel at the naivete of youth. One of the things I believed was that you would be healed if you persisted in prayer and faith. So I attacked this cold and refused to give in. I refused to accept it, day after day, week after week. Finally, one day in November of 1987, I went to the fridge and looked in the freezer, and while I was looking, I saw a dark shape fly from me into the freezer and then out and through the slats in the back door, which was nearby. It was just a dark place in the air. I didn’t know what to make of it. And when I walked out of the kitchen, I realized my symptoms were gone. Instantly. And they didn’t come back. Two people witnessed it. I know it sounds crazy and unimpressive, but it happened.

Sorry, it’s not documented. Benny Hinn wasn’t there. No cameras. But I sure felt better.

Over the years, I’ve had all sorts of problems that have gone away without treatment, while I used my faith to fight them. But I can’t prove the healings were miraculous. Sometimes things get better on their own. Of course, sometimes they get a hell of a lot worse, too. I haven’t really needed a doctor since…actually, it’s hard to remember. I went to a doctor for my first kidney stone, and I was very glad to get the painkillers, but when I got my second stone, I got mad at my doctor’s receptionist and decided to stay home, and I was fine. I think the last time I really needed a doctor was when I was in law school. I had two disgusting spider bites full of pus. They probably would have gone away on their own; there was no bacterial infection. But having them lanced made life a lot easier.

Obviously, you should go to a doctor if you need one. But there is no way I’d rely on medical science alone.

God exists, and He works miracles. I’ve seen things stranger than healings, and I’ve had prayer after prayer answered, and there are many other reasons why I believe. He’s there. It’s very sad that greedy preachers discourage people with bogus healings that are later paraded in front of the public by TV journalists, but that doesn’t change the facts. You can be a Christian and go blind. You can be a Christian and die of cancer. But on the whole, your life will be better if you develop and exercise faith, and sometimes, you’ll get some wonderful surprises.

My stories may not be thrilling, but on the other hand, I have absolutely nothing to gain by telling them, so maybe you’ll find them easier to believe than the stuff you see on TV.

Weakest Link in the War on Terror

I have almost finished Brother Andrew’s book, Secret Believers. I would recommend it to any Christian who supports the war on terror.

The book is about Muslims who convert to Christianity in Muslim-dominated countries. They face horrible persecution. In a Muslim country, a Muslim can do just about whatever he wants to a Christian, and the police will either help the Muslim or do nothing. They burn homes, commit murder, kidnap and rape and enslave Christian women, and steal from Christian businesses. No one cares; the only restraint is in the hearts of the Muslim aggressors. They only refrain when they get tired of aggression.

Remarkably, many converts choose to remain in their native countries. They want their compatriots to have what they have, and they risk their lives to offer it. American conservatives often talk about the concept of dhimmitude, in which non-Muslims are tolerated but treated like second-class citizens, with reduced rights and privileges. What most of us don’t realize is that dhimmitude is substantially better than what most Muslim nations provide in practice. Dhimmitude would be an improvement.

The cruelty with which these Christians are treated is amazing. Fathers try to kill their own children. Christians are ruthlessly beaten by their own families. And the change from loved one or friend to enemy takes place instantly. One day you may be a pampered rich Muslim girl with expensive clothing and pricey creature comforts, and the next day you may be a prisoner in your own room, covered with bruises and cuts and aching from broken bones.

And it’s not rare; contrary to what naive leftists tell us, it’s normal in Muslim society. Compassion and understanding are unusual. In fact, many Muslims are afraid to refrain from persecuting Christians.

I saw a video of a convert on the web. He said something strange. He said Muslims were good people, but they had no love in them. Clearly, the comment doesn’t make sense. He was trying to be charitable. How can an entire society be that cold? Is it possible that this religion takes the baseline compassion which is normally present even in atheists, and somehow depresses it?

It looks like we’re right when we say Islam is dangerous and results in horrific suffering. The testimony of converts confirms that. We haven’t slandered anyone by saying Islam is cruel. On the other hand, Secret Believers confirms something else. It confirms that we have to keep trying to reach these people. Many of them are miserable because of their unrewarding, demanding religion, and when they get a glimpse at what Christianity really is, they jump at the chance to convert.

