She is a Mean Old Thing

I did a short Mancow spot this morning, and I was thrilled to get it. I will make Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook famous if it kills me.

Right now, I’m taking a break. I always need to wind down after a radio bit. Somehow, I ended up Googling typhus and typhoid. Evidently, the British used to confine carriers in mental asylums, and some were not released until about sixteen years ago. You would think these miserable people would have been freed once antibiotics were available, but not all of them were. And some went crazy from confinement, assuring they would never be released.

We are so spoiled now. So lucky. For millennia, the world’s population increased slowly, and then in recent centuries, it took off. Why? Because life is so easy now, compared to the old days. Technology has given us so much protection.

I once read a book on the black plague. I had always assumed the plague was a one-time thing, but boy, was I wrong. Once plague epidemics began in Europe, they came back over and over. You probably know that the disease was carried by fleas, but it was also possible to contract it by being near a person who coughed or sneezed. Then you died in misery, and you stood a good chance of infecting your loved ones in the process.

And we worry about gas-price spikes.

Typhoid bore similarities to the plague. Some believe the “plague” Thucydides wrote about was typhoid, and some believe it was typhus. You can spread typhoid by failing to wash your hands after you use the toilet, which means about 75% of American men are potential carriers. Typhus is no fun, either, and it’s spread by lice. Before the modern age, there was no way to fight lice, and even in the 20th century, lice managed to infect many, many people.

People used to die from the flu, by the millions. And the bird flu scare reminded us that it can happen again. Now that I think about it, millions of people have died from malaria, which is preventable, because we haven’t used DDT responsibly. It’s funny; the hippies call the earth–an inanimate object–“Gaia,” and they claim it’s our mother, and that it wants to take care of us. The truth is that the earth has been working hard to kill us since the dawn of time, and it succeeds in numbers that would make Hitler and Stalin and Mao weep with admiration. Does your mother want you dead? Mine never did. I’d like to hear Gaia’s loving explanation for Katrina or the Dust Bowl or locusts or cretinism. And how about radon? The earth doesn’t love us, and it doesn’t take care of us. The earth is our enemy, and we continue to exist because we made it our slave. We survive because we fight the earth every day.

It’s funny; we see ourselves as precious and important, but in the past, we were downright ephemeral. Life was unbelievably perilous.

These days, if you avoid heart attacks, car wrecks, and cancer, you can pretty much expect to reach 80. At least, that has been true for the generations which reached that age in recent decades. It may not be true of the current generation; there may be a problem ahead of us which will change the picture.

We feel entitled to grow old. How strange that would have seemed to a person living in the nineteenth century.

I have to wonder if our illusion of invulnerability contributes to our immorality. If you’re 35 and you’ve never been to a funeral, maybe it’s only natural that you would ignore God and do whatever you want. Adversity changes people’s attitudes. They say that during the plague epidemics, people would throw their jewelry and money over monastery walls, to bribe God. And the monks threw it back, fearing it carried disease.

One of life’s great challenges is to maintain faith, gratitude, and obedience, in times when life is easy. There is a perpetual cycle. Faith and obedience beget prosperity, prosperity begets pride, pride begets sin, and sin begets misfortune. Which begets faith and obedience.

I wish I hadn’t started Googling! Sometimes a break can take more out of you than work.

Me, Mainly

I have a nice media opportunity today. Do me a favor and say a prayer for me. After all, ultimately, God decides who succeeds and who does not.

No, Really

Does anyone know whether there are any Browning Buck Mark pistols a Tactical Solutions Trail-Lite barrel won’t work with?

Not that I am planning anything. Although that Buck Mark Plus with the nice wooden grip looks sweet.

Bennigan’s Files its Last TPS Report

I just read about Bennigan’s going bankrupt. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise. I haven’t seen a Bennigan’s ad in ages.

The story was particularly interesting to me, because my cousin used to manage for Bennigan’s. He told me that if you wanted decent food, and you had to choose between Bennigan’s and T.G.I. Friday’s, you should go with Friday’s, because they actually tried to cook food a human could eat. He said the beef they used at Bennigan’s was something called “utility grade.” Like, if you don’t eat it, you can use it to make a sturdy doormat.

