But You Will Never Forget It

Over the last week, I’ve implemented a strange new way of honoring and remembering my late father. I bought a Ronco Showtime rotisserie oven and fixed a pork roast.

My dad was not a good cook. I’m not sure, but the feeling I always had in my youth was that he figured any man who cooked had to be a flamer.

I can’t recall ever seeing him cook anything before my mother died. I saw him carry boxes of Cheez-Its into the living room and eat directly from them. I saw him open packages of lunchmeat, grab handfuls, and put them in his mouth. I saw him eat raw hot dog. He didn’t cook. He didn’t even barbecue.

At some point in his old age, he developed an interest in infomercials. It seemed like he was more curious than he had been when he was young. I think he wanted to see if the crazy things they sold really worked. He ordered a few things. It is for this reason that I have personally had the opportunity to handle Mighty Putty.

I think the Showtime oven was his most surprising buy, because of his lack of interest in cooking. It startled me. Apart from the surprise, I thought he had been swindled.

As everyone knows, Ronco was named for Ron Popeil, the TV huckster. What people may not know is that Ronco had nothing to do with the original Popeil company, which belonged to his dad, Sam Popeil. In fact, it was a competing company. Sam and Ron were bitter rivals. They were estranged.

Here’s a story I’ve told before. I clerked for Jack Dominik, Sam Popeil’s intellectual property lawyer. Jack kept samples of inventions his clients had created. For example, he had Glugless Jugs. This is a big jug with an air line molded into it so the contents pour out continuously instead of in intermittent spurts. The Glugless Jug makes pouring pool chlorine much safer. For some reason, Jack actually gave me one. He was extremely eccentric.

Jack showed me his example of the Bionic Knife. This product came out in the Seventies. It was similar to a Ginsu except for a weird triangular saw handle, and it came in a case which unfolded to form a cutting board.

Why “the Bionic Knife”? Because when Sam invented it, Ron was dating Lindsay Wagner, TV’s Bionic Woman. Sam wanted to needle him.

Anyway, in the mind of the public, the Popeil name is associated with cheap, gimmicky products that don’t work. It is associated with fraud.

Is that fair? Yes. Jack Dominik told me what Sam told him about one of his ads. It showed a knife cutting through a nail and a boot. Popeil said the nail was made of lead, and the boot had been soaking in lye all night.

Sam Popeil was pretty shady, so anyone who flinches at the sound of the name Popeil can be forgiven. I thought the Showtime oven had to be a ripoff.

To make my suspicions worse, it came with a “flavor injector,” which was a giant syringe that inserted solid objects in meat. People were told to load it with things like garlic cloves and shoot them, whole, into roasts.

The sight of the newly-unboxed oven and flavor injector was jarring, but if you think that surprised me, you should have been there the first time my dad tried it. He got a recipe somewhere; probably included with the other things he bought. He shot garlic cloves into a big piece of pork. He followed the directions. When it was done, he invited me to try a piece.

You can guess how optimistic I was, but curiosity runs in families, so I tried it. It was excellent. Tender, juicy, and flavorful. The chunks of cooked garlic were a wonderful touch.

The original Showtime ovens (three sizes) really work, and the construction isn’t bad, either. They were made in Korea, not China or India or some other known source of disappointing garbage. The cases were sturdy sheet steel, nicely painted. The ovens use good-quality gearmotors to achieve the desired 6 RPM, which Ron Popeil said he personally chose after a lot of testing. When you put a Showtime on your counter, it won’t heat the material under it, so it’s safe for stone and wood.

One of the neatest, and funniest things about the Showtime is that the top of the oven is used for cooking vegetables. It gets really hot, so Ron Popeil, marketing genius, turned a burn hazard into a feature. He sold little trays for vegetables, so you can cook side dishes on top of your oven while your meat roasts. This actually works.

The metal parts that hold the food get very hot during cooking, so if you try to remove the food with your bare hands, you get blistered. Ron’s answer? He included a pair of cheap insulated gloves just thick enough to allow you to pull the food out and put it down before getting burned. Fortunately, I have a pair of silicone chef’s mitts which are much better.

Cleaning up is not bad. You clean the window, which comes out, the broiler pan that sits in the bottom of the machine to catch grease, the spits and spit holders, and maybe the heat reflector. A self-cleaning wall oven with a rotisserie would be simpler, but I’m not looking to drop $4000 any time soon.

Rotisserie cooking is better than cooking on a pan. When you cook with a rotisserie, the grease and sauce have a hard time falling off the food, so everything is basted continuously. The liquids keep pouring down the front side, keeping things moist until they bake into a delicious crust. Meat browns beautifully on all sides, and it doesn’t dry out because gravity drains the juice out of the upper parts. I haven’t Showtimed a turkey yet, but my buddy Mike does it all the time, and he says the breast meat is always perfect.

When my dad and I left Miami, I threw his Showtime out. I had no help with the move, and I was also taking care of my dad. The things I threw out and gave away were worth 4 figures, easily, but I had no choice.

My dad didn’t care, because he hadn’t used it in years. It’s not like I discarded his treasured possessions.

Sometimes it bothered me that I didn’t have a rotisserie any more. Mike rubbed it in during phone calls. What are friends for? He has two Showtimes.

I started thinking about the Showtime last week, but I didn’t think I could get one. I believed the company was kaput. Ron Popeil died in July, and he was retired at the time.

When I checked Amazon to see if any company still made a countertop rotisserie, I found that Ronco was still selling them. The company had been sold years earlier, and it had gone into bankruptcy, but it was back.

The new ovens got mixed reviews. I read two disappointing things about them: the steel (Chinese) was thin and flimsy, and the motors turned too slow. Unsatisfactory. If I was really going to do this, I was going to honor Ron by trusting his 6 RPM design. I actually looked into putting a faster gearmotor into a new machine, but I couldn’t find any acceptable motor deals.

I checked Ebay for used Showtimes, and I found a like-new oven. It looked like it had just left the Ronco warehouse. I made an offer, and I ended up paying about $70. When the oven arrived, I could see that it had never been used. It was spotless.

I decided to honor my dad by making a pork roast. I bought a bone-in shoulder roast and cut the bone out myself. I put salt and Accent on it and let it sit in the fridge for two days.

I planned to use my old recipe: apricot nectar, sage, and Marsala, reduced and applied as a glaze. Then I learned that coronavirus had somehow created a shortage of apricot nectar. Reluctantly, I used peach instead.

The proportions are 12 ounces nectar, 1.5 teaspoons sage, 1/2 cup sweet Marsala, half a teaspoon of salt, and as many cloves of crushed garlic as you like. Just boil it down to a thick syrup.

I tied the roast together, shoved it onto the spits, tied it again, covered it with syrup, and fired up the machine. One and a half hours later, I had the roast you see in the photos. I overcooked it a little. I went to 160° when I should have stopped at 145°.

Overcooked or not, it was wonderful. It was tender and juicy. The heat from the element charred the outside of the meat along with the sauce, and the charred stuff flavored the meat’s juices. You would think the black parts were ruined, but they were better than the rest of the roast.

The oven has two settings. One is closer to the element than the other. I used the far setting. Next time, I think I’ll finish the roast on the near setting to get more blackening.

I wish I could serve my dad a big slice.

Of course, I sent the wife pictures. She is looking forward to a continuous supply of roasted pork and beef.

After the novelty wears off, I’ll probably use the oven pretty rarely, but I’m glad I got it. There are times when there is no substitute, and it brings back memories of my old man. Also, Mike is moving to Florida, and he will be living with me for a while, so it will comfort him by reminding him of his natural habitat back in New Hampshire.

A cynical person would say I’m looking forward to having my own personal live-in rotisserie chef, but I’m not like that. Not me.

It would be interesting to do a small boneless turkey in the rotisserie. Might be impossible, because the legs and drumettes stick out after you stuff them.

My rotisserie mission is accomplished. On to the next challenge.

Keep Your Presidents; I Want a King

It’s very confusing, distinguishing apostles from nutbars.

A year or two back, I came across a guy who was healing people on Youtube. He wasn’t faking it. He didn’t take money for what he did, and he healed pretty unlikely people. He healed Muslims, for example.

I thought he was a good guy to keep an eye on. Then he started saying Donald Trump was going to be reinstated this year. He claimed Trump had dissolved the government, and somehow, he had concealed it from everyone. Biden, in particular, seemed to be unaware of the news.

Now he says God is going to bring Trump back as a king.

I think when you make an extremely confident prediction, and it goes nowhere, you should sit on the sidelines and try to figure out what’s wrong. You shouldn’t fire up your Gopro and make new predictions.

It’s strange that a person who is clearly deluded can also use God’s power to heal.

The bizarre thing is, he’s right about some things. He said some things I agree with. He says God doesn’t like democracy.

I used to think democracy was great. I know we have a republic, not a democracy, but let’s not be pedantic. I thought it was obvious that the people should be able to determine the course of their nation. I had that idea hammered into me from day one, and I didn’t question it, any more than I questioned the assertion that America was the greatest country in the world.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve soured on democracy. It’s a form of government not much unlike allowing small children to decide who gets to drive the school bus. Most people are too ignorant, unfair, and selfish to vote correctly.

A quotation from an unknown author reads, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largesse out of the public treasury.” That’s a little over the top, or at least it was, before America lost its collective mind, but it’s correct in principle. Way too many people vote for their own short-term, narrow interests. This has always been true, but as we descend into childishness and spite, it is becoming more true than ever.

As people who read this blog know, I believe the Antichrist will have a body, just like Jesus. The body of Jesus is supposed to be a large group of people guided by the Holy Spirit. The Antichrist’s body is a group guided by the flesh, the Internet, and, ultimately, Satan. Anyone who isn’t ruled by the Holy Spirit is ruled by Satan. The body of the Antichrist is a mob, ruled by the lowest, most immoral people in the world.

The body of the Antichrist has the appearance of a democracy, because it has a grassroots look to it. We are told it’s democratic. We are told the poor and the voiceless have come together and worked it out so their movements carry out the orders of the masses. This isn’t true, however. Satan rules demons. Demons rule people who are controlled by the flesh. When those people get together and vote on things, they’re not really trying to impose their own will. They’re doing what Satan has told them to do.

When a nation allows every adult to vote, it gives Satan power. It allows demons to shape election results.

In the Bible, we see mobs voting for evil, over and over. Before Noah, a mob of angels came down, conspired against God, and impregnated women, and the world became so corrupt, God killed the human race. In Lot’s day, a mob of homosexuals surrounded Lot’s house and tried to gang-rape two archangels, as well as Lot himself. In Exodus, a mob defied Moses, who was God’s representative, and chose to worship an idol. A mob voted for Israel to be ruled by kings instead of priests and prophets, and as a result, Israel was put under Saul, a man who lost his mind along with God’s favor. The Hebrews ended up with a divided kingdom, lost tribes, and a long succession of feeble, crooked kings who brought them defeat, captivity, the diaspora, and the Holocaust.

A mob in Nazareth tried to throw the Messiah off a cliff for announcing his arrival. A mob in Jerusalem tried to stone him to death. Another mob voted for his murder and got the Romans to do what they couldn’t do. Various mobs tormented the apostles. At least one apostle was killed to please the masses.

God lets people vote, but it doesn’t mean he supports democracy. It means he supports free will. He lets us choose to destroy ourselves and our nations, but he wants us to let him rule us.

After I watched the Youtube guy, I got some revelation.

If a nation has to vote in order to decide what to do, it means its people don’t know the truth. If they were hearing from God, they would be in one accord. They would hear his truth and know what to do. Voting is conflict resolution. It shows a nation is in conflict; a house divided. No one establishes a method of conflict resolution unless there is conflict. Jesus said, correctly, that a house divided could not stand. It can’t survive forever.

Jesus is the prince of peace. Peace is nothing but harmony born of agreement. Agreement only comes through the Spirit of Holiness. All other forms of agreement are faulty. Many people think Satan’s kingdom is united, but that isn’t true. Satan is a mutineer. Mutineers never have peace. Those under them always strive to supplant them, because mutineers don’t have authority or the fear it commands. The spirits that serve Satan aren’t loyal. They hate him and want to take his place. The Bible says, “The wicked flee when none pursue.”

The Youtube guy pointed out that God is a king, not an elected leader. He said we pray for God’s kingdom to come, not his democracy. The Bible calls Jesus the king of kings, not the king of presidents. The Bible says God’s children are a nation of priests and kings, not prime ministers.

The Bible says there will be a thousand-year reign on the earth after the tribulation. During that time, Jesus will be here in person, as both God and king. He will have believers ruling under him, and they will also be kings. They won’t be elected by ignorant mobs who only think of themselves. They’ll be anointed by God himself.

We should have theocracy, guided by the Holy Spirit. God offered us that, and through the Jews, we turned it down. After that, they got the second-best form of rule: kingdoms. God anointed kings to rule. Eventually, human beings started killing their kings and giving power to elected legislators and executives. It was a step backward.

“Democracy” means “rule by the people.” That, alone, should convince us it’s a bad idea. It shows the hand of the Antichrist at work, but almost nobody understands how his kingdom works, so Americans think it’s smart to be ruled by our people.

We still have a king. Unfortunately, his name is Satan. The monarchical system can’t really be escaped.

Democracy is leftism. American conservatives don’t like to hear that, because they think they own democracy, but it’s true. American conservatives are really leftists in history’s long view. Three hundred years ago, few questioned the legitimacy of monarchy as a system of government. The people who brought the kings down were leftists. They were “progressive.” Real conservatives believed their kings were anointed by God, so they tried to keep them in power. They thought leftism was rebellion against God himself, and it was.

