Welcome Back to 1930

Am I living in a movie? Is that what’s happening? Does that explain all the astonishing and surreal events I’m witnessing?

I’ll embed a video below, featuring Candace Owens cursing Israel. She curses everyone who took part in this defensive war and in the establishment of the ceasefire.

I’ll transcribe her demonic vomit in case the video disappears. I will add some language that isn’t heard in this particular version of the video.

Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize, by the way, for the planned ethnic cleansing, that they could profit on the land and turn it into a beach town.

This is our “Never again,” okay?

This is a holocaust. The holocaust just happened. A real holocaust just happened. We will never forget this. You can tell your children what happened in Gaza. You can tell them exactly who did it. Exactly whose families were involved in this.

Their children will be cursed. Okay? You go and you play in the sand where you know that your forefathers planned to mass-murder children; you will be cursed. Every person who steps foot on that. Every family that is set to inherit what they did. They wil be cursed.

Unbelievably, she goes on to quote the Koran, an accursed book sponsored by Satan.

Here is an except from the Koran about Jesus, who is speaking as a baby to defend Mary’s honor, said, “I am the servant of God. He has given me the scripture and made me a prophet, and he has made me blessed wherever I am. God is my Lord and your Lord, so worship him.”

She was reading a message from a Muslim fan, of whom she has many now. She went on to ramble about Charlie Kirk and Catholicism.

A real Christian who knows the Holy Spirit would have said, “The Koran is not scripture, and Yeshua says he is the only way to the father. Yeshua said he existed before Abraham, and that he and God were one.” But the person who sent the quotation had also sent her money, and she kept right on going without trying to dispel his fatal delusions.

The part about “planned ethnic cleansing” is a disturbing yet typical piece of cognitive dissonance. Trump and Netanyahu planned this war? They arranged the October 7th rapes, murders, castrations, and kidnappings? How did they get Gazans to play along?

Trump pulled that miracle off so he and some Jews straight off of Nazi propaganda posters could build beachfront hotels? Seriously?

Jews don’t like the word “holocaust” because it means “sacrifice.” I suppose they don’t want to be seen as burnt offerings. They prefer “shoah,” which means “catastrophe.” I use “holocaust” because most people recognize the term, and most have no idea what “shoah” means.

I guess the Jews who were burned by the Nazis truly were burnt offerings. They were offerings to Satan, the God of Nazism. The God of Candace Owens. Anyway, I use “holocaust” for convenience.

Owens is now claiming that a justified and measured response by a perennially-victimized nation was “genocide,” even though most of the population of Gaza is just fine and the death toll figures we are hearing come from savages and liars with a proven track record of worthlessness.

The language she used about Israel and the people in the Trump admnistration who arranged the ceasefire is classic Satan. Usurp. Project. Call evil good and good evil.

If you want to know what Satan is like, read what his children say about Christians and Jews, and you’ll have a pretty good idea. Read what pagans who hate Yeshua say about God. Satan takes every truth about himself and spews it back as a lie at God, the Jews, and God’s children.

Projection is a form of insanity. It can be severe, in that a person always projects, or it can be a lesser disorder, in which a person projects selectively. My dad and my sister both had it. I think it’s caused by demons, because it’s straight out of Satan’s playbook, and it doesn’t make much sense when you try to explain it supernaturally. If I have faults and do evil, why would I think other people had the faults and did the evil?

If you want to know my sister well, get her going about me and listen to what she says. Then apply it to her. The same principle applies to Jews and their demonized enemies.

I think the best projective canard is this: “Jews cause all the problems.” That is possibly the most absurd thing ever to pass between human lips. It’s amazing God doesn’t set people on fire when they say it.

Holocaust and genocide. This is what happened to the Jews, not the savages in Gaza. The ancestors of today’s Gazans were trying to exterminate the Jews while Hitler was still a small-time crank in Austria and Germany. Gazans chant about the destruction of the Jews. They create children’s shows featuring small children pretending to murder Jews. They murder Jews all the time, and when they do, they’re proud of it. They call their parents and show them the bodies, and their parents rejoice.

See that toy in the second photo? The one with the blue legs? My son has that toy. I put it together for him yesterday, and we spent a lot of time playing with it. Imagine your baby’s toys in that room.

Curses. This is what will happen to Candace Owens, Gazans, and those who side with them. God loves the Jews even though most are in rebellion (the same could be said of Christians). He has not given up on them. If there are curses facing them, it’s because they have been stubborn with God. It is certainly not because they took reasonable steps to prevent their own extinction.

Real Christians know that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed.

Owens is cursing her own children.

Never again. This is what Jews say about the first holocaust (the prophets predict another one). It means Jews will do what it takes to make sure it will never happen again.

It makes no sense to apply this to Gazans, since they continually provoke conflict with unnecessary and appalling genocidal attacks. All the Gazans have to do to make themselves safe is to stop trying to mass-murder Jews and get rid of Israel, a nation established by God.

It’s amazing how demons have transformed Owens. Hate animates her, like an electric current animating a fresh corpse. She squirms in her chair, shows her teeth, and narrows her eyes while striving to come up with words that adequately express her deranged rage.

I always say female demoniacs have “crazy eyes.” You’ve seen this condition in people like Jasmine Crockett and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Now Candace Owens has it.

She claims she’s doing her libeling for God and the papist church, but how can that be true? She and her husband are close friends with Andrew Tate, a Muslim pimp and pornography creator. She has had Tate as a guest on her podcast, and she defends him. How do you rationalize that?

A Christian should be good to the lost, when possible. He should not have close friends who reject Yeshua, and he definitely should not be close to Muslim pimps who create and sell pornography. We are not to be unequally yoked.

Yes, Yeshua talked to drunks and prostitutes. He spoke to them as a leader, not a follower or a partner. Try and imagine him packing the Tate brothers around Israel. The very notion is asinine.

I keep telling my wife it’s like there is a disaster movie, and instead of watching it on a screen, we’re inside it. Things are happening that could not have happened even 10 years ago. They would not have been permitted by the American public.

There will be a second Jewish holocaust. I am sorry to say it, but the truth is the truth. Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Zechariah predict it. They weren’t talking about ancient events. They weren’t talking about Hitler. They were talking about the latter days. When I watch Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and their mouth-foaming followers, I know in my heart, not just my mind, that it can happen here, and it is. It’s already in the works.

I used to say Jews should move to Israel in order to avoid slaughter. Now I don’t think that will help. The word says the next holocaust will take place in Israel. Should they stay in America? I don’t think that will help, either. The next holocaust will be global, leaving only a remnant.

The only safety is in closeness to Yeshua, who will pull his children out before the tribulation gets going. This is not an option that attracts a lot of Jews.

Check out these fawning comments from Owens fans who think they’re Christians.

Alright guys,
a MOMENT OF SILENCE FOR CANDACE OWENS. Let us pray that GOD protects her of any and all evil coming up against her or that will try and destroy her good work. It’s very important that those reading this say a prayer for her. ??
We need Candace to continue doing her good work ?

Enjoy your vacation! Christ is King.

You are doing the Lord’s work. Thank you

I saw a report that evangelicals are multiplying in France. It’s supposed to be encouraging. It’s not. “Evangelical” covers all sorts of people who are demonized and on board with Owens. The only people who are saved from derangement are CHARISMATICS who spend time with the Holy Spirit every day.

It’s not enough to claim you’re charismatic. Charismatics go to hell in droves. You have to be charismatic and also spend time with God.

People claiming to be evangelicals will kill Jews, and they will also kill people like me if they can.

I can’t imagine how much God hates the sea of lies we now swim in. The truth got lost, lies took over, and what did Satan’s children do? They complained about the truth being lost and lies taking over, except they went after the people who told the truth, and they told the lies. Owens could fill the Pacific with lies all by herself. Eventually, many innocent people will die because of her lies.

Get ready for murder in the streets. The apocalypse is here. The only question is how quickly things will progress.

Regretfully, I Must Pass on the Queers for Palestine Silent Auction

Today is this family’s day of rest and prayer. No laundry, no mowing, no welding, no painting, no repairs, no business.

We expect to do what we always do on Sunday: eat at Costco. I often wonder what my high school classmates would think of that. At least two were the children of a billionaire, and many were snobs. I really look forward to those cheap pizza slices and free-refill beverages, eaten on fiberglass picnic-style tables.

I have no interest in seeing any of my classmates again. Maybe one guy, but that’s it. When I knew them, they were unhappy worldly people with poor values.

I dreamed of one of them last night. John. We were in high school together. I would say we were friends, but we weren’t. Sometimes you spend a lot of time with a person and consider him a friend, and then after you part ways, you realize you just kept company for the sake of having company.

John isn’t an awful person, but he is insecure and competitive. He is selfish. He is extremely rigid. He has never thought for himself. Whatever the herd says is right is right. He finds people who reject the herd amusing, and he feels he is better than they are. Sometimes they make him angry, just because they’re different.

I don’t think he has changed. Maybe he has. I ran into a store maybe 10 years ago, and he seemed about the same. Personable, but condescending.

I cut back on hanging around with him because I realized he was condescending and didn’t treat me as an equal. Also, he stole a girl from me, which is a huge violation of the male friendship code.

The desire for a gradual parting was probably mutual. I don’t think he liked me all that much.

In high school, friendship is like looking for a seat in the lunchroom. You go where you’re accepted, and you take the good with the bad.

I couldn’t help John in his ambitions, so I don’t think he had much motivation to be my friend.

We didn’t have much in common. I had all sorts of interests. He was just an inside-the-box guy who wanted to watch sports, go to law school, practice law, and make money. If you know John, he isn’t inviting you to his house to see his paintings. He’s not climbing mountains in Nepal. He’s not composing music or fly fishing. He probably owns less than 10 tools.

I should have dropped him sooner, but I was too much of a person-pleaser. I think I’ve gotten over that! Most people who know me would surely agree.

In the dream, I was living in the house I lived in during high school. John came to the front door, dressed in his lawyer attire minus the jacket. He wanted to show me his car, which was parked by the curb behind him.

He said it was a Charger. It was very special. It had a thousand horsepower. He wanted me to see it.

When I walked out to see it, it was across the street. I had to walk a long way. I wondered why he had moved it. It was inconsiderate.

The car became a very fancy bicycle. It had big balloon tires, and at first, it had some kind of propulsion. The tires were not attached to the bike. They had no spokes. Somehow they stayed in place and spun anyway.

He started riding through a grassy field while telling me about the bike. He never offered to let me ride it. That was like the real John. I had to jog beside him.

I said there was no way it had a thousand horsepower.

For some reason, after a while, he had to pedal, so I guess it turned into a regular bike.

My high school was about half Jewish, and some of the Jewish guys were very competitive. Most were not competitive at all. If you befriended one of the competitive ones, you couldn’t be on the same level. You had to be above or below. John was like that. They said a lot of resentful things about other Jewish guys whose families had more money. There was a lot of competition when it came to bar mitzvah gifts.

I had another competitive friend. Ken. He tried to make valedictorian, but he was caught cheating. Got into Princeton anyway. He switched to the University of Florida because they had a short program that would give him a BS and an MD in a hurry.

Ken was miserable. One of the other Jewish kids came from a family worth hundreds of millions, and he used to tell Ken he would never be worth as much as he was. It bothered him. Ken’s father died, and Ken said his father was laughing at him from the afterlife because he would never be as successful as he had been.

Ken had his MD when he shot himself at 25. Seems like he was doing just fine in terms of worldly success.

His dad was tormented, too. Lots of money, but he was always anxious, driven, and unfulfilled, and he projected it onto Ken. When Ken said he wanted to play football, his dad said, “I’ll break your hands myself.” He had decided Ken was going to be a surgeon. He didn’t want him injuring his hands.

Anyway, I live on a farm, I wear work shorts or work jeans every day, I drive a 2016 Ford, and I love taking my wife and son to Costco for lunch. I drink XO brandy; that’s true. But it’s Kirkland XO, for $48 per fifth. An amazing bargain.

I wonder what would happen if I went to a high school reunion wearing work jeans and suspenders and proceeded to be very open about myself. “I voted for Trump three times.” “I pray in tongues every day.” “I have a law license, I was very good at law, and it was easy, but I refuse to practice.” “I carry a 10mm pistol with a laser everywhere.” “I drive a tractor and cut my own trees.” “I mow my own yard.”

“My wife believes in submission to her husband.” That would go over great. Among the divorcees and spinsters. Those fulfilled modern ladies. Living their best lives.

One girl from my school went on to become the top dog at Miami’s Planned Parenthood branch. A long time ago, they sent me an invitation to a fundraiser. I tore it in half and mailed it back.

