How Can This be a Good Deal for God?

I had a disturbing revelation during the night.

I often wake up at night and spend hours praying. I can’t get back to sleep. God confronts me with things about myself that need to be corrected. Sometimes it’s very unpleasant, but I look forward to it, because I want to be right. That’s just common sense. No one wants to continue being wrong and causing problems for himself and others.

Well. Many people do, actually. Most, I suppose.

Last night, I thought about the blood of Yeshua.

I have the cutest baby son you could ever hope to meet. He is funny. He adores his parents. He loves being hugged and played with. He puts his lips on us and makes hilarious noises. He tries to be a good boy; we can tell by watching him.

A large amount of our time is devoted to showing him love. He gets squeezed and kissed all day. I don’t know how we could love him more. The thought of anything bad happening to him is unbearable to me.

Abraham loved his son, too, and like me, he waited a long time for him. His rebellious wife was disobedient to God and persuaded him to have a troublesome son by a concubine, but the son of promise came later.

God told him to hold his beautiful, cherished son down, slit his throat, and watch him die. Abraham tried to do it, although his heart must have been bursting inside him.

Yahweh went farther than Abraham.

He had one son. Only one. He was perfect. He was full of love. He adored his father. He loved his earthly father. He was completely innocent, even in his thirties. Then God had him tortured to death, slowly, so his blood could be used to wash his enemies.

God loved his enemies–us–so much, he put himself and his son through that.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t cut the tip of my son’s finger. I would much rather cut myself. If he were killed, and someone collected his blood, I wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of it. I would want to die.

Here I am, however, continually claiming to be washed in the blood of God’s son, whom God loves more than I love mine.

That is really something. It shows what a serious thing it is when we claim the blood. It also shows how precious it is. We should never speak about it carelessly. It’s a person’s blood, taken by violence for which we are responsible, provided to us by that person’s adoring father.

I kept hearing a phrase during the night: “I am expensive.”

That is putting it very mildly. Imagine how expensive I am, if God traded the life, flesh, and blood of his only son so he could have me. It’s incomprehensible.

God calls his human children a pearl of great price, worth everything he has. He is serious. He paid all he had.

You can be expensive, too, if you want.

In other news, I am done with The Last Reformation. It seems to have deteriorated consistently over the last few years. It’s all Torben this and TLR doctrine that. It’s not what it used to be.

If you look at TLR’s video history, you will see that they used to heal and baptize people. Now, the focus has shifted. “Go on trips with us.” Explanations of doctrine that may be flawed. Complaints about Torben’s enemies and his imprisonment and deportation.

Here’s something important to know: anyone who lacks current testimony and revelation is having problems in his relationship with God. God never stops teaching us and doing remarkable things in our lives.

A lack of testimony is one of the hallmarks of a dead ministry. When you go to a typical church, the preacher gives testimony, but it’s not his. It may be the testimony of people he read about recently. It may be made-up testimony other preachers have been passing around, not knowing it’s fiction. In what may be the worst cases, it may be the testimony of people who lived 2,000 years ago.

Properly, “testimony” means “eyewitness testimony.” If you share your buddy’s testimony, it’s hearsay. It wouldn’t be admissible in a court of law. You’re not a witness. You’re just someone who heard a story.

TLR’s videos used to be full of evidence of the activity of God. Healing and deliverance, mainly. This isn’t true any more. It’s mostly talk, advertising, and teaching of questionable value.

I’ve been to TLR events in St. Petersburg, Raleigh, and Tennessee. I didn’t drive long distances so I could see Torben Sondergaard or learn how to use TLR’s special salvation cards. I didn’t make those trips so I could join their school and live in a dormitory with strangers, as though I were a child in boarding school. I wanted to get closer to God and have him move through me, and I thought they could help.

I met some nice people through TLR, but they were not insiders. I did not see any extraordinary healings. I participated in one deliverance. I had some useful experiences. But the ministry got stuck in a rut, and it is still there.

This is typical of my experience. I find a ministry I like. I involve myself to some extent. I get some good things out of it. I notice that the people who are heavily involved seem to be less blessed than I am, and that they are bogged down in their walks. No one listens when I try to help. I am seen as a problem. The ministry deteriorates. I let it go and move on.

This must be why God doesn’t send me to church. Churches are invariably run by preachers who know less about God than I do and who expect me to regress back to their levels. They can’t tolerate any revelation that didn’t come through them or their revered mentors and forebears. Revelation can’t come through nobodies like me; it has to come through people they know or who were powerful in their denominations. My job is to shut up and accept false correction, and I’m supposed to repent and apologize for actual revelation. Who am I to contradict a guy who has a jet, or even a guy who hangs around with a more successful guy who has a jet?

I’ll say it again: if God speaks to everyone in a church, which is what’s supposed to happen, Satan can’t do much to ruin things. He is weak and limited, so he can’t go after hundreds of Spirit-informed people simultaneously with any chance of success. In a personality cult, which means nearly any church, all he has to do is corrupt the pastor, and then the pastor corrupts everyone else, which is easy, because he hasn’t introduced them to the Holy Spirit. Instead, he introduced them to himself; an ambitious guy who likes telling others what to do.

Who did Satan use most effectively to keep ancient Jews from recognizing Yeshua and becoming blessed and saved? Whores and pagans? No! Priests and scribes. Satan won them over, and they corrupted Jews who thought they spoke for God, and that was the majority.

“I’ve been on 10 trips with Daniel Kolenda.” “I carried Kenneth Hagin’s briefcase.” People attach themselves to preachers and brag about how close they are or were. Many Christians feel that if they know famous preachers personally, they are somehow endowed with the authority and righteousness of Yeshua, even if they have never met him.

Satan wants us to worship preachers because it makes his operation work much more efficiently. He has used preacher-worship in his successful campaign to cripple the body of Christ.

Satan can’t corrupt the Holy Spirit, so if you spend sufficient time with the Holy Spirit every day, Satan can’t destroy you the way he has destroyed most self-described Christians.

I have probably spent a grand total of 45 seconds speaking to Torben Sondergaard at his events. I never had any interest in chasing him around to get his approval. I want people to bring me closer to God, not the other way around. Also, I don’t want to be a typical Jesus-buff pastor-pest. I don’t want to be the guy who stomps past people who are in need of help so I can tell the pastor how wonderful he is and get his approval.

A long time ago, I thought Robert Morris knew a few things, so we had a brief email correspondence. I wanted to learn more. I ended up asking him about a claim he had made that appeared to be wrong, and that was the last I heard from him. Now look what has happened to him. Where would I be if I had made him my guru?

He truly was wrong, by the way, and he should have known it. I think I still have his DVD’s, which I should really throw out.

I must have stirred up his pride, and proud preachers are to be avoided.

I liked Perry Stone because God showed him a lot of things. I never thought he was the new messiah, however. He ended up causing a sex scandal which, due to his dishonest denials and slanderous accusations, damaged his credibility forever.

I never spent significant time carrying anyone’s briefcase, doing his laundry, or helping set up his tent in Africa. I want to hear from God, not preachers.

I like T.B. Joshua, who died in 2021. I like Mark Hemans. I find the BBC’s accusations regarding Joshua to be transparent, debunked, intentional slanders. I haven’t heard anything bad about Hemans. Nonetheless, I don’t assume everything they said or say is correct.

The only problem I have with Joshua is that he had long conversations with people he was delivering. He asked demons all sorts of questions. “What did you do to this woman?” “Why did you do it?” Why would anyone give a platform to a demon? They lie. A demon might be lucky to lie to a thousand people through a person he controls, but put him in front of a popular minister whose videos go all over the world, and he can reach millions.

I believe Hemans gets a little chatty, too.

Here’s a wild proposition: we’re not supposed to let demons teach. Prove me wrong.

On a related note, the rapture has not come, unless I’m such a bad Christian I was rejected.

I saw a lady in a video, claiming her autistic son told her it would happen in September of 2025. She says he told her several true things no human being could know. Christians, who rarely investigate anything, got excited.

It’s the first of October.

Autism is often or perhaps always caused by demons, so this lady was getting supernatural information from a person who was in the grip of evil spirits. And she believed him, and other Christians believed her. That’s weird.

He communicates using a letter board, which is basically a secular Ouija board. It’s supposed to be a spiritually-neutral tool, but there is no reason a demon can’t use it just like a Ouija board.

She may have been making the whole thing up, though. People are contemptible and capable of anything, or, as my mom used to say, “People are no damn good.”

I am going to try to take the blood of Yeshua much more seriously. I already knew what God told me about it, but a revelation from God is somehow much more deeply convincing than common sense or a verse in the Bible.

I hear the baby making flatulence noises and squeaks of joy. I better go love him for a minute.

If You Find This Post Distressing, Blame the Jews

If the rapture doesn’t come soon, I don’t know how Christians will be able to stand living in this world.

Conservatives and Christians are now spewing lies about the Charlie Kirk assassination. Nominal Christians, anyway. No one who listens to the Holy Spirit is fooled by kooky conspiracy theories.

The thing about this that irks me the most is seeing people praise the liars while claiming God’s authority. God didn’t tell you to agree with demonized nuts who say Israel, the FBI, Charlie Kirk’s bodyguards, or anyone other than a Mormon homosexual named Tyler Robinson shot Charlie Kirk.

The chaos is amazing. How are you going to know who to point your AR-15 with Punisher skulls on the magazine at if you can’t even agree on a scapegoat? Are you going to shoot Netanyahu? Are you going to shoot Kash Patel? Figure it out. You’re bringing shame on nutcases everywhere.

I just saw a video by a conservative gun enthusiast. The kind of person who, one would guess, thinks he and his militia buddies are going to fix America for Christ. He and his followers are suggesting the assassination was an inside job because–get this–it looks like some of the bodyguards were wearing AI glasses.

Well. If that’s not proof, I don’t know what is.

They’re saying the people around Kirk were laughing after he got shot. One says Kirk was waving his arm, trying to run things. Another says nobody put pressure on the wound.

Charlie Kirk was shot with a .30-06. The cowardly liberal pervert who shot him used a rifle his grandfather used on deer. The .30-06 is a very powerful round. It’s supposed to blow flesh apart permanently on its way through bodies, causing so much blood loss or other damage the victim is incapacitated as soon as possible.

A hunting round from a .30-06 doesn’t just pass through flesh, leaving a long, thin hole. It tears things up. Hunting rounds are made to expand and/or break up. They’re made to be destructive.

Kirk was shot in the neck, which contains things like the spinal column, spinal cord, jugular veins, trachea, and carotid arteries. These are things we need in order to remain alive and conscious. When the bullet hit him, the flesh around it blew outward around the axis of travel, ripping things up and sending hydrostatic shock into every part of his neck.

He was almost certainly dead as soon as he was struck. They rushed him to a hospital because that’s what you do when someone is shot. They didn’t think he was going to make it. He wasn’t conscious and giving them guidance.

If they didn’t put pressure on the wound, which probably is not true, it would likely indicate they could see he was dead. I’ve seen the footage that supposedly proves there was no pressure, and it is completely impossible to tell whether pressure was applied.

I can’t figure out why anyone would think AI glasses were somehow evidence that Kirk’s team wanted him dead. I’m also amazed that anyone over the age of three seriously thinks these people would have him shot from over a hundred yards, with a cheap surplus rifle with a badly-mounted scope.

The shooter nearly missed. He wasn’t shooting for the side of Kirk’s neck. He was shooting at the center of his chest. No serious assassin takes a risky shot when he can take an easier one. Lying in a prone position, which is the best way to shoot, with plenty of time, Tyler Robinson hit Kirk about 10″ from his most likely point of aim.

The gun used was a poverty gun. Military surplus, made by unmotivated Russian Communists. The scope was mounted badly. It belonged to the killer’s grandfather, who probably paid under a hundred dollars for it before adding a scope and synthetic stock. It was probably something like a 7-MOA gun, meaning it could be counted on to shoot groups about 7″ wide at 100 yards, so more like 10″ at the range at which Kirk was shot. It was not a skilled assassin’s weapon of choice. A $500 AR-15 would have been a lot better.

Check out the deranged comments.

They wanted Charlie dead. He was reaching the youth. He changed people’s hearts and minds. He was a threat to the shadow government!

At this point it is completely obvious that this wasn’t just an assassination, but a professional hit job.

This whole situation smells like a CIA hit. I think the kid who supposedly shot Charlie was a scape goat.

I think he is still alive. It was a setup. Nothing is adding up.

Clear as day they weren’t helping Charlie; but they were tampering with evidence!

The fact that a head of a certain country made 2 videos, within 72 hours, denouncing any knowledge or responsibility in the situation is pretty much the biggest red flag ever!

The guys are smiling because they are activating a secret trapdoor that was under his chair. That blood looked like it was a movie prop burst. I have had a suspicion that he’s alive and that was a dummy that was switched when the security is over him. They handed off a key to that door. Why else are they pouring concrete all around the spot? Israel wanted him dead and so he had to die before they actually killed him.

I rebuke these lies and bind these people to come out with the whole truth.