Now when a nation like America selects rulers, the candidates have to pander to absolute idiots who have no idea how the world works. They have to pacify socialists, anti-white racists, women (who vote for chaos all the time), perverts, and even those who want to let unvetted aliens come in and take what we have. A king would not have to be so accommodating.

The American Revolution was a huge mistake. We like to think it was about the crown’s abuses, but the British were also abused back in England. For example, the British Navy was made up largely of white slaves who were hanged if they tried to escape. The British forced people to go to America as indentured servants. The British lived in terror of the royals. The punishments for treason were the stuff of horror movies. The British were still burning criminals alive after our revolution.

The American Revolution was about money and power. Let’s be honest. America was rich in resources, it was full of slaves who provided free labor, and it presented a great opportunity for people who were not nobles or able to serve in Parliament to form their own nation and occupy high office.

Canada and Australia didn’t fight the British. They ended up prosperous. We could have gone the same way.

If we hadn’t rebelled, slavery in America might have ended in 1833, when it was abolished in England. We might never have had the Civil War, which caused the deaths of around 700,000 Americans. We might not have had the North’s abuses during the postwar era. We might not have had the South’s reprisals against freed slaves, which still contribute to racial friction. The South might have been just as prosperous as the North, and today, we might not have the strong North/South antagonism that is working to fuel a second civil war.

If the colonists had stood by their king, the empire might have remained united and powerful much longer. Maybe America and Canada would have remained parts of the UK. If that had happened, would it have been necessary for the US to enter World War Two? Hitler wasn’t afraid to invade England, but would he have felt that way had England had well over a hundred million subjects across the ocean, in a country full of factories, farms, oil, coal, and other resources?

Maybe the combined might of Great Britain, North America, and Australia would have discouraged him.

If we had stayed together, we would have had a gigantic internal market with no trade barriers. Wouldn’t that have made us wealthier?

Maybe George III really was anointed by God. If he was, we should have worked with him.

I’m all done with democracy. I will take part in it because I want to be a good citizen and because I have no choice, but it’s a stupid form of government, and it’s destroying us.

If we absolutely have to have elections, women should stay home, and the right to vote should be limited to intelligent, informed, law-abiding people who have assets. You should have something to lose so you can understand how important government’s actions are. If you’ve never been anything but a burden, you shouldn’t be allowed to vote for the government to give you other people’s wealth.

I hope my understanding of prophecy is right. I hope the rapture and tribulation will be followed by a millennium during which Earth will be ruled by a perfect, omnipotent king. The Biden disaster serves to sharpen the yearning.

Let’s not Let 10,000 Dead Bodies Ruin a Good Grift

Let’s recap. What are the three hostile spirits that will be released before the tribulation? Death, famine, and murder. They cover a lot of ground. Death includes disease and wild animal attacks, for example.

What are we going through right now? A global pestilence, shortages, and an astounding outpouring of hatred and crime.

Today, newspapers (Is that term appropriate any more?) are reporting that 12 big American cities have record murder rates. Not records for this decade, century, or millennium. All-time records.

Let’s look at the list, which comes from the notorious right-wing smear outfit, ABC.

Albuquerque: 82
Austin: 60
Baton Rouge: 137
Columbus: 179
Indianapolis: 246
Louisville: 175
Portland: 72
Philadelphia: 523
Rochester: 71
St. Paul: 35
Toledo: 62
Tucson: 80

This is a misleading list, because it only includes all-time records. Chicago is leading the country right now with 753 murders, which, remarkably, is not a record. New York is at 443. It’s also misleading because the year isn’t over yet. We have about three weeks to go, and it’s looting season because Christmas is coming up. Finally, the list doesn’t include smaller, but still large, cities.

The New York Post notes that all of these cities have leftist mayors. That’s pretty shocking. Who would have guessed?

What they’re not telling you: for the most part, this is an epidemic of murders committed against black people. Most American homicides (a term which includes killings that are not murders) are committed by black people, and black people who murder overwhelmingly choose other blacks as their victims. Cities have big concentrations of black people. It’s also important to note that black women are more likely than anyone else to be murdered.

Oddly, no one is marching or painting streets over this. There is no movement called “Black Women Matter.” We have people wearing shirts that say, “All Cops are Bastards,” but we don’t see, “Civilians who Murder 10,000 Black People per Year are Bastards.” No one on the left cares much about black women or black murder victims in general. They’re just enjoying pushing the police around.

Fewer than 1 in 40 of the roughly 10,000 black homicide victims 2021 will produce will have been shot by the police, and nearly all of the police shootings will turn out to be justified, even in the eyes of black witnesses. Strangely, the police are perceived to be the problem.

Human beings are amazing. “Never mind the floods and landslides. My faucet is dripping.”

For some reason which is subject to debate, societal ills tend to hit black areas first and then spread to the rest of America. I think the spirit of murder will work this way. Americans are already filled with partisan hate, and leftists, in particular, are more than willing to rise up and kill the rest of us. The Internet is like a virtual hell, in which people vomit up their vilest expressions of loathing and cruelty, and when people let hate drive their speech, they are likely to let it drive their behavior later. I expect large armed skirmishes to start popping up before long, and after that, we can expect a state of guerrilla warfare, at least in cities and suburbs; every area near a leftist-dominated city. Leftists will form mobs to punish the “privileged,” and everyone else will respond in kind, having no choice.

I have been wondering why leftists congregate in cities, and I think it must be because life is so easy in cities. Cities hand everything to you. You have no yard to maintain, you never have to travel far to get food, and there are all sorts of people who dedicate their lives to helping you. In the country, you really have to know what you’re doing. No one is going to come take care of you.

Leftists feel everyone else owes them a lot, so it’s natural that they like cities.

I think there are more demons on earth than there were a few years back. If God has released three great spirits to hurt us, then those spirits have other spirits working for them. Demons spread delusion and anger, among other things. I think demons are what cause people to believe the facially absurd myths they subscribe to now. You can’t think a man is a woman without supernatural help. You can’t think a few unjustified police shootings are a big deal, while completely ignoring thousands of murders, unless something external has warped your perception.

I no longer have any doubt that the apocalypse has started. The Bible shows that it starts before the rapture and tribulation. The apocalypse is a process involving multiple events.

I don’t think hate and murder are going away. I am confident covid is here to stay as well, although the Omicron variant’s characteristics make me wonder if covid will continue to be a major threat to life. Maybe a worse disease will hit soon, or maybe there will be a much nastier variant of coronavirus.

Shortages are now routine, and they seem to jump out of nowhere to bite us. I have no reason to think they’ll get anything but worse.

Speaking of men who are alleged to be women, I read that a man on a women’s college swim team has been setting women’s world records. I guess I should grieve, but I can’t help finding it funny. You can’t grieve continuously. A guy named Lia Thomas, at an Ivy League school where everyone else swims slowly, is rewriting the books. He beat a competitor by 38 seconds, which is, I am sorry to say it, hilarious. He literally had time to get out of the pool, dry off, grab a Gatorade, take a seat, and watch the real girls finish the race.

This news is upsetting a lot of people, but I say may he go to the Olympics and sweep the golds in every event he can manage to participate in. Let’s not even stop with swimming. Let’s put him on the women’s track team. Let’s have him box. He might do really well. May others like him obliterate every women’s sports record. I look forward to a day when every women’s UFC competitor is a man, and actual women are afraid to compete.

Why would I say these things? Because the pimple needs to come to a head. Leftism bears putrid, diseased fruit, and society needs to see it. Also, I dislike spectator sports because they are destructive to Christianity. No one seems to understand the hostile relationship between spectator sports and Christianity, but it has a very long history. I’d love to see every spectator sport destroyed. More steroids! More cheating! More eunuchs! Let’s get this over with.

Where are the tennis eunuchs? Serena Williams needs to be exposed as a fraud. I guarantee you, there are male athletes out there who are willing to take hormones and drive her off the court. I want to see them get out there. What are they waiting for? They could become millionaires instead of settling for jobs as low-paid club pros. Castration can take you from mediocre male to world-class female, and no one can stop you if you want to do it. The courts will protect you. Fans will cheer you; even the ones who secretly feel sick to their stomachs. They will be too afraid not to.

There are no known pro tennis eunuchs on the tour now, but people my age recall one. His name is Renee Richards. He was a journeyman male pro in the 1950’s. Then he must have listened to too many Helen Reddy records, because he had himself castrated and started competing with female tennis pros.

You may think he proves eunuchs won’t ruin women’s tennis, because Renee Richards didn’t become a Wimbledon champion. Of course they will. Richards competed as a woman two decades after he competed as a man! He was over the hill, and he still made it to the women’s doubles final. He was ranked in the top 20 when he was middle-aged.

Richards himself now admits it isn’t fair for eunuchs to play women. He has said,””Having lived for the past 30 years, I know if I’d had surgery at the age of 22, and then at 24 went on the tour, no genetic woman in the world would have been able to come close to me. And so I’ve reconsidered my opinion.”

I can’t wait to see more men out there. The truth needs to be made clear.

In other news, I succumbed to temptation and got myself a used Ronco Showtime rotisserie oven. I found it on Ebay. It looks like it has never been turned on.

I couldn’t restrain myself. I started thinking about rib roasts. The one thing a non-rotating oven can’t seem to match is the crust a rotisserie puts on all sides of a roast. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like the $70 I’m betting is a reasonable risk.

I could have bought a new Showtime, but they just don’t sound good. They turn too slow, and people say they’re flimsy. The old ones are Korean, which says a lot for Ron Popeil, who could have gone Chinese right from the start. The South Koreans make wonderful things. The new ovens are from China, so no one should be surprised if there are issues.

I’ll probably use it about once a year, but it will be a good tool to have on those rare occasions when a rotisserie is the best option.

I think I can quit adding food equipment for a while. My kitchen isn’t perfect, but you can make nearly anything in it without wishing you had one more tool.

Thank God I don’t like high-temperature hipster pizza, which requires a special oven. If I did, one more expenditure would be imminent.

Plastic is Manly

Am I a bad husband? When I make major decisions, do I thoughtlessly forget the fact that I am no longer single?

Every once in a while, I start to say, “I’m single, so…” I’m well aware that I am not single, but after so many years on the shelf, and with a wife who is still stuck in a foreign country, I sometimes forget the proper mindset.

Last week, I did it again. I ordered new steak knives without showing them to the wife.

Back when I lived in Austin, and I was a physics TA, I got some steak knives for my apartment. They were Henckels knives from some store or other. Probably Bed, Bath & Beyond. They were serrated stainless knives with extremely tough handles that looked like wood yet didn’t go all snowflaky in the dishwasher. They worked fine for about 25 years, but some of them disappeared during that time.

Why do steak knives disappear? They do it to everyone. Where do they go? I think it sometimes happens because idiot relatives grab them and use them as screwdrivers and paint scrapers. Other than that, I can’t figure it out.

Between my dad and me, we had three or four knives when we moved to the Ocala area. It wasn’t a big problem, because we didn’t have gatherings that required a lot of knives. I got sick of it, though, so I decided to go to Ebay and see if I could find loose knives to match my old ones. I figured there would be new knives all over the place at reasonable prices. Even if the knives had been discontinued, surely there would be new old stock.

Boy, was I wrong. New ones did not exist, and old ones were selling for Sabatier prices. Okay, not Sabatier prices. But they were so dear, it looked like I would be better off getting a new set.

No problem, right? I went to Cook’s Illustrated, figuring I would buy whatever they recommended. They’re pretty reliable.

Guess what? They recommend a set of Victorinox knives that sell for $167. And they have wooden handles, so forget the dishwasher.

If they had wooden handles, I wouldn’t pay $167 for a set of lightsabers. I have a $200 knife that has been wrapped in newspaper since I left Miami. Wooden handle. I’m not washing that by hand. I will probably never use it again.

I should frame it to remind me of my own bad judgment.

Here is what Victorinox says on Amazon:

Victorinox Swiss Army recommends washing all knives by hand. For best results, hand wash your knives with a soapy cloth and dry immediately.

While Fibrox Pro knives are dishwasher safe, we recommend hand washing as dishwashers are designed to spray water at a relatively high pressure, which can jostle the silverware and cause the knives to collide, dulling the edge.

That’s what they recommend. I recommend they find another sucker to buy their knives. What am I? Niles Crane? I may be a snob, but I’m not insane, and I don’t have an illegal to wash my knives for me.

I finally found a cheaper set I liked, and it happens to be made by Victorinox, the company that also made some of my cheap Fibrox-handled chef knives. I paid $68 for 6 knives. I know I should have bought 8, but I was too cheap. I figured that if I…WE…ever needed 8, we could give the old, dull Henckels knives to the guests who were most likely to cut themselves.

I went with straight edges. Why? Because serrated edges are for women and other people who can’t sharpen a knife. Serrations make really dull knives cut well enough to satisfy most people. I don’t want them. Have you ever cut a steak with a sharp knife? It’s bliss. It just falls off onto your fork, and you don’t have to saw and rock the table back and forth.

Here is the part the wife may not like: the knives have black Fibrox handles. Plastic, in other words. They look like they came from Big Lots.

I don’t think she’ll care. When I asked her what her favorite food was, she said “meat.” She didn’t narrow it down any more than that. Meat. All meat. Any meat. She even eats hippopotamuses. As a person who will soon be eating meat in my house, not to mention washing dishes, I think she will love these knives. If not, I can always get the wooden ones and use the plastic ones when I’m alone.

So, what to do with the old knives? Nothing, right? They’re for the kids’ table.

