HOI Approved

I had to cook some thick pork chops the other day, and I didn’t know what to do. I decided to rely on a recipe from my book.

If you have the book, you’ve noticed the stuffed pig recipe. It has two parts. First, a recipe for stuffed pork chops. Then a recipe for an entire pig. I cannot recommend these recipes highly enough. You won’t believe them until you try them.

I didn’t stuff the pork chops I cooked recently. Instead, I took one idea from the recipe and used it. I have sage growing in the yard, so I grabbed a handful. I poured about a cup of apricot nectar and a cup of Marsala (Florio’s sweet) in a pan. I shredded the sage into it and added salt and pepper, I added two tablespoons of butter, and I reduced the liquid until it was thick. I had already salted the chops and set them aside to absorb the salt. I brushed the liquid on the chops and baked them at 350 until they hit 170 degrees on the inside.

They were excellent. You should try it. I think they would be much better if you soaked them in the nectar and Marsala for a day before reducing it. And if you want to be a complete perfectionist, brine them in a baking soda solution for a day before that.

They’re better with stuffing, but this version has the benefit of not killing you as quickly.

If you use the recipe in the book, make sure you use a thermometer instead of relying on time. Jam it in the middle of the stuffing. When the stuffing is cooked, the pork is definitely safe.

I think peach nectar would be good, too.

Wonderful Feedback

I am receiving more priceless celebrity endorsements for Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook.

Okay, they’re not from celebrities. But they’re still pretty good.

Good afternoon, sir! I’ve been a longtime reader of your blog and have bought all three books. It’s really nice to see someone with good values (I’m very impressed by your religion posts) and connections to my part of the world get ahead in life. (I’m an Eastern KY __________ from __ County.) I really have enjoyed all of them, but the cookbook is a masterpiece. I read three chapters, then promptly drove three counties over to buy a griddle. 🙂 Made the steak and potato recipe last night… I thought I’d died and went to heaven. Keep up the amazing work!

Wow, I’m glad someone tried the griddle idea. There are no bad recipes in the book, but some stand out, and my steaks are so good, I no longer have any interest at all in steakhouses. I have been criticized for frying steak, which is what happens on a griddle, but what you get is a beautifully charred piece of meat, more than worthy of an expensive restaurant. My steaks are better than Ruth’s Chris et alia, so who cares if they’re fried?

Sometimes I think it would be fun to make beef gravy on the griddle. It would be sickeningly good. The griddle adds a lot of flavor.

Shipping it today. Very nice job. We making the pizza tonight. You didn’t mention the redneck lamb box thro…

I’ll post a review… althro I didn’t see the comment about the librarian and the leather belt soaked in cinnamon oil from the first one. I loved Adam, Satan and Petunia thro. A better story than the Lilith one.

I can’t say it enough. The pizza recipe justifies buying the book. I have to warn you, though, Mike is right. Once you have the power to make real pizza at home, you’ll make it over and over and over. He said it took him five years to stop. That is not a joke. If you’re fat, it may be a real problem.

Thanks again, all.

Upstream

Haloscan has gone insane again. This is why you are unable to comment.

A Fine Trade for Innocent Lives

I was just reading about the Muslim nutwad who stole a front-end loader and used it to kill and injure a bunch of innocent people in Jerusalem.

This vicious, deluded individual went on a rampage, throwing cars and doing as much damage as he could do. What finally stopped him? Firearms. The best solution to random violent crime.

The first shooter was an off-duty soldier. The second was an anti-terror officer. For some reason, it took two guns to take this moron out and send him to hell, where he did not find the virgins he was promised. By the time he was dead, a large number of people had become victims.

Israel now has bizarre, suicidal gun-control legislation. When I lived there, you couldn’t walk down a street without seeing two or three automatic rifles. Now the populace is disarmed, except for a lucky few. Diane Feinstein would have fit right in, when she had her precious elitist gun permit. Chuck Schumer still has one; maybe he should emigrate.

Would this fool have tried this twenty years ago? I doubt it. When I was there, a bunch of inbred “freedom fighters” attacked a public square, and they were immediately put in their place by armed Israelis. When questioned, they said they would not have attacked, had they realized people were armed. Duh.