“Come on down and help us fund tearing apart babies in the womb for selfish, irresponsible sluts in the hope of reducing the black population!” No, and I don’t thank you for asking. God will judge you.

Why would anyone assume I supported abortion? Talk about a faux pas. “We went to high school together, so I just assumed you would want to come help my organization burn a cross and lynch a black man!”

I have always hated abortion, but now that I have a son, my understanding of the evil involved is much deeper. My wife and I prayed so hard that he would be born alive and without problems. We still pray for him and bless him all the time. Like all normal parents who aren’t sick in the head, we would give our lives for him without thinking. The thought of seeing his little body torn up in a pan so his mother could look better in a bathing suit or avoid suing me for child support is as horrifying as any thought I could ever have. I would much rather see myself in that condition.

Not to defend lynching, but at least some of the victims were murderers or rapists. What crime has a baby committed other than wanting to live and be loved by his parents?

I don’t have to worry about how I would be received at a reunion because I would never to back to Miami again unless I were forced by a court. I don’t even feel comfortable in Gainesville.

It’s amazing what feminism has turned mainstream Americans into. What could make a woman proud she tore her precious, helpless baby up? It comes straight from hell. God is male, period. He expects men to lead families. He never wanted us to be ruled by women; in Isaiah, it is mentioned as a curse.

Feminist brainwashing made it challenging for me to take over as a proper patriarch. I have been indoctrinated for over 50 years. It hasn’t stopped just because I overcome it. Every day, I have to dismiss it all over again.

What if God hadn’t pulled me out of it? I might be a Will Smith. A defeated cuckold with a demonized wife who humiliates me in public. A beaten father who raised an androgynous homosexual son, along with a lesbian daughter who is considerably more masculine.

No man wants to see his seed fall to the ground and rot.

My wife tells me she will be ready to go soon. She is fasting, and she wants to be at Costco when it ends.

Who can blame her?

Are You God’s Friend or his Customer?

I was praying this morning, and God showed me some things that will be extremely helpful.

My wife is always telling people that Christianity is not “transactional.” What a great way to put it. She has been trying to help an Indian friend understand this. He tells her about all the things he has done for God, and he wonders why things aren’t going better for him. She says Hinduism is transactional, and he has brought the Hindu mindset to Christianity.

Generally, around the globe, the forms of Christianity churches teach are transactional and therefore corrupt. Do this, stop doing that, and God will bless you and give you salvation.

This isn’t real Christianity. It’s the way pre-Messianic Judaism, Islam, and just about all the pagan religions work. Burn baby son alive at altar; get social credit and wealth. Cut off finger; get more help from voodoo spirits. Pay to put in football field at Catholic high school; get dad the whoremonger out of a part of hell that doesn’t really exist.

There is no one in purgatory, because it’s a fictional place, like Portland or Seattle. Oh, wait. Those places are real. It’s just hard to believe. Okay, let’s say Oz or Pandora.

Jews tell Gentiles–even Christians–they can get into heaven by obeying the seven Noahide laws, which, of course, are not in the Bible and not even a little bit valid. Transactional. Quid pro quo.

If it’s not about what you do for God, what is it about?

Pre-crucifixion Judaism was pretty transactional. There were a whole lot of laws to obey. This included the sacrificial system, which made the temple a place of continual butchering and roasting. It must have smelled wonderful.

Before the crucifixion, Jews generally didn’t know the Holy Spirit. God put his Spirit on a few here and there, and he didn’t rest in them all the time. The Jews had prophets and so on, but they were unusual.

Back then, Jews were not required to know God personally or exhibit the presence of his Spirit. They had to obey the rules, try to be good, and rely on sacrifices to get them past their failures.

After the crucifixion (after the first Shavuot–which we call Pentecost–following the crucifixion), Christians were fully expected to have the Holy Spirit live in them. Every Christian. All were supposed to know God personally, speak in tongues, receive revelation instead of relying on corrupt denominational doctrine, operate in the fruit and gifts of the Spirit, and so on.

The Holy Spirit is not an “it.” He is a person. We know “he” is appropriate, because the Holy Spirit inseminated a woman. Under pressure from Satan’s feminism, some churches have decided to claim the Holy Spirit is the feminine side of God, but that’s just misandry. No human woman can nurture like God, and God is male.

If he weren’t male, he wouldn’t have a bride.

I know the Holy Spirit. For that matter, I know Yeshua. I can’t summon Yeshua and have him come over for barbecue, but he came to me twice that I know of for certain, and the Holy Spirit’s presence is on me all the time, sometimes in an overpowering way and sometimes in a quiet, unintrusive way, like an engine at idle.

Sadly for me, knowing the Holy Spirit hasn’t instantly transformed me into a good person. The Bible compares God to a farmer and a potter; people whose work takes time to produce results. God keeps giving me correction over time, and the more time I spend with him, the faster the process goes.

I haven’t become perfect, but I really do hear from God all the time, and I get prophetic dreams. I receive miracles. I get special, generous, gentle treatment when other people who don’t listen to God have problems. For example, I had a blast in 2020, when everyone else was miserable. I loved that year.

Every year since then has been great, too, although these were years when the suffering of humanity was not as great as it was in 2020, so the contrast is not as stark.

Even though I know the Holy Spirit and believe in being blessed by grace, not as payment for services rendered, my relationship with God has continued to be somewhat transactional. It has been motivated partly by the knowledge that God does great things for me and saves me from horrible suffering. I should be motivated mainly by my love for God as a person; for his personality.

I have a wife. She does things for me, but not all that much. It’s not like she pays my bills or bakes me a cake every day. It’s unusual for me to ask her to do anything for me. I do more for her than she does for me. She says so herself, so stifle your feminist comments.

Taking her on increased my burdens a lot. I spend a lot on her. I have to consider her when I make plans and do things. Sometimes I have to wait a long time to get in the shower. I can’t always eat what I want, because she can’t stand some things I love. She rearranged my kitchen, which I had set up just the way I wanted it. She comes to me with her relatives’ problems.

I still love my wife. I want her to stay. I consider her a great gift. I don’t add up what we do for each other, compare, go to her, and complain. I’m very happy with our situation. Seems like I have a better attitude toward her than I do toward God, who has saved me from hell and set me aside from much of the misery other people endure.

The other day, God gave me a revelation of favor. He showed me that his attitude toward me was that of a father toward a favorite son.

We do more for our favorites. We give them much more slack; when they act up, they get reduced punishments or no punishment. The others get less from us. We just plain like our favorites better. We click with them. We want to do things for them, even when they’re out of line.

This revelation changed my life. It made it much easier for me to believe God would do things for me in spite of my past and ongoing sins. If I do something bad, I’m still his favorite. It’s just a bump in the road, to be driven past and forgotten. He’s not going to stop doing things for me, and he is also not going to stop battling my enemies.

We become furious at anyone who threatens a favorite. In that respect, we take after God. For example, the Bible says anyone who harms the Jews touches the pupil of God’s eye.

It’s not about my goodness, which barely exists. It’s about my status as his son, which Yeshua bought for me. I plead the blood of Yeshua as the basis for forgiveness and entry into the family of God, and God puts me in the VIP section. God bought me a relationship with him. He bought it from himself.

I am a favorite because God loves me, not because I build orphanages, give Kenneth Copeland Swiss watches, mention Yeshua sometimes while arguing with college students and being paid a king’s ransom, or walk to counterfeit Catholic shrines on my knees.

I should love God not because of what he does for me, but because he is the kind of person who does such things. I should love his personality and want to be with him just as I like being with friends.

We are told the dead surround God in heaven and praise him. They have nothing to gain from it, so why are they doing it? It has to be because they love him for what he is.

No one has to pay me to pick up my baby son or be with my wife. No one has to pay me to visit my friends.

When I get revelation, I always ask, “Why doesn’t anyone teach this?” Churches don’t teach it because the church was corrupted about two millennia ago. The ambitious people defeated the Spirit-led people, or, rather, they rejected them and the one who sent them. The Spirit-led continued to lead victorious lives and went on to heaven, and the ambitious people landed in hell, where they are to this day.

Revelation reminds me that “gospel” means “good news.” When you really know what God is up to, you realize it’s fantastic news. Being told you will go to heaven if you raise your hand for Joel Osteen, but that you shouldn’t expect to know God personally here on Earth, is not the kind of good news that makes people shout. Being told you have to sit through masses, bored to the edge of death, while effeminate old men mumble in Latin, and that this might eventually save you from hell, is not that kind of good news, either.

You can know God personally, and although you may be stuck here for a few decades, he will be with you, defeat your enemies, fill you with blessings, and let you feel his love and peace. You will know him as the best, most loving father there is, and not an absentee father.

The other night, my wife and I were talking, and we kept talking about how indispensable the Holy Spirit is. Every one of us is supposed to be taught by him directly, and only he keeps us from error. The vast majority of Christians reject him, and they believe any lie a crooked old pope or TV evangelist tells them.

Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson are great examples of carnal people who claim to be Christians and even to be doing God’s work, yet who are enemies of Yeshua. They are hostile to the Jews. Yeshua is the king of the Jews. It wasn’t just a derisive joke the Romans made. The Bible actually calls him “Israel.” Owens and Carlson are against the king’s subjects, so they are against the king.

America is full of Christians who insist opposing sodomy is unchristian. It’s full of Christians who think God loves socialism, which has been used to separate people from Yeshua and even the awareness of his existence all over the world. People can believe any stupid thing if they don’t know the Holy Spirit personally, and they do.

You can’t succeed with two-thirds of God.

Your pastor is almost certainly teaching you garbage along with the truth, and you need to learn directly from God so that when your pastor goes down, you will still be standing.

We Have to Delete Spam a Lot

I have a pretty significant pizza update.

I make my own pizza. My New York Style pizza is what I would call 75th-percentile quality by restaurant standards. Sometimes better. I keep changing it. My Sicilian is sublime and unrivaled.

Recently, I found out Restaurant Depot had opened a branch near me, and last week, I got a membership. Bliss.

I thought they would have Grande pizza cheese, because Grande is THE standard pizza cheese, but they did not. I tried what they had.

Their shredded offerings were no good. They had cellulose grit on them, and that ruins pizza. I tried two blocks of mozzarella. One was made by Saputo, and the name was Stella Top Grade. It wasn’t good, even for putting on salads. It might be good in lasagne or melted over spaghetti, but I wouldn’t count on it. I’m probably going to throw it out.

The other block was Restaurant Depot’s house brand, Supremo Italiano. Full-fat; low moisture. Back when I bought the cheese, I made a thin pie with Supremo Italiano on one side and Stella on the other.

They both seemed salty. I don’t know why, because that has not held up in further testing. The Stella threw off more grease, and while it was okay, it wasn’t great. The Supremo Italiano had a better texture, and the flavor was also better.

Later, I made a Sicilian with Supremo Italiano and Publix provolone. I am used to mixing mozzarella and provolone. The pizza was very good. I felt it could have been a little more tangy.

Today, I made an 8″-square Sicilian, and I changed a few things at once.

First, I used King Arthur Bread Flour, or, as pizza people call it, KABF. I have reason to believe I should be using it for NYC pies, so that’s why I bought it. I think it will improve the crust.

I have never been disappointed by any flour I used in a Sicilian. They all have different qualities, and I like them all. Thin pizza is more challenging.

Lately, I have been trying to make my Sicilians fluffier and taller. I have cut the salt to 1.5%. That’s supposed to help. Until today, I hadn’t used KABF in my fluffiness quest.

Second, I used Stanislaus 7/11 ground tomatoes for the sauce.

I have tried this product before. It was a long time ago. I was trying to recreate the sauce from a joint where I ate in college, and I found that Stanislaus paste sauces (paste, basil leaves, and citric acid) were closest, so I stuck with them. The one I really liked was Stanislaus Saporito.

In recent months, I have been thinking about sauces that taste different, so I have been fiddling with my Saporito sauce. Today I thought I should try ground tomatoes instead, since a lot of restaurants use them.

Third, I used Supremo Italiano on top. No provolone.

I baked this pie at 500, which is pretty hot, and the top didn’t burn at all except around the edges where the cheese touched the hot pan and fried.

It was very good. The crust was fluffy, and it was crunchy on the bottom. The sauce was a nice change of pace, and it was easier than diluting paste sauce. I didn’t have any Grande cheese to compare the Supremo Italiano too, but it seems to be just as good and possibly a little better.

The crust got damaged a little. It stuck to the pan in places. I think my wife may have washed the pan too hard.

I like cheese that doesn’t brown easily. Most pizza cheese we get at retail stores burns in a hurry. If a cheese doesn’t burn quickly, and you want a pizza that is fairly brown, you can make it happen, but if your cheese burns in a hurry, there isn’t a whole lot you can do. Maybe put foil on the rack above the pie.

