You Know too Many People

I had an interesting dream.

My wife and I were here at the heavily armed, fenced Northern Florida compound (my homey, welcoming name for it), and I was standing by the front door when I saw a big truck in my driveway. I had not let it in.

Right away, I reached for my illegally-modified full-auto AR-15 with the Punisher Trump skull laser engravings on the grips and opened up while quoting Bible verses I misinterpreted in order to justify violence.

Oops. Sorry. For a second there, I thought I was one of the guys who thinks we can shoot our way back to the Fifties.

I don’t have any illegally-modified full-auto firearms. I don’t even have Trump Punisher skulls. Sorry, BATF. I’m not interested in spending a grand every time I shoot steel for 15 minutes. I think one of my neighbors might have something, though. Based on the sounds I hear occasionally.

You should start by investigating the lady across the fence who complained that my shooting disturbed her snowflake horses. I’m pretty sure it’s her. Go no-knock on this one, guys. The earlier in the morning, the better. Just keep your fingers off the trigger, because I could be wrong. It’s actually okay for feds to withhold fire until there is a real problem.

I don’t mean any of that. I don’t wish her problems, but she should respect borders.

I don’t have any guns like that, but it takes like 45 minutes to make one with a Dremel and an Internet printout. When things finally go totally nuts, the number of automatic weapons in the US will skyrocket by a factor of 20 in about a day. Except in the ghettos, where everyone already has a Glock switch and kids fight white supremacy and institutional black genocide by shooting at other black people.

That switch has probably done great things for Glock sales. To the people the guns are stolen from, I mean. They have to replace them, after all.

Forget “Glock perfection.” The new slogan should be, “Glock. Make the switch.”

Pardon the jocularity. I am in a jolly mood this morning. Because I’m not drunk and in pain, unlike most Americans. It’s bowl season, and today many people are hugging one.

I shouldn’t joke about the BATF. They just ransacked a black man’s home for no clear reason, threw bombs into rooms occupied by innocent people, held children at gunpoint, threatened to blow up his gun safe, and left without arresting anyone. They destroyed floors and windows. Their dogs pooped on the victim’s daughter’s bed.

Apparently the training issues in federal law enforcement have spread to the canine agents.

The victims cleaned up the poop themselves. That was unnecessary work. They could have called the FBI crime lab and told them it was important evidence. The FBI would have collected it and lost it.

Not that there is any justification for thinking the feds are high-handed or anything, but, shockingly, if you’re the kind of person who believes CNN is fair, the BATF has not responded to inquiries from the press. I get it. If Uncle Joe doesn’t have to talk to the press, neither do they. I plan to keep checking dictionary sites to see if the leftist editors have gotten around to changing the definition of “transparent.”

The man’s name is Mark Manley. He has a Go Fund Me page.

Joe Biden will surely pardon the agents later in the day, as soon as his wife wakes him up and tells him to. Or maybe someone else has already done it. The thirtyish West Wing transvestites who have actually been running the country since January 20, 2020. “Hold his hand steady. Make the loop on the ‘J’ bigger.”

Is it possible Jeff Dunham is the president?

The victims kind of asked for it. They live in Baltimore. It’s like being in jail and asking to bunk with P Diddy. “Come on, warden. I’m a huge fan. It’s okay if he works on his music. I’m a very heavy sleeper.”

Maybe they’ll join the flood of political refugees and move to my county. Like traffic isn’t bad enough already. I was used to seeing a lot of yankees and other blue state survivors here before 2020, but they were really old. Now it’s entire families. Still in their reproductive years. And Republicans let their babies live. Once an invasive species starts breeding in Florida, you can’t get rid of it.

I hope they’ll open pizzerias. That would soften the pain.

I don’t know why I’m in such a good mood. I need to stop.

So the truck turned out to be a big hurricane-debris truck. We have had two messy storms here since my arrival. The county gives us time to dump trees by the road, and they send huge trucks to pick them up. They have cranes on them to lift the debris and drop it into their beds.

Dumping in beds. BATF. Stop it, self. Let it go.

The truck was inside my gate, which made me feel somewhat territorial, but I let it go, because they started going all over the compound, gathering up the dead wood. They picked up entire burn piles that predated the last storm. I was thrilled.

I suspect the dream had supernatural significance.

In the Bible, trees represent people. A dead tree is an unproductive tree, fit only to be discarded and burned.

In dreams, government employees are usually spirits. The police and the feds are demons. Military people are angels. Government employees who are helpful and pose no threat are on God’s side, and they usually will not talk to you. They already have their orders. They seem happy, and they’re pleasant, but they ignore your efforts to communicate, and they go on with what they’re doing.

Demons are chatty. They like attention. And they rely on the power of lies and threats. They need to talk in order to lie.

I think the county guys in the dream were angels sent to remove useless, destructive people from my life and my wife’s life. The few people who still treat us badly. If so, it’s not a good sign for people I am still entangled with financially. I knew it would not be long before old age got the most difficult ones, but the dream makes me wonder if the time of our disconnection is close.

It’s extremely important to get free of useless people whose only contributions to your life are negative. Sometimes you can’t cut them loose. You can’t put a wife in a dumpster, and you can’t abandon your kids. But most people can be dismissed at will, and you should get rid of the ones who consistently reward you with good for evil.

My dad was a net negative for most of his life, and one day, God told me he had cut him off, meaning his patience was used up.

I knew he had become forgetful, but he was still able to handle his affairs. I had prayed a lot for God to restore him, but after God told me he had been cut off, I quit.

The same year, my dad had to quit practicing law because dementia set in. I was put in charge. We ended up leaving Miami, finally, after years of delay which he caused.

After a while here, his dementia got very bad. At some point around the beginning of 2019, I started feeling that God was saying my dad would be gone before April 1. That was not his medical prognosis, however. His doctors didn’t think his situation was deteriorating all that fast.

When I finally had to put him in a nearby facility, I started to feel bad because I wasn’t praying for his recovery. One day as I drove to see him, I asked God if I could pray for recovery again. I felt it was allowed, so I prayed.

When I saw him the next day, he was much sharper than he had been the day before. He was fighting with the employees. He called his roommate a filthy name in his presence. He had been opening up to God, and he had asked for salvation, but on this day, he told me it was all insincere. He said he had done it to make me happy, which wasn’t true. He disavowed Christianity. He said the Bible was a story book. He radiated his characteristic arrogance.

The dad I had known all my life was back.

I prayed for help, and I got an idea.

I asked my dad if I could pray that God would do whatever had to be done to assure him a good afterlife, and he agreed to let me do it.

The next day, he had slipped backward. The clarity was gone. He was pleasant again. The negative talk about Christianity was gone. I realized God was showing me that some people shouldn’t be healed, because they turn healing into a curse.

Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.

This is true of all blessings. Some people can’t be given husbands or wives. Some people can’t be given financial abundance. There are people whose problems are necessary in order for them to remain saved. This is particularly true of the proud. It’s true of people who repent, get what they want, and then forget their repentance.

My dad died three weeks later, in peace, with me at his side and Derek Prince speaking from a laptop. He had recovered his salvation. All the hateful talk about Christianity had been replaced with reverence, gratitude, and enthusiasm.

This was late March. He didn’t make it to April 1.

If he had continued to recover from dementia, he would have died in torment and then gone to hell. He would be burning in humiliation right now, instead of waiting for me and his grandson to join him for eternal life in a place of perfect love.

My dad was a mixed bag. When his mind went and he started to love God, I was thrilled. I loved praying with him and talking to him about God. But the situation couldn’t last. I was alone, and he kept me too busy to progress in my own life. I could have continued visiting him over and over for years, but that wasn’t what God wanted for me.

I keep asking God to change me without chastisement and suffering. I want supernatural change. I want him to be able to give me good things without losing me.

As for the dead trees in my dream, I can understand why God would free me from them.

They don’t disrupt my life the way my dad did, and my situation is absolutely fantastic. I have a wonderful wife. I’m having a child. I’m healthy. We have abundance without working. We live on a dream property in a dream county. We get closer to God all the time, and things continually improve. He keeps correcting us. But while these people can’t keep us from having beautiful lives, they are treacherous and out of place in our circle of acquaintances. We should be big assets to each other, but while I am good to them, they abuse me and my wife, and they have no intention of changing.

They are tiresome, and it would be best if they were replaced by better people who are the opposite of tiresome. Even if they’re not replaced, their absence from my life would be a welcome relief. I’m ready for it. I can’t change their choices, I am in no way responsible for the way they treat me, and I will not be troubled about problems they make for themselves.

As for us, we are planning to fry chicken today. The deep fryer beckons. I’m going to try making twice-fried fries in it for the first time. We can’t find small chickens at Publix, but the local Winn-Dixie had a 4.5-pounder, so I think we’re all set. I’m also making hush puppies because they’re wonderful.

Later on, I may do some shooting out back. When you live in a place like this, every day you fail to shoot is a disgraceful waste.

Maybe God will smile on us in 2025, and his children won’t have to be here on this date in 2026. One can only hope.

Make Silent Movies With Your New $320 Microphones

Time for some practical information that will probably be interesting to about 30 people.

When I got married and we started traveling, I began investing in camera gear. Normal families take pictures and make videos and recordings, unlike my family. They like spending time together. I can’t even guess what that’s like.

Eventually, I realized the microphones that were built into cameras were not intended to be used routinely. They are for times of desperation. When your real microphones aren’t available.

Put a camera 5 feet from a speaker, in a room with normal noise, and you get bad audio. Put both outdoors in a light breeze, and all you hear is the wind. You can put a hairy mike cover (“dead cat”) on the mike to cut the wind sound, but you will still get bad audio because the mike is too far from the speaker.

You’re supposed to use external microphones. Some connect to cameras mechanically. Others send sound to cameras via radio.

You can get a “shotgun” mike, which is a little tube you mount on your camera’s hot shoe. It’s directional. You can point it at your subject, and it will emphasize sounds coming from his direction. You can also buy mikes with long cables.

What you really want is a wireless mike set with at least two remote microphones. And you want lavalier mikes. I mean mikes with wires that connect them to transmitters. Apparently some people think a mike with no wires at all can be a lavalier, but that goes against the definition of the word.

The remote microphones go with your subjects. If you’re a subject, you can attach a remote mike to your collar and capture your speech perfectly when you’re a long way from the camera.

A lavalier mike is a tiny mike with a long cable. You plug it into the remote mike or transmitter, which is larger and more conspicuous. You can put the remote mike in your pocket and clip the lavalier mike to your shirt. This way, you don’t have a big, heavy black thing pulling on your shirt, and the remote mike can’t fall off and land in a toilet or a river.

I got my first remote set in Hong Kong. I wanted DJI, but DJI was hot, and no one had them. I got a Saramonic set. It’s pretty neat. It has two remote mikes you attach to yourself using magnets. It works great.

Problem: it’s very easy to knock the mikes off the magnets. Then they roll down the street. It has happened to us more than once.

Problem: you can’t plug lavaliers into them.

Problem: if you need a part, forget it. Saramonic is an unreliable company. I lost a dead cat for a while, and I could not get a new one. They are still unavailable.

Problem: the magnet in the receiving unit, which sits on your camera, may interfere with your camera’s monitor screen. You have to install a ridiculous spacer on your hot shoe. Saramonic promised me one and never sent it. I had to go aftermarket.

I decided to eat the $250 loss and get a new set. I had to choose between Rode and DJI. Both seemed pretty good. I went with a Rode Wireless Pro set for some reason I don’t remember. Rode is a serious company that makes professional stuff. The set I got is on their low end.