I couldn’t leave them alone. While I was admiring the newly-arrived set, I had to do something about the old ones.

The old knives were only sharpened on one side. To a knife person who isn’t a sushi chef, this is on a par with vandalism. I guess it made the knives easier to manufacture. I don’t think Henckels expected anyone to sharpen them. I believe the idea was that undiscerning customers would buy them and use them until they lost a certain number. Then they would be replaced.

At first, I tried to sharpen them on one side, just like Henckels. I used two diamond hones; coarse and fine. It was very slow work. I reshaped the bevel on one knife with many strokes, and then I touched up the back side to get rid of the burr. I wasn’t satisfied at all. The knife was pretty sharp, but it didn’t make me completely happy, and I still had two to go. After working on the second knife for too long a time, I changed tactics.

I have a Smith’s PP1 sharpener. This is a desperation gadget for hopeless unskilled people, but it works pretty well for kitchen knives. It has coarse carbide cutters in one notch, and the other notch holds fine ceramic stones.

I ran the knife through it a few times, and I got an edge, but it wasn’t great. Even after following up with a leather strop saturated with 1-micron diamond spray, it was disappointing.

I found that the final answer was to make a crude edge using the Smith’s tool and then follow up with the hones. This worked quickly, and it gave me reasonably refined edges that shaved hairs. The serrated areas wouldn’t shave, but they were sharp again.

This is now my official steak knife sharpening method. The hones are fast and easy to use. You just have to be willing to learn to do it right. You can push your knives away from you on the top of the hones and then on the bottom, in order to get both bevels, or you can push on the top, turn the knives over, and pull toward you. You have to learn how to hold the knives at a fixed angle on both strokes.

You may not get a really symmetrical set of bevels, but that doesn’t matter. They’ll be close enough. The only hard part will be establishing your characteristic bevels in the first place. Factory bevels may be very symmetrical, and they may also have angles that differ from the ones you want to apply by hand. It may take a long time to grind the bevels down they match your angles. After that, resharpening a knife will take about 20 seconds. It’s so fast, you can do it every time you take a knife out.

I’m going with this method. It works.

The other day, I bought a KME sharpening system for my carry knives. It’s wonderful. It provides a beautiful edge that rips through anything. It’s not right for everything, though.

Carry knives are made from super steels which take forever to dull and aren’t easy to sharpen, and it’s natural to want a perfect edge on a carry knife, so it’s okay if it takes a while to sharpen one. Kitchen knives are different. A kitchen knife that will pop little hairs off the backs of your fingers is plenty sharp for any kitchen job. Also, kitchen knives get dull faster than carry knives, so using a KMA sharpener, which takes a while to set up, is completely impractical.

Now I have 6 new steak knives with razor-like factory edges, plus three old knives that, while not as keen, are sharper than they have ever been before

The problem will be to convince my guests to be careful.

Almost no one expects knives to be sharp. Only a small percentage of knife owners have any idea how to sharpen a knife, and when it comes to women, that percentage is close to zero. They’re used to bad knives in their own houses, so when you hand them sharp knives, they tend to be careless. They also lean into them, because they’re used to forcing dull blades through food.

Women will actually get angry at you for sharpening knives. Many women think it’s irresponsible and unsafe to sharpen a knife correctly. It’s sad.

It’s really mens’ fault. A man sharpens his wife’s knives.

A long time ago, my Aunt Jean asked for a big knife while working on a holiday meal. I let her use a huge Forschner butcher knife with a great edge. I told her several times to be extremely careful. I warned her that it was sharper than knives she was used to. Only a few minutes passed before I saw her with a paper towel wrapped around her hand.

I don’t want people to come to my house and maim themselves over shared meals. It ruins the atmosphere.

I think my sharpening technology is as good as it will never need to be. I have a CBN-wheel bench grinder for things like hoes and woodworking tools. I have two belt grinders for axes and similar tools. I have chainsaw files. I have the KME for carry knives. I have diamond hones for kitchen knives. I have the strop and diamond spray for all my knives. I have big DMT diamond stones for filling in the gaps. I am set. You can do better, but you don’t really need to.

I am building the kitchen up again. Not all that long ago, I stepped back from cooking because it was related to gluttony, but now I have a wife to think about, and she should have a well-equipped food workshop, even if I do a lot of the cooking.

Yesterday, I unboxed a new toaster oven. It’s a Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro. It’s a smart oven with a fan in it. It does air frying, which is good for routine weekday vegetable sides. It has all sorts of programs. It reheats, proofs dough, keeps food warm at realistic temperatures (unlike a big oven), and can even handle a turkey or rib roast.

My big oven is pretty bad. It probably came with the house. The thermal fuse blows every time I use the self-cleaning cycle, the display has gone so dim I can barely see it, and the convection setting doesn’t air-fry. I found a new one for $1100, but I have been too cheap to spring for it. It also takes 15 minutes to preheat, whereas the new hotness takes three. I spent $400 on it, which is a ton, but I think it will be worth it, because it appears I will only be using the big oven for maybe 10% of my oven jobs.

People complain about the difficulty of cleaning this oven, but I have an ace in the hole. I have a steam cleaner. Not many people know it, but a steam cleaner will dissolve baked-on crud in a hurry, with no chemicals or abrasives. Also, I’m not the kind of person who cleans ovens a lot. I’m not going to feel bad if my new oven looks like someone uses it.

I can’t fix a new entree until I get rid of the chicken I made two days ago, so all I can do for now is reheat. The new oven is performing beautifully. It seems to be a revolutionary change for my kitchen. The reheating feature, all by itself, is huge. My big oven is impractical for reheating, the conventional microwave I got to accommodate my dad’s dementia makes food rubbery and limp, and the little microwave with convection features is a much better at microwaving than convection.

When you’re single…married but temporarily living alone…you have to reheat a lot or throw out a great deal of food. You can’t eat everything you make in a single day, so you eat a lot of leftovers.

I almost wish I hadn’t thrown out my dad’s old Popeil rotisserie. Crude product that it was, it worked like crazy. When you move, you have to prioritize, and the rotisserie seemed like a good candidate for the garbage pile. My friend Mike has one, and he can’t believe I threw ours out. When I told him, he sounded close to tears.

Oh, my God. I thought Ronco had stopped selling the oven. I see a new one on Amazon. Should I? Should I? I can always get another kitchen cart. Oh, man. This is good news.

You may be inclined to assume the late Ron Popeil would never sell a decent product, purely as a matter of principal, but that isn’t true. His dad was very shifty, but Ron made some good stuff. The rotisserie lasts forever and makes excellent food. Ron himself worked on it, determining that 6 turns per minute were ideal.

The oven is sort of primitive, but the food is undeniably great. It’s strange that my dad, who could not cook, bought one, but I have to say that the things he made with it were shockingly tasty.

It’s not that easy to clean, but as I said, I have a steam cleaner. Nothing is hard to clean when you have a steam cleaner.

I am researching, and it looks like the new Ronco company is not the same as the old one. People are complaining that the new ovens turn at 4 RPM instead of 6, and that is not good. I found a new-looking original-Ronco oven on Craigslist and made an offer.

Being a handy person, I could conceivably take the gearmotor out of a new oven and put a faster one in, but I am not anxious to bet on it.

Guess I better warm up some chicken.

The World Prefers the Disease to the Cure

It’s surprising how hard it is to find out where the Omicron variant has taken hold in the US. I had to do several searches and compare results. Here is the most up-to-date list of states I was able to locate:

California
Colorado
Connecticut
Georgia
Hawaii
Louisiana
Maryland
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Missouri
Nebraska
New Jersey
New York
Pennsylvania
Utah
Washington
Wisconsin

I’ll save you some trouble: the number of states is 17. And as you can figure out for yourself, that’s almost exactly one third of our states. Since California, New York, and Pennsylvania are on the list, it’s a large fraction of our population.

Here’s a question to which I have not seen the answer in the press: how good is the world’s ability to test for Omicron? How can we know where it is if we can’t test for it?

It has been less than two weeks since Omicron was reported to WHO (Should I call it “the WHO”?), so can it be possible that every nation in the world now has test kits that distinguish Omicron from Delta?

Another question: does Omicron show up at all on tests that detect the more-familiar variants?

If the old tests don’t pick up Omicron, we may have Omicron all over the place and not know it, especially if it’s mild. A lot of people would get false negatives, and if they weren’t very sick, many others wouldn’t bother getting tested.

If Omicron testing isn’t available everywhere, and Omicron doesn’t show up on the old tests, then a lot of Omicron cases are hidden. If Omicron testing isn’t available everywhere, and Omicron does show up on the old tests with no indication that it’s Omicron, then who knows how many Omicron cases are misidentified as Delta?

You could go nuts listing different factual scenarios and trying to figure out the consequences.

Our leaders, scientists, and journalists are completely incompetent when it comes to presenting facts that help the public understand what’s happening. I assume scientists are thinking about the important questions, because they would have to be really stupid not to, but their logic is not filtering down to you and me. Politicians are generally not smart enough to figure out what’s important, and journalists are even less bright.

Let’s look around the web.

Wikipedia has the answer, or maybe it doesn’t. It says existing PCR tests are able to “detect the variant.” That’s not the answer we need. We don’t just need to know if the tests detect the variant; we need to know whether they distinguish it from other variants. When you say a test detects a variant, you’re not making it clear that it can discriminate. Maybe the old tests tell us coronavirus is present, without saying which kind.

It’s safe to draw a few conclusions. It’s clear the public has no way of knowing where Omicron really is, how many cases there are, and how bad the symptoms are. Science doesn’t know these things yet, so neither do we.

Nothing much is happening in Zambia with any strain of coronavirus. The country is a car ride away from South Africa, but Zambia’s daily case count runs around 1/100 of Florida’s, for about the same population.

The Bible says that if God’s people will pray and repent, he will heal their land. I keep saying I think this is why Christian Africa is doing so well. Their leaders–political leaders, not just preachers–called for prayer. Joe Biden would sooner let Sean Hannity give him a polygraph than tell Americans to pray, especially in the name of Jesus Christ. It will never happen. It would be political suicide. The Democratic Party is firmly against Jesus.

I agree with preachers who say Christians ruined America. I tend to get angry at non-Christians who abuse and slander us. They have taken over our country, and they have made public life disgusting in many places. Still, as I have said before, the primary responsibility is ours. God says he will heal nations if his people pray, not if every citizen prays. We’re not doing it. Even our church leaders aren’t calling for prayer. They refuse to say sin caused the pandemic, which is unquestionably true. They’re terrified of becoming less popular and losing income and power.

We’re not confessing that we caused the pandemic, and we are not repenting and praying as a body. We have been failing in the areas of confession, repentance, and prayer for decades. That’s how we got here.

The church is weak and blind. When people consider coming to us for guidance, what do they see? Christians who can’t prophesy and tell them what their problems are. Christians who can’t heal their diseases or rid them of their sexual aberrations. Christians whose prayers for them don’t produce results. They also see Christians who are more interested in arguing with them and criticizing them than helping them meet God.

We ended up with a homosexuality epidemic because Christians couldn’t help homosexuals change. They couldn’t cast out the spirits involved. There was a time when everyone realized homosexuality was sick and destructive, and people who were suffering from it wanted relief, but we couldn’t do anything for them. No wonder they decided their affliction was natural and normal and that we were the problem. We definitely weren’t the answer.

We ended up with racial and class friction because our churches didn’t connect people with the Holy Spirit, who takes people of different races, nationalities, classes, and religious backgrounds and turns them into brothers and sisters.

I feel I got a revelation about my own relatively inconsequential problems. God told me something I knew already, and it applies to all Christians. We should be harder on phony Christians than we are on people who don’t know God at all. We fall into the trap of focusing on the unpleasant things nonbelievers are doing to us, and we behave as though they’re the big problem. They’re not. We cause our own problems by failing to submit to God. Hostile nonbelievers wouldn’t be able to touch us if we were truly transformed by the Holy Spirit.

We are our own worst enemies, literally, and after that come antagonistic spirits. Human beings are farther down the list. God once told me all my problems were caused by lack of prayer. He didn’t say “heathens.” He didn’t even say “Satan.” He didn’t blame my dysfunctional upbringing in a house of abuse and despair. Lack of prayer was number one. Since I chose not to pray enough, saying lack of prayer caused all my problems implied I caused them myself.

I have to quit letting my annoyance with people who hate Jesus and Christians divert my attention and move me to misplace blame. I have to stop saying things unnecessarily that will drive nonbelievers farther away.

I should be critiquing myself and making a point of laying into horrible, toxic clergymen. People who lie about doctrine and make up testimony in order to get rich need to be exposed. They know exactly what they’re doing, so they don’t deserve patience or mercy. Christians should be telling other people Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, and the other usual suspects are crooks.

I believe God is showing me that the reason I still have nagging sins I sometimes fall into is that I am overly critical of people who are no worse than I am. My failures are intended to remind me that I didn’t save myself. I was contemptible and determined to hold onto my faults. I would have been happy to sink farther into sin, die in blindness, and go to hell had God not intervened and fought with me.

I am too hard on people who don’t know God at all, and I am not hard enough on liars who pretend to know him in order to bleed those who come to them for help.

I believe these things are correct, so I will try to change my behavior. I think this will bring me breakthroughs and make me more useful in helping others. We shall see.

I’m sure I will fail a lot, but my course is more important than my location. Falling isn’t a big deal as long as you continue moving in the right direction when you get up.

Next Step: Prohibiting Masks?

We’re in the second week of the Xi Unicorn Omicron variant crisis, and so far, things look pretty good. By pandemic standards. A low bar to clear.