It seems like we now have a strange and asymmetrical situation in Israel. In “Palestine,” i.e. the bits of Israel the Jews gave away to thieving squatters, it’s okay to have a shoulder-fired rocket. In Jerusalem, you’re not allowed to have a pistol. How can anyone think that’s a good arrangement?

Arm your people, Israel. We know from experience that they don’t use weapons to commit violent crime. And we know what happens when they can’t fight back.

If You Don’t, the Vultures Will

What a morning.

Over the last ten days, I have been hearing a lot about my great uncle, whom I will call Bill. He’s my grandmother’s brother. He’s 89, and he never married, so he has no kids. The family somehow lost track of him, and recently, his great-nephew contacted my aunt and asked her to pay his nursing home bill.

It looks like the great-nephew and his wife convinced Bill to sell his house, buy another one, and put it in their names. And he has Social Security and a pension from the company he worked for all his life. And he has Medicare. Yet somehow, he owed money to a nursing home. Where is the money going? See if you can guess. Unless my aunt and sister and I are badly misled, these miscreants have been cashing his checks and waiting for him to die. And they apparently thought no one would be alarmed if they showed up and asked for thirteen thousand dollars to pay his bills.

My aunt got into gear and located him, and she got a power of attorney, and now he’s in a nursing home in her town. By all accounts, it’s a decent place. The family is getting him things to make his life more pleasant. And it looks like the great-nephew and his wife are about to face a grand jury.

Honest to God, where does trash like this come from? We should have kept tabs on him, and that is our shame, but what kind of low life would put an old man in a home, take his money, and then ask other relatives to pay his bills?

I don’t know why he turned to these losers instead of us, but that’s water under the bridge now.

Don’t let this happen in your family. If an older relative wanders off and you lose touch, find out what’s going on before it gets this far. When an older person seems strong and capable, it’s easy to think he can take care of himself. Sometimes they can, and sometimes they can’t.

Eastern Kentucky must have unique soil, because the trash that grows there is a wonder to behold.

Coulter, Buchanan…What’s the Difference?

I meant to mention this the other day.

While Fausta was in Miami, we happened to discuss Ann Coulter. And boy, did we turn out to be on the same frequency. Fausta mentioned one of Acidman’s buddies, and I said I feared I had alienated some members of that crew by criticizing Ann Coulter’s slurs. There are a few men on the web who idolize Coulter and feel they have to defend her at all costs, and they are probably too dumb to understand that you can’t do the GOP any good by calling people “total fag,” “faggot,” “camel jockey,” or “tent merchant” in the national media. That is not going to win us converts or votes.

Before I could fully explain my thoughts, Fausta started telling me how she went to CPAC and signed a petition trying to get Coulter’s “official speaker” endorsement revoked. She said she was watching TV with some other bloggers, and they saw Coulter call John Edwards a faggot, and immediately, the petition materialized. I believe that’s what she said. And when Fausta told me her opinion of Coulter, it was like listening to my own words. The basics? All she cares about is selling books; the GOP and the United States can go pound sand. And Coulter raises a hell of a lot of money for Democrat candidates.

Glad to hear I’m not alone, and that a lot of other conservatives have reached exactly the same conclusions I did, with no input from me.

I know what it’s like to say something stupid and over the top, but I also know how to admit it, and that appears to be a lesson Ms. Coulter will never learn. I have never seen her apologize or admit fault in the slightest degree, and I’ll bet I never will. That is one of the most serious character flaws a person can have, and it’s enough to prevent me from taking her seriously, regardless of how good the bulk of her writing is. It puts her in the grey area between “pundit” and “sideshow act.” And that is a waste.

But she’s rich, so Mission Accomplished, I guess.

She’s like Pat Buchanan. Brilliant guy, but he hates Jews, so to hell with his books. I can’t believe they still put him on TV panels.