We decided to make a Christmas video with the Rode set and a Sony A7IV camera. Couldn’t do it. There was a horrible buzzing noise that took over most of the audio signal. I could sort of hear words in the background, but that was it.

Rode knows this problem exists with at least one product. The set one step below the one I got. I don’t know how much they know about this issue and the Rode Wireless Pro.

Let’s cut to the chase. There was a short cable that connected the receiver to the camera’s audio jack. Rode claims it’s a shielded cable. Whatever. It passed all sorts of noise and very little audio. It was the problem. When I contacted Rode, they gave me bad advice, like suggesting I crank the gain way up. Yes, so then I’d hear the audio AND the buzz. If I had listened to them, my set would now be in the return pile at an Amazon facility.

I had a similar cable I bought in an electronics shop in Lucerne. I think it was Lucerne. Could have been Singapore, but I don’t think so. I put this cable where the Rode cable had been, and all the noise disappeared.

Either:

1. Rode’s cables are pathetic, or
2. I got a defective one.

Based on Rode’s reputation, I would guess my cable is defective. I certainly hope they’re not sending useless cables out on purpose.

I got a Rode rep to send me a new one so I could find out. In any case, the camera works now. The new cable is longer and more likely to get in the way. I am hoping the replacement cable from Rode will function.

They asked me for my phone number before shipping the replacement. I told them they didn’t need my number, but they insisted. I didn’t want junk calls, so I gave them the number for a local Burger King.

Our relationship needs work.

Other than this, the product seems great. The batteries drained faster than the ad copy suggested, but every company lies about battery life. The audio sounds beautiful

Should you buy a Rode system? No idea. I don’t know whether DJI’s competing products have this problem. I know you should avoid Saramonic. If they can’t supply parts, it almost certainly means they are going out of business slowly. If you have a Saramonic set, guard the dead cats with your life, because you will never get a new one.

A Rode set like mine runs about 40% more than a Saramonic set, but at least it’s from a real company that has real support, and you won’t drop your mikes in the toilet.

The Saramonic mikes are still nice for indoor work. When the subjects aren’t moving around or leaning over deep fryers or anything.

How do you replace the batteries in products like this? That’s a great question. I’m pretty sure the product is finished when the battery quits. They don’t make a point of putting this information in the ads. “DIES PERMANENTLY AFTER 200 SESSIONS! COULD HAPPEN DURING A WEDDING OR EXPENSIVE VACATION!” That wouldn’t help them move merchandise.

I just emailed the Rode rep to find out. Not going to bother with Saramonic. They already owe me a part, and I don’t think I’ll ever get it.

I see some people on the web replacing batteries for a different Rode set, so maybe there is hope.

If you bought a Rode Wireless Pro, and you can’t record anything, maybe this blog post will fix the problem. I recommend trying your set out before your return period expires.

One Day Dallas and Atlanta May be as Pleasant as Mumbai

Is it bad to be a Christian nationalist?

That depends on what the phrase means.

I have seen it defined as part of white supremacy. That claim is completely asinine and belongs in the toilet with the whining about how white people can’t eat tacos because it’s cultural appropriation. It’s beneath the dignity level of tinfoil-hat stuff.

Incidentally, the web says most Christians are not white. You have to be pretty provincial not to know that. There are Christians other than Pope Francis and Franklin Graham.

Christianity is like gender or shoe size. Unrelated to race.

I have also seen Christian nationalism defined as a belief based on the notion that America is, and always has been, a Christian nation. That belief is fundamentally true, regardless of historical nitpicking and cherry-picking to the contrary. Overwhelmingly, the drafters of the Constitution represented Christians. But this doesn’t concern me. I don’t care what we believed in the 18th century. I would like to do whatever is best in the present, regardless of what Americans did two centuries ago.

If Christian nationalism means a desire to turn America into a Christian nation with special accommodation for Christians and a certain amount of favoritism for Jews and Israel, then I’m all for it. I would love to see Yeshua honored in our Constitution. Other countries have done this, and the earth hasn’t swallowed them up.

When I was young, I was indoctrinated, of course. Leftist teachers convinced me that religious freedom was extremely important. That is true, up to a point. But the First Amendment wasn’t drafted with Satanists and witches in mind. It wasn’t drafted to make room for Islamists, any more than the part about freedom of expression was drafted for Hugh Hefner.

“Islamist” doesn’t mean “Muslim.” It means a person who wants to establish a political state under Islamic law.

When the First Amendment was written, nobody considered the possibility that demonized people would eventually insist on putting monuments to Satan in front of courthouses. If this had been foreseen, the text would be a lot different. The First Amendment was intended to prevent the government from establishing a particular type of Christianity and forcing it on people. The Old World has a long tradition of turning denominations into governments and murdering people who disagreed. The founders didn’t want a Church of England here.

I guarantee you, Thomas Jefferson would not have been in favor of forcing city councils to let kooks wearing horns invoke Satan’s blessing at meetings. It’s childish to suggest otherwise. I very much doubt the founders would have expected Muslims and Hindus to be made goverment-employed chaplains. Our military didn’t get a Muslim chaplain until 1993.

I didn’t think about these things when I was in high school. I figured we were supposed to let people build mosques and Hindu temples and leave them alone, and I suppose I just assumed it would end there. I didn’t foresee the courthouse devil statues, and I didn’t know we would have a huge problem with radical Muslims establishing sharia law and committing thousands of murders.

I didn’t know one minority religion’s barbarism would result in the government forcing us all to pose for naked pictures at airports.

My plan now is to vote against the spread and encouragement of heathen faiths every chance I get. I am allowed to do that under our laws, so it’s what I’ll do. I am also against the wholesale importation of heathens from places where hatred of America and Christianity are common.

Right now, H1-B visas are in the news. Vivek Ramaswamy, a Hindu whose religion is the worship of evil spirits, has said we need to increase the flow.

Worshiping evil spirits is bad. Is it still legal to say that? It’s very bad. They are evil, after all. Hell is real, and not all religions will save you from it. Demonic doctrine is incorrect. Hindus have been fooled. It’s very serious.

Yeshua is the God of everyone. Hindus, Muslims, wiccans, atheists, Jews…everyone. There is only one God. The others are impostors who ruin people and cut them off from God’s love. It’s okay for Christians to say this. To do otherwise would be like living in America and refusing to name the president. It’s absurd for us to hesitate. Saying Yeshua is God should be routine and commonplace, spoken without any reluctance, like saying Elon Musk runs Tesla. To Christians, it’s a simple fact.

Incidentally, Ramaswamy is a Brahmin (big surprise), so he’s in the top Hindu caste. Apologists claim the caste system doesn’t come from Hinduism, but that’s a lie, because their religious texts lay out caste rules. They say Ramaswamy can’t eat food prepared by certain castes, for example. Also, Brahmins are generally lighter-skinned than the people Hinduism sets beneath them. The darkest people are in the lowest caste. And the castes are preserved and sometimes enforced among Hindus in the US. Caste discrimination is a big problem in America’s tech industry.

If there is a white man’s religion, it’s probably Hinduism.

Ramaswamy has as much as said that Americans are too lazy to fill the need for tech professionals. He thinks this means we need to open the floodgates. To all sorts of people we clearly do not need.

I looked up HB-1 visas. If what I read is correct, you can get an HB-1 visa in the fields of education and the arts. You can even be a fashion model.

No. We do not need to import more Hindu and Muslim teachers. We are perfectly capable of finding citizens and existing residents to teach. And paying people to come in and act or sing is moronic. Entertainers spread corruption, and we already have plenty of them. Why we would need fashion models so badly we would move them ahead in the immigration line is beyond me.

Extending the program beyond areas where we have a legitimate need makes no sense at all, unless it makes sense because it’s normal for our government to do stupid, woke things. It definitely makes sense. In that sense.

Ramaswamy just happens to come from a country full of educated people who live in squalor and who would love to come here and write code or give people prostate exams. And only a small fraction of them are Christians or Jews. A suspicious person would say he may be more interested in helping Indians than Americans. I’m not sure, but I have to wonder.

We get a lot of very good African professionals who are Christians. I’m all for bringing them in. I wish we could deport American citizens who practice wicca in exchange for them. But loading our country up with heathens is a bad idea. They will continue to push Christianity aside. Christianity is correct, and heathen faiths all belong to Satan, who hates humanity. The more heavily-Christian a nation is, the more blessed it will be. Heathen faiths bring problems.

Look at India. They work like slaves. They’re smart. They have ports and farmland. They work extremely hard to get education to the poor. In spite of all this, they live in horrible circumstances in a low-trust, low-empathy culture. Which we should expect them to bring with them.

Work and education aren’t the big factors in a nation’s success. Yeshua is.

When God blesses a nation for honoring him, people from cursed nations start moving there. Eventually, they can overwhelm God’s people to the point where the curses overcome the blessings.

If I were the king of America, I would drastically limit immigration except for Christians–real ones–and Jews. I wouldn’t worry about whether we had enough chip designers, because I would know God would look after us for being faithful.

Whenever I get a chance to cast a vote that will favor Christianity or disfavor heathen religions, I will do it. If that makes me a Christian nationalist, so what? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s the only intelligent policy.

It’s too late, though. The lifeboat is already sinking. It can’t be fixed. We now live in a nation where a big, strong, masculine rapist who has a moustache, no women’s clothing, a man’s name, and no feminine mannerisms can be sent to a women’s prison at his own request. That’s how demonized we are. Demons have made most Americans insane. We’re not coming back from this.

Why Does it Taste Like a Dodge Wiring Harness?

I decided to try a Tikka T1x bolt-action .22. It can be my son’s first rifle when he is ready. I’m concerned I may have trouble getting him to pay attention to shooting instruction during the first few weeks of his life. He’ll just have to man up.

As for shooting opportunities here at the compound, targets and things like water bottles and golf balls will always abound, and he will be permitted to kill any animal he sees that isn’t wearing a collar or a saddle.

He won’t be allowed to shoot inside the house, of course, but shooting FROM inside the house will be encouraged, since I do it myself.

Exceptions will be made for home invaders, or as I call them, undocumented guests, and also for those rare times when game finds its way into the living room. It has already happened once.

I chose the T1x because it has a top-notch reputation for accuracy. The other alternative was a Bergara, but the Bergara’s barrel was a little longer than I would have liked. The CZ 457 was also tempting, but in order to get the options I wanted, I would have to accept a 12″ length of pull designed for a 12-year-old. It would have been good for my son, but since I will be the exclusive user of the rifle for, I am estimating, at least two months, he will once again have to man up and deal.

I need a scope now, so I am thinking. It’s not a simple subject.

I was thinking I might go for high magnification because I like seeing what I’m doing at 100 yards, but let’s be honest: there is no reason to shoot targets with a .22 at 100 yards. That far off, it will probably shoot 3 MOA at best, and you learn nothing at all from that kind of spread. I think I will shoot targets at 50 yards and leave it at that.

I do want to be able to see which part of a squirrel I’m aiming at, and I think 12x is about right for that, up to a realistic 50-yard-limit. I am hoping to be able to stay within a one-inch circle at that range without a serious rest. Shooting squirrels is inhumane when you can’t shoot at least that well. I want to be able to tell where my crosshairs are so I can be sure the squirrel will drop even if I’m half an inch off either way.

I’m going to take some of my optics outside and fiddle around at known distances so I can firm up a decision.

To hit things like coons and possums, I should be fine with something in the area of 5x.