I think I paid $2.15 per pound for the cheese. Maybe it was $2.17. Locally, the only other good mozzarella I can get costs about $10.20, which is outrageous.

This is the kind of cheese they used to use at Ray’s Pizza in New York. It didn’t burn, and it didn’t congeal fast as the pies cooled.

I mean the real Ray’s, not “Original Ray’s,” “Real Original Ray’s,” or “Seriously, This is The Original Ray’s and Not a Parasitic Knockoff Opened by Unscrupulous Foreigners who Look Like Pakistanis.” Ray’s used to hold the best-pizza title.

The crust on this pie was sufficiently similar to Pizza Hut pan pizza, I believe I could clone their product if I wanted. Pizza Hut is circling the drain, and I like their pan pizza. It would be great to make it at home once in a while.

That’s my story. I’m going to use KABF in a thin pie, and I expect to have even better news.

I Want Basic Fitness, not a Special Reinforced Toilet Seat

I mentioned my hopes of adding a very short strength-exercise routine to my life, and a commenter directed me to a guy named Mark Rippetoe, who runs an outfit called Starting Strength. It looks like this man trains competitive lifters as well as people who just want to be strong and resistant to injury.

I don’t plan to make major changes to my life, because those tend not to be permanent, but today I looked Rippetoe up out of curiosity. I don’t think he’s for me.

While I was looking into strength exercises yesterday, I saw that deadlifts were recommended by many sources. To do a deadlift, you lift a barbell from the floor, drag it up your legs until your back is perpendicular to the floor, and lock it in place. This is my own description, which may be flawed.

To me, this is a scary exercise. Anything that involves putting a lot of strain on my back while it’s in a horizontal orientation could cause something in the lumbar region to pop and be ruined forever.

Bruce Lee crippled himself lifting with his lower back. He put a 135-pound bar on his shoulders, bent over, and then straightened up. Something popped, and he spent the next 6 months in bed. He was in pain for the rest of his life.

The pathetic thing is that Lee was doing something he didn’t need to do. He weighed around 135 pounds, just like the bar, so he was lifting a lot of weight for his size. He was trying to build freak strength in a part of his body that didn’t need to be freakishly strong in order for him to make martial arts movies.

He wasn’t a professional martial artist. He never fought in a competition because he knew a loss would kill his reputation. He was a martial arts teacher and an actor who used martial arts in films. Steven Seagal made a lot of money in martial arts movies, and I’m not sure he was even able to squeeze through a gym door. Betty White could have made martial arts movies. She could have beaten up Chuck Norris, Seagal, Jason Statham, and Iron Man.

Movies aren’t real.

My back is strong and straight. I really try to resist lifting anything that could change that, even when other people are watching and I feel the nonsensical and unrealistic male urge to try to look strong.

I was checking out Rippetoe videos today when I saw him talking about the trapezius bar, which is a frame that replaces a barbell for some exercises. You stand inside it, and you grab two handles that run from back to front outside your feet.

A trap bar is supposed to make deadlifts safer because it allows you to do a very similar motion without cantilevering your back as much. All sorts of gurus recommend it. The Army’s experts decided to recommend it for soldiers, and Rippetoe made his video because this didn’t sit well with him.

He said the trap bar was less safe than a barbell, which is the opposite of what just about everyone else says. He says that during a deadlift, the pressure against the legs keeps a barbell from swinging around. He said the swinging was not a big deal with a 135-pound bar, but it could be dangerous at 400.

He kind of lost me there as a potential follower. When am I ever going to lift 400 pounds?

If I ever deadlifted even 200 pounds, I would be a very happy and surprised old man.

I would think that a good strategy would be to use the safer trap bar to build up to big weights and then switch to a barbell when my body was ready for it, but I’m just guessing. It seems like it would be easy to ruin my back by bending over a barbell long before I got to the weight level where the swinging of a trap bar could hurt me.

Today I read that a trap bar is much better for developing “explosive” strength, which is supposedly something you need for sudden everyday movements requiring substantial force. Things like catching yourself when you start to fall. That sounds like a good kind of strength to have.

I also saw him talk to a competitive powerlifter who said he was 6’4″ tall and weighed 215. Rippetoe told him he needed to weigh over 300 pounds, and the way to get there was to overeat.

Rippetoe is an older guy. Looks like he might be 70. He is clearly and indisputably obese. He looks unhealthy. I don’t think he’ll set a longevity record.

He told the young guy that if he stuffed himself with food, he would only put on muscle. He had another obese guy in the studio with him, and they were pushing the idea that the young guy would never become overweight by following Rippetoe’s plan.

Two obese guys, giving that advice on camera.

I did not find it credible.

Yesterday I saw a guy named Mike Burch on Youtube. He was 65 when he made a video. It showed him bench-pressing 405 pounds in a flannel shirt with no trick gym clothing. He said he weighed 165 pounds.

I guess my standards are low, but I thought that was pretty good. I would be quite satisfied with that. Half of that would be pretty good.

I did some rooting around on the web yesterday, and I learned that my notions of what a good bench press was were inflated. I thought all sorts of people were lifting 300 pounds, but it turns out anything over maybe 220 is very good, and not many men are legitimately benching a 300-pound bar with no funny shirts, drugs, or short strokes.

Men lie a lot about what they lift, of course. Sonny Barger, the despicable Hells Angels leader, claimed he benched 500 pounds. Never happened. Richard Marcinko led SEAL Team Six, and he claimed they all benched 500 pounds. Never happened. Lyle Alzado was one of the strongest men in the NFL, he was huge, he was as full of roids as a Mexican drugstore, and regardless of his impressive claims, when he had to lift on camera, he only made it to 400.

A lot of guys lift a bar off the supports, lower it three inches, push it back up and say they benched 350 or 400 or whatever. If it didn’t touch your chest, you didn’t bench it.

Yesterday I wrote about Volodimir Shmondenko, the Ukrainian lifter who weight about 175 pounds and benches 330. Again, I consider this acceptable. Right now I’m more like 330 with the decimal point moved one space to the left.

Both Burch and Shmondenko compete effectively, so I don’t know if Rippetoe’s advice makes any sense at all. Maybe it does, though. He’s a professional, after all.

If you deliberately make yourself 100 pounds overweight, you have some things to look forward to.

1. Insulin resistance
2. High blood pressure
3. Arthritis, especially in the knees
4. Exacerbated prostate enlargement
5. Blocked arteries
6. Diabetes
7. Impotence
8. Dementia
9. Reduced testosterone
10. Increased estrogen
11. Breasts

There are others.

My impression is that Rippetoe is looking to give people optimal, and I mean optimal, strength at any cost, and he seems pretty excited about competition, which is a bad mindset for a person who trains old ladies and dentists. I would think it would be hard to prevent advice for competitors from leaking into his advice for normal people who would like to live to be older than 60.

I would like to do very little work, take as little risk as possible, and get pretty decent results in comparison to the effort I put in. That would be great.

If there is one thing I know about exercise, it’s that the topic leads to constant feuds. Gym people are more obnoxious than the rest of us, and every trainer thinks the other trainers are wrong. Some people think Rippetoe is a genius. Others insiste he’s a moron. I don’t expect to be certain of the truth about his methods during this lifetime.

This Will Separate the Sheep from the Goats

Either I’m on fire today or I’m just willing to do anything other than clean the pool, so here comes more blogging.

My wife tells me Candace Owens has published authentic texts from some snitch, revealing that Charlie Kirk was, maybe, not happy with Jews because a Jewish donor that gave TPUSA two million a year cut Kirk off for refusing to denounce the raving, ignorant, immature, frat-boy antisemite Tucker Carlson.

Supposedly, Kirk said something about his Jewish donors living up to stereotypes. Maybe I can find it.

I got it! Here: “Just lost another huge Jewish donor. $2 million a year because we won’t cancer Tucker. Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes. I cannot and will not be bullied like this. Leaving me no choice but to leave the pro-Israel cause.”

Kirk supporters will say the texts were taken out of context, but my response to that is that there are many things context can’t fix.

This reminds me of some lines from a Woody Allen movie. A Latin American dictator has been deposed and replaced by a rebel leader who will, of course, be the next dictator, because Latin America. When they try the former dictator, this exchange takes place:

Rebel Leader: You are accused of killing over a thousand people in your term of office… of torturing hundreds of women and children. How do you plead?

Diaz: Guilty… with an explanation.

There are a couple of things wrong with what Saint Charlie said.

1. There is something wrong with anyone who won’t “cancer Tucker,” because Tucker is rapidly moving into Josef Goebbels territory. It’s not subtle. There are no grey areas. It’s not debatable. Reasonable minds may not differ.

2. “Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes” is, well, antisemitic.

I’ve known more Jews than Moses, and while every ethnic group has people who live up to and even exceed stereotypes, I have not found Jews to be particularly stingy or manipulative. Actually, if I had to come down on one side or the other, I would say that on the whole, Jews are more generous than Gentiles, and I haven’t noticed any difference when it comes to manipulation.

I have known some Jewish people who were a bit aggressive, but I can’t say they seem more aggressive than Gentiles. Except with women. That, I have been a witness to. But only in Israel. I don’t know what it is with Israeli men, but they hound women relentlessly,like they have a quota. I haven’t seen it here in America.

There are definitely Jews who don’t like Gentiles, but I don’t think that makes Jacob’s children any worse than the rest of us. It’s not like Gentiles are free of bigotry.

Just to open myself to criticism, I have found other groups to run more truly to stereotypes. American ghetto blacks are frightening. Cubans are hard to live among because of the materialism, machismo, and corruption. Many of my own people are just emotional ghetto whites. I have found Jewish people to be less consistent with stereotypes.

They tend to promote antisemitic notions in their own self-deprecating humor. Maybe they should reconsider that. I learned the only antisemitic jokes I know from Jews.

The third thing wrong with Saint Charlie’s text is that he says he is abandoning Israel because a few Jews quit sending him money.

So he was not Saint Charlie after all. He was Charlie the Whore.

All you folks who got mad when I said he wasn’t a real minister, line up and have a plate of crow with kreplach on the side. I didn’t even insult him. I wrote of him approvingly. I just said he wasn’t a minister.

For the slow, I will explain. You do not change your support for a country or anything else because people stop paying you. Support is supposed to be sincere. If you pretend to support anything just because you are paid, you are a huge and despicable whore, and if your work endangers a small and perpetually-beleaguered country that continually faces unfair existential threats fomented by Satan himself, you may be among the kings of whores.

Is Kirk even in heaven? I doubt it now. How can a professional liar go to heaven? The word says the lake of fire was prepared for “all liars.” It says lying is abomination, just like sodomy.

Everyone lies, but not everyone makes it a career and refuses to repent.

If he lied about Israel, what else did he lie about? Maybe he was not even conservative. Maybe he was like Candace Owens and Arianna Huffington, who defected overnight when they saw the side where the grass was greener.

No one becomes conservative or liberal overnight. This should be obvious.

Andrew Breitbart worked for Drudge, then for Huffington, and then for himself. He flapped like a windsock in a tornado. He was a snake. He was no conservative. I said so, and the usual toadies criticized me for being right. Don’t speak ill of Saint Andrew. Kirk looks even worse.

If there is anything positive in the new Kirk revelations, it’s that it makes me, the main character of the universe, feel even better about not worshiping Kirk. I did think he was a good guy who helped Trump get elected, but I never thought his shtick of sitting in a chair and arguing with unprepared liberals made him a great man.

I guess the fact that I feel better is not all that helpful to the rest of the world, but it’s something.

I told my wife I was upset with Jews for not sending me money. I will be happy to “cancer” Tucker. I do it all the time. I cancered Candace. I’ve cancered all sorts of enemies of Israel. I do it sincerely. Still, no checks.

The fact that I am obscure and have no impact on society could be part of the reason.

I’d settle for hamantaschen. A big tray, once a month. Cherry and apple. I know apricot is more traditional, but cherry and apple would be better. Made with butter. No Crisco. I’ll be watching my doorstep. I’ll even put up a mezuzah.

In other news, I am thinking about resistance training.

Back when I was in law school, I lifted weights a lot. I maxed out almost every machine in the University of Miami Wellness Center (gym, for normal people). I never got big or bulky, except for a 48″ chest. It always blows up, even with slight exertion. A genetic aberration, I guess. Too bad it’s localized.

I thought machines were pretty good, but it turned out they were not. For example, I used to lift 300 pounds very slowly, with deep motions, for 8 reps at a time. I didn’t bounce the weights three inches from full extension and claim I had lifted 300 pounds for real. Then a guy asked me to try a barbell, and I managed one repetition of 220. My strength was real, but it was only good for motion in a straight line with no freedom in any other direction. I could not stabilize a 300-pound bar.