There are eight grades of beef, and all but three sound horrifying. Prime, Choice, Select, Standard, Commercial, Utility, Cutter, and Canner. Think about the lousy choice steaks you’ve had, and then try to imagine all the things that have to be wrong with a piece of meat before they drop it four more grades.

Now, I am not claiming I know for a fact that they used this stuff, or that the food was generally bad. I do know that my cousin worked for them and claimed Bennigan’s was purely “a money machine,” and that making good food was not a priority.

As for Friday’s, I have two problems with them. First, it is REALLY hard to find anything on their menu that isn’t fried, yet which I consider worth eating. Coming from the guy who thinks pig skin is candy, this is a harsh indictment. Second, they always smell awful. Like rancid grease. Like water in which Michael Moore’s baseball cap has been boiled.

You can make good food with cheap ingredients. Apart from stuff for the cookbooks, I’ve become obsessive about it. When I pay over two dollars per pound for meat, I feel like a sucker. But maybe I’m a little more skilled than some of the people who write recipes for commercial kitchens. Also, I’m a Southerner, and I’ve lived around Cubans a lot, so I have unnatural advantages. You can feed ten Cubans royally for about twenty bucks. Maybe this is why Cubans are so successful. The annual food budget for a family of four is about three hundred dollars. The rest of the income goes into real estate and business leases. And Uncle Sam gets about a dollar and a half. Or he ends up paying THEM.

I think the Bennigan’s story goes to show what happens when people start showing up for work without enough pieces of flair. If the CEO had worn maybe 97 bits of flair, including a codpiece studded with flashing blue LEDs spelling out “PARTAY,” maybe this would not have happened. In fact, when Obama wins the election, I hope we’ll start seeing a little flair in the White House. Like big buttons reading, “KISS ME I USED TO BE A MUSLIM.”

And of course, here I am once again, putting all these great ideas in the public domain instead of trying to get paid for them.

I would say Obama is cutter and McCain is choice, whereas Ronald Reagan was prime, and Jimmy Carter was canner.

I guess that makes Ron Paul Spam, which is appropriate, considering his enduring status as President of the Internet.

I’ll be hosting a wake for Bennigan’s at the nearest Bombay Bicycle Club, after which I plan to feign a heart attack and skip out on the bill.

Horrors

Bad news.

The worst part is thinking about all the hippies who will be overjoyed.

Type 1 Diabetic Runs Marathons

Meant to tell you about this yesterday. Reader Ruth H. has a granddaughter named Jordan Hoese, and she is believed to be the youngest diabetic marathon runner in the US. And she has been on the news! You can see a video at that link.

I think I could do a marathon. On a bike. If it were all downhill.

No, I know my limitations.

I especially like the idea of taking carbohydrates with you when you run. But I find that the wind keeps blowing the pizza box open.

Congratulations, Jordan!

Keep Your Hazmat Suit Handy

I did something horrible yesterday. I got myself more blueberries, plus a half-pint of raspberries. You can guess what’s going to happen to them. CORNBREAD.

I truly hope I can get the blueberries to occupy the proper altitudes inside the cornbread this time, instead of forming a big purple layer on the bottom. You really need to try this stuff. I do not lie. It’s wonderful.

If you haven’t signed up for Manly Grub Forum, you should consider it. People are contributing a lot of wild recipes. Elisson contributed one for something called Strasbourg pie. It’s hideous. You roast an entire foie gras (duck liver) in puff pastry, with other crap. You put it in a long pan and fold the pastry over it. What you end up with is a fatty loaf of death. I don’t know if I could stand it, due to the liver, but if liver doesn’t bother you, this may be your bag.

If anything worthwhile happens when I make the cornbread, I’ll put photos up in the forum.

The categories have been expanded a lot. Guns, charities, beer, wine, various spirits, and so on. I just created a board where you can post links to your favorite food sites. And as I had hoped, the boards haven’t devolved into a typical Internet-forum snakepit. We have over 1100 posts up, and I haven’t had to execute anyone yet.

I Have Been Too Hard on Myself

I got a few comments yesterday that were so favorable, they were somewhat embarrassing. Of course, I am grateful. I’m not complaining.

One of the dangers of addressing an audience is that people may begin to think too highly of you. So you can start out with good intentions and end up moonwalking on top of an SUV outside a courthouse, because you have become convinced you can do no wrong. I sincerely espouse solid Christian morals and principles of good character, but that doesn’t mean I do a good job of living up to them.