Is it okay to joke about coronavirus? There must be someone out there who is making a career of being offended by covid jokes. There has to be a “coronavirus community.”

So far, covid hasn’t turned out to be like AIDS. You can joke about cancer, diabetes, blindness, amputations, and all venereal diseases other than AIDS, but AIDS jokes are like people who won’t wear masks; they do not fly. AIDS sufferers are treated like heroes, and they even have a strange monument in the form of a quilt, but if you get herpes, people just make fun of you. We live in a world where humor related to a behavior-driven venereal disease is treated like blasphemy, but actual blasphemy is a staple of celebrated comedians.

“MY GRAMMY DIED FROM COVID! SHAME ON YOU!” Hmm. My mother, uncle, and aunt died from cancer, my sister and dad survived cancer, and I still make cancer jokes. Other people’s cancer jokes don’t offend me at all. I knew a guy who was dying of cancer, and he made cancer jokes during the process.

I haven’t noticed much sanctimony related to covid humor. I hope my perception is correct, but even if it’s not, I plan to keep my sense of humor while respecting your right to choose not to have one.

“Respect” is not really the correct word.

Let’s see. Omicron is spreading quickly, and scientists expect it to overtake Delta. So far, only mild cases have been recorded. That sounds like good news. We have been cautioned not to assume Omicron is milder than Delta, but within two or three weeks, the truth will be obvious. Here’s hoping we don’t see death spikes.

I saw that about 100 kids in South Africa had been hospitalized. That sounded bad. In the US, covid barely affects kids, and hospitalizations are very rare. Today I read that the South African children have mild cases. Why are they being hospitalized? Beats me. Quarantine? An abundance of caution? Anyway, the mild-symptom theory is still holding up, but it looks like Omicron doesn’t spare children the way Delta does. It appears lots of kids will catch it and become symptomatic, but we shouldn’t expect severe cases in children.

Hope that’s right. Imagine what life will be like if we start seeing waves of children with tubes down their throats.

It has become obvious that vaccines have no or nearly no effect on Omicron. Omicron is causing high-percentage transmissions among groups with high vaccination rates. That can’t happen when vaccines work. Maybe science can produce an Omicron vaccine, but until it does, don’t expect your old shot to do anything except, perhaps, make your symptoms less severe. Given the facts we have heard so far, with Omicron, such help may not even be needed.

Idiotic travel bans are still increasing. Zambia is now in the crosshairs. Countries that have thousands of cases per day are afraid to admit citizens of countries that have one or two dozen per day. Rhodah and I were hoping to go to France and the Netherlands, but France just slapped a quarantine mandate on Zambians, and I believe the Netherlands is currently banning them.

Day before yesterday, I mentioned the then-little-discussed possibility that Omicron might turn out to be nature’s vaccine, infecting huge numbers of people with a mild illness that would prevent them from having serious cases of a dangerous variant. Now another interesting thought has occurred to me: if Omicron turns out to be a godsend that prevents millions of deaths, will countries start imposing Bizarro travel bans? Will they start asking people from Omicron areas to fly in and spread the helpful variant? Will masks be outlawed?

It might be a great idea. Many people hate vaccines, human beings may never comply in numbers that make sense, and vaccines work poorly against Delta and show no sign of preventing Omicron infections. On the other hand, anti-vaxxers can’t prevent themselves from getting Omicron, which may act as a vaccine against severe covid. Vax-worshipers might start to see Omicron as an ally that can accomplish what their hysterical, irrational, fact-ignoring authoritarianism can’t do: it could sweep through countries and give just about everyone helpful antibodies.

If Omicron can do what St. Anthony of Fauci can’t, why not encourage the spread? It would save a large number of lives while restoring peace. Without a scary variant to be afraid of, the mask and vaccine Gestapo would no longer have any reason to torment people, so the anti-fascist movement (the real one, not Antifa) would have less motivation to protest.

It looks like a moot question, because Omicron doesn’t look like it will pay any attention to our plans. It appears to be poised to spread regardless of what man chooses to do, so my best guess is that by mid-January, we will know whether Omicron is a friend or enemy. By then, it should have spread so well we should have all the data we need.

Whatever happens, we know one thing for sure. Chris Cuomo won’t be reporting on it. I am taking the high road with regard to Corleone jokes.

I would say I was shocked that someone with Cuomo’s intellectual and ethical deficits was ever hired, but that would be ridiculous. This is the press we’re talking about. If government vans ever go around kidnapping brilliant people to crack Chinese codes and improve hypersonic technology, you will never see one stop in front of CNN, the big three, or Fox.

I was surprised to see CNN’s harsh report on Cuomo. After covering for him, they changed course and let him have it. They didn’t mince words. A conservative couldn’t have done better.

It makes sense, though. Why did CNN hire him in the first place? Because they thought he was the next Edward R. Murrow? Of course not. They knew he was inept even by journalist standards. Like Don Lemon, he was hired for what he was, not what he could do. He was the son of a governor and the brother of a governor. He was a nepotism hire. Either his brother and dad pressured employers to advance his career, or companies hired him to curry favor with his family and reward the Cuomos for being politically correct.

People who work with nepotism hires build up resentment, even if they support their hiring in a sort of realpolitik way. It had to burn a lot of CNN staffers, seeing Cuomo prove over and over again that he was incompetent while raking in millions they would never have the chance to earn. Once Andrew was gone, they must have realized they no longer had to maintain the farce. Some of them must have seen Chris’s fall as a welcome opportunity to toss an embarrassing son of privilege.

Now CNN can gain social credit while disposing of an embarrassing mishire and, in all likelihood, promoting someone who will be better for their ratings.

Cuomo’s Twitter account still boasts that he’s a CNN anchor and promotes the show he used to host back when he was employed. Wonder how long he’ll take to change it.

Speaking of social credit, it looks like AOC can’t get enough. She made a bizarre, mysterious remark to the effect that the flash looting epidemic didn’t seem to exist. Her claim was so crazy, the Walgreen’s corporation used its Twitter account to debunk it. That’s really something.

Ordinarily, corporations want to seem as hyperwokeded as possible. For some reason, they labor under the delusion that catering to far-left extremists will please the public. Half of America voted for Donald Trump, so I question the logic. Anyway, somebody at Walgreen’s must be getting tired of seeing minority-area stores close due to unprofitability caused by looters.

I always talk about the Jewish legends of Sodom and Gomorrah, which say the cities were known for shoplifting mobs. Here is a passage from Legends of the Jews, a book which contains the material I refer to:

The inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and the three other cities of the plain were sinful and godless. In their country there was an extensive vale, where they foregathered annually with their wives and their children and all belonging to them, to celebrate a feast lasting several days and consisting of the most revolting orgies. If a stranger merchant passed through their territory, he was besieged by them all, big and little alike, and robbed of whatever he possessed. Each one appropriated a bagatelle, until the traveller was stripped bare. If the victim ventured to remonstrate with one or another, he would show him that he had taken a mere trifle, not worth talking about. And the end was that they hounded him from the city.

This stuff comes from ancient Jewish writings which are known to contain gossip and untruths, but even histories which are largely corrupt usually contain a lot of accurate information. Think about it: even the most dishonest CNN story is probably 90% true. A lot of the Koran is probably true. I think the passage above is true. The parallels to our time are too strong to be coincidental.

The same book says the Sodomites eventually passed a law saying all visitors were to be gang-raped. There are American and Canadian cities where such treatment doesn’t seem impossible. They already have parades featuring completely nude men, and sex acts take place in the streets. The jump to raping strangers isn’t that big, and as a group, sexual deviants have a massive victim complex. Historically, such complexes have been used to justify horrific cruelty. It looks like a guy in Wisconsin just used one to justify killing 6 people with his car.

The book says the angels God sent to examine the city were inclined to recommend sparing it until the rape gang mustered. It also mentions gang looting as one of the sins that provoked the flood.

My personal take on AOC is that she is severely demonized. Her election was improbable, given her background, and it’s hard to find a natural explanation for the speed of her rise to power. Apart from that, she has those crazy eyes. She even looks demonized.

Things look bad for the world, but I’m not worried about myself. I keep getting indications I will be fine. Example: my wife just had a dream. She was walking north on a road, and she was with a lady who prays for people and prophesies. A group of black-and-white spotted cattle came walking down the road from the north. They were large, fat, healthy cattle. One of them broke from the herd, ran ahead of it, hugged the lady my wife was with, and then hugged my wife. It was thrilled to see them.

In the Bible, a pharaoh had a dream about fat cattle, and they represented years of prosperity. The coloring of the cattle in my wife’s dream suggests they were dairy cattle, not beef cattle. I never thought about it until today, but there aren’t any major beef cattle breeds that generally have black and white spots. You can only kill a beef cow once, but dairy cattle are reliable long-term providers. They would seem to represent sources of help that provide continuously. A cow gives milk every day.

The pharaoh also dreamed of skinny cows that represented years of famine. My wife didn’t see any of those.

Maybe the cattle represent the years of the tribulation, during which certain believers will be in heaven celebrating the marriage of Jesus.

I look forward to having my curiosity about the Omicron variant settled. I hope travel restrictions loosen soon, but humanity is not known for its collective common sense.

Illness or Nature’s Vaccine?

Bad news. My modified squirrel trap has not attracted any visitors.

Fed up with the continued destruction of my property by worthless rodents, I took a badly-designed trap and made some improvements. It has been in action for about 18 hours, and nothing has happened. I placed an order for a Squirrelinator, which is a factory-made trap dedicated to, well, you can guess. It should be here in the middle of next week.

I took a chunk of neurotoxic rat bait, smeared it with peanut butter, and put it in my chicken house, which the squirrels have turned into a resort. Later today, I’ll see if they’ve eaten it. I’m going to do whatever has to be done until I have a decent body count.

I have excellent rat baits made with an anticoagulant, but I was afraid to put them in the chicken house because I didn’t want hawks and owls to eat poisoned rodents and die. I’m reading up on it today. It looks like the Audubon Society recommends the anticoagulant as safe for predators, so maybe I should start using it.

In other news, I see another prediction of mine has come true. It’s not a big surprise, because I try not to predict anything that isn’t obvious. The Omicron variant has been found all over the place. Hawaii, New York, California, Colorado, Minnesota…it’s doing the blue state tour.

When we first heard about Omicron, which my wife inadvertently dubbed “the Unicorn Variant,” journalists and even scientists voiced “concern” that it “might” pop up in new places. I’m no epidemiologist, but I said that if you find one case, there are dozens of others you don’t know about. I said Omicron was already everywhere except places like Australia and New Zealand, which have sick, authoritarian rules. I was wrong about Australia, however. Omicron has been found there.

Australia is actually an Omicron hotspot, with more identified cases than America. Maybe arresting people and putting them in concentration camps isn’t working as well as they expected.

Of all the people on Earth, you would think Australians would be reluctant to put people in prison. You would think they had had their fill already.

The usual suspects also said they were worried the vaccines wouldn’t work well against Omicron. I wasn’t worried about that, because I already knew they wouldn’t. They don’t work well against any variant! Why would Omicron be different? The Dutch found 14 infected airline passengers, and today they’re telling us all 14 were vaccinated. If this surprises you, you should go in for cognitive tests and be very careful climbing airplane stairs.

A failure rate of 100% in 14 patients seems pretty bad to me, but then I am no doctor. I am no statistician, but it sure seems like the results could not have been worse. I can’t help feeling there just might be some predictive weight to this data.

I keep hoping Omicron will turn out to be a blessing. So far, there are no news reports suggesting the symptoms are anything but mild, but scientists say Omicron is extremely contagious compared to Delta. Put those things together, and Omicron might be the inoculation man couldn’t create. It might displace the nastier variants and give us resistance to them which would provide either immunity or safety from severe symptoms. It could turn coronavirus into the new common cold. Ineradicable, but not dangerous.

It may turn out to be the Omicron VACCINE.

Or it may kill a whole bunch of us.

We’ll know by the end of the month. That’s my new prediction, and like the others, it’s obvious. Omicron will hit thousands of people this month, if it hasn’t already, and it will have enough time to start producing deaths. If Omicron goes viral metaphorically as well as literally, and waves of deaths don’t materialize, sell your stock in mask manufacturers.

Now if we could just pay the Chinese to create a killer bug that only hits building contractors and tort lawyers.

And CCP members.

One thing is certain: if Omicron saves the world, the CCP will start pressuring smaller countries to call it the Xi Variant.

My understanding is that new diseases tend to become less severe as they mutate. Hope that’s correct. Didn’t pan out with smallpox, though.

If I get sick, my first move will be to blow my nose on my squirrel baits.

It’s amazing how dumb our statist overlords are. Why would anyone think it was smart to enact travel bans AFTER a new virus hit several countries? How badly did you have to do in elementary school math to think that was intelligent? We never find covid variants before they go around the world. By the time they’re detected, they’ve been carried all over the globe. Travel bans just add economic distress and feelings of powerlessness to our problems.

Speaking of feelings of powerlessness, I have realized they may be the worst consequences of covid. It has taught us man is weak and can’t fix his own disasters. It has taught us our governments have way more ability to control us than we had allowed ourselves to think. It has turned many of us into shuffling shut-ins who lack confidence in their ability to change their lives for the better.

It’s very important for people to think they can affect their circumstances. Take that away, and they develop what psychologists call “learned helplessness.” This is one of the reasons welfare states get worse, not better. People start sucking up government money, and they become convinced they need it. They believe going to school and applying for jobs won’t change their lives much.