I guess everyone knows Victor Davis Hanson recently handed Buchanan his own ass, brutally and decisively. More like, Hanson lifted Buchanan’s ass over his head and used it to hammer him into the ground. As Critical Bill might have put it, Hanson:Buchanan as Godzilla:Japan. It just goes to show that brains are worthless if you can’t see past your own biases.

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I found a blogger who has written up the CPAC story. Even watery old Glenn Reynolds signed the petition. His signature was probably the longest piece of writing he had done in a month.

Here’s the entry.

I did not realize Coulter had used the word “raghead” at CPAC in 2006. I have to revise my opinion of her, downward. The woman is an utter idiot.

CPAC rejected her this year, based on her atrocious past behavior. The toothless mullet-wearers who hate me for criticizing Coulter need to start insulting CPAC, too.

Whoops

I think I forgot to mention this. Kevin over at Technogypsy put up a link to my book, Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook.

Thanks, dude!

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Also a gracious link from Bill Quick, at Daily Pundit. Thanks, Bill!

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Claire dared to tamper with my peach cobbler recipe! If she improved it, I’ll sue!

She thinks there may be a misprint, RE vanilla extract. Unfortunately, I can’t remember.

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Here’s one from…Captain Cryptic?

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Damned if Helo hasn’t chimed in.

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Did I already mention Kim’s review? Can’t remember, so I’ll put up a link.

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ACK! Here comes Heather!

Not once, but twice!

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Steve Gigl, who has threatened to cook every recipe and blog it. God help him.

Where are the Smelly Protesters?

I am an amazing human being. I built a platform for the pool pump.

I was going to use concrete, but I had a lot of scrap wood lying around, and some of it was pressure-treated, so I figured it would be okay to put it in a humid place where it might get water on it occasionally. I got out the miter saw and the impact driver and the socket set, and before you know it, I had a platform Michael Moore could sit on without crushing it instantly into a quantum singularity.

Note I said “instantly.”

It took me an hour to build the platform, and when I got it out to the pump area, the damn pump was leaking. The “out” fitting was the problem this time. This is another fitting I stupidly used tape on. I had to saw a piece out of a pipe, create a splice out of a male fitting and a female fitting, put the “out” pipe back in with pipe dope, and cement everything together. I hope it doesn’t leak this time. I know I can fix it, but still.

I am now the Apostle of Pipe Dope. That stuff rocks. Explain again why anyone would use Teflon.

The mosquitoes seem really angry. The were forming a cloud over the pump. My guess is, the constant leakage out there found its way into a cavity somewhere, and I have been breeding bugs in it. Now that cavity is drying up. All this time, I blamed the trashy neighbors with the green pool and the crappy cars under stained canvas covers. Oh, well.

I still wish they would move.

A miter saw is an incredible tool. You leave it sitting in the garage on a Workmate, and when you want to saw wood, it’s just THERE. Waiting. And this experience confirmed my indisputable need for a 12″ sliding saw. I had no trouble cutting four-by-fours, but I had to turn the two-by-eight over.

I have decided Ridgid has the optimal 12″ miter saw. It gets reviews nearly as good as Makita and Bosch, and it’s a lot cheaper, and they have that eternal warranty. And my other Ridgid tools seem great. I don’t know how Home Depot ended up with a good product line, but I have no complaints. Today I got an email advertising their weird little 6 1/2″ circular saw, and it looks like that’s a pretty sweet tool, too. It’s very small and light, but you can do a 45-degree bevel in a two-by-whatever.

My 10″ saw gives me a thrill every time I use it. Today I discovered I can get perfect cuts–no fraying–if I saw a little slower than usual.

I wish I could write a book on learning to use tools. Big subject, though. And I’d say something stupid and cause idiots to cut their fingers off.

You Need It

I’m about to mention something wonderful, but supposedly, the site where it originally appeared has some sort of adware on it, so instead of linking to that site, I’ll link to the site where I found it.

Luckily for everyone, that site belongs to Sondra K.

It’s a T-shirt you really need. And I hope the design is also going on thongs and such.

Inside Joke for People Who Bought Book

I am getting more emails about Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook. I can’t get it through my head that people take this book seriously as a cookbook, because I wrote it to make readers laugh, but the recipes do work, and people seem to like them. This guy actually took the time to make the hash brown casserole! This one takes WORK.