Like I always say, nearly all of my grandfather’s good guns mysteriously vanished when my grandmother died, so I didn’t inherit a single one from her, even though I shot with him a lot and the other grandsons did not. My compensation is to get better guns and shoot them better. His .22 rifle was a crusty Remington 550-1, and I have considered getting one, but I was not able to resist buying rifles that were superior in every possible way. The T1x will be the best so far. Comparing it to a 550-1 is like comparing a new Lexus to a Crown Vic at a police auction.

I asked for scope recommendations at a forum for sharpshooters, and naturally they came in with things starting at around $500. I don’t think that’s necessary for this gun. I have some very good glass, and I understand the need for it in some applications, but I’m never going to shoot a thousand yards at twilight with a .22. Or anything else, now that I think about it.

Their recommendations were great, apart from the cost. They know what they’re doing. This country is full of men who can hit a man-sized target over half a mile away, and they are really common in rural areas. There are people shooting .338 Lapua, which is useful at ranges longer than a mile. There are people with night vision headgear, night vision scopes, and thermal scopes.

It makes me want to stay indoors, just writing about it.

The leftists who are most prone to putting on black pajamas and attacking innocent people in cowardly mobs are generally women or men who are a lot like women. Spindly, effeminate, spoiled, and not inclined to masculine pursuits. The country is no place for their fatherless unemployed behavior. A diet of soft urban targets doesn’t prepare them to take on men and women who decorate their homes with other creatures’ heads.

When I bought my first AR-15 here in my rural county, I picked it up at the company’s headquarters. They had a Ma Deuce set up among the displays. That’s legal. And they’re military guys, so it’s not just an ornament. Talk about feeling safe.

It wasn’t like visiting a Target in California and having to step aside while people punch clerks, break glass, and run off with boxes of Prilosec to sell on the sidewalk out front.

If I worked in a building near that place, I know where I’d run if I saw vans full of narcissistic sadists headed my way. I’d only slow down at the register to buy earplugs.

I don’t want to kill anything, but the squirrels have to go. One truck wiring harness is enough. It would be neat if we could be friends, but we tried that, and it didn’t work. At least the crows will feast.

If I hit anything.

I hope I get improved accuracy out of this gun. I’ll feel pretty stupid if it shoots no better than my semiautos.

On the subject of fathers’ gifts to sons, I had a wonderful revelation. A usual, it was something obvious which I already knew, yet which somehow had not made itself part of me. We can’t see the obvious without God’s help.

I realized I should not talk about God and his blessings, as though blessings and God were different things.

We always say we want to do this or that to get God’s blessings. Pray to get God’s blessings. Stay close to him to get his blessings. The truth is that he, personally, is the blessing. The other things are just the natural consequences of being near him.

If you are in God’s presence, you are already blessed. You are wrapped up in love. Because of his love and power, things are going in the right direction for you. Things may not be perfect, but they are headed toward perfection, and they will continue as long as you’re with God.

Knowing him and being with him are what matter.

These things don’t apply if you’re proud. First of all, a proud person can’t be in God’s presence except briefly. He stays far from proud people. Second, when you’re in God’s presence, he gives you revelation, and proud people can’t accept revelation. They can’t learn.

If Satan were in God’s presence, it would be a bad experience for Satan. A human being with air in his lungs and blood in his veins is different. We can surrender and receive help. Forgiveness is available.

God showed me that I have already won. If I stay with him, I’m not just winning. I’ve already won. I’m just watching the victory unfold, one step at a time.

God’s presence should be your top priority, and in order to get it, you have to humble yourself continually. When you get into pride, you push him away and bring demons near, making them your gods and demonized people your masters.

Prayer in unknown tongues is a manifestation of humility. When you do it, you’re admitting you’re too stupid and evil to pray well on your own. You are abandoning your own inner monologue and letting him replace it with his.

I hate being busy. I used to like it. I liked going to work and getting things done. I liked being busy with recreation. Now I feel resentful when I’m busy. It distracts me from God. I miss prayer sessions and receive worthless and harmful things in exchange.

It disturbs me when Christians brag about hard work and long hours. It is bragging. If you’re working 12 hours a day, you can’t possibly be close to God, unless you’re doing simple manual labor and occupying your mind with prayer. If you absolutely have to brag, you shouldn’t brag about being self-destructive and failing your family.

I like getting things done around the compound, but frequently, when I’m done, I realize I’ve overdone it. I should have quit earlier. God isn’t going to reward me for doing a perfect job, clearing limbs out of the yard or spraying weeds. He doesn’t care about things like that. He rewards me for being with him. I was with him a few weeks back, and while speaking by the Holy Spirit, I heard myself say, “Being with you is my purpose.”

My yard needs work, and the nursery isn’t done, but it’s better to fail at earthly jobs than my relationship with the one who loves me and solves every problem. God never rewarded anyone in the Bible for hard work. Not one person.

I have to continue trying to stay with God. The path is already prepared. The enemies are beaten. The corrections I need are in progress. I have to be careful not to try too hard to save myself.

The Best Present Fills a House

Merry Christmas, all!

On a somewhat-related note, a strange thing happened two days ago. Dave Portnoy, the Jewish founder of a website that caters to people who place illegal bets on sporting events that came to us via pagans, did something unexpected.

I don’t want a job. The thought horrifies me. But if I had to have a job, I would want Portnoy’s secondary career. He goes around the country reviewing pizza joints for his Youtube channel, One Bite Pizza Reviews. If he likes your shop’s pizza, his viewers mob it, and you make a lot of money.

On Monday, he visited Tinybrickoven, a closet-sized pizza place in Baltimore. He was in a hurry, so he couldn’t wait to have a pizza made. He asked them to reheat one.

This probably means he knew what he was up to when he showed up, but let’s ignore that.

The proprietor sold him a pizza and said he was getting ready to close. Portnoy asked what he meant, and he said the shop was closing for good. It wasn’t making money. The proprietor said the problem was that the authorities had refused to give him a liquor license.

Dave gave the pizza a 7.9, which is a very good score. Anything above 7 is worth a visit.

He asked the owner, “How much money do you need to stay open for like a year?” He had a hard time getting an answer, so he said, “Well, if there was somebody super rich right in front of your face who’s in the pizza business, and by serendipity, he’s like, ‘What do you need to stay open for a year?”, you got to give him some figure, because then he’s going to walk away.” Finally, the man said he thought $60,000 would get him a liquor license and allow him to stay open.

Then Dave gave him the money. He told him he was giving him a grant.

That was a nice thing to see. Portnoy gets a lot of criticism. He’s brash, he says harsh things about pretentious leftists, and women have accused him of treating them badly, but he started a foundation that has given tens of millions of dollars to small businesses. Whatever is going on inside of him, it’s not all bad.

What he did was a nice reminder that Christmas is a holiday we owe to Jews who helped gentiles. We celebrate a Jew who died for us and saved us from hell, and his Jewish friends told our ancestors the good news.

It’s best to do charity anonymously, but it’s still a nice story. It reminds us that Christmas is about love, not secular homosexual parades and gifts we buy on credit.

Not much is happening here. My wife’s gift has not arrived from Africa. She’s not in a position to get me anything. She has no job, apart from giving me someone to look after. We haven’t decorated.

Still, I am very happy, because God has answered my prayers.

Before my wife met me, she had a vision. She saw a big white house from a distance. Yeshua came out and walked toward her to welcome her. As she got close to the house, kids came out and hugged her, and she felt overwhelmed with love. I know she had this vision, because she texted a friend about it at the time.

Before I met her, I prayed for God to give me a house of love. Now we have it.

My family is a mess. My dad’s father drank and beat his wife, and then he died young from drinking bad moonshine. My dad’s elder sister was a sick, cold sociopath. My dad hated Christianity, and he grew up to be a drinker and wife-beater who neglected his kids and committed adultery. My mother’s dad was a much better person, but he had no interest in God, and my mother did a very poor job of showing God to my sister and me. My sister was a sociopath who hated me, in the manner of her aunt, who hated my dad.

I don’t really know my cousins on my dad’s side. My mother has one living sister I get along with, but she is tormented. The other has turned out to be very dishonest, and she is verbally abusive to me for no reason. My cousins generally don’t know God, and I haven’t been invited to a family gathering since maybe 1998.

In case you’re wondering, I’m not the problem. People like me, believe it or not. I’m easy to get along with. I’m nice to people. I make them laugh. I try to be helpful. I make friends very easily. I keep my circle small, but that’s a choice. I had all sorts of friends in college and law school. And in church.

I was popular in high school, although not quarterback-popular. I was voted funniest in class. At least two cheerleaders were interested in me. One made overtures after college. So was another one of my class’s top-tier girls. She actually wrote me a two-page letter after she got married.

I didn’t have to worry about where I sat at lunch.

I’m not the person you don’t invite to Thanksgiving or Christmas because he will get drunk and surly and make everyone wish he would leave, or because he’ll start a fight over some slight that happened in 1982. My sister always took the role of holiday-destroyer.

I made no friends when I was in grad school, but I was studying physics, surrounded by physics students, so that was completely normal. You would have to know physics people to understand.

The family gets together without me. It may be because I’m not supposed to see heirlooms they didn’t come by the way they should have.

I have one cousin who has a serious mental illness, and he practices yoga, which invites demons to destroy him. He has been rejected all his life, and I don’t think he has any hope that this will change. I think he feels unloved. I wish he hadn’t been ignored so much. His brother is not right, either, and he is extremely angry at the world. We used to be very close, but that’s over. Another cousin lives in Texas and has almost nothing to do with the rest of us, which I can understand.

Generally, they are unhappy people. Resentful. Not much interested in the welfare of others or the kingdom of God.

I used to love being with them. I loved all three of my aunts. I loved my cousins. I looked forward to Christmas and summer vacations. Now it’s almost like they’re dead.

I know they don’t care a lot about each other. They’re together because of habit. None of them has ever told me how wonderful any of the others were, except for moms bragging about their kids. One of the moms makes things like that up, so it’s for her, not them.

I have seen almost no affection being displayed.

This house is different. It’s full of love. My wife and I love being together. We go everywhere together. We go to each other’s doctor appointments. We pray together twice a day. We are very affectionate. We compliment each other.

I am not ambitious, so I don’t neglect her for my career. I have no interest in drunkenness, other women, TV sports, or selfish pursuits that ruin weekends and prevent me from being a real husband and father.

My wife has no interest in the things that ruin wives. She is not interested in status symbols or social-climbing. She likes working to create a warm, comfortable home. She is excited about having a baby. She sings to her belly all day.

We don’t belong to a dead Catholic or Baptist church where they tell you Christianity is a game where you try to rack up points while God does absolutely nothing for you. We don’t belong to a prosperity gospel church where the pastors spend their days thinking up ways to con people out of their savings and houses. We don’t hang out with church volunteers who snipe at us and revel in abusing their meager authority.

We pray for God to transform us and inhabit us. We ask him to separate us from useless people and spirits. We ask for humility, love, and revelation. We don’t get on our knees, ask God to give us more money than our neighbors, and get up and go about the business of the flesh. God helps us to pray for the important things.

I speak blessings over my wife and child. I speak blessings over my parrot, Marvin. I use the name of Yeshua. We want our family to be different from our parent’s families and our cousins’ families, and it is.

The yard is a mess. We need to fix the landscaping. The house needs a lot of painting. We are less than halfway done with the furnishings. Doesn’t matter at all. It’s nothing. My wife doesn’t lie in bed and pray for God to change me and make me a Christian husband who treats her well. I don’t go off by myself and ask God to make my wife love me and stop using me. We’re not looking around to see if someone better can rescue us. The important things are in place, regardless of whether the hedges need trimming.