Also, I wondered why I never looked particularly strong. People who were a lot weaker than I was looked better.

Lately, I have been considering doing a little resistance training. I did some last year, but I let it go. I am not trying to look buff or compete in contests. I just want to avoid crumbling faster than necessary in old age. I don’t want to have to ask the wife to open jars for me, and I don’t want to be easily injured because my frame has atrophied.

I learned a few things this week. I sort of knew most of it already, but I didn’t bother to put it all together until today.

A guy calling himself Anatoly popped up in my Youtube feed. He weighs about 180 pounds, but he looks more like 150 because he has no fat. He’s skinny.

He goes to gyms dresses as a janitor. He goes up to guys who are so full of steroids they will definitely die by 60, and he asks if he can try the weights. They laugh at him and make condescending remarks, and then he lifts more than they do, effortlessly.

I must make a disclaimer: I am assuming the bodybuilders in his videos are not shills. They could be.

He’s a powerlifter. He has benched 330, and he has deadlifted 640. People say he has lifted more and that these are old records. His real name is Volodymyr Shmondenko.

Benching 330 is not amazing, but it’s 110 more than I ever lifted. I don’t think he uses drugs, because his numbers are really good but not shocking. I could be wrong, though, because he could be someone who has limited genetic potential and looks like a good natural bodybuilder when he’s on the juice.

I found out that the bench press is not a great exercise. It makes you strong for doing one highly unlikely motion you will never make except when working out or trying to impress someone.

So anyway, I looked at this guy, and I thought I should think about powerlifting.

Here’s something weird: muscle size doesn’t correlate well to strength. For example, Schwarzenegger used to lift something like half of what his workout buddy lifted. His buddy Franco Columbu, was 5’6″ tall. Schwarzenegger’s claims have gone as high as 6’3-1/2″, but some witnesses say 5’11” is more like it. At least he’s taller than Burt Reynolds, who wore three-inch heels.

In any case, he was a lot bigger than Columbu. I saw Columbu lift the back of a Fiat and move it. I think it was in Pumping Iron.

Found it.

I had a fake friend in law school, and he was 6’6″ and weighed 330 (that he would admit). In the gym, he benched less than half of what I did, and I was not maxed out. The machine wouldn’t go high enough.

It’s not because my arms are shorter. I have long arms for my height. He was just naturally weak.

Bodybuilders commonly get two things wrong: they think they’re strong, and they think they can beat other men up. They’re not as strong as they could be, because they work out the wrong way. They can’t beat other people up unless they’re fighting untrained people. Fighting requires skill. Strength is not very useful if you have no skill and your opponent has lots of it.

Most untrained men can’t hit another guy with their left hands. It’s just right-right-right-right. That’s really something. And the rights are usually looping love taps that leave their faces and bodies open.

Bodybuilding is not about being strong. It’s about looking strong. This is why we now have men paying doctors to insert big pieces of plastic in their bodies to look like muscles.

What I’m getting at is that the majority of weight-training wisdom in America is aimed at making men look strong, and the things most men do actually limit their strength gains while filling them with relatively weak muscle.

I should have learned about this back when I was really working out, instead of waiting until I was ready for the shuffleboard court.

I have studied up, and I have learned a few things.

1. Bodybuilding is not a good way to build strength.

2. The really strong guys are powerlifters and strength trainers.

3. Powerlifting is a competitive sport, and while it shares things with strength training, it’s not the same thing. If you want to be strong, you want to use strength-training methods and forget about powerlifting.

4. Isolating muscles, which bodybuilders love, severely limits real-world strength. To become strong, you want exercises that involve multiple groups. The reason to isolate muscles is to make them big and impress all the other possibly-latent dudes in the gym shower.

5. To get strong, you want sets with low repetitions. A maximum of 5. Not the 8 or 12 you may have heard about at the gym. You set weights so you can lift them safely a maximum of three times. You lift until you can lift them 5 times. Then you increase the weight.

This is great, because it means less work.

6. Strength training, which involves heavier weights, is less likely to injure you than vanity training, which requires you to use your joints over and over. This surprised me.

I was very glad to learn that isolating muscles was stupid, because the more you isolate groups, the longer and more miserable your workouts will be. Your body has a lot of muscles to isolate.

It speaks poorly of humanity that so many people are lifting for stupid reasons. Why would anyone want to be weaker than necessary while working out harder than necessary? It’s effeminate, prancing around in shiny thong panties with other men, hoping your calves are more cut than theirs.

Different types of workouts build different types of muscles. Low reps build strong muscles. Supposedly, they also increase your body’s ability to “recruit” muscle fibers, so you get more power out of the muscles you have.

With all this in mind, you can see that it’s incredibly stupid to lift like a bodybuilder. You will work harder, be weaker, and endanger your body more. Also, if you’re looking for workout advice on the web, you have to be careful to detect bodybuilder garbage. Any fitness guy who says the words “big” or “bigger” while demonstrating an exercise should be ignored.

If you look around the web, you can find pictures and videos of men who look like refrigerator repairmen or Uber drivers, lifting enormous weights with their seemingly-flabby, untoned bodies.

All this makes me think of Dwayne Johnson, AKA “the Rock.”

People love this man. He’s a professional nice guy. He tries to avoid saying anything negative. He always smiles. He wants you to see him with his tiny daughter and his tiny dog. He gives people supportive shoutouts. I don’t like him.

I used to think Johnson was great, because I was foolish. Back in law school, I thought WWF wrestling was a hoot, and I watched it diligently. I loved the Rock character. The funny eyebrow. “It doesn’t matter what your name is!” The people’s elbow. Hilarious.

I should not have let the WWF’s excrement enter my mind, but I did.

He became an actor, and eventually, he hit the juice really hard. And lied about it. He says he hasn’t used drugs since he was a teenager, but the world is full of men his age, and so far, he is the only one out of hundreds of millions who has managed to look like the Hulk at age 55.

He lies and says it’s all about diet and exercise, like no one ever dieted or exercised before. Like no one else on Earth worked hard until he invented work.

He claims he has been a workout fanatic since he was a little child, but somehow he was bigger in his mid-fifties, with almost no body fat, than he was at any point earlier in his life when he was blessed with more natural testosterone and better recovery abilities.

People say he’s naturally big because he’s a Samoan, and many Samoans really do have a genetic edge. Well, he’s only half Samoan, his non-Samoan dad was on steroids, and no other Samoan has ever looked like him without drugs, so BS on that. He was half Samoan when he was working out like crazy and 30 years younger, and he was smaller.

Now he has given up drugs because he has clogged arteries, which steroids cause. He has dropped 50 or 60 pounds, or maybe one third of his total muscle weight. People are not 100% muscle. He claims he did it for a movie role. No; he did it to avoid an early grave.

He is a role model for kids, and they go to the gym and try what he claims he does, and they get lackluster results. They don’t look like he does, because they’re not on drugs yet, and they don’t get as strong as they should because they’re doing glamour exercises that make weaker muscles.

Then what do they do? Many do what he really does. They use drugs. Then they blow up and look like him. They go bald early. They get scarring acne. Their testicles all but vanish. Like Johnson, they grow breasts that have to be cut out. They have rage problems. They suffer from depression. They cry for no reason. They remain short because steroids end natural growth.

This is all bad, but it looks like he hurt his health and hurt kids without even getting as strong as he could have. He blew himself up so he could be a shirtless dandy for all his little bros, but smaller guys who don’t look like dangerously overinflated tires are much stronger.

On top of that, many women find grotesque steroid physiques a little repulsive. Steroid users tend to look like they’ve been skinned.

I am probably never going to work out seriously, because I am too lazy. I know I will never do long workouts assiduously, so I have reasonable goals.

I came up with an exercise which turns out to be very, very good for strength development. I put two dumbbells by my feet, I squat to get them to waist level, I curl them to my shoulders, I press them overhead, and then I do it all in reverse.

I don’t strain my back the way squats or deadlifts could. I give both sides of my body the same treatment instead of allowing a barbell to shift the work to my right side. It’s not bad for an old guy who has modest expectations.

I haven’t done any resistance training at all at least since the beginning of the year. I started up today, and I managed 5 reps with 42.5 pounds on each side. It will never win me any prizes, but it’s an okay start for an old man who mostly lifts a fork. Lifting dumbbells is harder than lifting barbells for the same reason lifting barbells is harder than pushing machine handles, so you end up using less weight.

If things go well, I should be up to maybe 60 pounds per side in a few months. I may add another exercise if I think I’ll keep up with it. I should get back to climbing stairs with a weighted vest.

I almost never feel I’m not strong enough, although putting tires back on hubs while sitting on the ground is an area where more power would be nice. I’m doing okay, but I think it’s wise to try get a little better and avoid falling apart too fast.

Preventing injuries is important at my age (or any age), and stronger muscles are harder to hurt.

Hopefully, my arteries will remain clear, my strength will be optimal in relation to the amount of exercise I do, and I will never have to drop 50 pounds in three months and come up with lies to explain it.

Your Good Deeds are a Band-Aid on a Dead Body

Last night I wrote about a three-part dream I had, and the dream included me being raptured by two angels.

The meanings of some parts of the dream were not clear to me at first, but now I think God has shown me what they were about.

I

I was at a corrupt church where I used to serve, and a well-meaning but ambitious and attention-loving person was trying to start a new ministry. He was about to speak. The pastor of the church, who has appeared in other dreams representing a spirit of church corruption, supported him. I wasn’t interested in watching the new minister speak, so I went outside.

This represents me leaving the world of big, established churches. By that I mean anything bigger than house meetings. God told me the age of churches was over. They are corrupt because they teach people to worship and follow men, not the Holy Spirit. Satan corrupts the men, and the men corrupt the church.

II

I was in Kentucky, on my grandfather’s patio. As a child, I defaced this patio while the concrete was still wet, writing my name in it. My relatives said I was in big trouble, but when my grandfather saw it, he was thrilled. He took me on his lap and told me one day I would show it to my son.

In the dream, I saw angels coming down from heaven. I lost all strength and lay down on my stomach on the patio. They lifted me up and raptured me. I was consumed with joy and relief.

Why does God do things for certain people? Because we are his favorites, as I was my grandfather’s favorite grandchild. It’s not because we’re good; we are not. God prefers one person to another for reasons we don’t know.

We see this in the story of John, the disciple who was closest to Yeshua. He was “the one Yeshua loved.” It is believed that every original disciple except John met with a violent death, as did Paul and Stephen, but when Domitian tried to fry John in a cauldron in front of a crowd of pagans, nothing happened to him. He died at a very advanced age, and before he died, he saw the kingdom of heaven come and wrote of it in the Revelation.

Israel preferred Joseph to his brothers. God preferred Israel to Esau. He preferred Isaac to Ishmael. He doesn’t make excuses for favor. He never says he will treat us alike, and it isn’t our place to question it.

Those who don’t have God’s favor hate those who do, and they say it’s not fair. This attitude started with Satan, and it prevails today. The hatred worldly people feel for the favored is like Satan’s hatred for humanity or an older child’s hatred of a younger child with a nicer personality that brings him more attention.

The other day, I heard Lester Sumrall say that the people who are against us, like the atheists and leftists, are just losers trying to “get even.” They refuse to do things God’s way, and they don’t get favor, so their response is to kill those who have it and steal from them.

In English Bibles, we see the word “love” a lot, and we think it only means affection, but it also means preference. God preferred Jacob to Esau, and God’s word puts it this way:

Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob,

And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.

Esau’s children, who inherited disfavor from Esau, tried to take the good things God gave Israel, but the word says this:

Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the Lord hath indignation for ever.

Actually, Esau himself brought this on his descendants. He sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. Not even a pizza or a prime rib eye.

We see the spirit of envy among the disfavored today. They say Israel, whose inheritance is still largely in the hands of thieves, has too much. They say white people, Christians, heterosexuals, and men have privilege, meaning it’s unfair that we have more blessings than others. They say America is rich because it oppresses and steals, which is patently absurd.

They want to exterminate those who are favored and take what they have, not realizing that without us, the world would be a much worse place for them. They treat each other much worse than we would ever treat them.

I really enjoy knowing I was my grandparents’ favorite, my father’s favorite, and my mother’s favorite. I didn’t appreciate it until I was old, but it was a tremendous gift. Thinking about it warms my heart in a way that brings me new humility. In particular, it makes me love my grandfather more. I wish I had been better to him, although I was better to him than most of my cousins.

I feel safe and comforted. More securely than ever, I know my blessings don’t depend on perfect obedience or past service. I feel I am living within God’s warmth.

I have been bad to people and animals. I haven’t become a missionary. I haven’t given everything I have away. I haven’t packed stadiums and seen thousands rush to the altars. I have sinned a lot. I still have favor. It’s not based on my deeds.