When you pay someone so much for doing nothing he can’t significantly improve his lifestyle by going to work, he is likely to choose to stay home and make excuses. That’s exactly what’s happening right now. It’s turning America into a much more socialist state, and socialism is authoritarianism. Authoritarianism brings dystopia.

I believe feelings of powerlessness also breed hatred and resentment. If you’re helpless and someone else is responsible for your happiness, you will feel entitled to make that person miserable when things don’t go your way. This is one explanation for the intense anti-white racism in America. Blacks and Hispanics are taught that whites, Asians, and Jews cause them to live in squalor and crime through racism, but paradoxically, many think the people who caused their problem are the saviors who can fix it. They believe the rest of us have special powers we’re not using.

It’s crazy, believing a certain class of people is evil and responsible for your problems, yet running to them over and over again, expecting them to make things right at their own expense.

Why would you expect a malicious enemy to save you?

The rest of us didn’t cause the problems, we’re not malicious, we are not good enough to devote our lives to making things better for you, and even if we were, we couldn’t do it. You have to do some things for yourself.

Anyway, I’m convinced the pandemic has made things worse.

Maybe Omicron will save us from the pandemic. The apocalypse is a delivery process with labor pains, and labor pains come and go. Maybe we’ll get a few years of rest. I wonder. I tend to doubt it, because I have reason to think the rapture is imminent.

One nice thing about proof the variant has spread is that it should convince the nations of the world to drop recently-imposed travel bans. Rhodah and I were planning to visit the Netherlands, and they have an Omicron ban. Maybe they’ll show some common sense and relent.

As for the rapture, I had a disturbing dream last night.

For years, I’ve had dreams about airports. There are things about airports I don’t like. When you’re in an airport, you’re not where you want to be. You want to be somewhere else, which is why you went to the airport. Airports, then, are inherently representative of not having arrived.

Also, airports are dirty, the food is bad and overpriced, and while you’re in airports, you are subjected to degrading control through unreasonable rules.

At least the Hare Krishnas moved out.

Last night, I dreamed I was in the imaginary airport again. My second-oldest friend had been there, but he had left. His family was still there. He had gotten on an elevator to turn himself in.

In the dream, Nazis were in power. My friend and his family are Orthodox Jews. The Nazis were allowing people to turn themselves in. In the dream, you could get on an elevator, and as soon as you got to the bottom, you would be in Auschwitz. You would go through the death camp process and be killed and incinerated. By the time you turned yourself in, you were doomed. There was no way to change your mind and go home, and no one could rescue you.

I couldn’t believe what my friend had done. Why did he trust the Nazis? Even though it wasn’t possible, I tried to help. I saw another Jew, and I ran up to him and tried to tell him what had happened. I wanted to know if he had any idea what to do. He thought I was Jewish and that I was asking him to help me.

Nothing was done. It was already over when I asked for help. I knew my friend was somewhere down below, beyond help, regretting his choice.

I now think the airport I dream about represents the earth. You spend time here on your way to heaven or hell. You get routed one way or the other depending on what kind of ticket you chose. This place isn’t your permanent home.

I don’t know if my friend represented himself, someone else, or a class of people.

The Nazis were the state-worshipers and man-worshipers of the Earth. The beast’s troops. The vaccine-lovers and distancing freaks. People who are willing to give up all their rights because they’re terrified of death. They say, “Trust us, and everything will be fine.”

If the airport represents the earth, then there must be departing flights. You can either go up or down. That seems to be a very Jewish idea. Moving to Israel is considered a move upward, and people who leave are called “yardim,” meaning they descend. The name of the Jordan River comes from the same root.

That’s it for today. Two containers of maple syrup have arrived, and I need to test them. I might skip dinner food and make waffles.

That Foot is Me

It has been a while since I had an interesting project. I started a new one today. I am determined to rid myself of excess squirrels, so I came up with a new trap design.

Actually, I’m fixing an old design. Not long ago, I found that squirrels were chewing on my expensive aluminum gate, so I went to Tractor Supply and bought a copy of a Havahart live trap. This is a box made from wire. It has a door that falls down when an animal enters and stands on a plate where bait is kept.

The name of the trap maker is a comforting fiction intended to deflect criticism from enraged wokiees. Sure, it traps things alive. They’re alive until you get there.

The door was originally installed so the upper hinge attaching it to the top of the cage was pretty far inside the cage. When tripped, the door would fall so its lower end fell close to the end of the cage. In this configuration, a strong squirrel could lift it just by trying to get out. The natural result of pushing outward on the door was to lift it. The door had a spring-loaded bail to swing out and brace against the top of the trap to prevent this from happening.

I remember thinking this was a stupid design for small animals. The triggering mechanism was complicated and not very sensitive. Because of the spring, the mechanism was under a lot of pressure when loaded, and that created friction that made it harder to spring the trap. I thought a squirrel would have to go in and jump up and down on the trigger plate to make the trap work.

My suspicions turned out to be right. The trap turned out to be a pretty good squirrel feeder. It would not trip for squirrels even after I adjusted the trigger mechanism.

I was afraid bigger vermin were stealing the bait. I must have found the trap tripped yet empty; I don’t recall. Anyway, I had some reason to think bigger animals were ruining everything. I bought a bigger trap just like the little one, hoping it would nail not only squirrels but their larger accomplices. I caught a coon in it right away. I shot it in the head and threw it over the fence.

I never caught any squirrels, though.

Yesterday I saw that squirrels had eaten through the backwash hose on my pool pump. Add that to the long list of things they have destroyed. I got mad and decided to get back to killing them. I have been shooting them, but that’s a slow process. I needed something better.

They squat in my chicken house, so I thought about throwing some rat poison in there. I haven’t done it. I have two kinds of rat poison. One is plain old anticoagulant, and the other is a neurotoxin. The anticoagulant could conceivably harm anything that eats a dead squirrel, so I have been reluctant to use it. The other poison lacks this drawback, but it has another one: it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work on mice, anyway. I had high hopes for it, but they came to see my blocks of rat poison as free buffets.

I started researching traps, and I found some neat ones. I started wondering…why didn’t anyone make a trap with a door that moves in the opposite direction compared to my worthless live-catch trap?

I thought it would be smart to have a simple trap with a door that fell behind a squirrel after it entered, with the bottom of the tripped door toward the inside of the cage. A squirrel would have to figure out how to lift the door while shoving himself under it. His natural efforts to get out would push the door down instead of opening it.

Lo and behold, I learned that such a trap exists. It’s called the Squirrelinator. It’s just a wire box with a door that falls so the lower edge faces inward. Reviewers say it’s great.

I thought I should get one. Then I thought…why not make one?

I grabbed my useless live trap, removed the door, removed all the mechanical garbage attached to it, and reinstalled the door backward. Now if a squirrel goes in, the door will fall behind him. If he turns around and tries to go out the door, his weight will close it tighter.

A squirrel genius could learn to lift the door before trying to escape, but squirrels are stupid, and even a smart squirrel would need time to figure things out. I think I can prevent that by checking the trap at short intervals.

It’s pathetic that they call traps “live traps.” What kind of fool releases a live squirrel? I’ll bet nearly everyone does what I do. The old point-blank .22 shot. When you release a squirrel, it just plagues someone else. Releasing vermin on other people’s property should be a crime. Probably is.

My uncle used to do it, however, He would trap squirrels, paint their tails orange, and turn them loose at a nearby airport. Not sure what the point of that was.

He was not a tree-hugging vegan whiner. He let my cousin raise a calf as a pet, and then he slaughtered it without warning her and served its flesh to her for dinner. He refused to let her leave the table until she ate it. I don’t know why he was more merciful to arboreal rats.

I put my modified trap under the bird feeder, which is already known to the squirrels. I took some of Marvin’s seed-heavy bird chow and sprinkled it around the trap. I put a generous smear of peanut butter on the now-disconnected trigger plate, which makes a handy bait tray.

We shall see what happens. If it doesn’t work. I’ll pony up $80 for a Squirrelinator, or maybe I’ll get a roller trap.

A roller trap is pretty brilliant. It’s a rolling-pin-shaped object that rests on top of a bucket or garbage can that has enough water in it to drown rodents. The thin ends function as an axle. You put peanut butter on the thick part, and rodents climb out to get it. The assembly turns, and they drop in the water, dying instantly.

Well, okay. Not instantly. They drown. I don’t like it, but I am tired of paying for squirrel-destroyed items. I’ve prayed about it, and my belief is that God has no problem with people who drown rodents.

You can make a roller trap from a pop can and a piece of thick wire. You need a fairly tall receptacle to prevent squirrels from jumping out. Or maybe you just need to make the water too deep for them to touch bottom.

Here’s another neat trap I just learned about: a bowl of oil.

You get yourself a large bowl and pour half an inch of oil in the bottom. Rodents will smell the oil and jump in. Then they can’t jump out, even if the bowl’s edge is low. Why not? Because you need traction in order to jump, and the oil kills traction.

If you go to Youtube, you can find videos where people get up in the morning and collect bowls full of very distressed mice that can’t get away.

You would need a pretty big bowl for squirrels, but it seems brilliant for smaller pests.

I thought about getting some of those black poison stations you may have seen around dumpsters. They make them in different sizes for both rats and coons. The problem is that bigger animals will tear them up, and, again, I don’t think the poison works well.

It doesn’t take the squirrels long to find stuff near the bird feeder, so I hope to have some answers today. If my trap doesn’t work, the Squirrelinator should, but I will probably try a roller first. I’m also going to put a roller trap in the workshop for mice.

I may put the bigger trap out, too, baited with meat. It has proven effective with coons, and it should also work with possums. It could hold a determined coyote. That would be great. Hunting is inefficient. So much easier to stroll up at your leisure and pop vermin with your favorite pistol.

I’m going to get a gopher trap, too. There are big hills in my yard.

No more Mr. Nice Guy. The day of vengeance is at hand.

How to Talk Your Way into Prison

Alec Baldwin still seems to be counting on the power of celebrity to keep him off Mugshots.com.

As people who read the news know, Baldwin shot and killed a cinematographer, using a loaded gun that was supplied as a prop. For some reason, a live round had found its way into the cylinder, and Baldwin pointed the gun at the director and pulled the trigger. The bullet somehow hit the director, injured him, and then passed into the body of the cinematographer, ending her life quickly.

Baldwin has behaved very badly, blaming the assistant director and set armorer publicly. So much for courage and loyalty. He seems to think that if he was handed a loaded gun, it doesn’t matter what he did with it, because the assistant director and armorer had a duty to make sure it wasn’t loaded. Of course, this is horse manure. Every person who handles firearms has an obligation to know how they work and what the safety rules are. You can’t pick up a firearm and do as you please with it, based on the assumption that someone else, no matter who, has rendered it safe. It doesn’t matter that the armorer’s job was to make the gun safe, nor does it matter that the assistant director also assumed that responsibility. Baldwin had a duty to check it again when he accepted possession. The last person to hold the gun is the killer, period.

It must be wonderful to know your employer, a person with a great deal more power than you in your industry, is trying to put you in prison for his mistake. Baldwin is not a stand-up guy. Not someone you would want beside you in a foxhole.

Baldwin has given George Stephanopoulos an interview, and his new excuse is that he didn’t pull the trigger.

First, it was someone else’s fault. Now he’s blaming a miracle. Even if the miracle occurred, which it did not, he is still guilty.

Baldwin used a real revolver made by the Pietta company. The Pietta company is based in Italy, which is home to some other companies that make reproduction guns for people who like weapons used in the Old West. Pietta does not make special guns for firing blanks. The gun he used was a faithful reproduction of a single-action Colt in .45 Long Colt.

I assume he chose Pietta because they look like Colts, and they’re cheap. One model lists for $540.

Here’s the thing: revolvers don’t just go off. A single-action revolver has to be cocked before every shot, and once it’s cocked, you have to pull the trigger. It won’t go off just because you wave it at someone.

My understanding–correct me if you know better–is that a Pietta revolver can go off if dropped, provided there is a round under the hammer. Modern revolvers have parts that prevent this, but Pietta makes old-fashioned guns.

My great uncle Rich shot himself off a courthouse toilet with an Italian revolver that didn’t have modern safety features; he sat down with the revolver in his pants pocket, and the gun fired a round into his leg when it hit the floor. Maybe that kind of thing could happen with the revolver Baldwin used, but everyone agrees the gun was in his hand when the shooting occurred.

Either Baldwin pulled the trigger, or he caught the hammer on something, or the gun had a magical defect that somehow allowed it to fire by itself.

It doesn’t matter. Even if the gun shot itself, which didn’t happen, Baldwin was negligent.

When someone hands you a gun, you have an obligation to make sure it isn’t loaded, even if you’re a Tinseltown big shot and your armorer and assistant director and an assortment of other employees and toadies have told you the gun is clear. Then you have to treat it as though it were loaded anyway. You have a duty not to point it at anyone. You have a duty to make sure no one is downrange where they might be hit, even if you’re not pointing it at them deliberately. Baldwin violated all these rules even if he didn’t pull the trigger. That makes him negligent, and negligence is all it takes for him to be found guilty.

His lawyer must be an imbecile. Either that, or he doesn’t have one. Or he has one, but he doesn’t listen to him. No lawyer with enough brains to fill a shot glass would let Baldwin do an interview before trial.

Baldwin hasn’t said anything that would indicate innocence, but he has said enough to prove he was negligent in relying on other people to make the gun safe. He has also said a lot of things that will make him very unpopular in his industry, among people he will need to work with in the future.

Pietta’s owner’s manuals contain the rules of firearms safety. Look:

ALWAYS carry revolvers with the hammer down on an empty chamber to prevent accidental discharges caused by a blow to the hammer or with the hammer set on the proper safety position.