I don’t name people who email me when I mention what they say, unless I’m sure they want to be named or won’t care. Here it is:

I cooked up the hashbrown casserole tonight. It was awesome. I needed to cook the bacon to get the grease, and I believe throwing bacon out is a felony (well, it should be), so I crumbled it up and sprinkled it between the layers of hashbrowns. You, sir, are a genius.

It warms my heart to read things like that. I hope people are cooking this stuff all over the US. But not too often. I need them alive so they can buy my next book.

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I just got another one. I guess it will sound silly, considering the type of writing I do, but I can identify with this one on a special level.

I just got your book Monday and read it when I got home. The chapter written in Christopher Walken’s voice creeped me out, but then just looking at him creeps me out. I read the entire thing before bed. To say I loved it is damning it with faint praise. I loved the recipe for biscuits and I can’t wait to try them but I do have an addition. My mom used to make biscuits with ‘cracklin’s’. Cracklin’s were the left over little bits from rendering lard. She would get fat from the butcher (for some reason it was ground or she ground it, I don’t remember) and render the lard then take the little bits out and cook them a little more to brown up. She would make the biscuits and I don’t remember if she mixed the cracklin’s in or put them on top, but whichever way she did it she would take the biscuits and put them in bacon grease and turn them over so there was bacon grease top and bottom, then bake. When I was about eight or nine she started making Bisquik biscuits and never again did I have an honest-to-goodness biscuit with cracklin’s. Your book has inspired me to attempt to make them myself. Now to track down some place to buy hog fat.

As I have often said, one reason I started improving my cooking skills in the Nineties is that my mother had died, and I didn’t get to see my grandmother in Kentucky very often, and there were foods I missed. A lot of the things I put in the book are things I used to eat at their tables. Cornbread. Biscuits and gravy. Bean soup with ham hocks. I put chicken and dumplings in the original book.

In a less important way, I also missed decent pizza, which used to be all over North Miami when I was a kid, so I learned how to make better pizza than I had back then.

If you’re in the situation I was in, do yourself a favor, pick a few dishes you miss, and figure out how to make them. You’ll get it right eventually. I can tell you from experience, it’s like having an heirloom nobody can take away from you. And if you have kids, you can share it and pass it on to them, and they’ll know a little bit about what your life was like when you were growing up.

Gun on Way

I’m starting to get into the general period when my new used Smith & Wesson 27-2 should arrive. It’s killing me. Jim really did me a service, locating this thing. I don’t ordinarily buy holsters for my guns, except for a pocket holster for the Glock 26. Man, I love having that thing with me when I run errands. I feel like I should get a holster for the 27-2. Just because it would be cool.

I always want more guns. It’s a sickness. But I realize you have to space purchases out, because if you don’t, you end up with a whole bunch of guns you don’t know very well. I bought two 1911s very close together, and that worked out okay, but you can definitely overdo it.

I think a Colt King Cobra would be a great thing to have. Seems like kind of a ghetto/trailer park gun. Good quality, but a little rough. How can you not love a gun with a ridiculous thing like “KING COBRA” stamped on the barrel? You can tell the people at Colt wanted people to shoot it while drinking King Cobra Malt Liquor.

The Python sounds disappointing because of the weak guts and frame. Part of the fun of having guns is that they will often be among the best-engineered, most well-made items you own. Can you say that about a .357 that only shoots .38 Specials? I dunno. Maybe it’s so much fun to shoot with .38s, you don’t miss real ammunition.

The 27-2 is supposed to be heavier than my 686+, which is not a wimpy piece. I don’t think I’ll have to baby it.

A Ruger would be nice. I don’t know if you have to go old when you buy a Ruger. The older Smiths are better, and there aren’t any new double-action Colts.

Liberals misunderstand the gun-collecting urge. Which makes sense, because they misunderstand nearly everything. It’s not that you want to stockpile weapons so you can fulfill a warped tough-guy image and kill your neighbors and have a standoff with the FBI. It’s just that guns are fun to collect. Like…let me think of something liberals enjoy collecting. I know! STDs! No, wait. Welfare checks. No, wait. Fatherless babies. No, still not right. Yanni CDs? Well, you get the idea.