This assassination is one of the clearest-cut cases of leftist-pervert gun-barrel activism in history. The killer confessed to more than one person. He confessed in writing. His own parents turned him in. He was captured by multiple security cameras. We have the gun. We have the bullet. His dress-wearing XY girlfriend is cooperating with the police.

Even if he had walked up to Kirk in front of the crowd and killed him with a hatchet to the forehead, the demon whisperers would still be spouting their theories.

I want OUT of this place. It was bad enough when everyone on the left was insane. Now the friendlies are wigging out, and they can’t even form a consensus, so I assume they’ll be turning on each other as well as the innocent.

My own relatives have gone nuts.

I remember realizing how unhinged my aunt had become. I was in Singapore at the airport, after a fantastic vacation with my wife, waiting for a flight home. It was after midnight. My aunt called to talk about a property we own in common. I told her it wasn’t a good time because of the circumstances.

She went off on me, demanding to know who goes on vacation in November. She was furious. I couldn’t believe it.

Called me another time about family business, and I told her she needed to start selling things instead of trying to maintain a decaying real estate memorial to my long-forgotten grandparents. She had no idea I was married. Started telling me she had more stuff than I did, as though that excused incompetence. She said I had nothing but “maybe a sorry dog.”

She has apparently forgotten losing her composure and saying nutty, hostile things to me, because the other day, she sent me a text asking if I thought democracy was going to survive. As though we were on cordial terms. I politely declined to discuss it.

I don’t want her in my life as social or even business contact. She is too far gone. I don’t hold onto abusers any more. Blood isn’t really thicker than water. I dream of the day when the last bit of real estate will be sold.

Now she goes on Facebook and posts wacky memes comparing Trump to Hitler and so on.

Hitler sent special trucks around to force Jews to breathe carbon monoxide. He invaded neighboring countries and stole their treasures. He had doctors investigate the cheapest ways to castrate Jewish men and men with mental issues.

Trump is a little different. He’s working to get rid of illegal aliens, bring peace to the world, restore free speech, and make federal laws and regulations sensible. The Hitler analogy is just a bit over the top, except to crazy people who listen to demons all day.

We used to have a great relationship. We laughed and talked together. She was a junior high principal, entrusted with looking after people’s children. Then the apocalypse virus destroyed her sanity.

I have a second cousin about my aunt’s age. Nicest lady you would ever want to meet. At least in the past. Now she’s right in there with my aunt. Check out this masterpiece of delusion she posted on Facebook.

My mother loved her. My other aunts loved her. What happened to her personality? Wait. I know. The Israelis stole her brain and replaced it.

I’ve had it. I want the rapture to come before it gets worse. Maybe you know what I always say: if it’s this crazy now, what will it be like in 6 months?

Last night my wife and I were talking in our big, comfortable bed. Our beautiful, charming, intelligent baby son was lying between us. I started talking about our lives. I started asking if she could even understand how blessed we were. It is something that continually amazes me. God has been so good to us, and I am not good.

We marveled at our situation. Paired up by the Holy Spirit. In strong agreement about nearly everything. Set aside in a peaceful area dominated by conservative Christians who are patient, kind, and full of love, unlike people in Miami or the white ghetto known as Eastern Kentucky. Healthy. Blissfully unemployed. Close to God. Constantly receiving astonishing, helpful Holy Spirit revelation.

On the other hand, all over America, people are going so crazy it’s a wonder they don’t need diapers and spit masks. They are furious at each other over nothing. Leftists are so mad they are quite willing to murder us and our children in the streets, and some conservatives are no better. People live with overwhelming anger and worry, but we are insulated in our cozy little cocoon.

It’s like we’re riding a monorail through Jurassic Park at feeding time!

I don’t know how I would live if I had to be on a quarter of an acre in a blue suburb, or if I were a Jew. Jews need to wake up and move to Israel or far-right counties before it’s too late. Jew-hatred is now treated like a legitimate, acceptable political point of view. It has been mainstreamed.

Candace Owens is getting rich from Youtube, Twitter, and Instagram checks. Youtube and Instagram are run by liberals, and the guy who started Facebook, which owns Instagram, is a Jew! How weird is that?

Anyway, Charlie Kirk was murdered by a lone sodomite, so try not to get worked up by conspiracy theorists.

Until Judgment Day Sorts Out the Weeds

Yesterday was our day of rest. I shudder a little when I hear a Christian call Sunday the sabbath, because “shabbat,” or “sabbath,” is literally the name of Saturday in Hebrew, but anyway, we now rest on Sundays, and we make more effort than usual to be with God.

God told me all my problems, not some, are caused by lack of prayer, so a day dedicated to him will surely improve my life.

God never commanded Gentiles to observe the real sabbath, but the sabbath principle is a helpful one just the same.

A rest day brings people close to God in more than one way. It helps us to sit down and read scripture. It helps us to pray. It helps us to pursue these things as families, building marriages and relationships. Perhaps most importantly, though, it reinforces humility. That’s important because pride is the absolute worst thing a person can have. It’s better to be a humble pedophile who can listen and change than a proud evangelist who isn’t saved and can’t be corrected.

Saturday doesn’t work as well for us. Stores are open later than they are on Sunday, and stores that close on Sunday are open. The Post Office is open. Chick-fil-A is open. There are things a resident of my county can get done on Saturday that are harder to do on Sundays. Also, if God ever tells us to go to church, which he has not, we can add it to our day of rest without shaking anything up.

I have been told that Christians honor God on Sundays because it worked well for the early church. Virtually all believers were Jewish in the beginning, and as Gentiles were brought in, somehow it made more sense to let Jews do their purely-Jewish activities on their sabbath and then come together with them on the first day of the week.

True? I don’t know. Dishonest Christians have made up so many lies, how would I find out? Bad Christians made up the saints and baby baptism. They made up the prosperity gospel. Horrible Christians like Augustine propagated the ethos of polytheistic Greek sodomites in the church. Bad Christians made up all the odd things the Seventh-Day Adventists believe.

For all I know, Joseph Smith thought he was a Christian when he made up Mormonism and claimed an Egyptian writing about preparing the dead for burial was really a biography of Abraham.

When you quit trying to solve your own problems for a day, you are telling God you believe he will work on them for you while you rest, and you are admitting you believe he can do it better than you can. That’s faith plus humility.

At some point during our rest time, we saw a Christian on Youtube, talking about the demonstrable insanity or dishonesty of Candace Owens, who is now calling Israel a “demonic nation” and trying to convince people Israel, not the homosexual activist Tyler Robinson, murdered Charlie Kirk.

After all, Israel has a policy of murdering its American critics, and it makes sense that it started with Charlie Kirk, not Owens, Tucker Carlson, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Al Sharpton, Kanye West, Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Louis Farrakhan.

Owens insists that Robinson, a sexual aberrant Mormon who was in love with a homosexual male crossdresser with whom he shared quarters, is not the actual murderer, and she is suggesting he will be murdered in custody in order to protect the guilty party, who is presumably a mohel or an executive at Manischewitz (perhaps both).

Robinson confessed to his parents and his sex partner, and he did it in writing, not just orally. Owens disagrees, based on what she is hearing from whatever demons she listens to all day in the pursuit of wealth.

Robinson told his father he would rather kill himself than turn himself in. Owens, however, says she knows better. She says he is not suicidal, so if he dies in custody, it will be the work of the same Mossad agent who got Jeffrey Epstein, Nicole Brown Simpson, John Kennedy, and Abraham Lincoln.

As we watched the speaker talk, I was impressed by his intelligence and his understanding of Candace Owens. Then he started claiming Charlie Kirk was an evangelist. Right there, I realized he was caught up in a mass delusion of his own.

It is nothing short of amazing that anyone would call Charlie Kirk an evangelist. He was a politician who debated college kids. He occasionally said good things about Yeshua and Christianity; the same could be said of Mike Lindell and most gangster rappers.

He didn’t teach about God. He didn’t receive or relay revelation from the Holy Spirit, which is something every single Christian is supposed to do. He didn’t cast out demons. He didn’t heal anyone. He didn’t have visions. He didn’t have the supernatural testimony common to men of God. He didn’t create a ministry. He created two political organizations that made him very good money and positioned him to run for lucrative political offices later.

Politics was the spare ribs. Christianity was the coleslaw. It’s obvious. It’s not subject to reasonable dispute.

Even Torben Sondergaard, who does cast out demons and heal people, claims Kirk was a some kind of minister. That is disappointing. It’s also disappointing that his ministry, The Last Reformation, got rid of a comment I posted, disagreeing with Torben.

Torben was censored. He was driven out of Denmark and the USA, and he was imprisoned for a very long time. He should be sensitive about censoring others.

The Last Reformation lost its shine for me a while back. It seemed to be turning into a denomination and focusing way too much on Torben. Also, his right-hand man, a Dane named Jón Bjarnastein, was getting pretty uppity.

When I went to be rebaptized by TLR, Jan talked to me as though I were a child who had never opened a Bible. I’m old enough to be his father.

He has serious pride issues. When I took my friend Mike to an event to be baptized, he refused to let TLR do it. He refused because Jón mocked prayer in tongues while he was speaking to the crowd. He made nonsense noises in an effort to be funny.

I guess every Christian will commit blasphemy a few times before he dies, and it’s usually unintentional, but what Jón did was pretty disturbing, and a man in his position should know better. Mike flat-out said he would not let TLR put him under. We went back to my hotel, and I baptized him.

For a long time, I’ve had the feeling Torben was giving himself to ambition, and when a man who leads an organization becomes ambitious, carnal people will attach themselves to him to “help” him.

This is how Torben got in trouble in Denmark. A TV network offered to film him, and he thought it would help his ministry. He entered into an unequal yoking, they stabbed him in the back, and he and his ministry were slandered so powerfully the public rose up against him in outrage.

Never listen when someone who doesn’t believe in Yeshua says he’s here to help your ministry.

I went to another event by myself, and another young associate talked to me as though I were stupid. For example, out of nowhere, he told me I didn’t have to have Torben himself pray for me, as though I had shown up and refused to talk to anyone else. I have spoken to Torben briefly, but I never chased him around or felt I needed to interact with him personally. I never even sought to be near him in a group. I was there to be with God, not Torben Sondergaard. I didn’t ask him to sign my Bible. I didn’t buy a bobblehead.

I felt unwelcome. Like an outsider.

I always try to be humble when I talk to people in ministry, as long as they’re serious people who seem to be on the right track, but I am used to them responding to humility the same way worldly people with a little authority do. I am used to impatience, condescension, and imperiousness. I am used to resentment and flashes of irritation and even anger. It’s funny how these things are seen as normal among ministers.

Give someone his own desk, a yellow vest, or a name tag, and chances are, he will immediately become the supreme authority of Earth.

This may sound awful, but I don’t care, so here goes. I was disturbed to find out Torben’s wife had a nervous breakdown, went to doctors, and was put on drugs while he was in prison.

“You’re criticizing a woman who was upset because her husband was in prison!” No, my fine troll; of course I’m not. I’m surprised that a Spirit-filled Christian with a powerful ministry could have severe mental issues that had to be addressed with drugs. I’m also surprised that it was concealed for so long.

For me, one of the biggest benefits of spending time with the Holy Spirit is good mental health. I don’t always receive healing for my physical issues, but I can’t say that about things like depression, anxiety, and so on. Those things are defeated, and they have been for a long time. I just assume that anyone who spends a lot of time with God will be protected from them.

I can be depressed for maybe three days. That’s it. And it has to be related to something bad that has just happened. Chronic depression, which is a real mental problem, not an acute response to misfortune, is different. It makes you feel bad for no good reason, and it doesn’t go away.

I always say I was depressed continually for the first three decades of my life. I guess I was actually 35 when it ended, so three and a half years. It hasn’t come back. It’s a major change. The most remarkable and lasting personality change I have ever experienced.

I just assume that people who are with God a lot of the day are not depressed or insane. I don’t see how depression or insanity could happen to them. I don’t think I’m wrong. God promises us peace.

I believe that if your prayer life is strong and you are fighting demons and repenting, your mind will be sound. I haven’t been proven wrong yet.

I don’t think becoming a cessationist Baptist will fix your problems. Christianity is supernatural. It’s not a system of rules. It’s a relationship with a supernatural person. But surely the Holy Spirit helps those who spend time with him.

She had to be treated with dangerous drugs, and as far as I know, the problem was concealed at first. I’m on their email list, and I didn’t hear about it until it had already happened. At least I don’t think so. I can go back and check, but I don’t think I ever received an email that said, “Lene is experiencing mental torment. Pray God delivers her so we don’t have to involve secular doctors.”

When I was being treated for ADD, they gave me depression drugs because they were believed to be effective for ADD as well. I wouldn’t wish them on Hamas. They actually made me depressed. They also made it impossible for me to eat, sleep, relax, or concentrate.

The worst drug was Prozac. Somehow, my doctor got it into her head that it could help. I took it very briefly. I had all the symptoms I mentioned above, and it made my private parts numb. I’m sure you wanted to know about that.