More:

ALWAYS handle and treat your gun as if it were loaded so you never fire it accidentally when you think it is unloaded. NEVER think it is unloaded.

NEVER take anyone’s word it is unloaded. ALWAYS check it yourself with your fingers off the trigger and the gun pointed in a safe direction at all times, including while loading.

More:

NEVER keep or carry any revolver with the hammer cocked. Cocking the gun or pulling the trigger should only be done when you are ready to shoot immediately.

More:

ALWAYS leave your fingers out of the trigger until you start firing. Note: safety devices on guns are extras and do not subsitute for safe handling.

More:

NEVER perch the gun on the half-cock notch as it may fall and discharge, causing damage to property, injury or death. The half-cock position provides only partial security from accidental discharges. If damaged or modified it provides NO safety. NEVER depend on the device to prevent accidental discharge.

More:

ALWAYS keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction. This way, if it fires accidentally, personal injury, death or damage to property can be prevented. This is especially important when loading and unloading your gun. NEVER let the muzzle of the firearm point at any part of your body or at another person or at anything you do not intend to shoot, even if you think it is unloaded. ALWAYS be certain of your target before firing.

More:

ALWAYS unload all firearms when not in use. NEVER store or transport a loaded firearm.

More:

Keep all persons nearby to the rear of the shooter. Standing beside or in front of the shooter is not safe. Flames, hot gases and fragments might fly from the side of the gun causing serious injury.

If you have any doubts about your ability to handle or use this gun safely DO NOT handle or use this gun. You must seek supervised instruction before doing so.

If the DA and the lawyers representing the people suing Baldwin have any idea what they’re doing, they’ll show the jury the owner’s manual. It will prove Baldwin either didn’t read it or didn’t follow the instructions.

What does the manual say? It says, “NEVER take anyone’s word it is unloaded. ALWAYS check it yourself.”

“Mr. Baldwin, here is the owner’s manual for the gun you purchased. Could you read the highlighted passage, please?”

Baldwin ought to be quiet instead of giving prosecutors and Gloria Allred rope to hang him with. I can’t understand why he would behave so foolishly. I guess he’s so spoiled he can’t believe anyone would charge THE Alec Baldwin with a crime.

My opinion is that the DA will charge him, if not because he’s guilty, then because he’s being sued civilly. Imagine how bad the DA will look if Gloria Allred proves he’s guilty after he is spared criminal prosecution. I doubt she wants that on her record.

Typically, people care much more about themselves than they do about their duties. Unless the DA is unusual, she will not care much about the injustice of letting a guilty man skate, but she will be highly disturbed by the prospect of having her reputation stained.

It’s amazing how many stupid legal opinions I’ve seen since the shooting occurred. This is not a hard case to understand, even for a typical district attorney private-sector firms didn’t find appealing enough to hire. It’s about as simple as it gets.

Baldwin will have to prove his innocence, and he can’t. A lot of people think a defendant never has to prove anything, but that’s because they’re ignorant. When a prosecutor shows you shot someone with a gun you didn’t check, you have to come up with justification, and Baldwin can’t, because he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

The presumption of innocence is swell, but it goes away once the prosecution makes a strong case against you. After that, the burden of proof is all yours.

If Baldwin isn’t charged, it will be for one of two reasons: the DA crumpled because he’s THE Alec Baldwin, or some astounding set of facts which is completely unforeseeable at this time materializes from nothingness.

I don’t know what kind of sentence he would get, but the maximum is a $5000 fine and 18 months in prison, and I assume New Mexico gives people a lot of time off when they cooperate. It’s not a life-destroying prosecution. Who knows? They might let him plead to a misdemeanor so he won’t be a convicted felon. I don’t know the customs of New Mexico prosecutors, but in Florida, my former pastor raped a little girl over and over and only served a couple of years. Sometimes maximum sentences mean almost nothing.

I am getting more merciful in my old age, and I don’t like to see anyone convicted, but it would be nice to see Baldwin stop making excuses and stabbing other people in the back. I would understand completely if he said nothing, but using your less-powerful employees as human shields is not becoming. It’s like jumping behind your wife during a mugging.

My prediction: a charge or charges will be filed. How severe the penalty will be, I am not qualified to guess. As for the civil cases, people will get paid, and there will be no trial unless someone is really greedy. The money will come from insurers, not Baldwin or his associates, and insurers love to settle.

Heavenly White Bread for Bad Cooks

Yesterday I wrote a piece about British actor John Cleese, saying how disappointed I was in him. I used to think he was something more than a good comic actor, but gradually I realized he wasn’t a great screenwriter or a particularly witty or smart person. He tweeted something pretty asinine about the Rittenhouse case, and I felt like responding.

I took the piece down. I felt it was just too crabby.

Today I feel like making amends. I’ll post a recipe for the most delicious white bread imaginable. It’s very easy to make. I like it better than croissants, baguettes, and, well, anything. The recipe will produce a loaf of rich, moist bread you’ll have a hard time staying away from.

It’s similar to white bread I’ve made in the past, but it’s better.

INGREDIENTS

520 g bread flour
1.5 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. instant yeast
2 tbsp. sugar
4 tbsp. butter
310 g warm water
1/2 tsp. diastatic malt extract (Amazon)

Blend the dry things first in the food processor. Then blend in the water until the dough is well mixed. Maybe 20 seconds. Wait 10 minutes. Blend in butter (softening in advance will speed this up). Butter a bread pan after salting the butter.

Form a loaf and put it in the pan. Butter it with more salted butter. Bake about 30 minutes at 440°.

You will have to watch the top of the loaf. If it browns too fast, you can put something between the bread and the upper heating element.

I use steel nonstick pans. Nothing fancy.

The bread will come out with a delicious, salty, buttery crust. If you cut it while it’s too hot, you may crush the inside of it. It gets firmer as it cools. It’s best to use a very sharp serrated knife and move it back and forth very fast while you cut, making sure you’re cutting instead of pushing the knife down through the bread. Light pressure is key.

If you have no shame at all, make this bread and prepare a lot of preserves and soft butter. Eat it while it’s hot. It’s decadent. You can have it with hot chocolate or tea with lots of milk and sugar.

When it cools, it makes an excellent sandwich bread. It’s also a good foundation for Texas toast. You just salt a slice, dip both sides in garlic butter, and brown it in a skillet.

This bread is a godsend for bad bakers. It’s hard to mess up. If you can breathe, you can make this bread.

You will need a big, powerful food processor to mix this much dough. If that’s a problem, you can always use a mixer or your hands, but don’t knead it too much, because you’ll get tiny, uniform bubbles like the ones in Wonder Bread.

I ordered myself some miniature bread pans. I like homemade bread, but I can’t deal with big loaves. They sit on the counter and taunt me until I eat them. Small loaves are much less dangerous. I haven’t tried one yet, but I’m hoping they will be better than big loaves because of the high crust-to-insides ratio. I think this recipe would make better dinner rolls than anything I’ve tried, but I’m just guessing.

This isn’t Happening

The wife and I are riding out another wave. The Xi Omicron variant is threatening to keep her in Zambia.

The name of the variant is one of the most interesting things about it. As you probably know, right-wing morons and conspiracy nuts have suggested coronavirus is a politicized disease. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s purely coincidental that the World Health Organization went through the Greek alphabet and chose the letter omicron, skipping the designation Xi, which JUST HAPPENS TO BE THE NAME OF CHINA’S SLEAZY PREMIER.

Personally, I call him Chi Penguin. Don’t ask me why.

Yes, when you’re concerned about the perception that wealthy, corrupt nations and business leaders are controlling the flow of information and spinning things so severely no one really knows what’s happening, the best way to build trust is to show you’re terrified of offending a slimy despot who is responsible for organ harvesting, slave labor, forced abortions, political censorship, political imprisonments, and the spread of coronavirus to the rest of the world.

I guess it’s a good thing the Greek alphabet doesn’t contain a letter called Joe.

As of this minute, several developed nations have banned travel from countries in southern Africa, where the virus was first detected. Zambia, miraculously, has been spared so far. Only the UK has banned Zambians, which is okay, because who in his right mind wants to visit England in the winter?

Rhodah and I are hoping for France and the Netherlands. I believe we just lost the Netherlands, but France still has not surrendered. Uncharacteristically.

I preferred to stay in France anyway, but Rhodah is still in that stage of life where she wants to cram as many countries as possible into every trip.

South Africans are mad because they’ve been banned. They say they’re being punished for discovering the variant, which was actually found first in a person from Botswana. They say it makes no sense for covid infernos like the UK to ban South Africans, who currently live in a not-too-disastrous covid area.

They seem to be upset because of the stigma as well. With regard to that, I think they’re whiners. Getting your lingerie in a knot over the fear that other countries may think a disease variant started in your country is silly. They start where they start. The Spanish flu started in the United States. Doesn’t bother me if people say so. I have to admit, though, we must have had a good PR team, hanging the pandemic around the neck of a country 3000 miles away.

At first, I thought Omicron was a bad thing, but now I’m wondering if it’s really a blessing. To the world, I mean. Not me and the wife. For us, it’s a royal pain.

Dr. Angelique Coetzee, the lady who informed South Africa’s government about the existence of Omicron, says every case she has seen has been very mild. I’m no epidemiologist, but…what if this is a milder variant that displaces the one that suffocates people?

What if Omicron infects a big percentage of the world, makes very few people seriously ill, and enhances their immunity to real coronavirus? That would be pretty cool, by 2021’s admittedly pathetic standards.

Edward Jenner, the man who first vaccinated people against smallpox, and who, as far as we know, never had his genitalia sliced off or insisted people pretend he was a woman, found that if he infected people with the mild illness cowpox, they became immune to smallpox. He found this out using a brilliant strategy. He infected a lower-class 8-year-old boy with cowpox, waited until he recovered, and exposed him to smallpox. The boy didn’t die, so they probably gave him a dose of the belt and put him back to work in the arsenic mine.

I guess guinea pigs were expensive back then. No use wasting money.

It would be nice if Omicron circled the globe and made us all resistant to real covid. That would be better than killing millions of us and making our vaccines look even sillier than they do right now.

Where will we go if France doesn’t work out? Turkey is still on the table, as one might expect two days after Thanksgiving, and because the lira is worth about as much as a MAGA hat in Detroit, everything in Turkey is very cheap.

Mexico is a possibility, but I am still detoxing after many years in Miami, and Mexico might activate my PTSD. If Miami is smallpox, Mexico must be cowpox.

I really don’t want to go to the Bahamas. If you don’t want to sit on the beach, fish, get drunk, or engage ladies of easy virtue, a Bahamas vacation basically amounts to 10 days of room service in a badly-cleaned room, cooked by some of the least-enthusiastic hospitality employees since The Shining. The people on some islands are nice, but we would probably have to go to Nassau, where I always got the impression that when restaurant and hotel workers saw me and my wallet walk in to pay their bills, it ruined their day.

When I was in Nassau, staying in a marina on PI, the whole area smelled like poop, flies were a big problem, and it was not unusual to see large pieces of excrement floating by with the tide. Trying to get people to wait on me made me feel like Patrick Swayze in Ghost.

All this being said, I would go almost anywhere to be united with my bride. Well. Not Miami. Not until I’ve ruled out destinations like Somalia, Antarctica, Pyongyang, and the active crater on La Palma.

Today I thought about visiting Zambia. The problem with that, apart from the obvious fact that I would be in Zambia, is that our president’s advisors or his certified nursing assistant might tell him to ban flights from Zambia, and then I would be stuck there until Kamala Harris, AKA The Girl with Colonoscope Eyes, took over and revisited America’s paranoia settings.

Here’s hoping that through Omicron, our kind and patient God accomplishes what man hasn’t been able to do in two years: flattening the curve.

No Comment

It looks like Youtube is deleting my comments. I knew they deleted videos, but I didn’t realize comments were on the beast’s radar.

I watched a video by an obscure Christian. His stuff typically gets a few dozen views. He was talking about coronavirus, which he chose not to call by name.

CORONAVIRUS CORONAVIRUS CORONAVIRUS. CHINESE VIRUS. CHINESE VIRUS. CHINESE VIRUS. KUNG FLU. KUNG FLU. KUNG FLU.

I just felt like saying those things on a site Youtube doesn’t control. I’m sure the beasty boys will delete this blog eventually, however.

Is Youtube using speech-to-text software to check videos for the word “coronavirus”? Wouldn’t be surprising. Speech-to-text should be a gigantic concern for people who love freedom, but for some reason, it is not. Speech-to-text allows our slavedrivers to have machines go through all our digital audio, turn it into text, identify things they don’t like, and allow our words to be used to turn us into unpersons.

Yes, I am still reading 1984.

Speech-to-text has a horrifying potential for abuse, yet conservatives don’t even talk about it as an issue! How can that be? It’s so obvious.

Anyway, I wrote a comment pointing out that Christian African nations had astoundingly low covid rates (in the area of 10 cases per day per nation) and noting that the blessed countries were did better than “gay-friendly”nations like South Africa, which has a big covid problem. Later on, I looked for my comment. The video’s stats still said there had been three comments, but mine was hidden. The creator didn’t do it.

We have a new variant and a new game. The variant is called “Omicron,” or, by some sources, “Nu,” because we haven’t run out of Greek letters yet. It has been found in South Africa, Botswana, Israel, and Hong Kong. For some reason, scientists suspect it developed in an immunocompromised person. It has lots of mutations, so it may render vaccines even less effective than they are now. They’re saying it’s likely it was an AIDS patient in South Africa.