This is where Jews, Muslims, and many Christians get it wrong. God doesn’t weigh your deeds and let you into heaven if the good outweigh the bad. He weighs his love for you and the righteousness of Yeshua, which is imputed to you.

Speaking of people who are called holy because of their conspicuous accomplishments, my wife says Billy Graham is in hell because he fawned on Muhammad Ali and called him a follower of God. Muhammad Ali rejected God when he rejected Yeshua and became a follower of the famous rapist and murderer Mohammed, so he was a rejecter of God, not a follower. Graham was supposed to understand this.

My wife says Graham denied the cross, and as she says, this is the one thing that will definitely send you to hell. You can molest children and then repent and receive salvation, but if you deny the cross and you don’t repent, you are definitely going to hell. Preach all you want. Call a billion people to the altar. It won’t help you.

If being “good” could get you into heaven, then Yeshua was a fool to allow himself to be tortured to death instead of taking his throne and taking back the planet.

Graham was a shameless and spineless sycophant of celebrities, the rich, and the powerful, and he didn’t teach people about the Holy Spirit, so my wife is probably right. He was the Joel Osteen of his time.

People point to his deeds–his crusades and the apparent salvations that took place–and say he was a great man of God. But even if those salvations were proper, which many were not, they wouldn’t overcome rejecting Yeshua, who is God. To reject Yeshua is to reject Yahweh, as Yeshua said.

It appears he also bought into the Jewish media control myth, which is not a sign that he was hearing from God. It’s hard to judge him, though, because the accusations are based on quotations from a tape recording, the quotations were reported by leftists, and we can’t hear the entire conversation to see if there are any exculpatory words in it.

Graham is just one example of people who are widely praised by transactional Christians yet who are probably in hell or headed there.

Now that I’ve had my dream, I think of God, I think of the way my grandfather felt about me, and I know in my heart, not just my mind, that God feels the same way about me. This helps me have faith that he will give me good things and help me improve. My grandfather used to slip me money and do things for me, and God loves me more than he did.

On his patio, my grandfather showed me favor. I think he would have been very angry if any of the other grandchildren had carved their names into the concrete, but he didn’t just let me get away with it; he loved me for it.

In the dream, God showed me favor in the place where my grandfather, who was a figure of God to me, also showed me favor. My grandfather showed me favor even in my transgression, and so does God.

In the dream, God showed me very great favor by removing me from the presence of the rotten human race and all the rotten spirits that conspire with people against God and his favorites.

III

In the third part of the dream, I woke up in a shabby hospital bed in a poor country, wearing clothes someone had put on me. I had been found somewhere, and the people found me unconscious and took me to the hospital because they didn’t know why I was there or what I had come for.

Several young schoolgirls stood at the foot of my bed and stared at me in wonder. A doctor came in to check on me, and I asked him, “Who am I?” I knew, but I wondered if he did.

I think this is about the return to Earth, after the wedding in heaven. We are told we will have to rule here under Yeshua.

When we rule, it will have to be by consent of the ruled. Otherwise, Yeshua will have to destroy them. We will rule because of our identity, not our own righteousness or ability. We will rule by heredity, because we will be kings and queens, not presidents and governors. That means our authority will depend on who we are, and if people consent to be ruled, it will be because they recognize us as members of God’s ruling family.

The other day, God told me something interesting. I already knew he hated democracy, which is an invention of pagans and sexual perverts, but I didn’t realise this: it is only because of the privileges of monarchy that he will be able to return to Earth, take it back, and rule.

If King Yeshua were President Yeshua, he could be voted out permanently. He would have no title. He would be like a tenant, and the Bible shows us owners are better than tenants. If he were voted out, he could never return except as an illegitimate conqueror, usurper, and squatter.

Because Yeshua is a king, his title is eternal. He can’t be voted out. His title can’t be taken away. He can consent for his enemies to occupy his land for a while, but he has the right to return, kill them in spite of whatever improvements they have made, cut off their children’s inheritance, and give the inheritance to Christians.

This is why Israel will never belong to anyone but the Jews.

Yeshua is the king of the Jews, and Israel (not just modern Israel) was given to him and to them by Yahweh, through Abraham. Palestinian savages who are worse than Nazis can cause trouble, and they will eventually overrun Israel in a nationwide campaign of rape, theft, destruction, and murder just like October 7, but in the end, a remnant of the Jews will be preserved, their enemies will be slaughtered by God himself, and the land will be returned to them.

We know from the Bible that Israel’s history of victory will be broken soon, and human animals will invade and have their way, but even if millions are murdered, in the end, Israel will exist, Jews will own it, Yeshua will be on the throne, and his kingdom, which is a continuation of the Davidic dynasty, will be restored.

Thinking about my dream makes me feel loved and comforted. I am not a Catholic or Baptist or Muslim, trying to score points and earn a ticket to God’s presence or heaven. I am a son and heir whom God loves based on my identity. God is willing to give me good things I ask for, just as my grandfather was happy to slip me a 50-dollar bill.

Favor is nothing to be proud of, because pride is always wrong, and it’s nothing to show off, but it’s something to tell the world about. By telling the world, we dispel the myths that keep people in self-condemnation and pride and block their blessings.

I believe being favored by God allows me to help others. When Job’s friends made errors in trying to correct him, God said Job would intercede for them. He was more inclined to listen to his favored one than to ignorant people who wronged him, even if they meant well.

I believe this is a pivotal moment in my life and for my family.

One Day it Will be for Real

I had a wonderful dream last night, or maybe it was three consecutive dreams.

I

I was back at Trinity Church in Miami. I served there as an armorbearer. We had three armorbearer leaders during my time. In the dream, the second guy was about to start a church of his own.

There were chairs set up in a small area, and he was about to speak about his plans. Several people were there, getting ready to sit. Trinity’s pastor, Rich Wilkerson, was one of them. That’s odd, because as far as I can tell, he never supports new ministries he doesn’t control and make money from.

In a dream I had long ago, he appeared as an evil force. I was at a different church by then. In the dream, it was night. The church was dark. I went in, and in a room in the back, with no windows, Wilkerson was sitting at a desk under a lamp, in a little cone of light, hiding. He was running an adding machine and counting money. I took that to mean the church’s pastors had greed issues, and that turned out to be true. Then one was outed as a child rapist, refused to step down, and went to prison.

The guy who was about to speak is a friend, but I wouldn’t want to see him run a church. He is headstrong, and he thinks he knows more than he does. He likes attention and admiration. He likes to be in charge. Basically a good guy, but not pastor material.

I left the room and went outside.

II

Once I was outside, I was not in Miami. I was behind my grandparent’s house in Kentucky. I loved that place when I was a kid. I thought it was heaven. I was my grandfather’s favorite grandchild. My grandparents treated me very well. They treated me like a son. Even as an adult, I could show up at their house whenever I wanted and treat it as my own.

The house had a small patio out back, and one day (not in the dream), my grandfather had it extended. I was probably about 8. When I saw the wet cement, I wrote my name in it with a slingshot handle.

I was told I was in big trouble. I was going to get it when Grandpa got home.

When he saw what I had done, he put me on his lap, and with a big smile, he told me one day I could show my own children what I had done. He thought it was terrific.

In the dream, I was on that patio, which I will never see again, for one last visit. It was dark. It was cool. I was wearing a winter jacket.

I looked at the sky. It was mainly clear with some clouds that shimmered around their borders. There was bright moonlight but no moon. Near where the moon should have been, I saw what looked like a little ship flying around. It was just an outline, like the little ships in the old Asteroids video game. I knew I was seeing something involving spirits. I have seen a spirit clearly, and it was clear with an outline.

At first, I saw one ship. Then I saw that there were two, and they were diamond-shaped. They were circling without changing their altitude. I knew something very important was happening.

My strength left me. I could not move. I lay on the concrete on my stomach. While I was lying there, two angels I couldn’t see lifted me up without changing my position, and we started to rise together.

I knew it was the rapture. I can’t explain how glad I was. I was done with this place. At last. Sometimes it seems like this experience will never end, and in the dream, it was over. Suddenly.

I believe I thought about my wife and son. They weren’t nearby. I believe I thought they were being raptured wherever they were and that we would meet shortly.

III

I woke up in a hospital bed. It was a cheap single bed with a white metal frame. I was in a hospital in a poor country, and they used whatever they could afford.

There was no sheet over me. I was wearing a T-shirt and gym shorts which didn’t seem to belong to me. I got the sense that I had been found somewhere, brought to the hospital, and examined. I was fine.

At the foot of the bed, there were about 5 little girls. I would say they were around 10 years old. They looked a lot like upper-class Indians. They weren’t wearing typical Indian clothes, but they looked like light-skinned Indians. They were carrying schoolbooks as though they had just been walking home from school. They were curious about me.

A doctor in a white coat came in. He also looked like an upper-class Indian. He was there to see how I was doing. I guessed he had been treating me.

For some reason, I said, “Who am I?” It was as if I wanted to find out what he knew about me.

I don’t remember anything that happened in the dream after that.

I woke up full of joy. Even though I had not been raptured, the joy of being lifted up to heaven and dropping all my earthly problems stayed with me for a long time. I feel it now as I type this.

I have died in dreams, and I have been raptured in dreams.

From dying, I know I’m not afraid of it. When I died in dreams, I really believed it was happening, so I know how I’ll react when my time comes.

If I were in a plane right now, and I knew it was going to hit the ground and kill me, I would not feel afraid. I would have an overwhelming sense of the gravity of the situation. I would feel very solemn. I would try to pray to make sure there was nothing to keep me out of heaven. I would be full of excitement, thinking about the fact that I was about to be in heaven with Yeshua. I would be glad my tour of duty here was over. I would look forward to having my curiosity about Yeshua and the afterlife answered.

Being raptured feels very similar.

When I say I’m not afraid of dying, I don’t mean I’m not afraid of what it takes to get there. I don’t want pain or mutilation. I don’t want to be burned. I’m just saying I’m not afraid to see this life end. In my dreams, I found myself in situations where I knew there was no hope of survival, and my end would be quick and painless. If I had been thrown into a tank full of hungry sharks, it would have been different.

I hope I have more dreams like this. I wish I knew how to make myself have more of them. Just thinking about them makes me feel great.

“Welcome to the Two Minutes Tim Cook Hate”

I got annoyed yesterday because I realized I had wasted $429 on a vacuum cleaner which is not as good as a $130 shop vac from Home Depot. Today I’m annoyed about refrigerators.

I had been hearing a lot about Samsung’s new policy of forcing refrigerator owners to allow fridges to display ads in their kitchens. You didn’t dream that last sentence; it’s actually happening.

Today I decided to take a look.

First, let me say that we have all been hoodwinked when it comes to fridges. We pay too much for refrigerators that do things 1) other than refrigerating 2) which are not actually very helpful.

When I was a kid, a fridge was a fridge, not a TV, video game console, telephone, camera, therapist, sex surrogate, French tutor, urologist, dog trainer, palm reader, thought leader, icemaker, or water fountain. Fridges had excellent mechanicals, they lasted 40 years if treated well, and they could be repaired easily.

In the 1960’s, things started to change. Clever marketers decided people wanted their fridges to make ice automatically and dispense cold water through the door. Over the ensuing decades, fridges got more complicated, the mechanicals started to fail after 10 years, and repair became less and less practical due to the use of cheap parts.

My grandparents built a beautiful home in about 1965. My grandmother put two deep freezes in the basement, along with the fridge from her old home. When she died in 2003, these appliances were still working, as were her Speed Queen washer and dryer.

I have seen modern fridges fail in under 5 years.

Consumers love shiny gadgets, so as technology improved, we started seeing truly ridiculous features in refrigerators.

Now you can talk to your refrigerator in America while you vacation in New Guinea. You can tell it what to do. You can make it show you video of its contents. If it gets lonely, it can text you.

They make fridges with external TV screens that allow you to see what you could see if you took your precious little hand and opened the doors.

I thought my old refrigerator was dying last year. Turned out it wasn’t true. We had been blocking the air from the freezer. Moving food around fixed it. Before we got it straightened out, we went to look at new fridges.

Spoiler alert: there aren’t any good refrigerators now. You think your Sub-Zero or Fisher & Paykel is going to last longer than a Frigidaire? It won’t. I talked to an appliance guy who was working on a dryer, trying to find out which brand of refrigerator was best. He was familiar with every brand. He said, “They’re all junk.” I asked if that included the boutique brands. Yes, it did.

Interesting side note: your new refrigerator is full of flammable gas. FLAMMABLE. Isn’t that nice? Good thing to know if you have a house fire. The greenies have panicked us through several iterations of refrigerant, probably needlessly, and now we have reached the point where they think it’s better to have a giant bomb in your kitchen than risk damage to the ozone layer, which seems to be doing very well.