These people are so hard to reach, though. How do you do it without being martyred? It looks like one way God is solving the problem is by direct action. A surprising number of converts say they became Christians because they had visions or dreams of Jesus. If you Google this phenomenon, you’ll find all sorts of unrelated, independent reports of such events. That tells me God can find a way when Man lets him down, but it also tells me we’re not doing our job. If we’re going to drop bombs on these people and depose their leaders and send terrorists to Guantanamo, we should also be working to put them in touch with God. Military action without a corresponding spiritual offensive is immoral.

There are things we can do. Muslims are able to receive Christian broadcasts, and they work. And we can send Bibles overseas, and we can donate money to ministries that reach out to Muslims.

Many converts say the Bible is what got them hooked. One convert in Brother Andrew’s book said he was a member of a fanatical organization called the Muslim Brotherhood, and his leader told him to read the Bible so he could refute it, using the Koran. And he was expected to confirm the 26 (I think) alleged Biblical references to Mohammed. Instead, he found that the references either didn’t exist or applied more naturally to Jesus. He was finally driven over the top by a vision of Jesus, but the Bible is what drove him initially. He ended up working inside his country, helping spread the Gospel. He was eventually kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. That’s how strong his devotion was.

You can’t depend on the stick to do everything. I think that’s the point. Somewhere in the process, you have to offer the carrot. Military action is invaluable, but compared to conversion, it does a poor job of turning enemies into allies. I have to wonder if our Guantanamo results would be better, if we sent missionaries in before resorting to waterboarding. Experience has shown that many Muslim fanatics are fatigued by their faith, and they are surprisingly susceptible to the Gospel.

Maybe the best thing is to ease off on the venom and ridicule and to try to offer encouragement instead. Muslims are fanatical about pride and repaying insults, so we probably aren’t doing ourselves much good by humiliating them. I am going to keep that in mind in the future. It’s unfortunate that it took me so long to come to that conclusion.

Convenience

I’ll tell you what’s sad about being a cookbook author. You may forget to shop for normal food, but you will generally have ingredients for nutritional disasters on hand at all times. Which is why I am about to make another pizza. It’s either that or drive to Winn-Dixie to check out the on-sale meat.

I’m almost angry at Winn-Dixie for discounting meat all the time. I used to go into the store and buy what I wanted. Now I feel like I’m not allowed to buy anything that costs over six dollars per pound, and I try to stay under two dollars.

Finding out that Costco cheese is actually pretty good has been a problem. I have several pounds of it, and I bought a couple of cans of delicious Stanislaus Super Dolce sauce the other day, and I feel like I have an obligation to eat all the cheese before it turns green. So I have to eat about three pounds a week. I also want to test it in calzones, so I have to make some of those this week. I think calzones should be less demanding, because my big concern with the cheese is that the low fat content will cause it to scorch, and inside a calzone, scorching isn’t an issue.

Thank God I don’t have ricotta, or I’d be making calzones with that, too. When it comes to calzones, I like pizza sauce, mozzarella, and maybe ricotta. But it seems like most pizzerias just use ricotta and maybe some crap to season it.

It’s a shame I didn’t go into calzones in the book, because you can make absolutely anything into a calzone, and they’re fantastic. If you have the book, just decide what you want to calzonify, make a 14-16″ circle of my dough, plop the ingredients on one side, fold the other side over, and seal the edges together by wetting them with water and pressing. If you haven’t made a cheesesteak calzone, your life has been wasted. Or a pan con lechon calzone. Oh. Oh.

I have been told that Paula Deen uses cottage cheese in lasagne. Sounds horrifying and WASPy, but I can’t argue with her reputation. Maybe I’ll put a spoonful on the pizza somewhere to see what it’s like.

Mike may be coming into town this week. He could definitely help me get rid of that cheese. Is it immoral to feed your excess cheese to a friend, knowing it’s just as bad for him as it is for you? I guess. But sometimes you have to look out for Number One.

It’s funny, but there are some TV chefs almost nobody criticizes. It seems like some chefs can’t manage to write a single recipe that pans out for home viewers, but others rarely fail. Paula Deen and Alton Brown seem to fit that description. You never hear anyone say, “I tried Alton Brown’s recipe for X, and it was disgusting.”

I would be really uncomfortable if I had a successful show and a string of restaurants, and most of my food was bad. I guess I’m nuts.

Pizza is imminent.

Not Surprising

I would appreciate a couple of small favors.