This is all fascinating to me.

Covid seems to spare Christian African countries where the consensus is that God is against homosexuality, and here we are, looking at a new bug science thinks may have from from a person infected with a disease that required homosexuality in order to spread around the world. Anyone can get HIV, but virtually everyone who is infected is a homosexual man, a woman who had sex with a homosexual man, or an intravenous drug user (whose infection has a homosexual man in its lineage). It’s almost impossible for a heterosexual man to get it through normal sex. Were it not for sodomy, AIDS would never have left the place where it arose.

Given that all this is true, is it possible these two plagues will turn out to work together to create a genuine catastrophe? That would certainly reinforce the idea that sexual perversion is one of the things for which God is punishing the world.

Talking about plagues related to sin will get you relegated to the kook bin in a hurry these days. Most Americans are either non-Christians or nominal Christians, so they don’t believe in plagues.

Nominal Christians are remarkable. They claim to worship someone who said almost nothing they agree with! Among their patently non-Christian beliefs: all religions lead to God, everyone goes to heaven, hell doesn’t exist, Satan doesn’t exist, and miracles don’t happen. Believing things like these and calling yourself a Christian stretches the envelope of cognitive dissonance.

To believe these things, you have to believe Jesus was wrong. He contradicted these beliefs many times. To be a Christian, you have to believe Jesus is God. You can’t believe Jesus is God and think he’s wrong!

If you think God is wrong, especially about critical issues, you have a pretty funny definition of the word “god.” A god who lies or suffers from major delusions is no god. Worshiping such a god would be like worshiping a mental patient who runs around claiming to be Genghis Khan or even a Waldorf salad.

One of the weirdest nominal-Christian beliefs is that Satan and hell don’t exist. Jesus went on and on about Satan and hell. He claimed he met Satan personally. If you think you’re a Christian, and you think Satan and hell don’t exist, you must also think Jesus was deranged.

Female nominal Christians are especially likely to say Satan and hell don’t exist. Their reasoning? “God is love!” So in their view, God is love, but he lied about Satan and hell, or some kind of mental illness or fraudulent argument convinced him, falsely, that they existed.

If God is wrong about Satan and hell, why do you think he’s right about anything else? Why believe him when he says he is love?

Actual Christians know two things: plagues existed in Biblical times, and they will occur at the end of the age. The Bible describes all sorts of ancient plagues, including plagues of hemorrhoids and snakes. It also says pestilence will hit the earth as part of the apocalypse. That means plagues aren’t just for the ancients. If God could send a plague to David, he can send one to us today.

In short, pestilence is still caused by sin. Every bad thing is caused by sin. There has to be a relationship between coronavirus and sin. People and animals reward good with evil, but God does not. We are not good. We deserve hell, so we certainly deserve coronavirus.

Overall, countries that promote homosexuality seem to be getting hit harder than others. Islamic countries and countries that oppose Israel aren’t doing well. Christian countries where leaders called for national days of prayer seem to be faring conspicuously better than most.

There are countries that don’t fit these patterns. My impression is that most do well because they turn their citizens into prisoners. Imprisonment is also a curse, so they’re still suffering.

Israel has not done well. Per capita, its case numbers are about like Florida’s, although the death rate is a lot lower. The Orthodox got hit very hard, suggesting their religion isn’t helping them get divine assistance.

It’s not possible to say this many people got infected in this place because of this sin, or that many people got infected in that place because of that sin, and the patterns are not rigid, but the trends are undeniable.

The world’s nations should be turning to Jesus, confessing their sins to him, repenting, receiving salvation, and praying. These actions would solve the problem, along with humanity’s other problems. It’s not going to happen. The human race thinks disease is a random thing that hits the just along with the unjust.

I didn’t think covid was a big deal when it showed up in 2020. I underestimated the US death toll (which may be grossly overblown due to financial and political incentives). I thought it could become a major problem, though, given the possibility of mutations. That hasn’t happened yet, but the Omicron variant might be the beginning of a true plague.

Some scientists are concerned that the new variant could be 500 times as contagious as the old ones, and that vaccines may not deter it. Wouldn’t that be something? If it’s already loose in a bunch of countries, they’re not going to stop the spread, any more than they stopped the original virus. Are we headed for a huge pestilential iceberg?

I believe there are only two possibilities. Either humanity will turn to Jesus (not just “God”) and get help, or the disease will run a course determined by God, and that course might include a never-ending pandemic that continues mutating as long as mankind exists.

In the Bible, some plagues were limited by God regardless of how people responded, and others continued unabated until people repented and prayed. We don’t know which kind covid is.

We already have punishment diseases we can’t get rid of. We can’t get rid of AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, or herpes. It shouldn’t be a surprise to receive a new one. The big difference is that covid is much easier to transmit and affects more people.

Youtube is tightening its coils. That’s the main thing I wanted to point out. The journey to unpersonhood is well underway for genuine Christians. Satan and his children don’t want God’s children or his help. They would rather stumble around in the dark, relying on science, than change their attitudes or their behavior.

I just put a test comment up on one of my own videos. I want to see what Youtube does.

Interesting thing: Youtube tolerates a user named “Deport the Jews,” and a video about an anti-Semitic black celebrity claiming blacks are the real Jews has lots of comments like this one: “The truth is so hurtful to Satan’s children.”

The other day I speculated that God was deliberately humiliating scientists because they worship a false god. I didn’t go far enough. People also worship government. They’re not just relying on shots and distancing, which were given to us by science. They’re relying on government coercion. God is humiliating man for worshiping himself. That’s why the virus keeps defying man’s reason. It doesn’t matter whether the measures we take make sense. Even if they do, the pandemic will be here as long as God wills it.

By writing this blog, I have destroyed any future hope I had of fitting in with the combine’s thralls. I have set myself up for arrest, imprisonment, violence, impoverishment, and execution. Many millions of other people are in the same boat. The Internet doesn’t forget, and the beast’s children don’t forgive.

Hope I’m right about the rapture. Reading 1984 is fun, but I don’t want to live it.

MORE

Busted.

I went to a couple of videos and posted comments I thought Youtube would not like. They vanished quickly. It’s confirmed. Youtube is killing free discourse. Not a big surprise.

I read that it was not possible to comment on BLM violence or terror, so I wrote a comment saying it was unfortunate BLM’s violence and terrorism were being used to displace repentance. Not a racist comment. Not misinformation. What I wrote was completely true, and it was a valuable contribution to public discussion. It expressed important ideas.

Doesn’t matter. Youtube hates free speech, so my comment is gone. Meanwhile, “Deport the Jews” still has an account.

Have Fun Making Your Elders Miserable

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all, and please remember: today we celebrate genocide, white privilege, colonialism, and the cruel consumption of meat.

This is the day when families all across America will get together to eat canned cranberry sauce and curse at relatives who voted for Donald Trump. It used to be about loving each other and thanking God, but we have evolved.

Today I glanced at the news and saw that leftist media outlets were including helpful edwokational mini-lectures with their Thanksgiving articles and recipes. Nothing makes yams taste better than feeling you are personally responsible for the deaths of countless little brown people.

What is there left that leftism can’t ruin? It even ruins leftism. They take over countries and turn them into elite-ruled concentration camps where everyone is afraid of each other.

I saw so much startling news today, I felt bad for saying there wasn’t much yesterday.

Let’s see. The article about how Thanksgiving is a celebration of hate came first. I also saw that a Catholic university let a campus organization put up a painting of an African Mary cuddling a George Floyd Jesus. That was simultaneously disconcerting and entertaining. I had no idea George Floyd had done so much for humanity.

I saw an article about a school system that insists on putting books that are essentially gay and pedophile porn on its shelves. Did I wake up in a movie? Can this be real? Or was I wrong to think it was possible to educate children without providing them with erotic homosexual fiction?

Another article says the mass killer Darrell Brooks, who murdered 6 people and injured dozens in a few seconds, was granted bail. Bail! A man who calls himself a terrorist, who is unquestionably guilty, and who has tremendous incentive to flee!

He’s already a proven bail-jumper. Hello?

“It’s just like Kyle Rittenhouse.” No, not even close. One of the considerations a judge makes when granting bail is the likelihood of conviction. The evidence in the Rittenhouse case supported acquittal, not conviction, even at the start. Brooks is just plain guilty. Even major leftist news outlets are omitting “alleged” from their stories. This guy is never going to sue anyone for defamation. Not even Gloria Allred would go there.

His bail is set at $5 million, which is actually attainable in the era of crowdfunding. The only question is whether other racists and terrorists will be generous enough to help. Someone had the gall to put up a Gofundme page asking for bail money. Even leftist-controlled Gofundme wasn’t having that.

Another great story: the Levis company, a leftist organization that makes expensive low-quality jeans that fall apart in a hurry, whose management discourages people from washing their smelly worn clothing, has provided facilities to help employees who have been “traumatized” by the Rittenhouse verdict.

They’re afraid their snowflaky minions are so allergic to truth that they require psychological treatment in order to heal scars caused by the acquittal of a man who was always clearly innocent. Imagine what would happen to one of these sissies if something that was actually bad happened to him.

We also have a new strain of covid. Huzzah! Somehow, it has appeared in two places that are very far apart: South Africa and Hong Kong. Scientists are afraid it will spread fast and overcome vaccines. They speculate that it developed in a person with HIV; apparently, such people get chronic covid, and that somehow increases the likelihood of mutation.

Coronavirus and HIV live together in perfect harmony…it’s like the old song. It’s a synergy we did not need.

South Africa is a gay-friendly oasis for coronavirus. “For,” not “from.” South Africa is surrounded by Christian nations where covid is basically gone. Coronavirus is treated badly in places like Zambia and Tanzania, but South Africa gives it a warm refuge.

It would really be something if it turned out sodomy was somehow turning out to make the pandemic worse. Like we needed more evidence that covid is a supernatural plague.

I wouldn’t worry. If it turns out to be true, any scientist who suggests it will be burned at the stake before the information has any impact. I doubt we have to be concerned about troubling stories. We’ll probably go on in blissful ignorance, wondering how such an awful disease happened to our wonderful, innocent race.

These days, all science news has to pass through a filter. Every mainstream disseminator has to ask, “Would Karl Marx kill this story?”

One more story comes to mind, but I read it last night, not today. A gang of black kids on dirt bikes attacked an old man in Boston, ruined his car, and beat him until he had to be hospitalized.

This story was disappointing for several reasons. First, it was probably “revenge” for a just acquittal. Second, it showed that mob crime is gaining traction. Third, it was remarkable in that it covered a long-existing phenomenon the MSM will not discuss.

Black males on illegal dirt bikes have been wreaking havoc in cities for years. You probably didn’t know that, because it’s something Karl Marx wouldn’t want printed.

As readers know, I mentored Travis Quinn, a young black man who was attending the University of Miami. He told me things most white people don’t get to hear. He said Martin Luther King Day was extremely dangerous. People waited for MLK Day to settle grudges and even kill others; they knew law enforcement was always lax on that day. He said his father used to stay home and arm himself on MLK Day. He said gangs of black males on dirt bikes celebrated by zipping around ghetto neighborhoods committing crimes.

This was a black man telling me this. A Kaepernick fan. I didn’t hear it from Dan Bongino or Sean Hannity.

A dirt bike is very empowering for a criminal. Dirt bikes don’t have license plates and they are extremely mobile. A gang of men on dirt bikes can’t be chased or identified. Dirt bikes are also much cheaper than street bikes.

It may be that dirt bike criminals are figuring out they don’t have to confine their activities to ghettos. That will be bad for the rest of us. In a world where dirt bike gangs run around lynching people, citizens will have strong motivation to keep rifles in their cars. A Glock 17 is not adequate when several dozen racist assailants surround you. We may end up with states where keeping an AK or AR on board is a popular and wise option.

We could see a lot more Rittenhouses created, or we could see a tide of dead non-black bodies, or both.

Black neighborhoods typically punish people who inform, and the police have longstanding practices of letting crimes go investigated and unpunished in these places. The authorities have been afraid of being called racist, and they probably thought black crime wasn’t a big deal unless it escaped into majority areas. Journalists suppressed the news about dirt bike gangs. Now we see what happens when we let crime fester.

God bless America. What a country.

I was praying last night, and as usual, I asked God to rapture his people quickly. This planet is outliving its usefulness. I was thinking about sudden freedom from hate, disease, and lack. I was picturing a world free of horrible suffering, which is what we have always had. I had the idea that God would be as relieved as rapturees were. Then it occurred to me that I wasn’t thinking about the tribulation.

When the rapture comes, the world’s problems won’t go away. They’ll get much, much worse. People and animals will suffer a lot more than they do now, and it will go on for years while rapturees are enjoying a party in heaven, secure in the knowledge that they will never have problems again.

I still want the rapture to come soon, but thoughts of the tribulation take some of the shine off of it.

I am still reading 1984, going through a chapter or two per night. Last night, I got a new revelation of the similarity between the outlook of characters in the book and people living in 2021.

The lovers the book is about are named Winston and Julia. They both hate the authoritarian state. They find it ridiculous. They consider its doctrines lies. They are forced to pretend they are rabid supporters of the Party, but inside their own minds, they have created refuges of sanity and rebellion. The Party can’t touch those refuges at first.

Winston and Julia know they will be caught, because the Party catches everyone who disagrees with it. They know they will be arrested, tortured, released, rearrested, forced to make false confessions, and executed. They know there is no possibility a resistance movement will change society and save them.