God is extremely, extremely good to us. I’m sorry so many people from our past are doing so badly. I wish everyone lived in a house of love. I can’t do anything about it, though. They don’t listen. God is ready when they are, but they prefer shallow lives devoted to bringing themselves the things they think will make them happy.

We don’t have a Christmas tree or matching Christmas pajamas. We don’t put up Facebook photos that are carefully engineered to create a false impression of an idyllic existence exemplifying the American dream and to hide things like domestic abuse, perverted children, debt, adultery, alcoholism, and despair.

Many Americans post photos like that. I don’t understand it. No one is going to try to rescue you from despair if they don’t know you have a problem.

Our house is decorated by love and God’s presence. We don’t need to publish a newsletter about how little Tommy is the tallest boy in the first grade and little Becky is the captain of the pep squad.

Happiness and peace are priceless. The appearance of happiness is worthless without more.

Things are working because I gave up. I was inept at running my own life. I had no idea what I was doing. I corrupted myself and turned myself into a disgrace. When I gave up, everything turned around, and over time, I was brought to this place. I have nothing to be proud of, and I am afraid of pride. God did it all. I don’t want him to stop.

You can have a life of peace and love if you want it, but you have to give up and admit defeat. You have to let God run things. You need to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, pray in tongues, and receive revelation. You have to embrace humility and benefit from its power. Otherwise, you’ll just be putting flashy bandages on infected wounds until you die.

I never lived in a house of love until my wife moved here, when I was already nearly elderly. I loved people, but I was alone with two birds. They were the only creatures I could share love with every day. Living in a house of love is still very new and strange to me.

Thank you, God, for all you’ve done. Please help us not to ruin it.

A Varmint Will Never Quit. Ever.

I’m going through a wave of firearm enthusiasm. It hasn’t passed yet.

A few years back, I consulted the most hard core gun nerds I knew, asking if it was possible to shoot well with a .22 rifle. To me, that means 20 consecutive sub-MOA shots at 100 yards.

A lot of people will shoot a hundred bad groups in a day and then go to the web and post a photo of the only three-shot group that came in sub-MOA and say, “Wow, this gun is a tack-driver!” I think most of them don’t realize they’re lying, because before they decided to lie to the Internet, they lied to themselves, successfully.

A monkey can produce a one-hole three-shot group with a horrible gun. You just have to give him enough time and ammunition. When you go up to 20 consecutive shots, the monkeys slink off and find other things to talk about.

Very knowledgeable people convinced me it was not possible, because rimfire ammunition is so poorly made. It’s inconsistent. I decided to quit and accept what I had.

Now I’m thinking about it again.

There is a niche-famous Internet thread about .22 accuracy. People post their achievements, and they have to prove them. To make it, you have to produce 30 consecutive shots at 50 or 100 yards. A surprising number of people have broken the MOA barrier at both ranges.

For reasons unknown to me, a gun that shoots sub-MOA at 50 yards may not do as well at 100. It’s not because they’re trying to hit the same circle at a longer distance; they’re not. At 50 yards, 1 MOA is about 0.525″, and at 100, it’s about 1.05″. The definining measurement is an angle, not a diameter.

Anyway, the list people shoot at two distances. And they do great.

This puts me back in the hole I dug out of. Maybe rimfire ammo is inconsistent, but if other people can shoot into half an inch at 50 yards, consistently, I should be able to come up with a rifle that will do humane squirrel head shots at 100 feet and humane body shots at 50 yards. I can no longer throw up my hands and say the quest is unrealistic or a waste of time.

Right now, with semiautos, I can shoot two MOA all day at 25 yards, which is a distance some squirrels will allow you to close. I have seen guys on Youtube showing groups worse than mine, with bolt-action rifles, and talking as though they were doing great. I find that hard to understand. I think anyone who holds himself out to be a great shot should be able to shoot into a quarter-inch. I’m merely pretty good, so they should be doing better than me, not worse.

My Savage A22 shoots about the same with Mini-mags as it does with CCI Standard Velocity, which is supposedly more accurate. Go figure. I have no reason to give up velocity and hollow bullets if the accuracy is the same. Standard Velocity only comes in round nose.

I have a silencer now, so things are getting complex. The silencer is 6″ long, so it’s desirable to have a short barrel. Obviously, the barrel has to be threaded. When you look for short, accurate guns that have threaded barrels and don’t cost a fortune, the field narrows fast.

I looked at the list to see what other people used. There are a lot of Anschutz rifles. Forget that. I’m not blowing over a grand on a rimfire. I don’t care if it wakes up before me every day and makes French toast. There are other expensive rifles on the list, and they don’t interest me either.

There are a few Ruger 10/22’s on the list. Surprising, since they are generally considered less accurate than the Marlin Model 60. I’ve only seen one Model 60 on the list.

CZ guns appear frequently, although some have very expensive Lilja barrels. If you’re going to spend that much, why not start out with an Anschutz?

I’ve studied up, and there are a few rifles worth considering.

1. Tikka T1x MTR. Not too pricey. Appears frequently on the list. Comes with a threaded 16″ barrel. If you decide to upgrade later, the barrel comes out when you loosen a few screws.

2. Savage Mark II FV-SR. Downright cheap. An MTR runs $650. I don’t think Tikka allows discounts. I can get a Mark II for $269. Being a Savage, it may be a little rough. Savage puts all the money into accuracy.

3. CZ 457 Scout. This is a fine gun with a short threaded barrel, but it comes with a tiny stock for children, so you have to spend over $200 on a real stock or slap some kind of clumsy attachment on the butt. It also comes with a 1-round magazine, so you have to upgrade that. The other CZ 457’s don’t fit my specs.

4. Bergara BMR. This is a Spanish gun with a great reputation. Not too expensive, and the barrel is threaded, but the shortest one you can get is 18″ long. Not a deal-killer. Not that far from 16″, which is the length I want.

If you own a Bergara, and you eventually decide you want to spend more, you can add a target trigger made for a Remington 700.

At the moment, my plan is to cut up my Savage A22 and see what happens. It has a 22″ barrel, which is too long, and the barrel is not threaded.

When I looked into shortening and threading a barrel, it turned out to be a complex job, of course.

Any idiot can shorten a barrel. You clamp it in a vise, cut it with a hacksaw, and use an inexpensive set of hand tools to repair the muzzle.

To thread a barrel, you have to find the center of the bore. If your threads are not concentric with the bore, your silencer will also be out of alignment, and when you shoot, you will shoot the silencer.

You would think gun makers would make their bores and barrels concentric, but most don’t. It’s hard to make a long, completely straight hole down the middle of a round rod, concentric with the rod’s surface. Manufacturers try to get close, and that’s about it.

When you thread a barrel, you have to stick something inside the bore in order to find out where the center is. There is a complicated procedure involving a thing called a range rod. I won’t go into that, because it appears to be outdated.

These days, people put barrels in their lathes and use test indicators with long probes to indicate the bores. If you don’t understand that sentence, it just means you’re not a machinist or gunsmith. A test indicator will tell you when something moves a ten-thousandth or two ten-thousandths of an inch, depending on its level of precision. You stick your probe in your bore and rotate the barrel, and you move things around until the indicator dial’s hand stops moving.

Some people use indicators that can go 2.75″ into barrels. That seems silly to me, although I may be wrong. A bullet’s path is entirely determined by the last bit of the barrel. Bores usually are not straight, but bullets aren’t influenced by whatever crooked paths they may traverse on the way to muzzles. Stretches of barrel farther down the line move them wherever they want. A bullet has no memory of what it was doing a few inches earlier.

If this is true, then indicating the last inch should be more than adequate. Whatever direction the last inch is pointing in will be the direction in which the bullet will fly.

This is my theory.

I plan to take the barrel out of the gun and cut it down to 16.5″. Then I’ll hold it in a 4-jaw chuck with about 2″ hanging out. I may have to find a way to stabilize the rear of the barrel, which will be unsupported in the lathe’s hollow spindle, but if I keep the speed low, I don’t think I’ll need to. It shouldn’t whip around.

I’ll put a nice face on the new muzzle. I’ll make an 11° crown. I’ll turn down the last half-inch for threading. I’ll put a small chamfer at the end to make it easier to get the barrel into the silencer. I’ll put a radiused recess in where the shoulder meets the turned-down part, so the threads will end before reaching the shoulder. Then I’ll thread the barrel and polish everything. Finally, I’ll blue the exposed metal.

I can also drill new holes near the muzzle so I can put the front sight back on the barrel.

This should work, and if it doesn’t, a new A22 barrel can be had cheaply.

When it’s over, I should have a handy, short gun that shoots a little better than it did originally. The velocity should be nearly the same. I won’t have to use hearing protection.

Unless I chicken out and get a new gun. Since starting to write this, I have learned new things, and I am wavering.

As bolt guns go, the Tikka is just about perfect. Fantastic trigger and barrel. Light. Super accurate. If I went this route, I wouldn’t have to do any work, and I’d have my first bolt-action .22.

A Savage Mark II would work, but gun nerds say they have ejection issues.

If I want to stick with semiauto, I can buy a shorter Savage barrel with a threaded muzzle and stick it in my A22.

Finally, I could buy a Savage A22 with a short barrel. They are not expensive at all. They’re so cheap, I could buy one and sell my old one and not lose more than maybe $150.

Of course, I wouldn’t sell the old one, because guns increase in value. I’d hang onto it as long as I had room for it. No reason to hurry.

I don’t know why I’m even thinking about this, with the squirrels avoiding every area where I can get a safe shot and forming conga lines and cheerleader-style pyramids between me and my neighbor’s house.

Whatever I end up doing, it looks like real squirrel-grade accuracy is possible, even with a semiauto.

I Need a Rifle That Fires Hungry Cats

I do not understand how the universe works.

I took a couple of my .22’s and sighted them in for squirrel work. I even put a better trigger in one of them. I fixed them up so they’re accurate enough for squirrels that have the audacity to show up in my yard.

Since then, I have not had one good shooting solution on a squirrel.

I like that term. “Shooting solution.” Like I’m stalking Jap carriers in the Bungo Straits.

The squirrels have vanished. Except for the ones that prance around and taunt me from locations where I would rather not shoot. I don’t want to shoot toward my neighbor’s house. Naturally, they get between my house and his and form Soul Train lines.

Why is the world like this? Why am I not rewarded for my efforts?

I got myself a silencer, and I am enjoying using it with my Ruger 10/22. It’s still very loud, but I am assured it’s not loud enough to do any damage to my ears.

I wish I had a liberal silencer. The kind people like Joy Behar and Rosie O’Donnell think exist. The ones that make a sound like “FFTT. FFTT,” when you shoot. So quiet they don’t even wake up the cat.

For that matter, I wish I had liberal guns. The ones liberal gun-haters use in movies. You plug a 300-pound man in the gut, and the impact lifts him off his feet and carries him through a convenient window.

These guns also keep shooting when the known capacities of their magazines have been exceeded, and they let you do things like shooting a twig off a tree from a thousand yards, offhand.

Where are these guns? They could save me a lot on ammunition. I could shoot 31 real rounds and then keep firing from an empty magazine.

I like my silencer, but it only screws onto one gun. The others aren’t threaded. Now I have to decide whether to thread them (some of them) myself or take them to a gunsmith.

I am supposedly a machinist. I have a 16×40 lathe. It’s long enough to hold just about any rifle barrel between centers. You would think I could thread a barrel, but it looks like it’s a little complicated.

You chuck your barrel up, you turn on the power, you put a shoulder on it, you thread it, and you’re done, right? Well, not necessarily, although I think some bubbas do it that way.