We decided we did not want an icemaker or any type of dispenser. My current fridge has a door dispenser, and we almost never use it.

Here is the dirty little secret of all door water dispensers: they dispense warm water, not cold. At least compared to actual cold water you might keep in a jug inside the fridge. If “cold” means 5 degrees cooler than the tap water from your sink, then yes, they dispense cold water. To me, it means 35 degrees.

Icemakers fail frequently. They are the parts that go bad most often on refrigerators, and they aren’t very good. They have evolved to the point where they dispense ice in awkward semicircular chunks that block the flow of liquid to your mouth. Seems like the ice always smells, too. These machines make so much ice, it sits around absorbing odors for weeks or months. Are you a fisherman? Get ready for gin, tonic, and perch.

Another issue: icemakers and water dispensers kill cubic footage. They take up room. If you see a refrigerator advertised as 22 cubic feet, you have to deduct the volume of the water and ice apparatus, because the manufacturer won’t.

There’s more: these machines have unnecessary water filters. My water is just fine. The manufacturers have started putting digital chips on their filters so you get no ice and no water unless you use their OEM filters, and those can cost $50 to $80 each, although a filter probably costs Frigidaire $5. I saw a guy claim he needed to spend $250 per year to keep up. That’s like 70 cases of bottled water.

My fridge has a filter cartridge (non-OEM), and I never replace it. The water keeps flowing. Sometimes when I feel like it, I push the little button that says to reset the filter life, and the fridge obeys as though I had installed a new cartridge. It has no idea whether the filter is full. It apparently goes by time.

Making your own ice isn’t really that tough.

If I want a big, shiny stainless bottom-freezer fridge from one of the least-worthless brands, it will cost me at least $1500. That’s on sale. I can get a plain old white top-freezer fridge for $850. Nearly the same cubic footage. Maytag sells a 22-cubic-foot model for $1800 (regular price), and I can buy a 21-cubic-foot top-freezer fridge for half of that.

Am I being cheap? Well, sure, but the main thing is that I don’t have to be concerned about repairs to parts I don’t want to buy in the first place. I don’t like waiting for repairmen. I don’t like paying them. I don’t trust them. I don’t enjoy doing appliance repairs.

I could buy a top-freezer fridge and a standalone ice maker for less than the cost of a fancy fridge with no ice maker or dispenser.

The thing that really sticks in my craw, however, is not the ice and water problem. It’s the ad problem.

People bought Samsung refrigerators, thinking they were getting cool gadgets they actually owned, and then Samsung updated their firmware without permission and started showing them ads. That’s immoral. You don’t change a deal once you make it.

I hate unsolicited ads. When I see ads playing on a gas station pump, I face the other way until my tank is full. I have smart TV’s, and I do everything I can to disable their ad functions (which didn’t exist when I bought them). I block and report all spam emails. I put a spam filter on this blog. I pay for Youtube Premium because it kills ads. I quit watching Amazon videos for multiple reasons, and one was that they swindled me on ads. They sold me Prime with the promise that I would see no ads, and then they started showing me ads anyway.

Call me spoiled, but I would rather watch nothing than watch a really good show interrupted by the same ad 30 times.

Video ads are pathetic these days. Some shows can’t get a lot of sponsors, so they run the same three sponsors’ ads over and over. They also increase the frequency of ads as the shows progress. You get a short interruption every 8 minutes toward the beginning, then you get hooked, and then you get a longer interruption, featuring the same ads, every two minutes until the show is over.

It’s also common for video providers to lock up ads while you look at other browser tabs. You move to a new tab while the ad is running, hoping to avoid it, and when you go back, the ad resumes at exactly the same point where you abandoned it.

If I don’t want to buy your silly product during the first three seconds of the ad, I still won’t want to buy it after being forced to see the other 27 or 157 seconds.

I quit watching secular entertainment, so I suffer much less than I used to. I still watch videos related to my interests.

I can’t imagine the misery of going through the work of minimizing the ads in my life and then having them forced on me, on a big screen, in my kitchen.

Do they have sound? Can you shut it off? I certainly hope they default to silence, but I’ll bet they don’t.

The ad-forcing TV’s don’t cost less than the ones that have no screens. They cost more. So where is the ad revenue going? To Samsung, of course. Samsung is subjecting you to torment and taking money for it. You get nothing for your service.

You’re like a prisoner on a chain gang, working for 50 cents per hour while the state charges private land owners for your services. Except you don’t get the 50 cents.

If Samsung put a billboard in my yard, they would have to pay me, not themselves. Common sense?

Samsung fridges have cameras inside them. I’m not kidding. I’m going to guess they film your food and send you ads based on what you eat. They sell the information to other jerks.

I hope some prankster starts putting dummy grenades and pipe bombs in his Samsung fridge.

Samsung says the ads are “curated.” This is a nonsense term intended to make products seem special and consumers feel important. It just means someone chose the ads. This is true of all ads. Also, Samsung’s “curator” is a computer that belongs to Samsung. It’s not a human being. “Curated” means “chosen to appeal to you based on information we shouldn’t have, and provided by predatory corporations.”

It’s odd to use the term “curated” to apply to products which are…advertisements. Ordinarily, marketers use it to apply to things we like and want, not things we hate. Assortments of skin care products. Music playlists.

“We hope you’re enjoying your stay at the Tower of London. Next in our series of curated experiences for valued subjects, the iron muzzle with spikes on the inside!”

Samsung lies and says the ads are intended to benefit you. It’s all about you. For the children. So you can live your best life. Because we are stronger together. And it takes a village. Love trumps hate. Coexist.

If you’re going to lie, at least try to come up with lies that would fool a two-year-old. The lies make this worse, not better.

It will get worse. If our government wanted to do anything about it, they would have done it by now. Our laws are made by people lobbyists pay for service, lobbyists have lots of money, and you can’t expect the same people who take bribes to ban bribes.

Here’s a critical video about Samsung’s disgusting actions. Here is the height of irony: the video was clearly made using AI. AI will defend you against creeping tech tyranny. Yeah. That will happen.

Why are Man Tools Always Better Than Girl Tools?

I’m sitting here today, wondering if I’m stupid.

Something like 18 years ago, I bought a Ridgid shop vac. It looks like it has leprosy. The surface of the plastic case is badly faded. I don’t know what caused this. Apparently, this particular plastic fades with time, and the texture roughens.

This is the only thing wrong with it.

I have used it on machining chips, all sorts of metal debris, sawdust, wood chips, leaves, dirt, bugs, and wet spills. I have used it as a spot cleaner on furniture, wetting the fabric with window cleaner and then sucking it out. I have failed to clean the filter for years on end. Nothing bothers it.

It is reasonable to expect this vacuum to continue working for at least another 30 years without repairs.

You can buy a similar Ridgid for under $130.

Move forward to September of 2022.

I thought I should man up, spend serious money, and get a real house vacuum cleaner. I already had an Electrolux, and it was okay, but the cord rewind mechanism was broken, somehow the main floor attachment had gotten lost, and it was a canister vacuum I had to drag around. I wanted an upright.

The Electrolux had its good points. It was very quiet. It was light. It seemed to do an okay job. But I had to drag it, and Electrolux is extremely feeble when it comes to parts. I had to buy a Chinese floor attachment. Electrolux discontinued the cord retractor, which is a part that fails frequently.

I bought a Shark upright for the low, low sale price of $429.

How can a vacuum cleaner cost $429? That’s a great question. A motor and a cheap body, all made in Asia. You can get a canister vacuum from another respected manufacturer for around $120, so what’s up with Shark?

It’s supposed to have unusually powerful suction. I’ll give it that. It does. Other than that, it’s just bells and whistles, like the motor that speeds up when the vacuum sees more dirt in front of it. Personally, I want my vacuum to run fast all the time. I am offended by products that charge me extra to save energy, unless they save me serious money.

Do you hate it when your TV turns itself off when you leave the room? Me, too.

Like just about everything these days, the Shark came with a proprietary part which has to be replaced regularly. It’s a fragrance cartridge. You put it in the base, and until it runs out of irritating chemicals, it makes your house smell like the perfume counter at Target. Shark charges $13 each, and you have to buy two at a time. Market price for knockoffs: two dollars and change.

The only reason I keep the original cartridge in my machine is to block the hole it fits in. I’m afraid leaving it open will kill the suction. I don’t care about running out of perfume.

I also have a Shark cordless upright, which I will defend. It works very well for what it is, and it’s convenient. It’s no match for a powerful vacuum, but it handles most types of dirt with acceptable success.

The Sharks work pretty well. The corded job sucks like crazy, and the cordless one is probably stronger than my Electrolux. They both choke on anything bigger than 3/4″, though, and wet spills will ruin them.

When a Shark chokes, you have to take the filthy floor part apart. Lovely experience.

Move forward to 2025.

Louis Rossmann is one of my favorite Youtubers. He runs a big electronics repair business in Texas. He used to operate in New York City, but he left because he couldn’t take it any more. New York treats business owners like criminals.

Now that I think about it, it treats criminals like business owners.

Rossmann is big in the right-to-repair movement. He got his start while servicing Apple products.

Apple is one of the most ruthless, immoral, greedy, dishonest companies on Earth. Apple will not give repairmen schematics and OEM parts, and it cheats customers who need repairs.

Apple has a history of cheating us silly, not just with inflated initial costs, but with dishonest repair bills. If you take your Apple product to an Apple repair center with a problem that can be fixed with a cheap part or a cleaning, there is a good chance they will lie to you and tell you to buy a new product.

Forcing people to buy new products is not a small wrong. It’s a big deal when a repair that should cost $35 turns into a $1500 purchase. We’re not all as rich as Tim Cook.

Rossmann saw the replacement swindle more than once, and he was frustrated because he had to find technical documents through back channels. He also had to buy real Apple parts this way, and he had to use questionable aftermarket parts in some repairs.

Now he puts out video after video about RTR, and he goes after companies other than Apple. One of his big beefs right now concerns unwanted ads. Example: Samsung just started forcing refrigerator owners to put up with ads on their fridge doors. They bought the fridges with no ads, Samsung updated the software without consulting them, and now they get annoying commercials while trying to get bologna for sandwiches.

He’s mad at Shark right now because a customer needed new wheels for a 6-month-old machine, and Shark construed its own warranty, which they try to tell us is generous, to exclude just about everything except the motor.

In a recent video, Rossman told the world about his home vacuum: a Ridgid shop vac.

It’s cheap. It’s powerful. You can get attachments to make it work indoors like a home vacuum. It can suck up just about anything, wet or dry. It has a huge capacity.

Need a part? Ridgid will sell it to you. They have a big selection of parts on their site, and Home Depot stocks a lot of parts.

I ruled out shop vacs for indoor use a long time ago, assuming they had to be unsuitable. I guess I was wrong.

Watching Rossman, I tried to rationalize my spending. I thought, “Well, it won’t work on floors. The primitive floor things on my two shop vacs are made for things like garages.” No; you can buy a floor attachment which will actually work. It’s simple and cheap, and it won’t give you a pretty LED light show, but it does work.

I kept trying to defend my expenditures. I said, “It won’t filter the air nearly as well as a Shark. It has no HEPA filter.”

There are problems with that notion.

1. Houses and buildings used to get very clean without HEPA filters. I think the initialism “HEPA” is just a tool to make you feel bad about not spending more money, unless you have some kind of freak allergy. You probably shouldn’t breathe dust while sanding drywall, but the stuff that collects on your exercise bike will not send you to the ER.

2. Ridgid sells HEPA filters for their vacuums.

The video made me think about wet spills.

I have a baby. He poops. He throws up. He spills stuff. My $429 Shark will not help me with any of that.

I have two Rug Doctor shampoo machines. I have the big one for floors and the little one for furniture and stairs. I got them years ago when I was looking after my dad. He spilled stuff. I guess I have $350 invested in these machines.

If I wanted to, I could spray cleaning solution on big carpet spills, suck it out with a Ridgid, and get things just as clean as the Rug Doctors would. I could do this for furniture and stairs, too.

Using a Rug Doctor is unpleasant. You have to fill a clean-fluid tank and then remove and clean out a dirty-fluid tank. Your hands get involved with the filth way too much. With a shop vac, you just carry it outside, pull the lid, dump the water, and put the lid back on.

Here is the thought rolling around in my head: while the big Rug Doctor is superior for shampooing wall-to-wall carpet, a shop vac is better for every other kind of spill.

If I cared enough, I could use a pump sprayer to apply fluid to rugs and then suck it out with a shop vac. Something to consider.