TC forwarded a funny story. Georgia is a conservative state, but Atlanta is a liberal city. It’s like a boil on an otherwise healthy body. A Georgia lawmaker got a law passed, allowing permit holders to carry guns on public transportation, in restaurants that serve alcohol, and in parks. And he is planning to take his gun to the airport, presumably relying on the public transportation clause. The Atlanta authorities say they’ll arrest him in spite of the law.

This should be fun.

I don’t want to reflexively back the legislator. I know 911 has made airport administrators and the admittedly hysterically anti-gun FAA crazy, and I would not want to make their jobs harder. Of course, the thing is, guns inside airports aren’t the biggest terrorism worry. Guns on planes…that’s the real problem. And I think it would be impossible for a crazed Muslim to use a gun inside an airport to get on a plane. He’d have fifty red dots on him in five minutes. And the presence of hidden civilian weapons would be a real deterrent. Imagine how your heart would leap if you got a chance to splatter a jihadi’s brains in an airport. I know it’s awful, but the satisfaction would be beyond description. I’m sure they realize many of us feel that way.

I tend to think guns in airports are a good idea, and that they’ll make airports much scarier for Muslim terrorists. Maybe I’m wrong.

Civilian guns make crime a very risky business, and criminals find them discouraging and upsetting. That’s what they tell us, and for once, they’re right.

I get more excited about concealed carry every day, and not solely because I carry. I love knowing that every time I’m in a public place where a moron is likely to show up and cause a problem, there are a few weapons around me, in the hands of people the criminals and I can’t identify in advance. I love knowing that criminals know it, too. It’s like being surrounded by invisible angels.

Concealed carry means hope. Gun bans mean surrender and helplessness.

I would like to see the Atlanta authorities publicly humiliated and spanked over their efforts to nullify the state law. I am a bad person. I am working on that.

Pump Fixed?

The saga of the pool pump continues. If this were The Lord of the Rings, right about now, I would be having my finger bitten off by a guy in a diaper.

People were telling me to use various types of unions and whatever to put the pipes together. Instead, I put a female threaded deal on one end, and I screwed a male threaded deal into the pump on the other end. I got a 90-degree elbow and put a short piece of pipe in it. I cemented a threaded male fitting on the pipe. I screwed this mess into the female threaded thing. Then I stuck a short piece of pipe in the male threaded fitting going into the pump, and I cemented the elbow to it. Now if I have a problem, I can cut out the elbow in about one minute and unscrew the other pieces.

Someone told me to use pipe dope instead of Teflon tape. My God, I can’t believe the difference. Why would anyone use tape if they had pipe dope? When you apply this crap, you can plainly see it’s going to lubricate the threads, prevent seizing, permit a tighter joint, and form a better seal. Am I wrong? and it’s easier to handle. Teflon tape folds and twists, and it’s a pain to cut, especially when you have one hand occupied.

I am fairly sure this will work, and if it doesn’t, for three dollars, I bought enough parts to do it all over again.

I saw an incredibly cool coping-saw kind of thing in the pipe aisle at Home Depot, and naturally, I was drawn to it. But I figured I would check the other saws in the tool area. I decided to get a ten-dollar Stanley saw with an ergonomic handle. You put a hacksaw bit in the handle, and the part that sticks out is what you saw with. It’s for tight places. I now think it may have been a dumb buy, since the blade is unsupported. It came with a second blade, sort of like a keyhole saw, but it was worthless for PVC. I got my hacksaw from the garage and went through the pipes in about thirty seconds each.

I have the pump-base concept figured out. The pump sits on a plastic mount that detaches. I’ll take the mount off, build a wooden form of the correct height, and pour concrent into it. I’ll use the mount as a jig to set lag shields into the wet concrete, with bolts already in them. If I put them in with no bolts, they won’t be expanded, and it will be impossible to drive bolts into them when the concrete dries. If it turns out the holes are too big and the shields slip, I have some concrete patching stuff that looks just like concrete. I’ll squirt some in the holes, put the shields in, and start over.