Your silencer’s bullet path has to be concentric with the barrel’s bore, because if it’s not, the bullets can hit the silencer on the way out. You have to be within a few thousandths of concentricity.

This means you can’t just center the barrel on the lathe. You have to center the bore, and when that’s done, the barrel itself may be running eccentrically. Bores aren’t always in the centers of barrels, believe it or not. They wander around in there.

No problem, right? You just jam a live center in the barrel’s muzzle and hold the breech end with a 4-jaw chuck. Well, it looks like it doesn’t work that way. I’m not sure why not, but evidently this may not give you concentricity. You need a thing called a range rod that goes into the muzzle. I haven’t been able to figure out what a range rod is yet, but they cost a hundred bucks or more. That part, I figured out.

I am considering chopping up my Savage A22. This is a really neat .22 semiauto. It has a Savage Accu-trigger, which is about as good as you can do without going to an expensive aftermarket part. It’s easy to disassemble and clean. It has a Savage barrel, and that’s one thing Savage does really well. It’s a great gun. But the barrel is not threaded.

I would like to thread it for the squirrels. I owe it to them.

I also want to cut it shorter. My silencer is something like 6″ long, and it will make the gun unwieldy. It’s already pretty unwieldy. The factory barrel is 22″ long, which seems nutty to me.

I read up, and I learned that there is no point in making a .22 barrel longer than about 16.5″. This is where you get peak velocity. As you add inches, the speed drops. So why are so many guns so long? I have read that it’s all about sight radius.

When you use iron or open sights, a longer distance between the rear sight and the front sight makes the gun easier to aim accurately. Supposedly.

Is this actually true? I have my doubts. Why would it be?

A longer radius means a heavier barrel, and that means the barrel will shake more when you shoulder the gun.

It can’t be because the same angular error at the point of discharge results in a smaller linear error downrange. That’s obviously wrong.

Gun precision is measured in degrees or milrads. Units of angular displacement. If your gun keeps every shot within 1.05″ at 100 yards, that’s one minute of angle, or 1/60 of a degree. If you move your gun up 10° from a given point of aim, the change in the point of aim, measured in linear units downrange, will be the same regardless of how short your barrel is.

My understanding is that the idea is that the same LINEAR error at the shooter’s end will produce a smaller error downrange with a long sight radius, and that is true, but that means you’re making a bigger angular error as you aim. Why would a short barrel cause that?

When I use a scope at 100 or 1000 yards, I have a sight radius of a few inches. It’s inside the scope. I can still shot 1/2-MOA at 100 yards. The nature of the sight makes it easy to see how far off-target I am, so I can withhold fire until I get it right. Why can’t I do that with open sights? Seems to be it’s just a matter of tightening them up. Instead of a front sight as wide as a paper match, use one half as wide.

Am I wrong? I can’t see the mistake.

It’s not easy to shoot a snubnose revolver accurately, but is that because they’re not built to be precise? No. It’s because they have huge, blocky sights which take extra skill to work with. When your sights cover up half of what you’re shooting at, you need to get used to them and figure out where your bullets are going to land.

I just saw a video of a guy shooting a snubnose at 50 yards, and he shot into an area the size of a canteloupe. That would be fantastic shooting with any pistol. I’m a great pistol shot, but this guy is on another planet.

A long barrel doesn’t do more to stabilize a bullet than a short one. It may seem like it would, but it doesn’t. The only thing a bullet remembers when it leaves a gun is the last millimeter of the barrel. Because a bullet is in contact with the barrel’s lands all the way down, it’s not like the lands a foot back from the muzzle have any influence on the bullet’s flight. If the front of the muzzle is in good shape, and the barrel isn’t worn out, the bullet will fly true. If it has a tiny imperfection, the rounds will go all over, even if the other 99.95% of the barrel is perfect.

Barrel rigidity is important to accuracy. Gun barrels hum as bullets move out. They experience waves along their lengths. The shorter or thicker a barrel is, the smaller the amplitude of the waves will be. A shorter barrel should actually be more accurate than a long one as long as the velocity is the same and the bullet twist rate is just as good.

I think putting a 22″ barrel on a .22 rifle is a mistake. I’ll bet they do it mostly for marketing reasons. A long barrel looks better, and people think they’re more accurate. And people expect higher velocities from them.

A .22 charge is pretty weak, so by the time a bullet moves 16″ down the barrel, it has exhausted whatever energy the powder provided. It’s not like a bunch of unused gas will follow it out of the muzzle instead of providing extra speed.

I’m thinking I’ll cut my barrel down to 16.25″, have it threaded, and have the front sight reattached. The gun will be lighter and easier to aim with a scope, and it won’t be 4 feet long with a silencer.

I don’t plan to use the front sight, but I might decide to try it some day, or maybe I’ll find an aftermarket peep sight set I like. Might as well keep my options open.

The gap in the rear sight might have to be widened by a third or so. I don’t know. Or I could grind the front sight down by a third.

I don’t know if an open front sight would be tall enough to be seen over a silencer.

In any case, it would be a pretty neat rifle with these changes. If it didn’t work out, I could probably get a new barrel for a hundred bucks.

Doesn’t do me much good if the squirrels keep reading my mind, however.

100% Failure Rate Does not Inspire

I don’t plan to become a family blogger, because my wife and whatever kids I will have never made the decision to be on the web, and I don’t believe I should subject them to much exposure. Nonetheless, I supposed it’s inevitable that I will mention them from time to time

Today I’m learning about gestational diabetes.

Pregnancy is a horror. I don’t care who gets mad when I say it. It’s true. God cursed women in Genesis 3, and he laid it on pretty good. If I had to be the one to bear the children, we would have to adopt, because there is no way I would consent to go through it.

Childbirth is a horror. It’s disgusting. If you’re a man, and you don’t know much about the subject, go read. Watch videos and look at photos if you have the stomach for it. Men love to say it’s beautiful and natural and all that, just like they love telling gullible girls they’re all about saving the whales or the Palestinians or going vegan when all they really care about is virtue-signaling their way into the sack. Men who lie to make women happy make truthful men look like the bad guys, but of course, that’s their plan. “I’m not like the others. And I’ve had a vasectomy, honest.”

About half of women take a dump during childbirth. Is that beautiful? I could go on.

When you get pregnant, you can look forward to vomiting, having food you love taste bad, all sorts of joint pains, muscle cramps that wake you up in tremendous pain, fatigue, headaches, uncontrollable mood swings, irrational thoughts, constipation, gas, hemorrhoids, and diabetes. You may not get all of these things, but you’ll get some.

The list is actually longer than that.

At the end, you have to push a huge object out through your genitalia, and rips and tears are common. Then you may go crazy from post-partum depression.

Nobody ever says the thing men’s bodies do to conceive a child is beautiful. Why? Because men don’t have to be flattered in order to get them into bed. It’s not beautiful. It’s gross. It makes a mess.

Like most women, my wife picked up a lot of weight after marriage. This set her up for gestational diabetes, and when she became pregnant, her own body betrayed her by changing its hormones to cripple her response to insulin. She failed a glucose test, so now we have a glucose monitor and a bunch of wokeness-corrupted dietary suggestions.

I say “wokeness-corrupted” because the advice always seems to begin with a push toward wokey food. Whole grains and fruit. Grain and fruit made her diabetic in the first place, but the medical establishment has a sick bias against meat and fat, which, had she eaten them exclusively, would have kept her thin and healthy.

A woman with diabetes does not need medical enablers telling her it’s okay to stuff herself with whole grains. Food cravings are her problem, which means she has the same problem an addict has. Her mind makes her look for justification to continue with destructive behavior. “I can’t eat a pound of African corn meal mush every day, but I can load up on brown rice and any bread that isn’t white.” No, she can’t. And she should not be encouraged to.

When you eat a big pile of brown rice, you’re going to raise your blood sugar more slowly than you would with white rice, which is almost a poison, but you will still raise it more than you would with a healthy meal with a moderate level of carbs.

My wife’s problem is partly due to whole grain. She eats nshima, which is boiled corn meal. It’s as whole as grains get.

As for fruit, it’s just a sugar solution with a little fiber added. It’s not a healthy food unless you eat it sparingly. When you eat a lot of fruit at one sitting, you get a headache. Why? Because you just pummeled your system with sugar. And it’s not “healthy sugar,” either. It’s fructose and glucose. Glucose is worse for you than table sugar.

They should be telling her to focus on meat, fat, and non-starchy vegetables with some carbs thrown in for balance.

My wife is expected to cut herself 4 times a day and check her glucose levels.

I started reading about these things because I know she will want help with monitoring. Now I feel so bad for diabetics, I can hardly stand to think about it. They’re all over the web talking about their problems. “Can I eat this?” “Can I eat that?” Discussing their level of this or that.

How do they stand it? They get things like terrible foot pain, headaches, blindness, amputations, impotence…

I’m not sure I realize how blessed I am.

Yesterday, I saw a video in which two web comedians made fun of Arnold Schwarzenegger. They were commenting on a video of an old white-haired man shuffling up a street and struggling to climb two or three stairs to get into an RV. He was breathing through his mouth. The man was Arnold.

The video came from a movie set, so I don’t know if the hair is his, but the rest is real. He looks bad. His feet barely leave the ground, which is a sign of dementia. His posture is terrible. His spine seems crooked.

Schwarzenegger is 77, and Donald Trump is 78. Donald Trump swings his arms and legs when he walks. He hits a golf ball a mile. He doesn’t breathe through his mouth when he walks on level ground. He dances at his appearances. I think Schwarzenegger would fall over.

My health is not perfect, and I am considerably younger than Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I am doing extremely well compared to many people my age. I can run up a flight of stairs. I work outside, carrying big branches, and I never feel sore the next day. I walk fast. My young wife asks me to slow down.

I make beer, so I have to lift a 10-gallon pot nearly full of grain and water. No problem. I have to lift 55-pound kegs about 40″ to get them into my freezers. Easy.

Sometimes I get an urge to go out and work hard with my chainsaws, not just to get things cleaned up, but to feel myself moving, like a horse that runs and jumps for no reason.

I park a long way from stores so I can burn off energy walking and so I can leave the other spaces for the “old people,” many of whom are younger than I am. When we went to Switzerland recently, the day after we arrived, I left the hotel alone on very little sleep and walked all over town. I went to a bar by the river and had a few beers and shot video. I loved it. My wife was at the hotel, flat on her back.

Why has God been so good to me, of all people? It’s a little scary. I don’t want to do anything to ruin it. And should I tell other people about it, or will I make them feel bad needlessly?

I have a friend who is two years younger than I am, and he has an artificial hip, artificial lenses, an amputated big toe, and diabetes. I’m afraid he’ll die soon. I would miss him.

This diabetes thing is giving me a new appreciation for other people’s physical problems. Before this happened, I was thinking about these things and praying about them a lot, but reading about diabetes really brought it home to me.

I hate this place. This planet is just hell light. There is so much suffering. Age, deformities, diseases, and injuries are extremely ugly and humiliating, and we can’t get away from them. Even if I’m doing well, I have to see others I can’t do anything to help, all day.

I’m not even discussing mental deficiencies and disorders. That’s a big subject all by itself.

Schwarzenegger is a wretched person in my opinion. If he has ever done anything for anyone else, I am not aware of it. He pumped himself up with drugs and climbed over other people in order to become famous. He was a bully, and he had sex with all sorts of women, including at least one session involving a whole group of male bodybuilders in the same room. He smoked weed. He entered into an extremely suspicious marriage with a person who just happened to be a Kennedy, and then he spat on marriage by knocking up a homely servant in his wife’s house. He served as Bush I’s Chairman of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports when he didn’t actually know anything about fitness or sports and he was prancing around with drug muscles.