You can’t clean a dirty carpet with a Rug Doctor until you vacuum it. I know this, because I had to take a Rug Doctor apart to remove dog hair after a friend abused it. A shop vac loves dog hair. And nails. And rocks.

The big Rug Doctor is designed to break down. It uses a water pump to shoot cleaning solution onto rugs. The pump is not designed to resist corrosion well. Every so often, the pumps quit, and they have to be replaced. This is a nightmare job. I did it recently.

The little Rug Doctor probably has the same problem. I am waiting for it. If it happens, I’ll probably take it to the dump.

It appears to be a machine with no legimitate reason to exist.

I don’t think a Ridgid cordless can replace a Shark cordless. I have a really good Ridgid cordless I got for sucking goo out of air conditioners. You have to carry it like a suitcase. The suction doesn’t seem all that impressive. Maybe I’m wrong, though.

Shop vacs are incredibly loud, so that’s a problem, but it’s nothing earmuffs can’t fix.

It looks like I spent hundreds of dollars buying myself unnecessary problems. Something to think about for the future.

MORE

I checked, and it appears the Ridgid WD0319 cordless shop vac sucks considerably harder than a cordless Shark Stratos and runs a lot longer on one charge. It lacks motorized rollers and so on, however, and the Shark may seal to rugs better.

I doubt the business about the Shark sealing better, since you can get a rug attachment for a Ridgid.

Tallow Facts for the Callow

Now that I’ve found a good source of affordable beef fat for the deep fryer, I am learning more about french fries.

Interesting fact: while most people think the “french” in “french fries” comes from Belgium, where American soldiers encountered fries and thought they were eating them in France, it may be that the “french” actually refers to a “french cut,” which means “julienned.”

This makes sense to me, since Americans are not really stupid enough to think Belgium is France.

Belgium is generally considered to be the top nation for fry excellence. They have all sorts of shops and stands selling thick fries.

There is a ton of fry folklore out there, and I have fallen for most of it at one time or another. I am here to post the current state of my knowledge.

I’ll list myths and then debunk them. Hopefully, I will not have to come back in a month and debunk the debunking.

1. You have to use Dutch Bintje potatoes for fries. If this were true, there would be no great American french fries, but there are. Maybe Bintje potatoes are better, but you can’t have them, so what difference does it make? The standard US potato is the russet. I have seen Kennebec potatoes recommended, as well as Yukon Golds.

2. You must rinse or soak your fries before frying them. The big problem with this myth is the existence of many Youtube videos featuring professional Belgian fry fryers who don’t rinse or soak fries. Belgium has factories that do nothing but cut potatoes into fries and put them in bags. Fry cooks dump the bags right into fryers. Rinsing and soaking aren’t necessary. I read about an exception for Yukon Golds, which need a rinse to prevent them from getting gummy.

3. Good fries should be cooked twice (not necessarily a myth, although there are dissenters), and you have to refrigerate or even freeze them between sessions. Belgians don’t use refrigeration. They cook fries at around 300° until the appearance gets dull, and then they dump them on shelves near their fryers. Then they fry them again at a higher temperature.

4. Plant-based oils are good for making fries. They’re just not. This absurd notion has been forced on us by vegans and other woke (i.e. mentally ill) people whose biases have nothing to do with making good food. Animal fat makes fries taste better, and it gives them more crunch. I know Five Guys uses peanut oil, and people think they know what they’re doing, but their fries would be better if they used the correct type of fat.

Five Guys is a business, so they want to maximize profits. I dont’ care about that. If Five Guys goes to real fat, the cost will go up a little, and whatever self-righteous vegans are currently buying their fries will stop. I think this is why they use cheap oil.

Food chains claim they use bad plant oils because of health concerns. Yeah. That’s why they serve McFlurries, Frostys, McMuffins, double cheeseburgers, and 50 kinds of sugar drinks. It’s why Culver’s serves fried cheese. Thanks for looking out for us, boys.

Could a lie be more obvious?

“We’re still running a whorehouse, but now every room comes with a Gideon Bible!”

Some restaurants are going back to beef fat now; notably Steak ‘n’ Shake, Outback, and Popeyes.

I now have 50 pounds of beef fat, which is the absolute best affordable frying medium. I paid about $1.40 per pound. I am getting ready to dump the peanut oil from my deep fryer, fill it with beef fat, and live the dream.

I came up with a plan, based on numerous sources. It’s for fat Belgian-style fries around 3/8″ thick. I generally like thinner fries, but I’m going to give the big ones a shot.

1. Cut russet potatoes to size, leaving the skins on.

2. Blanch at 300° until the shine goes away.

3. Rest for 45 minutes. I’ll probably just lift the fryer basket out of the fat and let it sit atop the fryer.

4. Fry at 350° until done. Belgians say the fries will “sing” at this point, meaning the frying noise takes on a higher pitch. I have also noticed that their fries float.

My feeling is that I should do what Belgians do and avoid doing what they don’t do.

The sad thing is that there are “authentic” Belgian fry recipes out there that tell people to soak or rinse potatoes. Why lie like that? People are really something.

If you don’t want to take the trouble of cutting up potatoes and frying them twice, I have good news. I learned that frozen fries are generally blanched before packing. I’ve tried some, and I found that Great Value crinkle-cut fries from Walmart are better than Ore-Ida fries that cost more. If you use Great Value fries, you’re really frying twice, and you’re also satisfying the characters who claim fries need to be frozen.

I won’t say Walmart fries are the best fries around, but they’re exactly like just about all the crinkle-cut fries you’ve ever enjoyed, and they save you some work.

Maybe I’ll get around to making fries later in the week.

I Ham Almost Finished

The final contestant in my country ham tournament of champions came yesterday, and I tried it this morning: Benton’s, from Tennessee.

I received 4 center slices with the bones removed. They were packed in vacuum bags. They came with directions that said to fry them for no more than 30 seconds on a side. You really need to have some grease standing by to get away with that. You need grease to provide thermal contact between the ham and the pan.

I fried a slice without water or grease, and then I used water to deglaze the pan and make a little red eye gravy. Then my wife and I tried the ham.

The bad: it’s salty. Somewhere between Newsom’s, which is fine, and Broadbent’s, which is too salty right out of the box. The slices were too thin at around 5/32″. It’s just a wee bit tough.

The good: classic country ham flavor, although not as pronounced as Newsom’s.

If I were going to go with Benton’s, I would buy a whole ham, slice it thicker, soak the slices for two days, and bag and freeze it. That would kill the excess salt and add moisture. I don’t think it would produce the nice texture Newsom’s has, however.

Maybe Benton’s would agree to sell thicker ham slices. That would be a good deal, because a sliced ham is only ten dollars more than an intact ham.

Benton’s says its hams are 9-10 months old on average, so call it 9. They sell older hams, too. Newsom’s starts at one year, which may explain a lot.

Curing is what makes a ham safe to eat. It takes a few weeks. After that, you can stick a ham in your unrefrigerated closet for a year without problems. It would continue to age and improve, as long as you didn’t overdo it. As I have said before, this could be a good way to avoid Newsom’s high prices and still get the same experience.

Benton’s has an interesting option: deboned hams that have not been sliced. I can get this for $133, which is not bad. They include the bones and trimmed bits, which is very important, because they are useful in soups and greens.

Yesterday, I used the bones from my Newsom’s ham to make Great Northern beans, and the result was glorious. I got rid of some of my unwanted Broadbent’s slices by using them in collard greens, and I made cornbread with a little bit of the grease from the beans. Food doesn’t get much better.

As I have often said, the price of ingredients has nothing to do with the pleasure food gives you. A really good pot of beans with cornbread on the side is as good as nearly anything, anywhere.

The beans cost me $3.98. The onions ran around $1.50.

The ham was so salty, I didn’t have to add salt to either dish.

I had some Oberholtzer’s sorghum syrup from Liberty, Kentucky, and I put it on buttered cornbread. You really have to try this combination to understand how good it is.

My cousin tells me my aunt now recommends Townsend’s sorghum, but they charge so much for shipping, I am not planning to try it. A Tennessee company called Muddy Pond will send you 64 ounces for $48, shipping included. That’s interesting.

It looks like my best sorghum deal is about twice as expensive as my best maple syrup deal, unless you count the $24 half-gallon of maple syrup I got at Rural King. That was an amazing buy.

Ronni Lundy, who wrote a very authentic Appalachian cookbook, recommends Oberholtzer’s and Muddy Pond. I trust her judgment. I’m going to try some Muddy Pond, since I am low on Oberholtzer’s.

I don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible for anyone with sorghum cane to make good syrup. You just boil the juice and bottle it.

Current tournament rankings: 1. Newsom’s, 2. Meacham, 3. Penn, 4. Benton’s. Broadbent’s is disqualified because I felt it was in a lower tier even after two tries.

It’s hard to be certain about the 1-2 and 3-4 rankings. They’re close, and besides, country hams are not completely consistent, so I can’t be sure I got hams that represent their companies perfectly.

I’m pretty sure Broadbent’s is not for me.

When I used to order Gatton Farms and Scott hams, things were simple. I got pretty much what I wanted.

The more I look at country ham, the more I think I should try curing one. It just has to survive a few weeks in my fermenting fridge. After that, I can put it anywhere.

The idea of buying a relatively cheap ham, meaning one that isn’t aged much, and letting it age in my laundry room is also tempting.

I guess I could even take a slice of Newsom’s ham and rub the rind on a new ham to transfer the correct mold.

Anyway, I’m nearly done with the ham tournament. I just have to try all the winners at one sitting.

I’m looking forward to getting it over with. When you eat a lot of country ham, the salt makes you retain water, and it wants to come out at 2 a.m. And 3 a.m. And 4 a.m.

Mild but Tasty

My country ham tournament of champions continues.

I have tried hams from Newsom’s, Meacham, Broadbent’s, and, today, Penn.

Newsom’s is just about perfect. I wish it were not. It’s expensive.

Meacham is very good, but it has a little bit of unique flavor that is not exactly like the hams I ate as a kid. It’s hard to say whether Newsom’s or Meacham is better.

Broadbent’s hams are very salty. The flavor is just okay. I received two packages. The first slices were too tough, salty, and lacking in flavor for me. The second bunch were not as tough or salty, but they were still saltier and tougher than I would have liked, so Broadbent’s is out.

A package from Penn Country Hams arrived. I ordered a half ham. What I really got was between three and four pounds of big boneless slices in vacuum bag inside an insulating bag with one of those synthetic ice pack things in it.

The meat was already warm, but they tried.

I ate plenty of country ham when I was young, and I believe I know what a quintessential Kentucky ham tastes like. As an adult, I used to get them from outfits named Gatton Farms and Scott Hams, and they were pretty much like the hams my grandmother and great uncle cured. That’s the kind of ham I want. The best? That’s subject to debate. It’s what I like. It’s what my grandmother and her brother liked. It’s good.

When I cut the bag open, the ham gave off kind of a barnyard smell. Some hams are like that. It’s almost like manure. In some cases, it’s a great deal like manure. I won’t eat Smithfield-brand hams because the manure smell is about all you get.

It also smelled sort of like peanuts.

A sticker on the bag says “8 Months Old.”

I fried a Penn slice. I didn’t bother with water or bacon grease.

This ham is pretty tender for country ham. It also has a fair amount of fat, although I would say Newsom’s and Meacham probably have more.

Newsom’s falls apart in your mouth like aged steak. I like that. This ham was easy to chew, but it was not the same.

On the salt scale, I would say it’s similar to Newsom’s. Just fine.

The flavor is milder than Newsom’s and Meacham. A good ham has an acidic umami flavor nothing else seems to have. Newsom’s hams nail it. Meacham is close. The Penn slice had less of it.

The ham had a peanutty aftertaste my wife and I both noticed.

I believe this would be a great ham for someone who is scared of real country ham. It’s the real thing, but the move from city ham to this ham is a little less jarring than it would be for other hams.

The verdict: delicious, but not quite what I’m looking for. Newsom’s is a bullseye. Meacham is close, and I think the quality is the same, but it also has that signature Meacham scent. Not bad, but not quite what I’m used to. I’m not just looking for great ham. I’m looking for nostalgia.

This is excellent ham. Eating it is not exactly a hardship. I won’t buy it again, though, because Newsom’s and Meacham are closer to what I want.

Your Typical American Way of Life is Destroying You

The reason we should have continued the unconstitutional banning of open carry in Florida is that we knew that if the ban were dropped, there would be chaos in the streets caused by people carrying guns openly and legally.

This is what millions of leftists told us, including leftists in open-carry states like Washington, Wisconsin, and Oregon, where no such chaos has ever developed.