This sure beats waiting for an incompetent pool guy to show up, put the wrong pump in at an inflated price, and do everything badly. The way they always have in the past. The last pump wasn’t grounded. Nice.

I guess PVC is okay, if you’re willing to plan well. The trouble starts when you put things together without considering the hell you may be creating for the next person to work on the system.

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It works. It really works. I turned it on, and nothing bad happened.

Surely I am hallucinating.

Bullet Choices

Mike swears that the next time I see him, he’ll have a firearm to bring to the range. Me, I put the odds at 30%. I truly thought I was attention-deficient until I started helping Mike shop for a pistol. Then I realized some people were out of my league. “What do you think about Glocks?” “The guy at the store wants to sell me a Taurus.” “Maybe I should get a frame for my Dan Wesson barrels.” Arggh. When did that start? Like two months ago?

I hope he’s for real this time. Mike has his own health-care staffing company, and I want to see him get rich, mainly so instead of waffling around like this, he’ll have the money to buy every gun he likes and get it over with.

I haven’t loaded any rounds for the 9mm yet. When I bought bullets for the .38 Super, I picked a size I also liked for the 9mm. Then I started reading about polygonal barrels. My bullets are hard, but they’re cast. No jackets. The Glock has a polygonal barrel, and some people believe you should not fire cast bullets through that type of rifling.

A normal barrel has raised ridges of metal inside it, spiraling from one end to the other. The bullets are gripped and turned by the ridges as they move. The inside of polygonal barrel is shaped like a polygon, in cross section. Also spiraled. Imagine the shape you would get if you put a hex nut in a soft tube and twisted it as you pulled it through. Sort of like that, except that I chose a hex nut as an example because it was familiar, not because barrels actually have six flat sides inside them. Wikipedia shows an eight-sided barrel as an illustration.

I don’t understand what goes on in a polygonal barrel that would make cast bullets a problem, but the theory is that lead will build up and obstruct things. In Glocks, like my 9mm and .40 caliber, the lead may build up in a way that prevents the shells from entering the chamber all the way, and then they may not be supported fully when they go off, and your gun explodes. This is known as “the Glock Kaboom.” It’s somewhat upsetting, as it instantly ruins your gun, and it may injure you. You can buy an aftermarket barrel to get around it.

There are those who say no polygonal barrel should be used with cast bullets. Others point out that some gunmakers who use polygonal barrels don’t advise against cast bullets. They say Glocks have a problem and other guns don’t, because of the way the chamber meets the barrel. And a lot of people shoot the brand of bullets I bought–Laser-Cast–with no problem.

So here I am with a pile of 9mm bullets I got at a good price. And I don’t know if I can use them. Something to think about, if you have Glocks and you reload.

Midway is having a pretty decent sale on jacketed bullets, so it’s possible to buy those and save the cast bullets for the .38 Super.

I’m surprised Glock hasn’t fixed the kaboom problem. If the theory about the chamber is right, and other manufacturers aren’t having the problem, it should be simple to remedy. And it harms the guns’ reputation. Imagine relying on a Glock to defend your life, while wondering if it was going to blow up in your hand. I’ll bet that’s extremely unlikely, since an intelligent person in a self-defense situation would probably use quality jacketed ammunition from a reputable manufacturer. But you still have to wonder.

I’m not sure what diameter bullets to get. I assume anything labeled 9mm will be fine, but there are choices within a range of three thousandths or so. Guess I’ll figure it out. I would hate to make reloads that degrade the accuracy of the Glock 26, which is usually a tack-driver.

More Free Food for Yours Truly

Got some nice emails about Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook. Here’s part of one:

I thought I was gonna die reading your Angela Ashes passage. Seriously. Certainly not appropriate for a Sunday, but then, I’m iconoclastic like that lately.

And then the Christopher Walken and Tom Cruise, and, and, and.

Please write more. I know that I will be hooting and hollering and thinking and amassing recipes, if there’s another cook book, while I read your books. I can’t think of many authors who accomplish that result. The “big name” humorists aren’t literally funny, nor are they consistent, that I can see anymore.