When I quit taking it, the effects took about two months to wear off. Unbelievable. No wonder people who are being treated for depression commit suicide or shoot into crowds.

I never felt like harming anyone, including myself, thank God. Please don’t send the padded bus for me. I have never, ever felt suicidal in my life. Murdering people has never crossed my mind. It’s foreign to me, like wanting to eat liver or listen to Alanis Morrissette. Not my thing.

They did give me one drug that made me confrontational and obnoxious. I found it useful when I needed to be confrontational, but it didn’t help with ADD. It was a bad experience.

Psychiatric drugs have a scary history. They should be tools of last resort. Even caffeine is bad.

If a minister has mental problems, hiding it is the worst possible thing to do. When it finally comes out a) it will make people question God, and b) it will make people doubt the ministry, correctly. They will wonder what else is being hidden from them.

It will also prevent people from praying for the afflicted minister, and it will prevent them from offering advice and correction that could save the day.

You don’t become incapacitated by depression because you’re doing everything perfectly. I believe every mental problem has a solution in God. Who would argue with that? If God isn’t willing to fix every mental problem, why do you think so highly of him and boast that he works miracles?

I suspect they kept the news quiet because it would have made TLR look ineffective. Surely it couldn’t have been to save her embarrassment. There was nothing to be embarrassed about. I think most Christians are eager to admit it when they are down and need prayer.

It did make TLR look ineffective, though, and keeping it quiet made TLR look dishonest.

Now I can expect trolls to pop up and accuse me of picking on a sick woman. Trolls gonna troll. Keep your gaslighting. It just encourages me. Satan is the slanderer, and his nominal-Christian children never miss a chance to be like dad.

I enjoyed dealing with TLR, and they did a lot of good, but I don’t think TLR is the final answer or the last reformation. For one thing, they taught that we should baptize in the name of Yeshua only, which is odd. The Bible doesn’t say that.

Matthew 28:19: Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

How can anyone miss something that obvious?

To get back to troll-harvesting, I want to write about a conversation my wife and I had. We discussed the numbers obsession many Christians have. Anyone who “saves” 80,000 people at an event is a great man of God, say the quantity-pushers. Anyone who criticizes such people is self-righteous. They’re wrong.

A lot of the quantity gospel depends on the myth of eternal security, which says that if you go to one altar call, you are saved for eternity regardless of what you do later. It’s like you’re a calf, and when you go stand in front of Eddie Long or Jimmy Swaggart for a couple of minutes, Yeshua puts a tag in your ear, and after that, nothing can separate you.

It’s not just a lie; it’s a blatant lie.

Eternal security people love to quote the scripture where Yeshua said no one could take his sheep out of his hand. The problem is that he never said we could not leave of our own free will. We can.

You can raise your hand and cry, leave church, get back in your car, go home, smoke two blunts, and have a threesome with your girlfriend and her sister. You can continue your work as a pimp. You can continue robbing houses. You can even keep your voodoo paraphernalia and continue sacrificing chickens and declaring your love for Bondye or whatever other evil spirit you like.

Do you seriously think you can’t go to hell if you do things like that? Seriously? Really?

Many, many Christians live this way. It’s SOP for American charismatics. My last two churches used to put pregnant trollops on the stage to sing. Trinity Church in Miami had a known car thief on the music team, and he drowned running from the police in handcuffs.

Did he repent and receive new salvation while he was drowning in a canal on Miami Beach? Well, one would like to think so. But based on what his pastors taught him (if he believed at all), he probably thought he would wake up in heaven regardless.

You don’t have eternal security unless you keep living right. I don’t mean obeying rules perfectly, but you have to be with God a lot and have a holy lifestyle, separated from the world.

Salvation is not an event. It’s a way of life.

Because ignorant big-tent Christians love numbers, they love anyone who draws them.

These are the same people who say Mormons are cool because they say Yeshua is their savior. They’re not cool. They’re not Christians. They’re heretics.

I used to work as a volunteer for Pastor Rich Wilkerson, Sr. In around 2012, he came up with a numbers game for us. He called it “the 2020 Vision.” We were given salvation cards. Every time we saw a person get “saved,” we were supposed to fill out a card. Name and date and so on.

The goal was to get a certain number of “souls” by 2020. I think the real goal was to build a huge mailing list without paying an outside company.

Of course, like all Wilkerson projects, the 2020 Vision was plagiarized and came to nothing. He did’t tell us, but I Googled, and the web was full of “2020 Vision” crusades from other preachers, going back years.

One of the big problems with the 2020 Vision is that even if we had seriously tried to “save” people, there was no mechanism for guiding them afterward. Go home, have sex with every girl in the hood, keep trying to become a famous gangster rapper, steal cars…it’s okay, as long as Rich has your card.

I can’t even guess how many present and former Trinity members are on the way to hell, confident that one altar call justified every rotten thing they would ever do.

I mention the 2020 Vision farce in order to show the problem with the numbers people. They prefer hundreds of thousands of fake salvations to a few real salvations.

As my wife and I discussed this, we talked about Yeshua and how different his policy was.

He never talked to a really big crowd. He got 3,000 once, if I recall. Most people he talked to abandoned him. He said things that were very harsh, all the time. He said things he knew would offend people and reduce his stats. He ended up with 11 close followers and a total of 120 in the Upper Room, after around three years of work and thousands of miracles.

He never watered down his message in hopes he would be popular, even though he knew that people who rejected him would burn forever.

My wife and I talked about the way we got together.

Someone I knew had all sorts of online women from dating sites. He kept telling me I should try it. I was okay with dying single, but I tried it anyway. Within about 4 months, I was engaged, and I was married within about 7. My wife and I get along beautifully. We have never had a serious marital problem. We agree and agree and agree. My friend is still single, 4 years later, and he started looking for a wife long before I did.

When I wrote my dating profiles, I used the Yeshua approach, not the quantity-is-king approach. I was not inclusive. I worked hard to drive women off.

I told them what my beliefs were. I told them not to even waste my time if we were not on the same page. I was brutal.

My wife saw it, liked it, and here we are.

I did what Yeshua does. I focused more on running off people who had no chance than on attracting people. I ran off leftists. I ran off cessationists.

I was building a filter. If you want to filter something good out of a substance, you don’t give it holes that hold onto everything. That’s just common sense.

My friend was willing to talk to women who were “spiritual” but not completely in line with him. Cessationists. Catholics. He was open to all sorts of Christians. For a time he even had a Jewish girlfriend, and I don’t mean a Messianic.

My friend has the stats. I have the wife. She and I agree; I did it right, and my friend has done it wrong.

One of the most destructive things women do is going after unsuitable men they think they can change. They do the same thing with shoes. If they’re cute, they buy them, even if it means surgery later. Most men look for women they don’t have to change, but my friend has done it the female way.

My wife and I discussed my method and my friend’s method, and of course, we agreed that my way was the right way. We agreed that it was like what Yeshua does.

There are people out there who think Charlie Kirk is a great man of God because his death inspired a lot of people to go to events and get baptized. But how many of those people will be Christians 5 years from now? How many who will stick around will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, speak in tongues, and be transformed and separated from the world?

A tiny percentage. I promise you.

Also, you can’t become a great man of God after you die. If a million people got baptized because a cocker spaniel died, it wouldn’t make the cocker spaniel a man of God. You are defined by what you do while you’re alive. You can’t become a man of God after you die.

Here’s another problem for the people who want to put Kirk on a pedestal: he thought Catholicism was great, and he took his family to masses. He also hid it, which is not very honest, presumably because he knew the Christian right is overwhelmingly non-Catholic.

A lot of non-Catholic Christians think this is a slander Candace Owens made up, among her many other slanders and fantasies, but it appears to be true. His best friend (he has so many best friends now) says Kirk was drawn to the Catholic Church and loved masses.

Catholicism is WRONG, and I don’t mean wrong in small letters. It’s WRONG. It credits Mary with a type of godhood, which is completely false. It teaches people to wear charms, which come from pagan religions. It teaches people to pray to dead people, which is necromancy. It discourages the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It contains so many major errors, many ex-Catholics who have become charismatics say they were Catholic but not Christian.

God doesn’t put people in the Catholic Church. He pulls them out of it.

Conservative Christians have a lot of fun with the delusions of leftists, but delusion is spreading among us, too. The Charlie Kirk delusion is a glaring example. We also have a problem with Jew-hatred. It used to be confined mostly to the left, but Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson are helping it spread on the right. Conservatives who claim to be Christian but know nothing about the Holy Spirit are easily fooled, so it’s not hard to pull them into Hitler’s camp.

You know who was a big supporter of big-tent Christianity? Constantine. He made Christianity (or a pagan corruption of Christianity) the official religion of the Roman Empire. He was a Catholic.

How did that work out?

Go look at the Revelation.

Istanbul was the capital of the Roman Empire. Why don’t we call it Constantinople any more? Because it’s in a Muslim country where big-tent Christianity failed.

The seven churches of the Revelation were in what is now Turkey. Every last one of them. Who ended up fighting the so-called Christian monarchs of Europe? Turks! Muslim Turks.

Turkey is now a Muslim nation, it has been for centuries, and its government is antisemitic. Many of the common people also hate Jews.

If Yeshua visited Turkey today, he wouldn’t have seven huge churches to talk to. They’re gone. But he could go to Istanbul and see the Hagia Sophia, the huge Catholic church Muslims took over, desecrated, and turned into a mosque.

A person who helps 30 people obtain a lasting relationship with the Holy Spirit, and to obtain salvation, is doing great. Yeshua is God, and he didn’t do much better during his earthly life. A pop minister who helps hundreds of thousands obtain show salvation for selfies and Tiktoks is actually harming people.

The word says this:

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

That didn’t suddenly change because America was founded or people had big events after Charlie Kirk died. Salvation is still for the few.

This follows:

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

If you know people who answered altar calls and still fit into the world and embrace its culture, you know fake Christians. They existed in ancient times, and they still exist.

Real Christianity is never going to be popular, and our job isn’t to make it popular. Yeshua himself couldn’t do it. Our job is to spread the real thing and not worry about the people who reject it.

Delusion will increase on the left and the right because leftists hate Christianity and conservatives think they know better than Yeshua. It’s a bad situation. Real revival isn’t coming. I don’t care how many people get on their knees on athletic fields at special post-assassination events. It was never about quantity. It has always been about the truth.

If I annoy big tent Christians by writing these things, it’s a good sign, because they have always been a problem.

That’s the Only Part of You That Will Feast

Today is Sunday, so I won’t be here long.

We don’t cook anything that requires effort on Sundays. This morning I fried up a piece of country ham and two eggs, and because we don’t cook anything that requires effort on Sunday, I added a frozen Fresh Market croissant the store gave us for nothing. We never buy loaves of store bread. My wife makes bread for us. We ran out, and she can’t fix more until tomorrow.

I used Meacham ham which I ordered for my ham search. Along with Meacham, I’m testing Benton’s, Broadbent’s, Penn, and Newsom’s. I already eliminated Broadbent’s. I made red eye gravy with the drippings.

Meacham ham has a unique side flavor, and it smells a little funny before cooking. That threw off my analysis at first.

The smell goes away during cooking, the flavor is strong and tasty, the salt level is just right, the ham isn’t too dry and there is a reasonable amount of fat. It’s very nice.

The other companies are up against the wall now. Newsom’s is nearly perfect, but it costs about twice as much as Meacham, it’s not aged as long, and they won’t slice and bag it. The more I try Meacham, the more I think it’s just as good. Penn and Benton’s might be great. Benton’s can’t match Meacham on price, though. Penn is pretty close.

Penn is sending me a half-ham, sliced and bagged, for $64. It’s only a few pounds, so it doesn’t weigh half as much as a whole ham, but they keep the bones and probably some stuff I would remove and discard. I don’t know if it’s honest to call it a half ham or not, but there is a lot of waste in a whole ham, so maybe it is.

The good thing about butchering a whole ham is that you get a hock and a bone for beans or soup, so losing that is a significant hit.

I ate this in front of my baby son. I guess that was mean, but he can’t have country ham. He will be raised on it, though.

That’s all I got. Enjoy your Sunday.

This Salt Needs to Lose Some of its Saltness

The country ham search continues.

I tried to get some ham from Benton’s in Tennessee, but I made a mistake and ordered the wrong thing. The photo on the site was more than a bit misleading, and somehow I either failed to read all of the copy or I read copy from another product. Anyway, I thought I was getting half a pound of ham slices, but I ended up with paper-thin slices of very old ham intended to compete with prosciutto.

It tastes fine, but I’m not a prosciutto or charcuterie person. My feeling is that if you can afford a fancy board, you can afford bread so you can make a proper sandwich.

Charcuterie is boring. It’s a fraction of a real dish. When you eat charcuterie, you’re eating ingredients.

I think peer pressure convinces people they like charcuterie even though they don’t. It’s not a legitimate course. It’s just scraps of meat on a board.

I contacted Benton’s because I thought they had made a mistake, and they are graciously sending me what I actually wanted. I just have to pay for shipping.