I realized Rhodah and I are like Winston and Julia. Things are going well for us now, but we live in a deranged world where we can’t have the kind of future we want. The American Dream is no longer possible. We may be able to have kids and live well for a while, but our family’s lives will never be normal, and America will get crazier and crazier, assuring people like us never fit in. Sooner or later, if we remain here long enough, the Thought Police of modern America will breach our refuge and “correct” us.

Perverts, POC racists, statists, and pagans will get more and more powerful, as will foreign enemies. Freedom will disappear even more completely than it already has. The Constitution, if it still exists, will mean nothing. We will be expected to become part of an electronically-curated global hive being; a disgusting, computer-tamed artificial family that shuts God out.

Winston and Julia were waiting for something. They were waiting for the Thought Police to discover them and bring about the inevitable: defeat. Rhodah and I are different. We live in victory, so we are waiting for deliverance. Both couples are subject to alienation, persecution, and rejection, but one is guaranteed an escape followed by glorious eternal life in God’s presence, while the other is guaranteed torture, humiliation, loss of self, death, and erasure from history.

Winston and Julia give me an insight into the grey, mildewed minds of people who don’t know God and fear death. Orwell’s lovers hate their lives, but they have no reason to anticipate anything better. They are cynical and carnal. They think fornication has value because it lets them rebel briefly and forget about the Party. Julia revels in her sluttiness, saying the men she has had may run to three figures. Winston fantasizes about spreading syphilis to the ruling class. That appeals to him as a legacy.

They’re like Satan himself. He knows he will spend eternity in agony, humiliated, surrounded by beings that hate him, so his only pleasure comes from fighting the system. Satan can’t build a future for himself, so he finds pleasure in destroying the futures of others.

Here in the real world, not every godless person hates life. Many get what they want here on Earth, at least for a fleeting moment. But they tend to be cynical and, in the long view, hopeless.

That’s why they love phrases like “bucket list,” “best life,” and “YOLO.”

I feel that God led me to read the book, to show me how different my experience is from that of a person who thinks the supernatural doesn’t exist. The sad thing is that those people are denying the existence of something other people know to be real. Know, not just believe.

People reject sound, credible testimony from reliable individuals because they’re in love with homosexuality, fornication, marijuana, or something else God won’t let them have, or sometimes because they’re angry at God because he let someone die or because bad things have happened to them. The truth is the truth, though. You have to acknowledge it and act on it. Not liking it won’t change it, and if you don’t accept it, there will be terrible consequences.

Laymen and Their Brilliant Legal Opinions

Today’s disturbing evidence that Americans are subject to supernatural deception: leftists are saying the Rittenhouse verdicts set dangerous precedent.

We keep saying “verdict,” but there were a bunch of verdicts.

Leftists are claiming that as a result of the verdicts, it will now be relatively easy for conservative gunmen to go out in public carrying rifles and shoot whomever they want. Antifers are encouraging each other to buy guns and take them to riots or protests or whatever you choose to call them. The excuse is that they now face hordes of charged-up Rittenhouse clones who think they can’t be prosecuted.

Is there any point in writing about this idiocy? No one will be convinced by what I write, even though I will write truths that are self-evident. You will agree with me if you’re a reasonable person who agreed with me before reading this. Otherwise, there is very little hope the thick bone of your skull can be breached.

Here I go.

The Rittenhouse homicide verdicts did not set precedent of any kind.

In order for a case to set precedent, there has to be something novel about it. It has to change the law, usually by answering some question that hadn’t been answered in the past.

In order for precedent to be binding on a court, it has to be binding within the jurisdiction of whatever court it answers to. For example, let’s say a Florida state court in the Third Judicial District decides it’s illegal to put margarine on waffles, as it should be. Other judges in the same district, or even the same judge, can ignore the decision in other cases. A court in the Fourth Judicial District can ignore it. The Third District Court of Appeal can ignore or reverse it. A court in another state can ignore it. Federal courts can generally ignore it, although sometimes federal courts have to apply state law, and I don’t want to get into that subject, because I would have to Google. In jurisdictions where the decision is not binding, at best, it will be considered “persuasive.”

Rittenhouse was acquitted in the Kenosha County Circuit Court in Wisconsin. There are courts of appeal above the county circuit courts, and there are other circuits. There is no reason to think other Wisconsin circuits would automatically respect a Kenosha County decision, unless Wisconsin laws are peculiar. There is no reason to think the appellate courts or supreme court would feel bound. The federal courts in the area certainly would not, nor would any court outside of Wisconsin.

Actually, I believe Wisconsin courts are famous for decisions intended to curtail the use of margarine. But I digress.

In short, Kenosha County precedent isn’t precedent anywhere else.

Also dispositive: juries can’t set precedent. A precedent is a ruling of law. Juries don’t make those. They look at evidence, compare it with jury instructions, and decide whether the evidence and instructions match up. Jurors are not competent to make legal rulings. No one expects them to. The Rittenhouse verdicts were findings of fact, not law, delivered by a jury, not a judge.

Finally, the Rittenhouse case didn’t change the law surrounding self-defense. There was nothing novel or interesting about it, apart from egregious prosecutorial misconduct. It was cut-and-dried. A young man shot someone who tried to grab his rifle after chasing him down, on the same night the assailant threatened to kill the young man and cut his heart out. An armed mob tried to lynch the victim, and the victim shot some more attackers. Self-defense. Simple. What Rittenhouse did–using deadly force to defend himself, I mean–was legal in every state. It was legal in 1950. It was legal in 1900. Nothing new.

It would have been legal even if the mob had not been armed. There is no jurisdiction in which you are required to let a mob beat you instead of using deadly force.

If you’re a leftist, look at it this way. Imagine Kid Rock, George Zimmerman, Donald Trump Jr., James Woods, and 75 Proud Boys, all unarmed, chased Lil Nas X down and started beating him, and he shot some of them and ran off. Would you have a problem with his actions? Would you seriously complain that an armed gunman had shot unarmed protestors? You would think no one would be stupid enough to blame the victim.

The only interesting legal ruling in the case involved the judge’s refusal to try to enforce Wisconsin’s confusing law regarding minors and weapons. That ruling didn’t save Rittenhouse from a murder conviction, however. It was a separate issue, and the best leftists could have hoped for was a misdemeanor conviction, most likely followed by probation and, eventually, expungement.

So:

1. A Kenosha County Circuit Court ruling of law is not precedent, even in the Kenosha County Circuit Court.

2. A jury rendered the verdicts, and juries can’t set precedent.

3. No novel rulings were made with regard to the Rittenhouse homicide charges.

In other words, the Rittenhouse judge did nothing to make it easier or harder to shoot people.

Apart from the law regarding minors and weapons, which carries a misdemeanor penalty, and which will probably be revisited by the legislature in the aftermath of the judge’s refusal to enforce it, nothing will change.

The conclusions I’ve presented are not wild opinions. They represent centuries of well-settled law. They are irrefutable. They’re about as debatable as a statement that people who work in courthouse doughnut kiosks can’t rule on objections.

It’s really something, seeing leftists stand up for blatant, unquestionable prosecutorial misconduct. When did that become a leftist position? Aren’t they the people who fought for Miranda rights and free public defenders? Aren’t their chosen officials turning thieves loose right now in California and New York?

For centuries, leftists have been telling us the police and courts have to go easier on suspects and defendants and do more to protect their rights. The Bill of Rights is a leftist document. It was written by men who didn’t like all-powerful kings and their prosecutors. Now, suddenly, it’s a good thing when prosecutors run their ethics and their souls through the garbage disposal in order to convict the innocent.

I will never convince anyone, regardless of how obvious the truth is.

What I write here will never establish precedent in anyone’s mind.

Leftists have supported kangaroo courts in the USSR, China, and just about every other socialist country, so I should not be shocked.

The blindness we are seeing now is willful, and it is extreme. It should be impossible for so many Americans to believe things which are clearly, demonstrably untrue, and which have been proven untrue repeatedly all over the web and on global television. The only plausible explanation is that we are duped by evil spirits because most of us don’t know the Spirit of Holiness, who is the one in charge of opening eyes to reason.

Lately, I have been working on prophesying. You could say I’ve been practicing it. It has been getting easier and more fluent.

Sometimes I get angry when I read the news, and I feel like typing comments or fuming in private. I have to forgive people over and over and think about my own sins. I find that when I spend a long time praying in tongues and prophesying, the anger disappears, as does my interest in the news.

For years, I’ve been saying the Internet was going to be the Antichrist’s counterfeit version of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit unites God’s children and teaches them all exactly the same things. He brings peace and harmony by ending disagreement. He cleanses us of evil emotions and thoughts. He also commands us like an army. On the other hand, the Internet fills us with anger and disinformation. It gives different people different versions of facts. It spreads pornography. It encourages us to hate each other. It is being used to command mobs to do evil.

Yesterday I realized it made sense that prophesying and praying in tongues made things better. Doing these things is like surfing God’s Internet. We spend too much time on the web, absorbing filth, and not enough time being cleansed, informed, and refreshed.

I believe my experiences with tongues and prophecy confirm what God told me about the Internet and the Antichrist. There is always symmetry in the supernatural, because Satan has no original ideas. He has to copy God. He can’t create anything like the Holy Spirit, so he made a fake out of chips, screens, and wires.

If surfing Satan’s counterfeit causes problems, you would expect having the Holy Spirit flow through you to fix problems.

One thing I keep hearing goes like this: “Don’t worry about the people who will not listen. They can’t be saved, and they have no future.” Ominous. I also heard, “I am here to reap.” I hope that was God and not my imagination.

God has told us to covet prophecy, so obviously, we are expected to receive the gift. It would make no sense for him to tell us to set our hearts on something we can’t have. After all, he says, “Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”

I hope we don’t have to wait much longer. The thought of me sitting here typing blog entries in 2055, in a world where it is nearly impossible to tell men from women, is a little too much.

Thanksgiving for One

The unthinkable has happened. I will not have guests for Thanksgiving.

Ordinarily, friends show up for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but somehow it didn’t happen this year. One bunch moved to Georgia, and another is saddled with a difficult octogenarian who requires pampering and obedience. My friend Mike was going to come, but he decided to visit his son in New Jersey. Mike is distressed, because he usually cooks a feast, and he can’t do it this year. His son works in Manhattan and has a tiny, useless apartment kitchen.

Mike made reservations at a restaurant in Times Square. Today it occurred to him there would be a parade running through it. He is not happy.

Last week I was thinking I’d just make a turkey sandwich and be done with it. I was in the store yesterday, however, and the fiends who run the place had set out rib roasts for $10 per pound. These days, that’s actually a very good price.

Feeling myself a victim of entrapment, I bought the smallest rib roast in my long history of cooking beef. Two ribs. A little over 5 pounds.

I thought I would cut a steak off of it, freeze the steak, and roast the rest, but I was afraid a 3-pound rib roast wouldn’t cook correctly, so I’m fixing the whole thing.

The butchers did an excellent job of cutting the ribs off and reattaching them with twine. Usually, I do this myself. Today I took the roast out to apply salt, butter, and garlic, and I found myself asking if the ribs really needed to be tied back on.

Time for Google.

I read that a lot of people cook rib roasts without the ribs. They claim they’re just as good, and the big advantage is that you can use twine to force your roast into a rounder shape. The bonus here is that it will cook more evenly. I decided to give it a try. Cooking experiments are best left for solo meals. Never try anything new when you’re cooking for company. You will face-plant and ruin a memory.

While I was looking at the web, I came across an idea I had heard about earlier this year. People claim the things you put on the outside of meat before you cook it do no good.

If you go to Youtube, you can find at least one video of a person “proving” marinades don’t work. They marinate one piece of meat, leave the other one alone, cook both, cut the outside off the marinated piece, and have people compare the taste. People say they can’t tell the difference. The claim is that nothing soaks in farther than 2 mm.

I asked myself if I was wasting my time, applying salt, butter, and garlic days before cooking.

I decided to grease the roast as planned.

Why did I go against THE SCIENCE? First of all, as a Youtube dissident has pointed out, you don’t throw away the outside of meat when you cook it. Multiply 2 mm by two, and you get about 3/16″ of intensely flavored meat, accounting for both sides. That’s worth the effort of marinating or seasoning.

Second thing…salt penetrates. Anyone who has ever eaten ham knows this. I’ve eaten pieces taken from huge country hams, and they were salty all the way through. If salt didn’t penetrate, it would be impossible to cure a ham.

I don’t know if the garlic will improve the inside of the meat at all, but two days of absorbing salt should make a difference. The butter and garlic will add flavor to the outside of the meat, and they will run off and collect in the broiling pan, providing stuff I can use to make gravy.

I don’t know if it was a good idea to force the meat into a round shape. It’s supposed to cook more evenly, but do I want that? Chances are good I’m getting advice from people who don’t know good food when they eat it. It’s nice when a rib roast’s cap is a little more done. I don’t know if I’ll like it as much if there is pink meat right under the surface.

They say a roast with the ribs removed will give you a tasty salt crust all over the outside, whereas leaving the ribs on prevents one side from getting crusty. I fell for this, but now I wonder if it’s true. My roast will have one side facing down while it cooks. That doesn’t sound like a good way to put a crust on it. I’ll bet it’s not much better than it would have been with the ribs on.

I’ll miss stuffing. I’m thinking maybe I should make stuffing even though I have no turkey. There is no law that says stuffing is only for poultry.

I feel obligated to make a dessert, but I don’t think I will. My best dessert is cheesecake. It’s a lot of work, it’s a calorie supernova, and after the meal, I would have enough left over for a week, making for a very fat November.

I will miss my friends, but it should be nice to have an easy Thanksgiving. Ordinarily, I have to start cooking on Monday.