First of all, as I said Friday, a TV executive has expressed interest in the rights to my cookbook. I don’t know if there is any point in pursuing this or not; I am now told that the idea is for me to sell the rights to them, and they’ll hire a professional chef to do the show. You can see the problems with this. I’d get a little check for the rights, and then I’d be gone. The show wouldn’t be very good, because I’m what drives the concept, and I wouldn’t be there. The show would probably have little relationship to the book, so it wouldn’t be very helpful in terms of sales.

The obvious concern here is that if I don’t go along, someone will take the idea without paying for it, and they’ll do a bad show, and I won’t get squat.

So I would appreciate it if you would include me in your prayers, to prevent that from happening. This idea has a lot of potential, and I’ve worked very hard on it for a long time, and if it is taken away from me, I’ll be at square one.

Second thing: someone I know has been harassing me for a while, and it has been very distracting. I won’t go into details, but it’s basically a hopeless attempt to squeeze money out of me. And this person has done a number of risky, wildly self-destructive things in the process. Help me out and join me in praying that this person has a change of heart, accepts salvation, and learns to use God’s power to be a positive and healthy force in this world. And of course, please pray that the situation is resolved without harm.

If you could help me out here, I would truly be in your debt.

More

This, from reader JeffW:

Praying here also. If anyone finds time, my wife could also use some prayer. Due to cancer in an ovary, she just had an Oophorectomy (like a hysterectomy except they remove the ovaries too). She is “clean” now, but we’re in the recovery stage (1-week down, 5-weeks to go).

Just when I think my problems are important.

Tisha B’Av Continues

It’s the Christian Sabbath. On the other hand, it’s also Tisha B’Av, the most calamitous day in the Jewish calendar. I guess the good news is that we’ll all be praying today. And boy, is it a good day for it. I was just watching the news, about the war between Russia and Georgia. I don’t know enough about the conflict to know who has the better claim to the disputed area, but I do know that Vladimir Putin is dangerous and ruthless. People are dying. Homes are being destroyed. And the Russians refuse to stop.

I wonder what the humanitarian aid situation is over there. We’ve had so many natural disasters over the last few years, I’ve gotten used to thinking of disaster relief as something that applies chiefly to things like hurricanes and earthquakes. But I suppose need is need, regardless of how it arises.

I’m checking, and predictably, World Vision has already reacted. These people are fast. Here is a link.

If there is one good thing about this mess, it’s that it lacks the scale of a natural disaster. It’s not another Burma. I have no idea what finally happened in Burma; they fought so hard to keep aid out, I quit reading about it. I can’t imagine a populous country nearly free of Judaism and Christianity. Talk about hopeless. If I lived in a place like that, I would expect a catastrophe every week. My personal suspicion is that the presence of believers is the only thing that keeps the world from being destroyed. I would not want to live in a country that contains fewer than 20 Jews and has an official government program to eradicate Christianity.

I have never understood what drives a person to oppose Christianity. Atheists make wild claims, with no evidence, that Christianity causes most of the world’s problems. What world are they talking about? The Inquisition and the Crusades were over a long, long time ago. The excesses and atrocities of atheist leftism continue to this day, and the horrors of anti-Christian Nazism (in many ways a form of leftism) are still fairly recent. And their scale dwarfs that of any problems caused by Christianity. As for the Jews, they’ve never been numerous enough to make trouble. On the other hand, they tend to provide us with inventions and vaccines and music and huge charitable gifts.

What’s the worst thing that could happen if Christians completely took over? Conversion by the sword is out of style, so that’s not a concern. You might have to sit through a prayer at the beginning of your next ball game. You would have a hard time finding pornography, which, as we all know, is essential to a healthy, happy life. If you’re a woman and you carelessly conceive a child, you might be expected to carry it to term instead of turning your womb into your child’s abattoir. The US would give a bigger percentage of its tax revenues to protect Israel. Can minor “evils” like these compare to leftist practices such as lining up hundreds of thousands of suspected political enemies and machine-gunning them so they fall into ditches? Can they compare to nearly wiping out the educated class of an entire country? Do they look bad juxtaposed with gulags and purges and forced abortions and infanticide? Those things are the rancid fruit of enlightened atheism.

Life tends to be pretty good in nations with a history of Christianity or Judaism, and it tends to be pretty awful elsewhere. There is a reason why countless people have risked death to move from the USSR and China and Cuba to the US, while virtually no one wants to go the other way. There is a reason why Muslims sneak into Israel and then refuse to leave.