Meanwhile, my second package of Broadbent’s ham has arrived. The first samples I bought were very dry, unbelievably salty, and somewhat leathery in consistency. Also, I couldn’t taste much flavor. I ended up throwing some of the ham out.

Country ham is supposed to be salty, but the slices I received were not normal. It’s supposed to be a little tough, but it should fall apart when you chew it. You shouldn’t feel like a shipwreck victim trying to eat a shoe.

I tried the new package today, and it was better.

The ham is still very salty, but I don’t think it’s quite as extreme as the first package.

The texture is still tough, but it’s not like a hard piece of leather.

I was able to taste the country ham flavor. It was not the near-perfect flavor of Newsom’s, or the unique-but-still-classic flavor of Meacham, but it was good. A little better than the ham slices at Cracker Barrel, I suppose.

The slices were still too thin for me. The perfect thickness for fried country ham is 3/8″, and these looked like half of that. It’s meat. It’s not copying paper. Give the customer something to eat.

If I had to buy a Broadbent’s ham, I would slice it thicker, soak the slices in water for three days, and then store it in vacuum bags. The water would tame the salt and fix the dryness.

This would probably work, but I won’t be buying any more Broadbent’s ham, so I will never find out. Meacham is as good, or nearly as good, as Newsom’s, and it’s much less expensive than Broadbent’s, so I don’t have any reason to buy Broadbent’s.

I don’t know why Broadbent’s hams are so salty and tough. All hams are cured pretty much the same way. They are covered with salt. You would think they would all be equally salty.

Maybe Broadbent’s is using hams that are dryer and less fatty to begin with, or maybe they keep them at lower humidity.

I’m not complaining about the salt because I’m an ignorant person who thinks all country ham is too salty. I know what a ham is supposed to taste like.

The two last contenders are Benton’s and Penn. Both should arrive this coming week. In the end, I will have tried 5 brands of ham, and that will have to be enough.

My Rebuttal to Dale Carnegie

I had the funniest dream last night.

I use a lot of Internet forums because I have a lot of interests. I can’t just conjure up friends and relatives who can tell me how to wire up a guitar amp tube socket or change an oil seal on a tractor axle. I have to look elsewhere.

Something about me attracts insults and abuse. Internet forums are full of jerks. Anyone who participates in a typical forum will eventually be bullied and provoked. My strategy is to try to show humility and patience from the start, and I use self-deprecating remarks to keep the jerks from waking up, but to many jerks, humility and self-deprecation are like the smell of poop to flies, so they pounce.

Eventually, if someone will not leave me alone, I will respond in kind. I am much better at this than most people, and forum moderators don’t like it. You can let a complete ass insult you over and over for weeks, and you can count on forum moderators to leave him alone, but when you get fed up and snap back with a penetrating shot from a larger caliber, you get in trouble.

These days, more and more moderators are ignorant young wokesters, so things are worse if there is any kind of conservative or Christian smell to you. It doesn’t have to be overt; a slight hint will serve just fine to get you disparate and unfair treatment.

Some old crank has been needling me on a forum for saying it’s a good thing to expose people who give consumers a raw deal. It’s like he’s a dog and the neighbor’s shar pei is in heat. He can’t move on. I responded to his obnoxious remarks civilly several times, and he can’t shut up.

I quit going to the forum, but after a week or two, I decided to visit again, and he was still at it. I told him the first of the month was coming up, so I was glad I wasn’t paying rent on his head.

Personally, I would rent a house, not an efficiency, but let’s move on.

Now some woke kid moderators are sending me email messages. I responded once, and now I just put them in the Archived folder. Maybe I’ll read them in a month or two, or maybe I’ll use other forums.

There are some seriously non-woke forums out there, so that’s nice. One example is Arborist Site, for people who need help with forestry tools. Gun forums are also pretty good. I wouldn’t go near a Christian forum, because I can’t handle the self-righteousness from people who do nothing but quote fools like Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes. Few things are worse than being scolded by ignorant, disrespectful people.

Some people are drawn to Christianity by a desire to change and get close to God. Many more, however, are drawn by the desire to be God’s Karens and HOA presidents. Yeshua was murdered by self-promoting, self-adoring Karens.

A Youtube preacher named Tom Fischer lectured me for criticizing TV preachers and their prosperity nonsense. Well, he lives in a camper that was a gift. I am not making fun of him. Poverty is no joke. But he lives in a camper, he has had this standard of living for many years, and he essentially called me an enemy of Christ for criticizing the prosperity gospel.

He told me I had discipline coming. I was living in a nice house. I had a wonderful wife. I didn’t have to work. I lived in a fantastic area with warm, kind people. Since he gave me his warning, I have had a magnificent baby son who brightens every day of my life. Things get better all the time.

As I have told my wife, if this is discipline, I want more of it.

He has a lot of company. A lot of people have told me God was either getting me or going to get me. Most ironically, Alberto Lee Santiago, the child-rapist pastor from my last church. He told me God didn’t like what I was doing. Within a couple of years, he was put in prison, his wife (who agreed with him) died from a brain tumor before he was sentenced, and of course, he lost his church.

His brother-in-law Sander was also enraged at me, although of course, he claimed he was praying for me. Sometimes I think that’s the ultimate Christian diss.

Sander was an illegal alien; maybe he still is. He got furious at me for calling Osteen a grinning jackass, which I stand by. He got even madder when I said illegal immigration was a Biblical curse, which is a hundred percent true. When Santiago was arrested (after doing his level best to discourage the victim’s mother from forgiving him), Sander posted a meme criticizing church members for abandoning their “shepherd.”

There are a lot of things a good shepherd does with sheep. What Albert did is not one of them.

I would like to see Tom Fischer and his wife in a big, beautiful house with a pack of cute kids playing around their feet, but it looks like the prosperity gospel is keeping him where he is. It was designed by Satan to do that. It works beautifully. As Satan’s tools go, it is unsurpassed in its effectiveness.

The more you give to prosperity preachers, the less you prosper, and the less you can give to the poor. That’s the scheme, in a nutshell. In a way, it’s almost beautiful. So simple and powerful.

Fischer also lays into the Jews all the time, which is beyond disappointing.

Anyway, that’s just an example of what happens when I speak up around Christians. Religious people murdered Yeshua, and they want to get rid of everyone else who shoots down their idols and superstitions. Jewish or Christian, it’s the same kind of people.

I really hope no one hits me with “Judge not” for the rest of this year. I don’t know if I’ll be able to restrain myself. I’m going to get a shirt that says, “‘Judge not’ is not the only verse in the Bible.”

Like Yeshua and the apostles, I judge people all the time. It’s extremely helpful to me and whoever hears it. I don’t care who the person is; the other day I judged Billy Graham for saying Muhammad Ali was a follower of Jesus Christ. That was a stupid and dangerous thing to say. I don’t care how many people went to Graham’s crusades.

Billy Graham is probably close to the top of the Christian idol totem pole. He was so relentlessly inoffensive, he drew the admiration of hundreds of millions. What did Yeshua, an unpopular person, say about popularity?

If I’m willing to knock Billy Graham, you know I’m hard core.

My wife saw Graham say this, and she was mortified. We listened to him, and the impression we got was that he denied the necessity of the cross, which could mean he was not saved. Denying Yeshua is the absolute surest and quickest way to lose your salvation.

Muhammad Ali, a Muslim, named himself after a pedophile rapist gangster who was physically dirty and encouraged his followers to perform acts of terrorism against non-Muslims. Ali was no follower of Yeshua. He was an extremely ignorant man, he lived a life of defeat, and he is almost certainly in hell. Graham saw no point in correcting him. In fact, he reinforced his eternal itinerary by lying to his face. Great job, Billy.

Believe it or not, warning people about hell is important. Is it controversial to say that? Can that possibly be? Slap yourself hard in the face and think about it.

To get back to my dream, I dreamed someone emailed me a link to a new forum, and I visited it. All of the posts were reposts of things I had written on forums. All the horrible non-woke things that had sent snowflakes running for their weed stashes and power crystals.

One of the posts was very funny. The guy who created the forum was furious at me for using the phrase “crazy people.” You can’t say “crazy” any more, even if you’re describing a bona fide psychotic who has to be kept strapped to a wall.

This useful, accurate phrase is considered offensive. That’s just crazy.

God has blessed me for giving up secular entertainment. I did it earlier this year, and although my life was very good beforehand, it is much, much better now. Years ago, he blessed me for giving up social media. Now I wonder if he wants me to quit using Internet forums.

I feel like I need them for the purpose of getting information, but that may be an excuse. I also use them for socializing.

Now that AI is freely available, I have found that it’s a better source of help than Internet forums. Forum people like answering questions about which they know nothing. They also drag threads off topic. Maybe I should drop forums and stick with AI as much as I can.

Participation in the world’s culture is unequal yoking, so it has to be minimized.

Is using AI unequal yoking? I hope not. It’s pretty woke, i.e. deluded. AI bots aren’t people, though, so I treat them like the inanimate objects they are. I don’t try to get along with them. I don’t use good manners. I never joke with them. It would be like trying to befriend a shovel.

The world’s culture is a minefield. It was designed by Satan. He puts little temptation mines in TV, fiction, movies, sports, music, and the news. When you walk through it, the mines blow up under your feet. Demons get permission to enter your home and go after you and your family.

The most pleasant thing about abandoning secular entertainment is that it put an end to my lust issues. I didn’t realize it, but websites that don’t seem sex-related have little bits of erotic content in them designed to pull you further astray, and it works. News sites are full of erotic clickbait about whorish female celebrities. This one or that one shocked the crowd at Sundance by going to a viewing naked! This one has an incredible “bikini bod” at 57! That one wore a CHEEKY dress to the Golden Globes! It’s all over sites like The Daily Mail and Yahoo News.

I don’t need to see professional sluts all day. Sorry; that’s what they are. I wouldn’t let them be part of my social circle or walk onto my property, so why read about them on the Internet?

I didn’t realize reading the news or watching shows like Clarkson’s Farm could lead to problems with lust, but it does. It must lead to other demonic issues, too.

Being delivered from demons is wonderful, but it’s a second-rate blessing. The better blessing is to avoid having demons in the first place. Secular culture brings them in, and if they are cast out and you go back to secular culture, they enter you all over again.

I would rather stay free than watch Fox News. The Catholic news channel.

Any channel where more than one host refers to an old celibate socialist elected by gays as the holy father is suspect.

I’m not going to fit in with this world. If I started to, it would be a sign that I had backslidden and lost my relationship with God. Changing my behavior to avoid offending won’t help. The real offense is my existence. I’m like a Jew. The problem people have with me isn’t my behavior. It’s my existence itself.

Currying favor won’t make anyone like me. It will just strip me of the favor of God and grieve the Holy Spirit.

If I try to make people like me by being less honest, they will still hate me, but I will lose my relationship with God.

Go ahead and dislike me. They will never build a microscope powerful enough to detect my respect for your opinion of me.

Don’t Give Everything Away Just Yet

Rapture fever is apparently peaking again.

I believe in the rapture. It is described clearly in the Bible, and there are also lots of symbolic references to it.

I have no problem with the rapture. In fact, I am counting on it, because I am not eager to die of old age on a planet that has descended into wholesale, violent, sadistic persecution. I don’t want my wife and son to be stuck here, either.

I’m convinced rapture-deniers have the poorer view. On the other hand, it is fatiguing to get excited, repeatedly, about a possibly-imminent rapture and then find out it’s not happening. It’s like sitting in a restaurant, watching waiters stroll by with pizza after pizza you mistakenly think is headed for your table.

In 2015, in a dream, I experienced the rapture with my late mother. I heard the trumpet and everything. It gave me hope I would not be stuck here much longer. It is now 2025.

In 2020, I had another rapture dream, but it was symbolic. I thought it might point to a rapture that would take place at around Christmas of that year. January came, and I was still here.

I think both of these dreams were related to Christmas, because in the 2015 dream, I was in my grandparents’ living room. That is the room where my cousins and I opened our Christmas presents. The memory of opening presents in that room is the strongest memory I have of it.

Also, if you think about it, the rapture is like Christmas. The first Christmas was the first time Yeshua came to earth as Messiah, and the rapture will be the second time. A second Christmas.

I used to keep up with other people’s rapture dreams on Youtube, but it became very difficult because an eccentric woman put up a channel which stole and reposted other people’s videos. This effectively blocked out other people’s content unless she liked it. I think she did this to make money.

I quit searching for videos and went on with my life, so I lost touch with other rapture enthusiasts.

Recently, a friend of mine reposted a video from a young man who said he had dreamed of the rapture. He said Yeshua had told him he was “right at the door.” He said he had heard the dates September 23 and September 24 over and over.

He said Yeshua kept saying, “My wrath is just,” meaning the tribulation was ready to fall on the world.

He also said God spoke through him to his father, telling his father that his grandfather was in heaven, and the grandfather wanted the father to pray for the father’s siblings because they were not saved.