Since I started trying to write for a living, I have become concerned that I would eventually become something of a public figure, and that people might treat me with more regard than I am due. It’s a funny thing; if you have even a little fame, people you don’t even know will start trying to give you things and do things for you, and some will treat you as though you are more than human. I can’t help being concerned about that. I think glory is like wealth. A certain amount is okay, but if you get too much, you face the risk that it will corrupt you. I have always wished I could write books that were famous, without becoming famous, personally. I know that’s not realistic; it’s a hard trick to pull off. Especially when you have to do interviews in order to get where you want to be.

Some people desire fame. I think it’s one of the worst things that can happen to you. If I could sign a contract right now that assured that I would make a good living from writing, but that only my friends and family and professional contacts would know who I was, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

I sometimes think one of the reasons lower beings are supposed to glorify God is that the alternative is to accept the glory for themselves and become poisoned by it. There are some things you are supposed to hand over to God. Vengeance, for example. A portion of your time. A portion of your income. I believe we’re supposed to be like oxen that tread out corn. We’re allowed to take a reasonable amount of what we produce–we’re not muzzled–but we’re not supposed to keep everything.

If things go well, I will try not to allow my head to be turned.

In other news, Baldilocks has bought a domain for the site she intends to put up to get PR for her efforts to fund the Kenyan school Barack Obama abandoned. But she needs a web designer. Someone give her a hand.

Must Have Had a Fair Wind

I am mystified. I ordered a box set of Horatio Hornblower DVDs on Friday at 11 p.m., and they arrived today! How is that possible?

Unfortunately I’m already sucking them up way too fast. I could not keep myself from watching the first two today.

I think that if you have any potential inside you for the development of character, you will find it impossible not to be moved by Horatio Hornblower. What wonderful lessons you can learn from his adventures. Don’t whine. Don’t make life hard on those in authority over you. Don’t forget that you have to serve your subordinates more than they serve you. Admit responsibility for your errors. Look for ways to solve problems and improve things, beyond what your duty requires you to do. None of this stuff will get you far in an average workplace; politicking is the way to get ahead. If you want advancement, learn to control others. If you want self-respect, competence, resourcefulness, and satisfaction, learn to control yourself.

How much we are cheated of, when our parents let us raise ourselves. How slim the likelihood that we will find the strength and the inclination to teach ourselves the lessons overlooked by our parents during our formative years. Oddly, the best way to make up for your parents’ mistakes is to refuse to blame them, and to treat the mistakes as though they were your own.

Maybe that’s the true magic from which God wanted us to benefit when He told us to honor our parents. When you choose to stop blaming them, and you put yourself out to compensate for their shortcomings, and you try to help them lead as they should lead, you will find that you become what you wish they had been, and you are likely to improve them, too, by example.

I know Hornblower is a fictional character, but it’s not unrealistic to emulate his virtues. They’re not superhuman.

I enjoy these DVDs for the same reason Christianity is exciting to me. Christianity offers self-improvement. The New Testament doesn’t just say you get eternal life. It says that while you live, provided you receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, God will build you up from the inside and make you a better person. More disciplined. More courageous. Kinder. More patient.

I only have 8 more DVDs. I know I’m going to burn them up by Friday.

If you have kids, you couldn’t ask for better entertainment to share with them. You could pause the DVDs here and there and explain why Hornblower makes the hard choices he makes. Sure beats Grand Theft Auto and R-rated movies.

Life is beautiful, if you know what kind of beauty to look for and where to look for it. I think that’s one of the lessons of maturity. We think we enjoy our venal pleasures while we’re young, but they always come with a high price, and we don’t even know what enjoyment is until we’re old and we have suffered and learned. Maybe God gives us old age and infirmity to keep us from growing to love life so much we refuse to die. The older you get, the more you are able to see what there is in life to love.

Thoughts like these increase my sadness that we are becoming a nation of degenerates and barbarians. I’m just glad I’m managing to pick up a few clues while I’m still young enough to make use of them.

Plus Jon Voight, Bringing the Smackdown

Am I the only one who is loving Jon Voight’s in-your-face Washington Times op-ed? Kind of reminds me of Reagan. Lots of common sense, and low in BS.