I doubt anyone reading this today will live to see a wave of immigration to Burma. I feel safe making that prediction.

I think the US is facing its own slow-motion Tisha B’Av. The Jews lost their temples overnight. Americans have been watching God’s favor slip away since at least 2001. And our brilliant response was to legalize gay marriage and push Israel to give away more land. And half of us want a President who carries a Hindu idol wherever he goes. Even to the Western Wall, which is the foundation of the temple in Jerusalem.

Have you read about the idol Obama carries? The “god’s” name is Hanuman. He is the son–an incarnation–of Shiva. Many people consider Shiva to be the Hindu homologue of Satan. So what does that make Hanuman, in Christian terms? Figure it out. Here’s a hint: the incarnation of God is Christ.

Here’s a link to a story about Obama and Hanuman, with a photo of the large idol sent by Indian admirers.

Very creepy, for a Presidential candidate to carry the graven image of that particular heathen deity. Insignificant, to a person who doesn’t believe in God. But to a Christian? Highly disturbing. And taking it with him while praying at the temple…it’s like something out of a shlocky horror movie. An abomination.

It’s a strange type of Christianity Obama practices. It allows him to carry an idol and have a pastor who pals around with people who seek the destruction of the Jews. I’m having a hard time seeing the connection to the other type of Christianity, which says we are to have no graven images and no other gods, and that the Jews are the apple of God’s eye.

If only some nice leftist would put me in a camp and reeducate me, while distributing my property to local leftist officials. Then I might understand.

I Could Have Been Born in Yemen

I finished God’s Smuggler and started on Secret Believers today. The older I get, the more grateful I am that I live in America. And these books only reinforce the sensation.

Secret Believers is about real Christians living in Muslim countries. Some were born into Christian minorities, which is bad. Others are converted Muslims. That’s a whole lot worse.

One of these believers is a young man who piped up at a gathering of Muslim students. He asked the Imam why Muslims, who honor the prophets, did not honor the greatest prophet of all. And he was referring to Jesus. The others beat him, and the Imam turned him over to his father and told him to keep beating him until he recited the little prayer that supposedly makes you a Muslim. His own cousin told him, “God will be pleased when I kill you.”

Churches exist in many Muslim countries, but they suffer constant harassment and persecution. And Christians are divided, because the older churches resent the Protestants. It seems Protestants can’t convert Muslims very easily or safely, so they go after Catholics and Orthodox believers who are disenchanted with the less-lively spirit of their churches. And they succeed.

Here in the US, you can go to any church you want, you can get all the instructional materials you want, and people from different denominations get along very well. As long as they don’t talk to each other too much.

Atheists always say they don’t see how God can be good and allow suffering. That seems childish to me. If you want to ask a better question, ask why evangelism is allowed to fail. You would think God would assure the success of anyone who tries to spread the word. But there are very high barriers to evangelism, especially in Muslim countries, and progress is not exactly optimal.

It’s a curious thing. But I am not stupid enough to second-guess God. When I was younger, I was so smart I was able to do that, but it seems I have grown less intelligent with age, because I no longer feel qualified. I suppose there is a purpose to the multi-millennium human pageant, and if God forced everything to go right, it would all be over in about a week.

I think the most likely explanation is that God has some responsibilities, but He has put a lot of jobs–a lot of authority–in the hands of Man. And we screw up. There are a lot of things we could be doing to improve creation, and we fail, so the world is a mess. Now that I think about it, Jesus complained about it, saying the harvest was plentiful, but the workers were few.

I guess the question isn’t that hard to answer, after all.

God bless this country. I am happier than ever to be here.

Dishwasher

I just installed a dishwasher. I removed the old copper inlet line. I replaced it with two braided lines connected end-to-end. I used to have maybe seven feet of extremely fragile, leaky copper. Now I have ten feet of braided stainless. If the dishwasher goes bad, I can move it around all I want, without fear of sending water spraying all over the kitchen. My question: why couldn’t the people who installed the last dishwasher have done this? Answer: because they took no pride in their work, and all they wanted was to get a signature and get back on the truck.

No one does anything right any more. And it’s not a question of skill or knowledge. Yesterday I knew virtually nothing about installing a dishwasher. Today I have an installation which is infinitely superior to what I would have gotten had I paid the delivery guys to do it.