This all sounded pretty good, except for a few problems that made it incompatible with the truth.

First of all, the rapture did not come, unless it was tiny. If so, I am in big trouble, because I am now in the tribulation.

Second, there is no reason to believe dead people know anything about what happens here, that they intercede for us, or that God would give us messages from them.

Predictably, there is a parachute to save the prediction from the date problem. People are saying Yeshua is coming on September 23 or 24 on the Julian calendar, which is 13 days behind our Gregorian calendar.

The obvious question is why he would use a calendar no one uses today.

The Julian September 23 is our October 6, so some people will hold out hope through October 7.

There is no getting around the dead people problem. Talking to the dead is forbidden in both Judaism and Christianity, except for old semi-pagan churches like the Catholic Church. It’s for witches and sorcerers.

In the Old Testament, only one dead person spoke to a living person. It was Samuel. Saul conjured him up, and Samuel told him he was cursed for it. Some people say it wasn’t really Samuel, but the Bible clearly says it was Samuel, so God must have permitted Saul to talk to him on this special occasion.

There is no example of a dead person talking to a living person in the New Testament. Elijah and Moses appeared with Yeshua, but they didn’t talk to anyone else. Resurrected people talked to the living, but they were alive.

In the Bible, God spoke to human beings through Yeshua and the Holy Spirit. I think there is also at least one example of a person visiting the throne room in heaven, meaning Yahweh spoke to him. I am not a great Bible scholar. Anyway, God spoke to people as Yahweh, the Holy Spirit, and Yeshua. As the Holy Spirit, he often spoke through living men. He also spoke to people through angels.

With the likely exception of the Samuel incident, which is something no one should ever try to copy, there is no example of God sending a dead person to talk to the living.

If God were speaking to the young man in the video, he would simply tell him his dad’s siblings needed intercession in order to be saved. He would not involve his grandfather. That would make no sense.

God didn’t tell the young man the rapture was coming on September 23 or 24 on any calendar. He didn’t give him a message from his grandfather. The information in the video came from somewhere else, and the whole video should be dismissed.

In comments below the video, Christians are oohing and ahhing in agreement. We have a terrible culture of gullibility, which is not faith. We try so hard to believe, we get used to accepting whatever we hear that seems to be positive for the kingdom. We swallow a lot of garbage. This leads to disaster for many of us.

Today, I see heathens gloating on the web, saying MAGA Christians are crying like babies because the rapture didn’t come this week. I don’t know if this is true; I haven’t checked. I didn’t know September 2025 rapture predictions were widespread, so I am behind the curve.

I have nothing but empathy for anyone who cries because the rapture hasn’t come. It seems like a rational response.

Although the video was not from God, it did contain some interesting information.

The video says that when Yeshua said people would not know the day or hour of his return, he was quoting past Jews who were talking about Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish holiday that started on September 23. It’s the day the Jewish new year starts.

I decided to look this up, since there is a lot of unvetted garbage out there regarding Judaism’s connection to Christianity.

It turns out there is something to it. Rosh Hashanah is one of the Jewish special days that starts on a new moon. Deep in the past, Jews did not assume the new moon was out there because astronomical charts predicted it. They didn’t go ahead with new moon festivities until two witnesses testified that they had seen the new moon.

This may be wrong, but: the web says the current Jewish calendar, which is very good, didn’t exist until a millennium and a half ago, and this is why they had to eyeball the moon.

Because the moon was sometimes covered by clouds, and clouds can last a while, the beginning of the new year could be moved back quite a bit, meaning it wasn’t just the hour, but the day, which was not certain.

Is this all correct? Do your own Googling and see what you think.

The idea that the date and hour were uncertain seems to be solid, but not so, claims that Yeshua was quoting well-known Jewish wisdom when he said, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” This may be a Christian embellishment.

The video also says something about Jewish weddings and abductions. The idea is that ancient Jews used to hold mock abductions at weddings, grabbing the brides and carrying them off to the ceremonies or something.

This appears to be fiction. Maybe someone can find proof that doesn’t come from a Christian source.

It makes the rapture look more plausible, because the rapture is Yeshua, grabbing his bride and taking him away with her. It is understandable that Christians will little regard for the truth would make something like this up. Christians have promoted enough lies to fill encyclopedias. They made up the saints, the immaculate conception, the rosary, original sin, baby-baptism, and the Seventh-Day Adventist rules against pork and shrimp.

No bacon-wrapped shrimp! Now that’s a sacrifice.

While I am sure the September 23-24 theory is wrong, because here I am, I have to say that I saw another September rapture video that was not as easily debunked. A lady who sounds like she is from Australia says her autistic son spelled out prophecies on a letterboard and told her he had seen her aborted daughter in heaven. She says he didn’t know she had had an abortion. She says he named the man who raised her and said he was in heaven. She says the boy couldn’t have known about him.

She does not call for a September 23-24 rapture. She says God clearly told her son “September 2025.” I’m assuming that’s Gregorian.

It would be impressive, if true, and for all I know, it is. But she could be making it up.

Here’s a great lesson for you: you can’t “read people.” You can’t tell whether people are lying or not. If you think you can, you’re delusional. The world is full of people who know exactly how to act to make others believe them and give them sympathy. Only the Holy Spirit can read people for you.

The lady in the video seems open, honest, and brave. She says things that tug at your heartstrings. Well, if I were a bored psychopathic liar in love with attention, I would look for ways to seem just as credible and sympathetic as she does. It’s not that hard. If it were, there wouldn’t be hundreds of millions of people doing it.

This lady could be a AI creation for all I know. I can’t find the original location of her video, or any other videos she created, anywhere.

I would be very happy if my family and I were taken this month. I don’t think we’re going anywhere on October 6 or 7, but if we do, it will ruin future October 7ths for Islamists everywhere.

I don’t think anyone can specify a date. I think what Yeshua said about days and yours probably still holds true, although it’s not certain. He fully expects us to know the time of the rapture, but it’s not clear how accurate he wants us to be. I think it’s reasonable to think we could be told the month when he will come.

I’m not worried about being wrong about any of this, because I know of no requirement that you believe in the rapture in order to be included.

I am ready to go. This place is getting crazier by the second. It looks like Candace Owens is now surpassing Hitler in her ravings about Jews.

Owens is an excellent barometer. The more approval she gets, the crazier our country must be.

As far as I know, Hitler thought Jews were immoral, subhuman parasites whose disloyalty (not the Kaiser’s obvious incompetence) caused Germany to lose World War I. What a terrible thing to do, if true. How wonderful Europe would be with Germans running it (sarcasm). As of right now, they’re just funding it.

Owens now says Israel is a “demonic nation.” Hitler didn’t go that far, unless my knowledge of history is even spottier than I think it is.

I can’t believe I live in an America where a crazy woman can blather blatantly, patently, shamelessly antisemitic lies, not be censored or fired, and get richer every day! Could this have happened even in 2015?

Most political commentators are silly, but Owens is genuinely dangerous. She is moving us toward an America where pogroms are everyday activities. Where will Jews go then? No idea. I don’t even know where I could go.

If the success of Candace Owens can happen, we can eventually have troops goose-stepping down Pennsylvania Avenue, saluting Fuhrer Carlson and Vice Fuhrer Owens as they pass the White House. No delusion is beyond us now. We could hold fair elections and put a fox terrier in the Oval Office.

Owens is a self-debunking liar. She wants us to think Israel killed Charlie Kirk because he was turning against Israel, which he was not, but she is much worse than she wants us to think he was, and Israel hasn’t had her killed. She thinks Jews control the media, but they haven’t shut down her horrendous podcast.

I’m genuinely sorry the rapture didn’t come. Take comfort in the knowledge that we won’t be here forever.

Welcome to Nonbinary Day Care, Little Tyler Routh Mangione

My baby son grew up this week. He is now 47.

Three big things have happened.

1. His crawl speed has increased by about 300%.

2. He tried to climb up our stairs.

3. We are pretty sure he was trying to say “Dad” in the car yesterday.

All of this took place over about two days. I don’t know what’s with this kid.

Yesterday, I planned to have a pleasant day of testing country ham and procrastinating, but I had to go to Walmart get a baby gate and a real playpen. It couldn’t wait until today.

The crawling thing was a shock. I used to be able to put him on the floor and come back and find him pretty close to the same location. Now we get–literally–two seconds before he drops the clutch and crawls completely out of the room. For the first time, if he is on the loose, we may not know where he is.

When we’re on the bed together, I have to grab one foot of his romper and hold it, because he may launch himself like a Trident missile to get at the stuff on my night table. He may also launch himself over the side completely, head first.

There is no warning at all when he takes off. Suddenly, he’s somewhere else.

I don’t know how anyone can crawl quickly. It’s hard on the limbs.

When I hold him by his romper, he keeps groaning and straining. He never looks back to see what the problem is.

My wife found him at the bottom of the rec room stairs, pawing at things I had left on them because I was too lazy to move them all the way to the second story. She had to move everything away from him.

Now when I receive .22 ammunition to try out, I’ll have to take it all the way to the storage room. Otherwise, he’ll turn himself into a human magazine.

On the way home from the trip to get the gate and playpen, he started saying, “Da da da da da da DA!” I have been trying to teach him to say “Dad.” I touch my chest and say, “Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad!” He thinks it’s wonderful. It appears he is trying to imitate me.

My wife says she thinks it’s great because she’s a patriarchist.

If only a feminist would come, deprogram her, and save her from happiness. She, too, could have 7 cats named after famous socialists and witches, an apartment all to herself and a fatherless son, dated Seventies rainbow hair, and a bellyful of Zoloft, Klonopin, semaglutide, and fattening bagged organic snacks from Trader Joe’s.

Putting a gate on the rec room stairs may be hard because we have a high baseboard. I bought something anyway, and I’ll see if it fits.

Playpens are now called “playards.” It’s not a real word, it makes no sense, and it looks stupid. When I saw it, I smelled wokitude.

Turns out I was right. Evidently, suggesting a child can be put in a pen is non-woke, microaggressive, and extremely hurtful. In the view of utter pinheads.

A playpen is nothing like a yard.

I call it what it is: a playpen. I will always call it that unless I can come up with something that invokes colonialism and manspreading.

Why do young people have to opt for idiocy every time? Is there anything millennials can’t ruin?

We already had a playpen for him, but it was no good, because it wasn’t a real playpen. It was a bassinet. The mattress can be lowered close to the floor, so that supposedly makes it a playpen. No; it’s just a weird bassinet. It’s small, and he can’t be expected to learn to walk on a foam pad.

I wonder when they’re going to come up with a new word for “diaper.” Maybe “pooyard.”

“I was chestfeeding little Lenin Snoqualmie when I realized zhey needed a fresh, sustainable, gender-neutral, tuck-friendly, soy fiber pooyard.”

This brings me to disturbing woke baby names. My buddy Mike already has granddaughters named Fern and Wren. I am not kidding. A boy is on the way. This was Mike’s chance for a normal name.

I won’t give you time to brace. They chose “Oak.”

Fern, Wren, and Oak. Where is Christopher Robin?

I almost miss the days when all liberals named their kids Dylan.

Oak isn’t a name. I don’t care if there have been people named Oak. There have been people named Raspberry and Osprey. Doesn’t mean these are real names.

Here is his future:

1. “Could you repeat that for me? Again?”

2. “Class, I thought I told you to stop throwing Oak on the ant pile.”

3. “Is it okay if I call you by your middle name?”

4. “Honey, I’m just not comfortable with ‘Oak, Junior.’ Let’s pick something else.”

I hope he’s big and strong, because he will need to be. A boy named Oak.

They gave him three names plus a surname, and only one is normal. Unfortunately, the normal name is sexually ambiguous. By design? Wouldn’t surprise me.

You have to give a kid an escape hatch unless you like putting cold washcloths on black eyes.

It was predictable that they wouldn’t consider “Michael,” even after all the things Mike has done for them and paid for. It fits in perfectly with all the things I have heard about them.

My understanding is that his son is a very smart and talented young man and an extremely conscientious and dedicated father. Mike says he is very concerned about morality and tries to improve himself. He appears to have a blind spot in one area, though.

Seems like an undeserved slap in the face to me, but what do I know? Mike would have been on cloud nine, but never mind. I would have loved to hear they named the baby after him.

I would have given my son my dad’s name, but because of my dysfunctional upbringing, hearing it makes my blood pressure spike. It’s like I’m a baby sparrow in the nest, and my dad’s name is the shadow of a hawk flying over. I gave my son my grandfather’s name, and I told my wife we should give the next one her dad’s name.

She rejected that, however, because he did not behave all that well in life. She has demoted him to middle-name status.

Christians name children to honor older people they know, or Biblical figures. Leftists name children to one-up other leftist parents.

Leftist 1: Our son has an Algonquin Indian name.

Leftist 2: Be better. My unassigned offspring has a sub-Saharan click-language name.

Leftist 3: How 2020 of both of you. We chose “Sinwar Bud Light Luigi.”

Is the last-names-first fad over with? Are leftists still naming their daughters awful things like Wilson and Flannery?