Bodybuilders aren’t actually fit. They use routines that build muscles that are very large but not all that strong. Skinny powerlifters put them to shame. A lot of bodybuilders have a hard time walking up stairs because they have no cardiovascular fitness and no energy reserves. Their endocrine systems are constantly in crisis. They get cancer. Their guts and hearts grow and fill their chest cavities because they use growth hormone. They grow breasts and have to have them cut out. That happened to Dwayne Johnson, another person I don’t admire.

Schwarzenegger was supposed to inspire young people, and he did. He inspired them to take illegal drugs and ruin their bodies. There are a lot more steroid users out there now than there would have been without Arnold’s mass mentorship.

Now Johnson is using drugs while appearing in movies aimed at kids. He’s 52, and he has much bigger muscles than he did when he played football at the University of Miami. They had a fantastic strength coach, and they probably gave the players drugs, but old Johnson makes young Johnson look like Don Knotts.

I know a former UM player a few years younger than Johnson, and he was a monster when he played. He beat up a top-10 boxer outside a club, and he had muscles on top of muscles. I saw him a few years later, and he didn’t even look athletic. Skinny arms and legs. Don’t tell me he wasn’t on drugs.

Schwarzenegger weakened the GOP after it helped him get a governorship. He took a naturalization oath in which he swore to protect the Constitution, and then he tried to curtail our civil rights with gun control. He even said, “Screw your freedom,” because he was so terrified of coronavirus.

I am perplexed by people who admire him. Yesterday, I told my wife he had sold his soul to the devil, and I wasn’t sure the devil got a good deal.

Now the earthly life he sold his soul to enjoy is wrapping up. Everything is being taken away except for the money. No worthwhile person respects him. They see through him. His movies were fun, but they were shallow and cartoonish. He never made a Casablanca or Lawrence of Arabia. Even Jean Claude Van Damme has made more mature fare. Van Damme is able to examine himself with some honesty.

Last night my wife and I prayed for Schwarzenegger, but there isn’t much hope for people who get everything they want while remaining children.

I wish I could do something for people whose bodies are messed up. It will be nice to live in a place where such help is never needed.

The Christmas Beverage Situation is Well in Hand

Google’s search now features AI, which I define as “artificial idiot.” I Googled “Christmas Ale,” and Mr. AI decided to give me his unwanted opinion.

He said it was a dark ale, often flavored with spices, hopped with things like Centennial and Amarillo. The usual Northwestern culprits.

There is a body called the BJCP that defines beer styles. I don’t think they have recognized Christmas Ale as one of them. But I could be wrong.

Well, guess what. I checked. They have a category called “Christmas/Winter Specialty Beer.” “A stronger, spiced beer that often has a rich body and warming finish suggesting a good accompaniment for the cold winter season.”

I don’t put spices in my beers. You can get a dizzying array of flavors from different yeasts, hops, and grains. I think people who jump straight to spices are trying to compensate for an inability to work with the basics.

My own (first) Christmas ale, extremely loosely based on heavy ales made by fat drunken monks in Belgium, is now ready to drink. I brewed on November 15, and today is December 19. It’s a very young beer, especially for a strong ale, but it’s ready to go.

I could have started drinking this earlier. It fermented in something like three days, and it tasted fine from the start.

I put it in my garage keezer and chilled it to 35°. I pumped it up to 3.3 volumes of CO2, which is very fizzy. When I say 3.3 volumes, I mean that if you forced all the CO2 out of one unit of beer, you would get 3.3 units of gas. Liters or whatever. I have no idea what temperature this applies to.

Tonight I made the huge mistake of using a normal-sized glass to hold my first finished serving. This beer has around 12.75% alcohol by volume, which is a little stronger than average. For wine.

It’s truly wonderful. A little dark fruit flavor, like a fruitcake. Some coconut, banana, and pineapple from the yeast and hops I chose. Sweet, but the sweetness is balanced by the CO2 and hop bitterness. Nice and bubbly. The head is beautiful and takes a while to go away.

The alcohol content may seem high, but in the winter, people like a little alcohol. It adds some heat to the beer. You feel it after you drink it.

I thought this beer would be way too sweet, but it isn’t. It has settled into a nice groove now that it’s cold and full of gas.

Going forward, it will be important for me to remember to use small glasses when I serve this beer. At the moment, I can’t feel my hands all that well.

For me, the purpose of brewing is not to get drunk. It’s to make very pleasant beverages that suit my taste better than what I can buy in stores. I think next time, I’ll use a 9-ounce nonic glass.

My second Christmas ale, which I brewed because I had no confidence in this one, is taking a while to ferment. I should be able to drink it in about 4 days if all goes well.

After this, it’s time to go back to replenishing my everyday beers. I can’t drink this heavy stuff all the time. I’ll end up on a transplant list.

It Never Takes 5 Minutes

I have some information for anyone who is having a hard time installing a new trigger group in a Ruger 10/22 rifle or pistol. This is supposed to be a 5-minute job, and of course, with all my tools, I spent about two hours on it. It’s just like the 30-minute toilet-bolt-cap job I did recently, which took 4 hours.

1. The pins holding the old group in don’t just “fall out,” as people claim they do, and you can’t just push them out with a punch. I had to bang the snot out of mine with a big hammer and a punch. They were really tight. I put a couple of blocks of wood on my bench and covered them with paper towels to prevent marring, and the pins came out. They are the same on both ends, so you can’t push them out the wrong way. Either way works.

2. The two smaller pins DO just fall out, and they do it while you’re working on the gun. If you let this happen, you’ll have to fiddle with it to get them back in, so don’t let it happen.

3. If your bolt lock doesn’t seem to want to let go, it’s because it’s stupidly designed. The manual contains some frustrating tripe about pulling the lock lever’s upper part to make it let go, which is counterintuitive. Forget all that. Pull the bolt back, pull the lever, let the lever go, and release the handle. This works.

4. You can buy a new bolt lock lever just about anywhere for $14 or less. Tandemkross makes a really neat one that hangs out where you can get at it. It will also release the bolt when you pull it back and let it go, so your 10/22 will be like a normal gun.

5. Tandemkross also makes a really neat magazine release lever. Other companies make them too, but I trust Tandemkross more than a random sweatshop in Shenzhen that sells via Amazon.

I decided to get a Ruger BX trigger, which is a nicer version of the standard trigger. The pull is a lot lighter. You can’t adjust it; at least not if you’re a typical user. I suppose a gun nerd could do it.

The BX trigger is a direct replacement. Sadly, it has no markings on it indicating that it’s a BX, so if you take your old trigger out and put both triggers down together, you are likely to install the wrong one when you get back to work.

You can also buy triggers costing a couple of hundred dollars. I don’t think a 10/22 rifle is capable of shooting accurately enough to make them worth it. The BX feels very good, and there is no way I’ll need anything better on a pistol with a red dot.

A hex nut fell on my workbench while I was working on the gun, and it matches the pitch of the screw that holds the handgrip on. There are no nuts in the manufacturer’s parts list or exploded views, and if you put the hex nut on the screw, there is no place in the gun where it will fit.

I kind of wonder if there was a nut on the bench, which stuck to my hand while I was fighting with the pistol and then fell off. If so, the matching pitch is an impressive coincidence. I put the gun together without it, and everything seems fine.

I have the above-mentioned Tandemkross parts on the way, so I will not have to keep suffering with the factory bolt lock and magazine release. I also bought a Shock Block, which is a thing that cushions the bolt when it flies back in the receiver. There is a steel pin in the rear of the receiver, and people say the bolt hits it.

There is a lot of argument about whether the bolt needs cushioning. Some say the bolt never hits the pin. Some say it only happens with fast ammunition. Some say it definitely happens when using a silencer. I figured it couldn’t hurt.

This is where my 10/22 efforts and knowledge stand right now. I want to punch the whole Ruger company in the face. I will try out the trigger tomorrow or the next day, and I’ll try the other stuff when it arrives.

Want to see a Reindeer Stagger?

I felt like I needed to brew a special ale for Christmas, so I started with my Happy Halfwit wheat ale and added things to make it darker and give it some raisiny flavor, like a liquid fruitcake. It fermented in about three days, and my brew software thinks it’s 12.8% alcohol, which is kind of a lot. Most wines are a little weaker.

I wanted a high ABV, because this was intended to be a one-serving beer, but this is more than I bargained for.

I tried samples during fermentation, and I was disappointed. It was too sweet, and the Sabro hops and Abbaye yeast made it taste like a pina colada. It tasted good, but it was not what I was after. I thought I would have to throw it out, but I chilled and gassed it anyway, just to find out.

Yesterday, I brewed a new version which has more bitterness, different hops, and less alcohol. I had the old one sitting at 35° and 3.3 volumes of gas. Today I tried a sample. A small one.

It’s magnificent. It’s still sweet, but the added gas and chilling add balance. CO2 adds carbonic acid to beer, and carbonic acid must have a sharp, acidic taste, because that’s the difference between seltzer and water.

Now I’m stuck with two batches of ale and only one Christmas. But it should last until next year. Really strong beers benefit from aging.

The newer beer should be fermented out by…let’s see…Thursday. That’s how fast it is. I guess the wheat kicks the yeast into high gear. Wheat beers ferment quickly.

This is not a session beer. Obviously. One pint, and you are done for the evening, unless you actually want to make a fool of yourself. I don’t think I’ll ever pour an entire pint for myself.

I need to quit making heavy beers for a while. There is no reason for a sane person to have three of them on tap, and that’s the number I currently have. I’ll get back to the old favorites.

I wonder why most strong beers are bad, given that any amateur can brew a good one. When I was in high school and even less mature than I am now, I got excited about Carlsberg Elephant, because people claimed the alcohol level was 10%. In reality, it was 7.2%, but it was still pretty strong.

It’s nasty. It gets good reviews from consumers, but I think that must be frat boys who think it’s good because it’s strong and doesn’t taste so bad they can’t gag it down. It barely tastes like beer. It has no balance. It has a musky smell. Maybe it arrives in the US skunked because of the green bottles.

How come Carlsberg brews a gross 7.2% beer, but I brew fantastic beers that are much stronger? They need to send their people to Belgium to try some strong beers that actually taste good.

I’ll think about all this while I sit on the couch and wait to feel ready to drive.

The Appliance no Home is Complete Without

I used my new deep fryer again today. I made the same things I made poorly two days ago: fried chicken and hush puppies. I also made slaw using Robert Irvine’s recipe, but of course, I changed it slightly. I’ll post my version, but his is available online.

INGREDIENTS
1 bag Publix coleslaw mix
1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1-1/2 teaspoons celery seed
1/4 cup sugar
Salt and pepper if desired

This works great, but the amount of sauce is a little excessive for one bag of slaw, so it would be best to hold some back and add more later if needed.

This time, everything came out very well. My wife liked the chicken better than I did. She asked how we were supposed to enjoy fried chicken from restaurants after tonight. She said it was the best fried chicken she had had in the US.

In case anyone wants to try the recipe, I’ll post it, but I am still improving it, so I wouldn’t be in a rush to put it to the test. I felt it was too salty, and I think it still needs more heat.

BREADING INGREDIENTS:
1 cup flour
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon sage
1/2 teaspoon chipotle
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

This will get you through a 4-pound chicken, but just barely.