Thank God, it’s coming from one of Hollywood’s finest actors. Ordinarily, as soon as something like this comes out, the liberal damage control squad pops up and says it’s a failed actor trying to get attention. But Voight is one of the most charismatic and effective actors of his generation. Even in movies like Anaconda, you can’t take your eyes off of him. Everything he says drips with significance.

I realize, he’ll never be half the thespian Rosie O’Donnell is. But enough fat jokes.

I keep thinking about Obama, bailing out on his own family in Kenya. He was going to help his family’s village build a school, and they have been waiting two years, and he hasn’t done a thing. Imagine how painful that must be to the people he let down. Imagine the hope he put in their hearts and then allowed to wither.

Here’s a question. If this is how he keeps promises to his own relatives and their friends, how well will he keep his promises to us?

Now look at John McCain. A man who adopts other people’s children and refuses to make hay of it. Hey, I know the answer. Let’s have John McCain adopt Obama’s village.

Another possible solution: tax the bejeezus out of the village. That way, they’ll have tons of revenue to spend on schools. That’s how taxes work, isn’t it? In Obamaworld, I mean. Maybe we can get a teacher’s union in there while we’re at it, to make sure no one is working too hard and that the place doesn’t become infected with insane ideas like meritocracy.

Maybe we could auction a pair of Obama’s boxers on Ebay. If we can start a bidding war between Chris Matthews and Frank Rich, we’ll be able to buy the village a school plus its own aircraft carrier.

Prayer Request

I just read the news story about Bob Novak’s brain tumor. Unbelievable. This makes two famous people and one blogger I know, who have been diagnosed recently with brain tumors. Ted Kennedy, Bob Novak, and Linda SOG.

I invited everyone to say a prayer that Senator Kennedy would be healed, and I did the same for Linda. I hope you will take a moment to repeat those prayers, and to add a new one for Mr. Novak.

I Got up to “F”

Between the Sabbath and household repairs, most of the weekend got eaten up, but right now I am enjoying a lull in activity, so I think I’ll see what other bloggers are up to.

Agent Bedhead thinks it’s hypocritical for celebs to devote their lives to seeking attention and then complain when they get it. I have to agree. Go read the whole thing. Heh. Indeed. Tom Maguire. Althouse.

Speaking of Althouse, she is a little sick of the Obama man-crush phenomenon. And it looks like someone needs to hide her fish eye lens for a week. Don’t be startled (or encouraged) by the naked blonde currently on Ann’s site. It’s not who you hope it is.

I thought I was disgusting for keeping canned goods until the bottoms rusted out and the crap oozed onto the pantry shelves. But Elisson has stolen my crown.

Cap’n Bob has an interesting revelation. Apparently, ancient Americans knew what circles were.

You’ve all heard of “eliminating the middleman.” Well, Dan from Madison has a weird story about a company that eliminated its own distributor and left the middleman with no competition. Sweet. It’s a story of stupidity and bad business practices, with a happy ending.

Via Mike at Cold Fury, Jeff Goldstein has ceased blogging. Again. Let’s hope it’s so he can do something more rewarding. He said something about a novel involving a taco shell.

CONCEALED CAMPUS! CONCEALED CAMPUS! CONCEALED CAMPUS! I just felt like sending you there.

Double Tapper is keeping track of Obama’s proven lies. And if you help, you apparently get a cool T-shirt.

Finally, Fausta is going to be doing a Nowlive show soon. When it happens, you will find it here.

Back on the Juice

Several times over the last week, I have broken my own commandment and indulged in the marvelous juice of the coffee bean. I gave up my morning coffee some months back, when I had to get cosmetic dental work done because I had been grinding my teeth at night. But the busier you are in the morning, the harder it is to give up coffee. I’m not chugging a quart any more. But that one relaxing cup, while I take a break and surf the web…that is a hard pleasure to forego.

I make my coffee with espresso grounds, and my new thing is to add sugar, half and half, and a squirt of chocolate syrup.

I can always buy new teeth.

Shun This Site

Drudgebart links to a story that says Cuil.com (pronounced “Cool”) is poised to crush its main competitor in the search engine biz, Google.

Here is why I hope that is not true:

“We didn’t find any results for ‘”eat what you want and die like a man’”

No Joke

Is this for real?