I am not in love with my first name, but it’s not bad, and at least it’s a name. It’s much more dignified than I am, so that’s a win.

“Tyler” is probably trending among leftists right now.

I think I should take a page from an old Bloom County strip and name a son Trump T. Trump. Or Reagan T. Trump.

It’s startling to see a baby make sudden leaps in development. Of course, it’s encouraging, but it also reminds me he will only be a baby once. When babyhood is gone, it’s gone. It has to be savored while it lasts.

We will try to teach him to have a little gratitude and respect instead of criticizing and putting us on trial every day of his adult life while expecting us to support him and do things for him well into his thirties. I hope it works, because I have seen what happens when it doesn’t.

Things are just about ideal here. My son is a joy. My wife and I love each other; we are more like parts of each other than separate beings. God’s presence comes to us over and over. Our area is peaceful. We lack for nothing.

Everyone was miserable back in 2020, but we both loved it. Then we found each other in 2021, and while a lot of people were worrying and being held prisoner in their own homes by Democrat governors, we were having long video calls, praying together, getting married on Zoom, and flying to exotic destinations to be with each other. Every year has been better than the last. As happy as we were with just each other, we are even happier now that we have a baby, and we expect every new baby to make us happier still.

God keeps giving us correction, and I believe anyone who keeps receiving and applying his correction will find that his life gets more pleasant as years pass. I am optimistic because I have a loving benefactor who is patient, eager to bless, and slow to punish. He has been right about everything.

Today we will be taking the baby to the dermatologist for a followup, and then we plan to go to our favorite restaurant: Costco. We hope to be home when the anniversary ring I bought my wife comes back from being resized.

If you’re not happy, keep asking God to tell what you’re doing wrong. It worked for the ancient Jews, and it is certainly working for us. God loves you as much as anyone else, so he is ready to start when you are.

Creative Cure from Meacham Hams

A third type of country ham has landed on our porch: Meacham Hams of Sturgis, Kentucky! I fried up two small slices, and we tried them.

The raw ham scared me a little. I am used to country ham smelling a certain way. A little bit like bacon. A little smoky, if smoke is used. A fermented umami smell which is hard to describe. Sort of like a Slim Jim.

The slices I bought from Meacham didn’t smell much at all. When I used to buy Gatton Farms hams, I could tell there was ham in the boxes before I opened them.

The slices I bought today had an aroma that surprised me. It was just a little bit like dog poo.

I wasn’t disturbed. I know nobody cures hams with dog poo, and I have had hams that smelled like manure and mold.

There was also a faint odor that reminded me of maple syrup. Maybe it has something to do with the sugar in the cure.

I put a small amount of water in a pan and boiled the slices for around 45 seconds per side. The purpose of this is to cut the salt and make the slices moister, but my grandmother used to slice and fry, period.

Important to point out up front: the fried slices did not smell like dog poo.

This is a mild ham. It’s mild by country ham standards, not Oscar Mayer standards.

On the saltiness scale, it is below Newsom’s and the Broadbent’s slices I bought. If Broadbent’s is a 10 and Newsom’s is an 8, I call this a 6. Still very salty, as it should be, but toward the lower end of the country ham spectrum.

I consider this a good thing, because this ham should not need any water in the pan, and that saves time. Also, water probably carries off some flavor.

It’s not tough at all. It’s easy to chew, but it has the texture of a true country ham. It’s not like a canned ham. It’s not dry, either.

The texture of Newsom’s made me think of cheese for some reason. It sort of collapses between your teeth like the center of an aged prime rib eye. The Meacham slices don’t have as much of this quality.

It has a nice, acidic country ham flavor, but I would say it’s a little less pronounced than Newsom’s. The Broadbent’s slices didn’t have much flavor.

On the whole, it has a flavor all its own. Newsom’s produces hams with a very well-executed typical country ham flavor. This one is just a little different.

At first, I thought I liked Newsom’s better, but this ham grows on you. I stopped eating, and then I kept going back to finish it.

Here is my conclusion: this is a great ham, but if you want perfect textbook country ham just like your granny’s, you will prefer Newsom’s. If you are open to something a little distinctive but still completely authentic, Meacham is something you should try.

If you like country ham, but you are tired of dealing with excess salt, and you want a flavor that is slightly less intense, Meacham is probably ideal for you.

In terms of quality, I think there is no difference.

The price can’t be beat. Nobody else will send you a year-old proper country ham for this kind of money.

I think this is an excellent product that fills a need. Not everyone wants a hard core ham, but if you try to find something a little milder, you are likely to end up with a fake made for New Yorkers and Californians. Meacham makes a mild ham, but it’s for real. Also, the unique flavor gives people a new option without going outside the genre.

Anyone who likes country ham should try Meacham Hams. They deserve credit for doing their own thing.

MORE

I sliced my Newsom’s ham and soaked it in water for two days under refrigeration. Today I tried it.

I was afraid I was ruining it, but it’s better. It’s slightly less salty, and it’s juicier. I recommend this approach.

Spam is not a Dish That is Best Served Cold

Yesterday I wrote about a startling and disappointing spam text I received from Erika Kirk, and I was very critical. Some people have questioned the legitimacy of the text, suggesting I fell for a scam.

I didn’t. I will teach you a few things.

The text is from Turning Point, and it links to their official donation site. The language in the text is repeated on that site word for word.

Here is a link.

Anedot is TPUSA’s official donation processor. Go to TPUSA’s site, click a donation link, and see for yourself.

I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I don’t believe everything I see on the web or in texts or emails. I never click on links I can’t verify. I have never bought a timeshare. I don’t fall for organic food. I have never wired money to a Nigerian. I have never paid a gypsy to put “leftover” blacktop on my driveway. I don’t follow the Omaha Steaks people back to their trucks. I haven’t left a tooth under my pillow in around 60 years. I know the difference between “made with real cheese” and “uses only 100% real cheese.” I have never responded to an infomercial. I would never get a reverse mortgage. I have never even considered getting a Herbalife franchise. It doesn’t scare me at all when a guy with an Indian accent calls and claims he’s with the IRS. When I receive envelopes with warnings saying things like, “OFFICIAL COMMUNICATION! OPEN IMMEDIATELY!”, I throw them out without opening them. I have never put my Social Security number in an email or spoken it over the phone. I don’t buy anything endorsed by Oprah Winfrey or Shark Tank. I don’t answer misspelled emails thanking me for huge purchases I never made. I have never paid anyone money because they sent me an email claiming they turned my webcam on and filmed me watching porn. I will never pay anyone to clean my air conditioning ducts. I don’t take methylene blue. I don’t believe a mediocre old socialist in Rome, elected by homosexuals, is even dimly acquainted with Yeshua or can send anyone to hell. I don’t open mail from companies offering to buy my house for half the market price. I don’t buy extended warranties except in rare cases. I don’t tip on tax. I don’t believe racking a pump shotgun will scare a burglar off. I don’t trust AR-15’s. I don’t believe Brigitte Macron is a man. I am positive Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, and I know for a fact Charlie Kirk was not bumped off by Israel.

I have made some real sucker moves in my life. I gave money to Robert Tilton, and I also dated a Brazilian who told me she would never date a Brazilian and gave me solid reasons. But I have checked this spam text out, and it’s the real thing.

As long as I’m in a lecturing mood, I want to comment on something more personal. I had an epiphany this morning.

Once I got past a certain age, older women started paying attention to me. I was never attracted to them. No apology. You don’t apologize for things like that. It’s like apologizing for not liking yogurt. It’s not something that results from a choice.

Who insists women apologize for their preferences? No one. Feminists think Brigitte Macron is practically a deity.

She put an end to the Macron line. Emmanuel Macron will never reproduce unless his wife leaves the picture and he finds himself someone who can still have kids. She deprived him of a great deal.

She’s a bit of a husband-beater, so she and Macron may part ways. If that happens and he goes on to have kids with someone young, feminists will probably cruficy him.

I have also turned down women of childbearing age, not just in recent years, but when I was young. It would be crazy to apologize for that. You don’t marry people you don’t want. It’s wrong, and it leads to misery. I don’t owe marriage to anyone. I am under no obligation as a Christian to save women from their problems, even if they’re nice single women.

Marriage isn’t musical chairs. You don’t leap for the only remaining option just because there is no choice. There is always a choice. It’s called bachelorhood. It worked for Paul. It worked for Boaz until the time was right.

I never felt I should marry someone because I was old myself and should be grateful anyone would have me. That would have been pathetic. A Japanese robot would be an order of magnitude less pathetic. At least I wouldn’t be using another human being. I would be objectifying an object.

I was completely prepared to remain single until I died. That was better than burdening myself with the human equivalent of chopped liver and burdening a woman with a man who only stayed with her out of duty.

More than one older lady tried to turn other people against me. Women will do that. If you reject a woman, she may go to your common friends, and they may conspire and decide you’re a wicked person for not wanting ONE woman out of 4 billion. A cousin of mine broke up with a girl in high school, and other girls in his small town decided no one else should date him.

I’m sure some were willing to jump in and undermine her, though.

It’s gaslighting. The victim is the problem. If the victim agrees to be victimized, everything will be as it should be. Take one for the team. The other team.

Today I was lying in bed, and I looked at my son. His crib is between our bed and a sliding glass door. He was standing in the sunshine, in his romper, eagerly awaiting his day with us. He seemed to glow with innocence and love. My own love poured out toward him, as always.

Suddenly I had a realization: this is what irrational, selfish older women wanted to keep me from having. Maybe they never articulated it to themselves, but this is what they offered me: life without my beautiful son and whatever siblings God might provide later. Life without any hope of a grandchild.

In exchange for that, I would get to pay someone’s bills and maybe the bills of their kids and relations, and I would get to lie next to someone who was as attractive and who brought me as much pleasure as another old man.

No; I won’t say that. Women are difficult; they even find each other difficult. Men are easy to get along with, and we share interests. It would be much better to share a house with another man than a woman I didn’t want. We could shoot together. We could do metalworking. We could smoke ribs and make beer. We would be happy with crummy furniture and doing small engine repairs on the kitchen table.

Two Oscars and no Felix.

No woman ever thought, “I want to make sure he never has kids.” Surely. But every woman who can’t or won’t have babies knows this is the sentence she imposes on potential husbands. A considerate person would have thought about that, and she would have backed off and encouraged me to find someone suitable. I was willing to die a bachelor, but if married, I wanted to have children.

If I had given in to the pressure, which was never even a remote possibility, I wouldn’t be waking up every day bathed in the presence and love of my very own family. I wouldn’t get to hold my baby son and kiss him. I wouldn’t get to pray for him and speak blessings over him.

My phone wouldn’t be jammed with pictures of my wife and son. My boy fresh from delivery. My boy swaddled in the bassinet. Taking his first trip to Home Depot. Being bathed by my wife in the utility sink. Going to his first restaurant. Sitting up by himself. Crawling. Standing up while holding a chair leg. Sitting in a grocery cart outside Costco while my wife beams with joy.

I’m sorry life doesn’t work out for everyone. My own life was a disappointing mess until I was well into middle age, so I know how it feels. Doesn’t mean I’m the catcher in the rye for every woman who is in the same boat. I can’t do it, and it would be wrong to do it. Your problems are not my fault. They’re your fault.

Choosing the wife I did doesn’t make me immature, insecure, a fetishist, selfish, gullible, domineering, or unwilling to face reality. I chose a magnificent helper, and we could not love our baby more. You know all those miserable couples on Facebook who post glowing entries about their wonderful lives together? That’s not us. Our lives really are wonderful, thanks to our patient, forgiving, generous, reliable father.

There are a lot of women out there who don’t think at all about the welfare of their potential husbands. Gimme, gimme, gimme. Save me. Save my kids. Serve a man’s proper purpose. You should love me because I want you, or, worse, because I need you.

Actual love is not selfish.

I used to pray for God to give me someone to pour myself out for. Like most husbands and fathers, I take pleasure in sacrificing for my wife and child. I didn’t say, “Please make her rich. Give her a nice car. Give me a warm body so I don’t feel lonely at night. Make her good at fixing our house and vehicles. Send me someone to solve the problems I caused.”

I’m not a good person, but I genuinely wanted to give of myself. I didn’t pray for God to send me someone who would make sacrifices for me. I wasn’t like a Titanic survivor pleading for God to send me a piece of floating wreckage I could cling to until a ship came along.

A man should sacrifice for his family, but a woman shouldn’t pray for God to send her someone to sacrifice for her. She should pray for someone to whom she can be a good helper. A woman should be a good helper, but a man should pray for God to send him someone to make sacrifices for.

And she should be someone he actually wants.

I apologize for nothing except dating people who could never have been good Christian wives. That was unfair to them. I don’t apologize for rejecting anyone, and I don’t feel even the tiniest trace of resentment toward women who rejected me. They were right. The ones who rejected me when I was young dodged a bullet.

If you’re a female troll, and you think I’m still a bullet, all I can say is, my wife sees me very, very differently.