WASH INGREDIENTS:
2 eggs
3-4 teaspoons Frank’s Red Hot sauce or something similar
1 tablespoon beer
salt

I managed to find a 4-1/2-pound chicken, which is a midget by local standards. I am going to keep looking for 3-pound chickens. I was not able to find small chickens already cut up, and big chicken pieces are hard to fry well. I ended up cutting the breasts up because they were huge. Ideally, every piece of chicken should be the same size so everything cooks at the same speed and likes the same temperature.

I don’t cut chickens up well. I’ll keep working on it.

I did not listen to the insanity about frying at 350°. Maybe that works if you can find small chickens. I tried to stay below 330°, and the chicken cooked very nicely. No dark areas. No undercooked meat. The breading stayed on the chicken. The crust was similar to KFC extra crispy in texture and appearance.

I think I would do even better at 300°. Maybe lower, once the crust is set. My grandmother made good chicken, and she used to fry it on relatively high heat for 5 minutes and then cook it on lower heat for 20.

I used a Thermapen to check the internal temperature of each piece. They varied tremendously, so I think this was necessary.

I have always found that chicken fried at 350° burns on the outside before it cooks inside. As I have said before, I believe recipes that recommend 350° are intended for small cooking vessels. The people who write the recipes know that when you add chicken to a small pan, the temperature drops fast, so you end up cooking between 300° and 330°. When you have 4 gallons of hot oil and a propane burner, your oil temperature is not going to drop.

I dumped the raw chicken in a bowl. I salted it pretty generously and poured in a lot of Frank’s. I stirred everything up and left the chicken in the fridge while I worked on other things.

In retrospect, I think I should use a hotter sauce than Frank’s, because fried chicken somehow loses heat during the preparation and cooking processes.

I beat the eggs with a little beer. I didn’t taste beer in the final product, but I think eggs alone are too thick.

I dipped each piece in the eggs and then rolled it in flour. I lowered each piece into the hot oil individually to avoid having them hit the bottoms of the baskets while still raw. I was afraid they would stick if I did that. It happened last time.

I did not crowd the pieces. I believe I never had more than 4 pieces in a basket. I tried to group large and small pieces as well as I could, hoping all the pieces in each basket would be done at the same time. It didn’t work, but at least I didn’t mix wings and breasts. Having pieces of similar sizes made some difference, even if it wasn’t a perfect solution.

I cut the propane off at least twice. This machine will burn chicken very easily because it has a lot of power. You have to watch it.

In the past, I have double-breaded chicken, but this time I decided not to push it. It worked. One application of wash and flour worked great.

Day before yesterday, I used a Southern Living hush puppy recipe, and it was no good. The hush puppies had too much flour in them. They were doughy, like biscuits. They didn’t have enough onion flavor. They lacked salt and sweetness. They weren’t dark enough. The batter was too loose.

Today, I used much less flour, more onions, and more salt. I added a little beer to the buttermilk just for fun. The hush puppies were nearly perfect. Next time, more sugar, less salt, and stiffer batter. I plan to add the liquids a little bit at a time until I get what I want, instead of relying on a fixed amount called for by a recipe.

I don’t know why the people at Southern Living can’t make hush puppies. Maybe they’re like other magazines. Maybe they hire a lot of gay urban writers who only pretend to know their subjects.

INGREDIENTS

3/4 cup cornmeal mix (self-rising)
1/4 cup self-rising flour
1 tsp. salt
1 large egg
1/2 cup buttermilk
1-1/4 cups finely-chopped onion
1/2 tbsp. sugar

As noted above, I added a little beer to the buttermilk. I didn’t use the entire half-cup of liquid, but the batter was still looser than I liked. I ended up adding almost three tablespoons of meal.

I didn’t have self-rising flour, so I added 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder.

If you try this recipe, reduce the salt to 3/4 tsp. and increase the sugar to 2 teaspoons or so.

I used Martha White corn meal mix.

Do not use sweet onions. You never cook a Vidalia.

Even with too much salt and not enough sugar, these were dynamite. They tasted exactly like the taste you taste in your mind when you hear the phrase “hush puppies.” They browned better than the first batch because of the sugar.

I think they would be even better if I omitted the flour completely. Martha White mix already has some wheat flour in it.

I turned the heat up for the hush puppies. Small food needs more heat than big food, and hush puppies need to be darker than chicken. The fryer requires a certain amount of technique. You can’t just dump things in it without planning or watching and expect the best results. It’s not like making the same batch of fries 10,000 times at McDonald’s.

My conclusion is that the fryer is a winner. Everyone should have one. But frying is still a lot of work. I don’t have to wash a frying pot or filter and move oil, but I have to wash the baskets. Fried chicken involves a cutting board, a knife, a big bowl to hold the pieces before frying, a bowl for flour, and a bowl for egg wash. You also need tongs and a few other things. It’s not like a deep fryer is a toaster and you just pop your chicken pieces into it.

My wife wants to make fries in it. That should be nice. She makes them Zambian-style. Very thin and wide. They’re wonderful. Surprised me.

So that’s it. I can make good fried chicken now. My chicken will get better and better in the future. I have mastered hush puppies. On to the next challenge.

Maybe I’ll add a food photo later. I have a couple. They don’t look great, but they show that the food was fried nicely.

Rome wasn’t Built in a Day

My first effort at deep frying in a propane cooker is behind me.

My wife likes wings, so we had them on hand. I also bought legs and thighs. I decided to make hush puppies as well, simply because I could.

First off, the Bayou Classic fryer works perfectly. It’s easy to use. It heats fairly quickly. It holds a temperature when you dump two pounds of chicken into it. The built-in thermometer is pretty accurate when checked against a candy thermometer.

This fryer has a weird pipe that goes through the oil, and burning propane goes through the pipe. There is a sort of chimney in the back, and the burned gases go out. They exit at around waist height and go straight up.

Believe it or not, the hot gases are not a problem. I would not want to hold my face over the chimney, but you can wave your hand over it while the flames are at peak ferocity without getting burned. The pipe must do a great job of transmitting heat to the oil.

I thought I would have to move the fryer a long way from the wall of my house, but I would say 18″ would be more than enough.

The instructions say to keep the fryer far from your house. Well, of course they do. This fryer does not have a thermostat, and if you walk away and leave it running, which could happen if you drink while you barbecue, the oil can get so hot it bursts into flame, and then your house burns down.

I am not going to keep the fryer away from the house. It’s too heavy to move when it’s full. Also, what if my guests bring their kids? Kids do a lot of dumb things around pools, and running into a hot fryer at top speed is exactly the kind of thing you would expect one to do. If the fryer is close to the house where adults can guard it, kids are less likely to spill hot oil all over themselves or put their hands on the fryer because you told them not to.

When only adults are present, there is no reason to think the fryer will flame up or fall over. You have to make sure you don’t fry if you have guests with common sense issues, but that’s something you can control.

Does it hold its temperature? Yes. Almost too well.

Fried chicken recipes commonly say to fry at 350°, but if you do that, you’re probably going to get chicken that’s too brown on the outside. Chicken should be fried at 300-330°. Recipes say to fry at 350° because the people who write recipes expect you to use inferior equipment that has neither the mass nor the power to hold a temperature when food is added. They figure you’ll drop your food in at 350° and the oil will immediately go down to the correct temperature.

When I put my chicken in the fryer, the temperature didn’t budge. I had to keep turning the heat down. I even turned it off for a while. My take: a high flame is for heating the oil, but you need a very low flame for cooking.

Is it hard to control the temperature? Yes, if, like me, you overshoot it in the first place. I expected the temperature to drop, and it didn’t. It took a very long time to get it to go down. You need to make sure you’re at the right temperature when the food goes in, because you can increase it later, but you won’t be able to reduce it fast enough to compensate for overheating your oil.

The baskets work fine, but it’s easy to hang them incorrectly when you take them out of the oil to drain, and if you do, they will swing down suddenly until the handles hit the front edge of the fryer. This is pretty scary, as if standing in front of 4 gallons of bubbling oil weren’t scary already.

So what happened with the food?

The chicken was pretty bad.

I used a recipe I wrote in 2005, and the recipe says it was better than Popeyes. I’m sure that was true when I used a pan to fry the chicken, but it was not true today.

I salted the chicken, applied a lot of Frank’s Red Hot, and let it sit for a while. Then I added orange juice to add acidity, and I let it sit some more. I breaded the chicken with a mixture of starch, flour, and some seasoninges. Then I dipped it in a seasoned egg and buttermilk wash, plus more Frank’s, and breaded it again.

The chicken’s skin turned dark brown. Not the breading, although that was dark, too. The skin itself. Darker than the breading. I think the sugar in the orange juice caramelized. It never did that when I used it for pan-frying. I’ll have to give it up.

The chicken had chipotle powder in the breading, plus the Frank’s I applied earlier. I also added pepper. I couldn’t taste any heat at all. I guess I need to revisit the recipe.

The chicken stuck to the fryer baskets. I have seen people lower full baskets into oil on the web, but it looks like it won’t work for me. I’ll have to lower each piece into the baskets, one at a time.

The chicken was too well-done on the outside, as I mentioned. I think this was partly because of the oil temperature, but also, the pieces were too big. Frying big things is a mistake. I was not able to find small chicken pieces at the store, and I didn’t want to cut up a small chicken because I’m not good at it.

The wings may have been better, but I didn’t try them.

The pieces cooked at different speeds, so in the future, I will know to put small pieces in one basket and big pieces in the other.

The hush puppies fried up perfectly. They even turned themselves. When I dropped them in, they blew up with CO2 and floated. As they cooked, the sides in the oil became dryer and lighter, so the hush puppies rotated so the heavy raw sides were down. That was neat.

Unfortunately, the recipe was no good.

I got it from Southern Living. I figured they would have a clue. The recipe said to use equal parts corn meal and flour. I thought that was a bad idea, but I gave it a try. The hush puppies were big flour balls. They were half biscuit and half cornbread. They lacked flavor. The recipe didn’t contain enough onions, either. It lacked salt, and the hush puppies weren’t sweet enough or dark enough.

I’m going with my instincts next time. I’ll go 3:1, meal to flour. I’ll use more onions. I’ll add sugar so the hush puppies are sweet and they brown better. I’ll double the salt.

The hush puppies weren’t bad. I ate a bunch. But they weren’t what they were supposed to be.

I’ll jot down my plans.

INGREDIENTS

3/4 cup cornmeal mix (self-rising)
1/4 cup self-rising flour
1 tsp. salt
1 large egg
1/2 cup buttermilk
1-1/4 cups finely-chopped onion
1/2 tbsp. sugar

That will be better. If I don’t have self-rising flour, I’ll add half a teaspoon of baking powder.

This machine will be a huge improvement to our arsenal. I look forward to firing it up again and applying the things I learned today.

Excuse me While I Kiss the Sand of Florida

In our daily prayers, my wife and I pray for divisiveness.

We pray for God to separate us from worthless people. The worthless are the people who are so determined to stay in pride and reject Yeshua, there is no hope for their salvation. They are vexatious and discouraging to be around, they do great harm, and whatever good they do in our lives is not worth the cost.

Division gets a bad rap. It’s actually a huge blessing. Associating with degenerate people is harmful.

The other day, God told me something. Good people avoid bad people, but bad people pursue good people and want to live among them. Parasites can’t get by without hosts.

This is why America has so many destructive immigrants and illegal aliens. People from what are kindly described as “low-trust cultures” come here to get away from their own kind and abuse people who have established a relatively orderly society. On the other hand, good people flee low-trust cultures to get here and experience reduced predation.