It has been over two weeks since the first police departments stopped enforcing the carry ban, and here’s a comprehensive list of all the shocking incidents in which nuts used open carry to create public disturbances:

In case you weren’t paying attention, here is the list again:

Even I was overly pessimistic. I figured surely I would see a few patriots carrying openly during the first days of carry freedom, but it didn’t happen.

On the down side, the most combative, irritable element of the 2A population segment is now insisting open carry is now legal in Florida’s “prohibited places,” meaning schools, courthouses and so on.

They have a point. The law listing these places expressly refers to concealed carry permit holders, and it doesn’t even say there is a ban. It says the law doesn’t allow permit holders to carry openly or concealed in these places, and that’s not the same thing as banning it.

Weirdly, the part about open carry only mentions pistols, so I guess the door is open for some brave soul to go to a police station with a rifle on a sling.

Another interesting wrinkle: federal law also creates prohibited places, and Florida can’t override the federal ban. A federal court in a different part of the country recently held that the ban in post offices was unconstitutional, but given the way federal law is changing, I doubt that will help anyone in Florida right away.

My understanding (from not reading the opinion) is that the relevant case struck down all “federal facility” bans. Does that include military bases? You have to wonder. Soldiers can’t carry guns, but I can?

The post office ban is stupid. Nobody robs post offices. Granted, given past behavior, it might be a good idea to disarm employees preemptively, but most of the rest of us have the good sense to commit our crimes in places like banks, trailer parks, and liquor stores.

Where carrying weapons is legal.

It’s also illegal to carry a gun into an Amtrak station. First of all, who goes into an Amtrak station? Second, who robs trains? Jesse James is dead, people. “Hands up! Give me all your stale, half-eaten dinner rolls and empty Dasani bottles!”

Here’s a great law: although you can wander around in a national park armed (because many people find guns helpful when hunting) if you have to relieve yourself, you have to go behind a tree, because going into a mens’ room with a gun is a felony.

You can always leave your gun outside and hope kids don’t pick it up.

Squat on footpath so people step in it: model citizen. Sit on toilet behind locked door: felony.

All federal buildings in national parks are off-limits. I guess a lot of thought went into that law.

It’s like they just said, “We’re still stinging from the passage of the Bill of Rights, and here’s a chance to get even!”

In news which is less irrelevant to me, I keep getting wonderful revelation.

God has been teaching me a lot about holiness. I believe that most people think “holiness” means standing around with a stupid grin on your face, holding two fingers in the air and glowing like a giant lightning bug. Believe it or not, that is wrong. It just means a state of separation and dedication to God. It means you reject the world’s culture and adopt the culture of heaven, because you choose to belong to God’s family.

I used to have the feeling that holiness meant giving up everything that is enjoyable for the purpose of scoring points to get me into heaven. That is not correct, either.

Holiness removes evil spirits and curses from your life, reducing your problems and your suffering. It brings you closer to God and other Christians, increasing your blessings and making you safer.

Satan has salted our culture with poison to make us weak and corrupt and open holes so demons can enter us.

Secular entertainment, including sports, is a real problem. Even seemingly-innocent shows and songs lead to captivity. Entertainment teaches us that fornication, which God says is abomination, is fine. It tells us normal people don’t pray or acknowledge Yeshua during their daily lives. It endorses perversion and cruelty. It glamorizes violence. It promotes drug use, including the use of steroids. Those big, buff actors you’re used to seeing, who used to look like Rob Schneider, didn’t get that way from eating chicken, broccoli, and rice for two months. Wake up.

Dwayne Johnson is on steroids. Face it. Well, he was. Now he’s down about 50 pounds. He reached the age where his doctor told him to knock it off, but he continues to lie and say he didn’t take anything. He has blocked arteries, and steroids cause that.

Shia Leboeuf admits he used steroids; he went from 165 to 220 to 165. Alan Ritchson uses drugs. All sorts of movie henchmen and goons use steroids.

Arnold Schwarzenegger. Dolph Lundgren. Mickey Rourke. Dave Bautista. Even Charlie Sheen and Suzanne Somers used PED’s.

Hugh Jackman definitely used drugs to play Wolverine. He looked better at 55 than anyone reading this blog will ever look at 30 with the best regimen imaginable and no drugs.

People are calling the Rock “the pebble” now. He looks thin, like the new, de-juiced Dave Bautista. He claims he lost weight to play a role, but he’s not going to bulk up again, unless he does it briefly to “debunk” the steroid stories. He’s not going back to long-term juicing, because it could kill him.

Even reality-TV (oxymoron) personalities use drugs. Celebrity chef Robert Irvine’s biceps suddenly fell off a year or two ago. Seems like the late fifties are the magical years when every user’s doctor sits him down.

Actors are telling our kids they can have superhuman physiques by eating chicken and exercising a lot. Then kids find out it’s not true, and while they’re at the gym, they start talking to other kids who look like Ronnie Coleman, and then they start taking drugs.

Entertainment promotes torture. It really does. Goody-goody Tom Hanks tortured a suspect in a lame cop movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger tortured people. Kiefer Sutherland. Josh Brolin. Benicio del Toro. Kathleen Turner. Tommy Lee Jones. Lots of movies and shows feature torture scenes, and we’re supposed to feel good about it because it’s the good guys doing the torturing. The movies make torture, which should turn our stomachs and give us nightmares, satisfying. Just like Stanley Kubrick made rape seem funny and sexy.

Liberal actors are the best gun salesmen there are, after Barack Obama. We watch movies and then go to gun stores and buy the guns the actors held. We even buy stupid guns like the obsolete rifle Tom Selleck used in Quigley Down Under, a movie which sounds like it was named after a disease.

We decorate our guns with a skull logo that was used in Punisher movies. We buy “tactical” clothes actors wear, and we wear them to gun ranges.

You can buy a bobbed lever-action rifle like the one John Wayne used. Wayne was a draft-dodger real soldiers booed during World War II, and he never saved a town from a brutal rancher, but we still like that Italian-made tribute rifle.

It’s a third-rate weapon. Low capacity, low velocity, relatively inaccurate, and slow to cycle. Doesn’t matter.

Sensible gun owners use guns to hunt and to defend life. They teach others to be responsible and humane. Gun owners under the influence of Hollywood are participating in a dangerous form of demon cosplay. They secretly hope for a chance to put their toys and skills to the test on human beings.

Name something bad. Entertainment promotes it successfully. Witchcraft. Socialism. Feminism. Stealing. The murder of the unborn.

PG-rated entertainment and even news sites are gateways to porn compulsions. I could go on about other things entertainment leads to, and I have, in other posts.

Holiness also means dropping people who pull you away from God.

The word says we should not be unequally yoked. People think this is just about marriage. It’s not. It’s about everything. Friendship. Business. Everything.

A friend of mine started a business with some nominal Christians who were, frankly, creeps. I knew it was a bad idea. He thought it would make him rich. He made excuses for them. He gave the business a name that made it sound like it had something to do with God.

His partners undermined him. They let employees walk on him. They overruled his good ideas. They pretty much killed the business. They finally drove him out. He had wasted years of his life.

Now he’s trying his hand at construction, which is something he knew nothing about three years ago. He had a nominal-Christian buddy who was going to teach him everything.

The buddy connected him with irresponsible trash typical of the subcontractor breed. He let him get into pickles that caused great expense and delay. A house that was supposed to be built in a few months is now in its third year, and it’s a mess. I don’t think anyone will buy it unless they want to raze it and use the lot. He should have built and sold several houses by now. He hasn’t seen a dollar in profit.

Say you take three years to build a house, you spend $100,000, and your profit is $150,000. Sounds like you won, but you were supposed to build 5 houses during that time and make $1,000,000 in profit.

When I worked with unbelievers and nominal Christians, they sabotaged and blackballed me right and left. My dad’s partner cheated me. His other partner got us to buy a new building and then got suspended for doing drugs and sleeping with strippers. My first boss in the field of law tried to cheat me and then broke his promise to give me a permanent job. A friend he recommended me to cheated me. When I was a writer, editors gave other people things they promised me. My own family cheats me on my inheritance.

I even got demoted while working in a bar, so a thief could take my place.

When you work with dark-siders, they abuse you, and they also pressure you to do things the devil’s way. You shouldn’t get involved with them in the first place.

If you’re letting demons in with things that seem innocent, it will lead to bondages that clearly are not innocent. Netflix will lead to porn and fornication. News sites can lead to rage. Satan’s kingdom is like a nail. If you let the small, sharp end in, the big fat end will follow.

Demons don’t just do one thing. A spirit that causes anger may also cause health problems. A spirit of pornography may curse your finances. Procrastination can cause high blood pressure because of stress. You won’t necessarily know which ungodly behaviors cause which problems.

Demons are like squatters. Have you noticed how squatters behave? They’re under the influence of demons. They don’t just occupy homes. They tear them up, for no reason. They rip out walls and break windows, even though they live in the houses. To a demon, your body is a house that belongs to someone else.

If you give up evil people and secular entertainment (including sports), and you minimize your exposure to the news, you and your family will be safe. Fewer demons will be able to get at you. Your exposure to troublesome people will be diminished. God will be closer to you. Things will get better, even as they get worse for others.

This is what holiness really means.

This should be obvious, but preachers don’t teach it. Most of them just want your money or a nice secure job. They don’t receive revelation. No one taught them, either. I had to learn these things directly from God because preachers were nothing but parasites to me.

My involvement with preachers was unequal yoking. Think about that. The thing that was supposed to help me.

No wonder God hates bad preachers so much.

My son will hear good things from me. I will introduce him to the Holy Spirit, and after that, if my son chooses, the Holy Spirit will finish teaching him and correct mistakes I’ve made.

This will be helpful to you if you give it a try. I’ve put it out there. I can’t do much more.

Is That a City Burning Over There on the Horizon?

I got nothing done today, and I’m loving it. Instead of painting the kitchen or putting a new oil seal in the tractor’s front axle, I put the family in the car, and we went for lunch and supplies.

The weather is bearable now. The heat has abated, and the rains have tapered off. It’s beautiful here. Even better, we have a new Captain D’s and a Restaurant Depot.

Captain D’s is basically the same as Long John Silver’s. Fish fried in near-tempura batter, served with fries. In other words, fish and chips.

The only local LJ’s is a long way off, and it seems to be making long, slow circles around the drain, so I was very happy when Captain D’s came to town.

Restaurant Depot is a food service company. A grocery store for restaurants. They sell big packages of restaurant-grade food at wholesale prices.

Restaurant Depot is a godsend if you want to make real pizza. They have every flour known to humanity, they carry Stanislaus and Escalon tomato products, and they sell decent mozzarella, which is more than you can say for nearly all grocery stores.

You’re not supposed to shop at Restaurant Depot unless you run a business, but they will let you in for a day if you’re a mere mortal. You won’t have access to alcohol, and there are other perks you won’t get, but you can buy most products at the same prices chefs pay.

Yesterday I found out anyone with a federal EIN could get a Restaurant Depot card, so I decided I needed to become a member. I took care of that today. I feel superior to other people now.

Captain D’s was shocking. Most restaurants here are dirty, and the employees tend to be incompetent. Captain D’s was spotless. The staff was well-groomed, courteous, and efficient. The food was exactly what it was supposed to be. No excuses. The tartar sauce and ketchup were a little subpar, but you’re supposed to use malt vinegar at Captain D’s.

I guess some people would make fun of me for getting excited about fast food, but then the world is full of idiots. A really good burger with fries is just as good as the black cod at Nobu or the pate at Picasso. It’s just a different cuisine.

Any restaurant that does a top-notch job providing tasty food is a good restaurant, and a really good Five Guys is better than a mediocre haute cuisine joint.

I like restaurateurs that do a great job, whether they serve wagyu or food-truck tacos.

Captain D’s is the Chick-fil-A of fish and chips.

Yesterday I ate at a restaurant that put canned green peppers and canned onions on a pizza, so I was ready for some redemption.

I love Restaurant Depot. They really cut through the grocery-store BS.

Huge bag of shelled pistachios: $8. Gallon can of pomace oil: $17. Good mozzarella: $2 per pound.

Best of all for today: 50 pounds of beef tallow for $68. This is about what 40 pounds of peanut oil cost at the grocery, and peanut oil is vastly inferior.

Beef tallow makes crisper fries that taste much better, and that’s why McDonald’s used to use it. It’s perfect for frying chicken, which is why KFC used it for decades before women and vegetarians made them cave in and use rape oil.

I looked at tallow last year, and I saw prices like $150. I was going to spring for it eventually. I like $68 much better, and at Restaurant Depot, I get an extra 10 pounds for the kitchen or my wife’s skin care. Or my baby’s butt.

This is great.

It seems unfair for life to be this sweet while everyone else is gearing up for an unnecessary civil war.