My son is on the floor at my feet, moving the end table around and grabbing my leg while I type. He coos and grunts with pleasure. He explains what he’s doing with incomprehensible babble. What did I ever do to deserve to be so blessed? Nothing.

This is what some women thought I should give up on and do without, forever, so I could give them everything and get precious little back. If anyone should be ashamed, it’s not me.

Don’t marry the wrong person. It is literally worse than cancer. Get to know the Holy Spirit. Pray in tongues. Beg God to clean you up for marriage, and ask him to send you the right person.

On your own, you have no chance.

I got a spam email today, addressing me by my first name. That always annoys me. It is never proper to address a grown stranger by his first name. It is insulting, because it’s a transparent trick intended to foster a false sense of intimacy. It doesn’t work on me. It offends me, because I hate two things: having my intelligence insulted, and being manipulated.

I’ll post the text.

Charlie loved witnessing excellence.

It’s why he loved sports so much.

He loved watching the best of the best perform at the level of greatness God intended for them.

[Insert your first name here.], that’s why this photo…

One of the very last photos ever taken of Charlie…

Took the breath right out of my chest. Because I know that look…

I fell in love with that look. He’s in athlete mode. Locked in. Dialed. Focused. Just Charlie. In his element.

And now, this image is permanently etched in time, held in my heart, as I admire his greatness.

Forever.

[Insert your first name here.], this is a message I never imagined I’d write.

You knew Charlie’s voice…

But I knew his heart.

That’s the story I want you to know – and the man I want you to remember: turnpt-usa.com/6etCd_ZXd

-Erika Kirk

Reply STOP to end

I am old-fashioned by 2025 standards. By the standards of my grandparents, I am practically a savage, but in 2025, I look like Emily Post. Am I wrong to be old-fashioned? Putting it gently in view of the time frame, I am unfavorably impressed by this text.

Charlie Kirk’s body is in a coffin somewhere, still above ground. It has been 13 days since he died. Now his wife’s company is sending me seemingly-ghostwritten texts in her name, trying to get me to sponsor her career as a political pundit.

If I had a friend who was poor, and he died, and I knew his family needed money to get them through the months following his death, I would be thrilled to help. I wouldn’t be upset if the widow came right out and asked me. I would offer before she could do that. But this is a rich woman with many, many millionaire and billionaire contacts, and I am being asked not for help making ends meet, but for help advancing her media career.

Worse, I could be helping the dangerous antisemite Tucker Carlson, who seems to be jockeying for Kirk’s job. That would feel like sponsoring Josef Goebbels.

There is no way she wrote this. Not by herself, anyway. It has the smell of professional copywriters all over it. I think a company that does fundraising for a lot of outfits wrote this. It reads exactly like the computer-generated letters I used to get many years ago, before I realized prosperity preachers were the among the lowest creatures on Earth.

“[Insert your first name here.]: MY WIFE DEONDRIANNA AND OUR CHILDREN JAYDEN, HAYDEN, PAYDEN, AIDAN, PEYTON, ASHLEY, ASHLYNNE, MICKAYLA, BRAYDEN AND I HAVE BEEN WEEPING OVER YOUR FINANCIAL SITUATION! OUR HEARTS ACHE OVER YOUR LACK! JESUS WOKE US IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND TOLD US TO PRAY FOR YOU AND LET YOU KNOW THAT IF YOU WOULD JUST SEND US YOUR BEST POSSIBLE SEED GIFT OVER $250…”

I think TPUSA does wonderful work. It’s well worth supporting if you’re the kind of person who gives money to political causes. I’m not that kind of person, and I haven’t been since Bush I was running, but if you are, I can’t think of a better political cause than this. But this is not the way to go about getting donations. This is fodder for Charlie Kirk’s leftist critics.

Now that I think about it, I may have given Trump $25 in the process of buying a hat and a shirt, but I can’t recall.

I say it was spam because it was. It was an unsolicited and unwelcome fundraising pitch, sent to a random person with no previous communication.

I have never had anything to do with TPUSA. I saw very little of Kirk’s work. He did not inspire or influence me. I didn’t subscribe to his Youtube channel. If Charlie Kirk had spoken next door, I wouldn’t have gone, because his bag was not my bag, and I hate crowds. I’m glad he did it, just as I am glad there are people who become morticians, accountants, and septic tank pumpers, but I don’t want to be part of it.

I never signed up for a mailing list or gave anyone any indication whatsoever that I was interested in TPUSA. I have been blogging for 24 years, and prior to his assassination, I have mentioned Charlie Kirk precisely once.

I didn’t give them my number, so I know they got it without my consent. They bought it, or some other political corporation gave it to them in an underhanded, rude, and thoughtless way.

Back in 2014, a car thief who went to a church I used to attend drowned while fleeing the cops. His name was Alex Nicolas. He knew a lot of wealthy Jewish kids, so Rich Wilkerson, the pastor of the church (Trinity Church in Miami) offered to hold a memorial service.

Some of Alex’s rich friends came by to pay their respects, and Rich Wilkerson saw his plan coming together. He asked for a cash offering. To help Alex’s family.

No, he didn’t. You knew I wasn’t headed that way. He asked for a cash offering to go to his own “charity,” from which he personally drew funds. A charity which did nearly nothing for anyone not named Wilkerson.

It was ghastly.

I can’t help thinking of it now.

The folks at TPUSA need money, so they ask for it. That’s fine, but they should not spam innocent people, and this is not the proper time to send out emails in his widow’s name. I don’t think they should be using this kind of emotional appeal, either. It seems very inappropriate to me. There is a lot more of it on the page the text links to. Maybe it’s sincere, but I just don’t feel it, and anyway, I did not know these people.

They could have said, “People funded TPUSA largely because they knew they were supporting the work of Charlie Kirk. Now that he is gone, we need your help more than ever. Please consider sending a generous donation while we recover from this tremendous loss.” And they could have refrained from spamming.

You know what? I’ll post the link they sent me. Go ahead and donate if you like. I think TPUSA was fueled by Charlie Kirk, and I expect it to dry up and vanish like The Daily Wire without Ben Shapiro, but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe lightning will strike twice in the same place, and they’ll find someone who can do what Charlie Kirk did. Make up your own mind.

I don’t think this disturbing spam necessarily justifies abandoning what is fundamentally a good cause. I’m just put off by the tone-deaf approach. I now have a sour opinion of the character of the people involved.

As you will see, suggested-donation buttons range from $25 to $100,000. Seems bold to me. Maybe, for the first time in 24 years, I should put donation buttons on this blog and suggest amounts ranging from $10,000 to two billion dollars.

Of course, the link they sent has tracking code in it to show where it came from, so I guess they have already tracked me and realized I went to the site. I guess I can expect more spam now that there is blood in the water. I stripped that code out in the link above, not that it matters, since it would have led back to me, not you.

I guess people will be mad at me now. But as many people have said, being offended doesn’t make you right. Kirk himself said that, although it was not his original thought. I used to say it before I had ever heard of him, and you probably said it, too.

I think it’s time to register as an independent.

Bad Day for Broadbent’s

Back in 2023, I ordered samples from Benton’s and Broadbent’s, two of the leading producers of real country ham. I was going to compare them.

I used to order hams from Father’s Country Hams in Bremen, Kentucky, but they closed up. Then I started ordering from Scott Hams. They went out of business, which is not surprising, because they were not sufficiently competent to answer the phone or answer emails.

I went to the trouble of comparing Benton’s and Broadbent’s, and then I forgot to take notes. Whatever conclusions I drew are forgotten.

Now I’m doing it all over again. Somewhere, George Santayana is smirking.

Last week, I ordered a whole ham from Colonel Newsom’s in Princeton, Kentucky. I had never had their product. It’s expensive, and I am cheap. My late cousin Wade swore by it, and based on the company’s reputation and his recommendation, I was confident enough to give in and pay for one of their very expensive hams.

I also ordered more slices from Benton’s and Broadbent’s, and I followed up with an order from Meacham Ham. I have not received the Benton’s and Meacham slices yet. We have tried Newsom’s and Broadbent’s.

I don’t recall being disappointed by Broadbent’s in 2023, because I don’t recall anything about my first order, but the slices I received this time were no good. They are too thin. The ham has very little flavor. They’re tougher than they should be. The ham is so salty, it’s hard to eat.

I don’t know how one country ham can be saltier than another. You create a country ham by dumping it in a box with loose salt and other cure ingredients and packing the cure all over it, so you would think they would all come out with the same level of saltiness.

We tried two slices last week, and we did not finish them. We tried two this morning, and again, we threw a good deal out. It’s just not worth the effort to eat it.

The slices smelled very good when I opened the package. They had a strong fermented smell; almost alcoholic. I expected a lot of flavor. After cooking, all I noticed was salt.

I cooked today’s slices by putting a quarter-inch of water in a pan, boiling the slices on both sides, and then frying them. This is supposed to reduce the salt. Still, the slices were useless.

I reviewed Broadbent’s slices a few days ago, and I was more charitable. I said we preferred Newsom’s by a narrow margin. That is not how I feel today. As of now, I would turn down Broadbent’s if it were free. My wife doesn’t like it either.

I don’t know if the slices we ate today are different or what, but I take back all the nice things I said. Maybe my high hopes colored my perceptions to the point of distortion.

Maybe the first slices were better because I fried them in the same pan with Newsom’s ham. That could explain it.

I sent Broadbent’s an email asking if there might be something wrong with the ham we received. I think they deserve a chance to respond.

Their hams get very good reviews from most people, and I don’t recall having a bad experience with my first samples.

The Newsom’s ham is just about perfect. It has a strong fermented flavor. It’s very salty, but not like Broadbent’s, which tastes almost like fatback. It’s not hard to chew. I think the long curing process may have broken the meat down a little.

A 16-17-pound Newsom’s ham costs $152.83 before shipping, and curing a ham is not rocket science, so I am hoping Meacham Ham or Benton’s will be just as good at a lower price.

I did my best to butcher the Newsom’s ham, and I put the pieces in a pot of water to add moisture and draw out excess salt. I’m going to drain them and put them in vacuum bags.

Newsom’s is just about flawless, so if I never find a great ham at a lower cost, at least I’ll have one company that will come through for a price.

MORE

Broadbent’s got back to me:

Without seeing a picture of exactly what you received, my best guess would be that the center cut country ham steaks you received might have simply been from a smaller and/ or older ham, which would have resulted in less fat (leathery texture) and a saltier taste. As you know, every ham is different in fat content, size, and even how it shrinks down and takes to the cure, so every pack of ham steaks is as unique as the ham it came from.
We stand by our products, and every customer’s order comes with a 30-day guarantee where if you are not happy with what you received, we will send a replacement or refund you the cost of your merchandise

I will try another package and see what happens. Surely my slices were not normal. No one would order them.

Who Will Catch the Bloody Bouquet?

When Martin Luther King died, people in his penumbra used his death as a catapult to launch themselves into similarly powerful and lucrative careers. They wanted to replace him, not because they cared about black people, but because he had a really good thing going, and a position someone else worked hard to build was suddenly vacant.

This is how we ended up with Jesse Jackson in our faces for 50 years. A reverend in title only, non-Christian Jackson told all sorts of lies about his closeness to King. He claimed he held King as he died, which was a lie, and he appeared on The Today Show wearing a shirt he claimed was stained with King’s blood.

King was not a Christian, which is strange, since he used the title “Reverend.” He denied essential tenets of Christianity, including the resurrection, without which there is no Christianity. He was a pervert, and he degraded his wife by participating in orgies. One of his best friends said King physically attacked a woman who commented on his mass adultery.

He was not a great guy or any kind of minister, but as a political figure, he was a powerful agent in the battle to see to it minority members’ civil rights were not denied. His accomplishments were 100% political and 0% Christian.

Nonetheless, many people insist he was a great Christian and a valid Christian martyr.

Now we have our own MLK; the late Charlie Kirk. He appears to have been a much better person than King. He didn’t chase or hit women. He wasn’t a closet boozer. He was a very, very serious family man. I have never seen any evidence at all that he was a hypocrite like King.

This is all wonderful. He seems to have been a fantastic human being. I think he was very sincere, although I have been fooled before. He was definitely ambitious and dedicated to self-promotion, but I believe he truly cared about America.

The thing that disappoints me is that he is suddenly being promoted as a new Stephen. A holy man the likes of whom have not been seen since the first century.

Worse, like King, unless I’m mistaken, his memory is being used by morally inferior people to accelerate their own careers. Notably, the notorious antisemites Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson.

You can’t be antisemitic and be a good Christian, any more than you can be a socialist and be a good Christian. It is not possible. The New Testament warns us against antisemitism, every one of the Bible’s books is believed to have been written by Jews, and Yeshua himself was, and remains, a Jew.

Owens claims it is not possible to be a Jew and believe in Yeshua, which makes you wonder if she has ever heard of Yeshua, his disciples, Paul, or any of the other Jewish believers named in the Bible. None of them ever renounced Judaism.

She must think Yeshua doesn’t believe in himself.