I can’t ask for a nicer response than that. Although this comes close:

Just got your new book a few days ago and made champagne chicken tonight. Man, I can’t believe how good it is. It’s like sex on a plate. I’m probably too lazy to make anything else in the book, but I had to make something. It’s an obligation. I didn’t want the book to end up like another investment that ends up never used, like a Bowflex.

Someone got the writing, and someone else gets the food. Maybe I didn’t waste my time!

Fausta and her family invited me to dinner AGAIN tonight. And I was the worst guest imaginable. We started talking about bloggers and blogging, and we got carried away, I kept talking and talking, and eventually they had to tase me to make me leave.

It was sort of like reading this blog, only there was no way to close the browser window.

I really enjoyed myself, even if I bored everyone else to death.

Again, the comparison to this blog is unavoidable.

Thanks for the emails.

You Think You Have Enemies?

I continue to work on the New Testament today, in The Complete Jewish Bible, with accompanying commentary. I just got up to the stoning of Stephen. I don’t like calling him “Saint Stephen,” because I think the whole “saint” thing is a bad mistake. Anyway, my father (who claims to be a Druid) says I was named after various Stephens in his family. My mother told me the Bible’s Stephen was the inspiration. I suppose it’s flattering to be named after a martyr, but the choice doesn’t scream “good luck.”

I almost wish they had gone with “v” instead of “ph.” As I have noted before, one constant reminder that people are becoming more and more ignorant is that increasingly, people pronounce my name “Stephan” and even argue with me about it. It’s terrible, seeing what liberals have done to education. How can you make it to the age of ten without noticing all the famous Stephens? And what does this say about people’s knowledge of the Bible? I guess I’ll worry even more when people lose the ability to pronounce “Moses” and “Jesus.” If you’re young, you may think Americans have always been stupid, but that’s not true. I remember a time when a lot of us were not total ignoramuses.

I learned interesting stuff about stoning. Somewhere the Talmud describes it. The defendant was taken to a place from which the fall was twice the height of a man, and then he was shoved off. If he landed face-down, they turned him over. Then the first witness dropped a big rock on his chest. After that, the stoning was carried out by others present, I think. So it wasn’t a Life of Brian affair, where women in false beards threw pebbles.

I had always assumed that one virtue of stoning was that no single individual bore the responsibility. But if a witness has to be the first to harm the defendant, that’s not true. It makes a lot of sense to force a witness to drop the first rock. It would tend to discourage lying cowards who are willing to accuse but prefer that dupes do the dirty work. In other words, it might make the bearing of false witness less likely.

A peculiar thing about stoning is that the Jews have been reluctant to do it. For example, I have been told they didn’t obey the order to stone homosexuals. One of the commandments says your eye is not to pity those who are to be stoned; you’re supposed to do what the written law says. I don’t know how they came to the conclusion that it wasn’t necessary to go through with stonings. I haven’t read the Talmud. I know they didn’t make the decision lightly. Jewish law, like civil law, should never be taken at face value.

The Muslims, of course, see it differently. Stonings, beheadings, mutilation without anaesthetic…Muslims are very sincere and fastidious about observing their obligation to do these things.

I also learned that a man named Daniel Zion saved most of Bulgaria’s Jews from Hitler. He was a Messianic Jew, too. He was a religious scholar and a rabbi before he decided Jesus was the Messiah. In fact he was the chief rabbi of Bulgaria, and he retained that position even after confessing his faith to another rabbi. He never considered himself “Christian,” however. I guess he’s a thorn in the side of those who say no Jew with a religious education can go Messianic. Anyway, he helped about 45,000 people escape the camps, so he must have been quite a man. I found a page about him. I can’t vouch for it, but I have no reason to think it’s not factually correct.

He ran a synagogue in Israel after the war, but his status was not recognized by Israel’s rabbinical court, which took away his credentials.

Interesting man. Flogged by the Nazis for his Jewishess. Stripped of the title “rabbi” by a Jewish court, for his belief in Jesus. They gave it to him coming and going.