How did we end up like this? Time and time again, I find myself in a position where I would be thrilled to pay someone to do a job, but I end up doing it myself because I can’t find anyone to do it right.

On top of that, the money people charge for services is insane. I could get rich running a business where I only charged people fifty bucks for the fifteen minutes of work an appliance installation requires. That’s because appliance stores charge over a hundred. Lawyers don’t make that kind of money. Why would I pay it to a blue-collar guy who can barely be considered skilled labor?

In case you’re wondering, it looks like Kitchenaid makes the best dishwashers these days. Braun gets higher ratings, but they have an eco-weasel “feature”: no heating element. So your dishes never get dry.

I went to Consumer Reports and saw how they raved about Kenmore. Then I read the reviews from the unfortunate people who had actually bought the machines. Oh, man. You couldn’t give me one now. But the Kitchenaid owners all seemed ecstatic. I went to J.D. Power to check, and I saw four stars by Kitchenaid, and that was enough for me.

So I guess what this means is that Consumer Reports is right in there with all the other people who do their jobs badly.

I’m glad I’m learning to do all these things for myself. I am so sick of having people tear up my home and belongings; I am so tired of having to follow up and complain until they get it right. I just don’t need the aggravation. Better to suffer with the actual work than to spend time on the phone yelling at people who don’t care. I have the sort of feeling I would have if these people were deliberately conspiring to punish me with bad work until I got the message and quit hiring them.

Do I sound crabby? Maybe just a little? Go on. You can be honest.

In other news, I heard from a TV production company today. They expressed interest in the rights to Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man. How about that? I looked them up. It’s a real company. I don’t think they’re like the vultures who appeared when I put my press release up, offering to put me on THREE TOP LITERARY WEBSITES or let me buy an infomercial from a company whose name sounds almost sort of like a famous shopping network, but not quite enough like it to justify a lawsuit.

I don’t know if it will amount to anything, but it proves I’m not the only person on earth who likes this concept. Who knows? Maybe some day you’ll see me on cable at 2 a.m., putting together a turducken.

I don’t like the idea of having my face on camera, and I am sure America and I are on the same page in that regard. But PR is the key to riches, and regular TV appearances are hard to beat. The TV-chef pantheon is full of rich people who can’t cook. Investors even buy them restaurants. Where the food is bad. And people buy it and swear it’s ambrosia.

I’m not desperate to get rich, but I would like to generate a solid income with this stuff. Maybe there is a way.

Mail: a Bourgeois Luxury

I’ve been reading God’s Smuggler again. What a great recommendation.

One thing about the book that startled me was the way it illustrated the astounding cruelty of leftism. Brother Andrew said he went to Rumania to meet with the Christians there and bring them Bibles. A lady there was shocked to learn that Christians in other countries thought about Rumanians. They were not allowed to mail letters, and they hadn’t received any from abroad in thirteen years.

Maybe that doesn’t sound atrocious the first time you read it, but think about it. Sitting here on my rear end, I can contact people all over the world, instantaneously. If I felt like it, I could send and receive a hundred emails a day. And my penpals and I could attach photos, audio, and video. Now imagine going thirteen years with no contact with anyone beyond a few miles from your home. It would be like living in an aquarium, on another planet. It would be almost as if the rest of the world had disappeared. Even prisoners in the US can mail letters. And when we send our soldiers to war, we work very hard to make sure they can communicate with people here at home.

It’s true, the leftists provided a certain amount of “news.” Citizens of Eastern bloc nations heard wild stories about Holland being occupied by the USAF, and they were told that the Dutch were oppressed by capitalists. But people behind the Iron Curtain didn’t really know what was going on in the world.

If it doesn’t hurt you to think about millions of people cut off from the rest of the world, it ought to. But that’s how leftism is. People are objects; it doesn’t matter what you do to them, because the state…and CHANGE…are all that matters. Rumania, Cambodia, China, North Vietnam…it’s always the same. Only the degree varies.

It really is a shame God didn’t make human beings intelligent enough to see through the poisonous promises of leftism. We’re just bright enough, on average, to realize we like things like trees and clean air and fairness and freedom from poverty. Most of us are too dumb to realize leftism won’t bring us these things–that it has never brought these things to anyone. In fact, it makes life much, much worse. It tends to increase the very problems it purports to fight.

More and more, I think a good monarchy is better than a republic in which unintelligent people get to vote.