Many conservatives are upset because their deranged far-left acquaintances are cutting them off. They complain because toxic people refuse to spend the holidays with them. What are they thinking? There are few greater blessings than having people who do harm removed from your life.

Ordinarily, the type of people who love leftism make an effort to be around successful, productive, orderly people, because they know they can take advantage of them. It’s wonderful when their derangement and hatred overcome their common sense and they decide to separate themselves from us.

I haven’t heard my sister’s voice since 2015, if memory serves. Often, I pray God will keep her away from me forever. I don’t have to be told to separate myself from parasitic people. God got the message through to me years ago.

She sent me an email a few years back. Why? She wanted money. She had moved in with my sick aunt, ruined the aunt’s life, and refused to leave. By the grace of God, my sister fell in a ditch and broke her leg in several places, and while she was being treated, my aunt’s daughter took her junk to a hotel. Then I got the email. I deleted it and blocked the sender. Every day that passes with no communication from her is a big victory, and I literally thank God every day for the separation.

I didn’t shut her out because of a political disagreement. I did it to protect myself. But a leftist relative who ruins family gatherings with vicious diatribes is also a fine candidate for ostracism.

Think about this: far-left nuts generally go to hell, because most never repent and get to know Yeshua. If you invest in them while they’re alive, you’re wasting. What are you wasting? Time, money, affection, company…you name it.

You will die, and after that, you’ll never see them again. You will never share fond memories in heaven. The things you did with them prove to be worthless and not fit to be remembered. Eventually, you will be cut off from them for eternity, so you may as well let them go now.

The more you invest in such people, the more you lose.

Why am I thinking about this? Naturally, it’s because I read about a gun control case.

Hawaii is a far-left state. A horrible place. Hawaii’s government has decided to violate the Constitution over and over. In Hawaii, only a tiny percentage of carry applications are approved. This obviously conflicts with federal law.

A guy who lives in Hawaii was prosecuted for carrying a gun while hiking. He got the case dismissed based on federal precedent, but Hawaii’s Supreme Court reversed and wrote a deranged leftist opinion. The case was appealed to the US Supreme Court, which denied certiorari on procedural grounds. Basically, they decided the case was not ready for Supreme Court consideration. Eventually, it will be.

Hawaii’s Supreme Court said something really stupid. Here is what OUR Supreme Court said, quoting the lower court:

[I]t denigrated the need for public carry in particular, rejecting as un-Hawaiian “a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons.”

People carry deadly weapons everywhere. Even Honolulu and Martha’s Vineyard.

Legally, many things can be considered deadly weapons. The case law is clear. A wrench. A screwdriver. A bronze figurine. A rock. A car. A canoe paddle. In the George Zimmerman case, a sidewalk was used as a deadly weapon.

People have access to deadly weapons all the time. On top of that, many people ARE deadly weapons. If you’re a 250-pound athlete with 15% body fat and a 300-pound bench press, your hands and feet are deadly weapons.

Carrying firearms doesn’t introduce deadly weapons into an environment. It just makes the playing field more fair to the weak. If you can’t carry a weapon, and you’re small and frail, you pretty much have to accept being beaten up and otherwise abused by stronger people.

There are lots of Hawaiians who are very physically dangerous but unarmed, and unarmed Hawaiians commit a lot of violent crime. Native Hawaiians are extremely prone to criminal behavior. They are known particularly for beating women.

Wife-beating is a big problem among Pacific Islanders in general. It’s not just Hawaii. But you can’t talk about it, because if you do, you’re a racist.

To get back to the opinion, permitting people to arm themselves is not a “mandated lifestyle.” No one will be forced to carry a weapon.

“Un-Hawaiian” is divisive virtue-signaling, and it evinces contempt for the union. Residents of Hawaii are supposed to be American, not Hawaiian. There is no country called Hawaii.

Please don’t tell me how great Hawaiian culture is and how idyllic Hawaiian life was before Christians showed up. They loved human sacrifice. They thought incest was normal. Hawaiians killed Captain James Cook, and 4 of them shared his heart at a ceremonial meal. They murdered many of their babies, supposedly to avoid overpopulation.

If carrying a weapon is un-Hawaiian, then presumably, Hawaiians won’t want to do it, so no harm done, except for the continuation of the harm of allowing the weak to be preyed upon. Tough luck for women abused by native Hawaiian husbands.

I’m very tired of the dishonest anti-2A arguments. They’re all lies told to keep citizens weak and compliant, and, frankly, to turn crime victims into sacrifices on the altar of misguided gun control.

I think the worst lie is the one about militias. The Second Amendment says we have the right to own and carry firearms. It mentions militia work as a motive, but it does not say we can only possess and carry guns while serving in militias.

How stupid would it be to write a Constitutional amendment giving people the right to possess and carry arms in the military?

The Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, which is a list of changes representatives of states forced on the union before agreeing to join up. Its sole purpose is to limit the federal government’s power over states and citizens. It does not give the federal government any power.

It should be obvious that it makes no sense to grant the people the right to carry arms in military service. That’s not a right. That’s something that has historically been forced on people.

Hitler allowed German and Austrian citizens to carry arms in the military. Genghis Khan allowed it. George III allowed it. The pharaohs allowed it. Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh…every tyrant who ever lived allowed it. Their regimes depended on it. They didn’t allow their military slaves to NOT carry arms.

Governments force arms into people’s hands. What kind of idiot would write a law pretending carrying a weapon for military service is a right? It’s like saying you have the right to pay taxes.

Incidentally, 2A says militias are needed to protect the security of free states. Not the union. The states. Against the union. The framers weren’t thinking a state might need to defend itself from Canada. They were concerned that states might be overrun by union troops or forcibly absorbed into the union. Which is exactly what happened in 1865, but let’s not go there.

Leftists stupidly say 2A is only about militias, even though they hate militias, and they also claim we should only be able to carry the types of guns soldiers carried when 2A was written. They like to say this means muskets, but we fought the British with rifles, swords, pistols, and cannons, too.

If the purpose of 2A is to assist with military service, then we should be allowed to carry the military weapons of our time. Full-auto. No nation on Earth goes into battle with AR-15’s that fire one round at a time. Imagine showing up for militia duty to fight the Russians, carrying a flintlock.

I’m glad I don’t live in Hawaii or any other blue abscess. Thank God I live among good conservative people. Thank God I don’t have to go to work every day and be pushed around by sexual deviants, socialists, and environmental tyrants. I’ve never had to take a seminar and be told how evil my race is. I’ve never been pressured to honor a coworker who chose a same-sex marriage. A friend of mine works at a university, and she could not discuss the pandemic at work for fear of being fired. I don’t have to deal with such things.

My best friend has another friend who is a senior engineer at Raytheon, a company we rely on for our defense. The engineer complains of being forced to take wokeness classes, not because he has done anything wrong, but because all employees have to take them. He says the company is filled with affirmative action hires who are incompetent. Everyone else does their jobs for them. I don’t have problems like this. I am so blessed.

I never have to say, “I don’t know how I can stand this, but I have a mortgage.”

It’s good to live among conservative Christians. It’s very good to limit your exposure to demonized leftists who have no future. I don’t chase the people who have shunned me because I turned to Yeshua. We were going to be separated eventually anyway.

The New Hotness has Arrived

Finally, I can live like a civilized human being and a bona fide Southerner. I just came home from Ace with a 4-gallon Bayou Classic deep fryer.

A hardware store had a 4-gallon propane fryer? Of course it did. This is the South. They had a whole bunch of Blackstone griddles, too, as well as the full line of Big Green Eggs.

The guys at Ace were telling he how great it was as they put it in the car. One of them said his dad had the same fryer. Of course he does. This is the South.

Frying has always been the weak spot in my culinary skills. It’s very hard to do well, it makes a huge mess, and it leaves you with a lot of fat to either throw out or store with difficulty.

When you fry in a flat-bottomed vessel, as most people do, crumbs fall off the food, hit the bottom, and burn. The bottom is the hottest part of the vessel, so anything that lands there turns black. These crumbs can ruin your food by making the oil taste burnt. If your food comes out okay, and you don’t want to lose the oil, you have to pour it through a filter to get the crumbs out before you store it.

A big gas fryer has heating tubes above the bottom of the vessel. That means crumbs can fall down under the tubes where the oil is at about 120°. Too cool to burn. They sit there doing no harm until you change the oil, which should last 20 sessions. The fryer I got has a V-shaped bottom so the crumbs are concentrated for easy removal via a drain tube.

Removing oil from a fryer and storing it between uses are horrible experiences. You have to have a jug or something set aside, and you have to lift a big pot and pour it in with a shaky funnel. You’ll get oil on yourself and the jug. Expect it. You’ll have to clean everything off before you quit. And you can’t store the oil until it cools down unless you pour it into a metal container. You have to sit and wait for the oil to cool.

With a dedicated deep fryer, you seal the machine up against bugs and let the oil wait for you, right where it is.

Frying indoors makes oil droplets condense on your walls, stove hood, and whatever else is near the fryer.

When I fry stuff, it’s hard for me to get even cooking. For example, chicken tends to end up darker where it touches the bottom of the fryer, and that’s no good. Shallow frying is really just a poor imitation of deep frying, which is the proper way to do it. Deep fryers cook things evenly.

Another issue: you need a lot of fat unless you’re frying tiny things. Making fried chicken in a small pot or pan takes a long time, because if you put enough food for a family in the oil, it cools down immediately, and the breading falls off. The breading that stays on the meat soaks up oil. It’s a bad situation. A big deep fryer is better because the fat has a lot of thermal mass to resist cooling, and if you have a propane fryer, you have many times the heating power any stove provides. The fryer I bought has a 90,000-BTU burner, and that’s around 26,000 watts according to the web. No 110-volt fryer can give you more than about 1750 watts. A nice electric stove tops out at around 26,000 BTU, so a propane fryer produces about 3.4 times as much frying power.

I’m sure a better cook could do better with frying than I do, but he would still have to make tiny batches and do a lot of annoying work. And he could forget about making chicken and hush puppies at the same time.

I bought a T-Fal countertop fryer a few years back. The folks at America’s Test Kitchen said it was great. It was a fun experiment, but it didn’t work out. If the fryer were really as good as ATK and T-Fal claimed, I would still be using it, but it has sat idle for at least two years. That proves it’s not very good.

The food gets darker near the heating element. It fries miniscule portions because it lacks the power to stay hot when you add a decent amount of food. Cleaning it is a real chore, regardless of what deluded reviewers say. You have to put several big parts in the dishwasher. And it clutters the kitchen.

I believed the ad copy when it said the T-Fal would cook 2.65 pounds of food in one batch, but I found it to be untrue in real life. I would say one pound is about the limit. Maybe it depends on the type of food.

With propane and 4 gallons of oil, I should be able to feed a table full of people quickly without a lot of effort.

Peanut oil just happens to be on sale at Publix right now, so that’s good. I just read that peanut oil does not absorb flavors from food, so I suppose it’s the best choice for a fryer that will have to cook different things.

By the way, I saw an ATK video where they fried chicken, and they messed it up. They presented it as though they had done a great job, but the chicken was overly browned in places. If ATK can’t do it, it’s hard.

I tried coming up with a fried chicken recipe in ’21, and it never made me really happy. Tonight I decided to do the obvious thing. I dug through my files and found a 2005 recipe which, at the time, seemed much, much better than Popeyes. I’m going to give it another shot.

I am hoping to fry some chicken tomorrow. Maybe some hush puppies. It’s not an experiment. I know it will work, because I’m doing it with the right equipment. Every stovetop frying setup is a desperate compromise and an imitation. A deep fryer is the real thing.