Owens is pretty smart. She is not “brilliant,” as Megyn Kelly mystifyingly asserts. She’s no Ann Coulter, not that I endorse Coulter. Owens is aggressive and wildly overconfident, and she loves to argue, but she is not a real thinker.

Kelly seems to have a hangup about feminism, so maybe that’s why she imputes brilliance to a woman who does not show any signs of possessing it. Anyway, Owens is smart, but she is also ignorant, and not just a little.

As proof of her shocking ignorance, let me point to her wacky dispute with Bill Maher. Maher told her we know, for a fact, that people walked on the moon, and she expressed doubt.

Anyone can go witness a Spacex launch. Anyone can look up and see satellites. The International Space Station can be seen with binoculars.

Starlink exists, and there are no cables connecting millions of rural homes to it. There are no giant towers hiding in plain sight, shooting Starlink signals to homes. The data comes from outer space. These are indisputable facts. Spacecraft exist.

The moon is not that far away; it’s about 30 earth diameters off, or roughly (roughly, nerds) 250,000 miles. There is no wind resistance in space. It’s not that hard to make an object in space move at an average speed of thousands of miles per hour. We can send things to the moon in a long weekend. If we can send things, we can send people.

She had to ask Maher if more than one person had been to the moon. This is like asking if more than one person has been to New York.

The Washington Post’s motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” I would say this: antisemitism grows in darkness, just like leftism. The more ignorant you are, the more antisemitism appeals to you.

No American over the age of 7 has an excuse for not knowing astronauts went to the moon. What else doesn’t she know?

Owens later claimed she was joking with Maher, but she’s a liar. Watch the video yourself some day. She was dead serious.

Owens is so eccentric, she devotes a huge amount of energy to proving the wife of the Prime Minister of France is a man. She bet Piers Morgan $300,000 she was right. Now she’s being sued by the Macrons, and in order to shake Owens off her ankle, poor Madame Macron is going to have to show a court her private parts.

I hope she can write a check for $300,000 without selling anything or borrowing money, because I don’t think Morgan will let her off the hook.

She says she told Charlie Kirk he was too smart to be a protestant. She chose a religion whose adherents quite literally pray to dead people and statues; a religion known to have created the “saint” cult in order to get pagans to join, and she thinks protestants are dumb.

She has written books. Has she ever read one?

Interesting fact: Charlie Kirk’s denomination, Calvary Chapel, is not a Protestant sect. That’s their official position.

Carlson is just gross. If you look into the details of his firing, and that of his cronies, you will not be impressed. The picture the details paint is one of a bunch of smirking, semi-bright frat boys whose mental development stopped when they were 14.

According to a former Fox employee who sued over Carlson’s behavior, Carlson and his dudebros had sexually-suggestive posters on their office walls. Posters? Aren’t those for high school kids and mechanics?

Carlson was allowed to host Kirk’s show the other day, which suggests he is making a grab for the bloody mantle. I wonder if he paid for the privilege.

I saw him talking to a couple of Kirk underlings. They had the audacity to talk about Yeshua and revival while buddying up to an enemy of the Jewish people. One of them made it seem like Kirk’s death was going to be the springboard for a huge revival.

It’s a springboard, all right, but not for revival. Not with people like Tucker Carlson jockeying for pope status.

I remember when Andrew Breitbart. I knew things about him, which I heard from an insider. He was a sleaze. I don’t think he had any principles at all. He helped Arianna Huffington start The Huffington Post, and then he turned around and started his own parasitic link page that fed off Drudge. That turned into Breitbart.com.

I think he would have been perfectly happy to run MSNBC or Mother Jones as long as the checks were good. I have no reason to think he was a conservative.

After Breitbart died, people eulogized him and played up their relationships to him. They tried to make him look like the fourth member of the Trinity. He was a sleaze, period. And he called me “evil” for being right about Pajamas Media.

Kirk was no sleaze, but people are using his death to beatify him in the eyes of the public, so they can cash in on their dubious proximity to him.

It wouldn’t bother me if they only praised him for his secular virtues, but they’re making him sound like Yeshua himself.

He didn’t heal anyone. He didn’t prophesy. He didn’t work miracles. He didn’t lay hands on people so they could receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. He belonged to a weak denomination that keeps the Holy Spirit on the bench in order to avoid offending Christians who are heading in the wrong direction.

Try and find a video of him preaching. I couldn’t find a single one. I can’t find an essay about his walk with God.

If Christianity is the center of your life, and you have a monstrously-large public platform, how can you not write about your life with the Holy Spirit?

According to the Bible, Christians are supposed to have testimony, and, “Jesus changed my life,” doesn’t qualify.

He did a very secular job, and he relied on the non-Christian tools of hard work, self-promotion, and self-confidence. Fine. Lots of people have done similar things. Mike Lindell, for example. Donald Trump. Famous Amos. Susan Powter. It’s impressive. But it’s not ministry or anything likely to lead to real revival. Talking about Yeshua in between short debates with confused, hungover college students who take the Cliff’s Notes/Candace Owens approach to life and smell like bong water is not an exemplary ministry.

No one ever said, “I am on fire for God, and I absolutely have to drive across America to a Charlie Kirk appearance so I can be filled with the Holy Spirit and do what Peter and Paul did.”

He formed TPUSA Faith, not to turn Republicans to Yeshua, but to turn Christians to the Republican party.

People went to his appearances to see him own the libs. No one would have gone if he had done nothing but talk about Yeshua.

He’s not going to be replaced. Not by any of the usual hacks, at least. Owens is too crazy, angry, arrogant, and ignorant. Carlson isn’t very smart, he has the opposite of charisma, and like Owens, he will have a hard time wooing people who aren’t borderline Nazis. Who else is out there right now? Nobody.

People are saying his widow will replace him. In order to do that, she would have to have his gifts. I watched her speak for a while, and although she seems like an intelligent and motivated person, I doubt she can do what her late husband did. If one rare phenomenon just happened to marry another, it would be quite a coincidence.

If I were her, I’d just try to arrange the inheritance so I could raise my kids and let someone else take the heat.

It would be sad if a large number of people mistook Kirk for a spiritual leader. Anyone who can’t tell the difference between a secular leader who is a Christian and a spiritual leader who also has political leanings is blind.

Current Population: Three

The Wonder Baby is nearly 8 months old. What should I say about him?

I suppose I should write about his personality.

He is possibly the funniest baby that ever lived. It seems like everything he does is funny, from screaming with joy for no apparent reason to breaking wind in my face when I’m trying to bond with him.

He puts everything in his mouth. He really loves charging cables and TV remotes. He puts live charging cables in his mouth and sucks on them. I tell people that’s why he has so much energy. I just ordered a new remote because after he got done chewing on the old one, it didn’t work.

He loves people. He makes eye contact with anyone who talks to him, and he smiles and giggles at them. He trusts everyone.

Enjoy that while it lasts, my son.

He sleeps between us, and he wakes up before we do. He stares at me and waits for me to wake up. When I snore, he thinks I’m talking to him, and it makes him happy.

He has learned to reach over and scratch my shoulder to wake me up.

He finds my attention overwhelming. When I look at him and talk to him, he opens his mouth in a big, toothless smile, and his whole face lights up. He gets so excited, he has to turn away and bury his face in his mom’s shoulder.

At some point during the last month, he decided he wanted to stand, so he grabs things and pulls himself to his feet. He can’t walk yet, but he loves standing, and he will do it for long periods.

He crawls a lot, and he takes off suddenly, so if we’re both on the bed, I have to hold onto a leg or something to keep him from launching himself over the side like a depth charge. He has started crawling out of the bedroom and into the hall.

He holds his own bottles, and he holds his sippy cup and drinks water from it. He’s a big eater. It seems like his mom is shoveling food into him all the time.

He eats and drinks ferociously. He gets very agitated when his bottle doesn’t come immediately, and he screams and cries. Then when he gets what he wants, he sucks like he just crawled out of the desert.

When he poops, he growls like an angry Rottweiler. He likes to poop at the table, during meals. We can pretty much count on hearing that growl when we sit down to eat. He also likes to poop when he sees Dad.

He adores his mother. Sometimes he gets very upset because she has left the room. He will stand in his crib, facing the door, and yell until she returns.

He can’t stop scratching his crotch. I keep telling him we’re not Italian, but he does it anyway. When I change his diaper and put zinc oxide on his crotch, he shoves both hands into it and smears it on other parts of his body. I try to restrain his hands, but it’s impossible.

He pulls his mother’s hair. He thinks it’s wonderful. He especially likes pulling it while she’s trying to sleep.

He likes putting his mouth on his parents and making gross noises. He thinks this is fantastic.

He screams when he’s happy, but he also screams when he’s upset, so sometimes we have to try to figure out which it is. Overall, he is a very happy baby.

He is fascinated by everything. He is extremely aware of his surroundings. He looks around constantly. If he sees that something interests us, he wants it. This is why he likes chewing on remotes and phones. He has a rubber baby remote, but he has figured out that it’s not the real thing, so he doesn’t have much interest in it.

We took him to Costco, where they have enormous ceiling fans around 15 feet across. We noticed he was leaning back in the cart, looking up, and my wife realized he was staring at the fans.

He thinks Costco ice cream is the best.

He hasn’t spoken any English yet, but he babbles in his own language all day. He talks to us, to himself, to the windows…he is not picky.

He likes being tickled, and he loves it when we rub his belly with our heads. He pulls our hair and shrieks with joy. He never gets tired of it.

He’s still very strong. The other day while I was in bed, I felt someone grab my arm and move it. I thought it was my wife, but it was him. His hands are thick and muscular. He has what millennials call “core strength.” When you hold him horizontally, he is as straight as a board.

He loves the shower. His shower is our utility sink, which has a special plastic seat and a sprayer on a hose. He loves having poop hosed off of him and being washed with hand soap. He likes lapping at the hot water as it comes out of the sprayer.

He takes things apart, so he is definitely male. He unscrewed a knob and removed it from a drawer. He has learned to remove rubber caps from doorstops, so we had to get baby-safe doorstops so he wouldn’t choke on the caps.

He gets tons of affection. He is with his mother most of the time, and she sings songs to him and holds him over her head. The “Changing Baby’s Diaper” song. The “Baby and his Mommy, They Love Each Other” song. There are others. He can’t get enough of this stuff.

I had to tell his mother he would like having his hair combed. I didn’t realize she didn’t know. It’s easy to run a comb through most types of Caucasian hair, but it doesn’t work for most Africans, so they have no idea how it feels. When I was little, my mother used to sit me down and comb my hair slowly, and I loved it. Now my son loves it. His hair is curly, but a comb will go through it.

This is a great tip for black parents of biracial kids.

We squeeze him and rub him and toss him around. He likes being thrown on the bed over and over. He’s a rough-and-tumble kid. He prefers being thrown around to being handled gently.

He likes making music. He has a little keyboard, and he likes to bang on it and stare at it.

He has a crew of stuffed animals that keep him company when we’re out and about. Mr. Bear. Mrs. Cow. Mr. Polar, the other bear. We have three Mrs. Cows because they get dirty and because we don’t always know where they are.

Mrs. Cow was originally Mr. Cow, but my wife changed her name because she was concerned about the consequences of misgendering.

I don’t know if women who don’t raise their own kids know what they’re missing. My wife wants to be with her son all the time. They’re always busy together. She shows him numbers. She takes him for walks and shows him the trees and birds. She puts little outfits on him. She shows him to her relatives on video chats. She sings her songs to him. He always wants more; he seems to think they are parts of one creature. The thought of getting a job is abhorrent to her, understandably.

It seems wrong to me, too. I can’t believe any woman would prefer a job to her own children. I think we are doing things the correct way.

We pray with him. I tell him Yeshua is God, and I tell him Yeshua loves him even more than we do. I speak blessings over him in the name of Yeshua.

We don’t work on Sundays any more. Sundays are for God and family.

Whatever his future holds, he will be better off than his mother and I. My mother rarely took my sister and me to church, and she taught us almost nothing about Yeshua. My dad either slept late or played golf on Sundays, and I never saw him pray until he was 87 years old and dying from dementia. I grew up in a house that was empty of purpose and hope, and we were all miserable. My son lives in a house of love and God’s favor.

He will be walking at talking soon, and that means we will be able to tell him about God.

Good Ham is no Luxury

I am still thinking about country ham.

Hams have gone up a lot in price, like everything else. A ham that used to arrive at your door, sliced and sealed in bags, for $65 will now run you twice that much in one piece. Also, a company’s ability to promote itself can affect prices whether or not the product is better. It seems likely that shopping around can pay off.

Another factor: the single most important variable in ham quality is aging; older hams are much better. Aging a ham costs money, so older hams cost more. What if you can find a mediocre young ham for a good price and then age it in your pantry, dramatically improving the quality?

Any cured ham will continue to age safely in your kitchen, as long as you don’t keep it too cold.

I decided to go through some of the best-known online ham suppliers to see what I could learn.

1. Benton’s. A Tennessee company. From their site: “Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country Hams are slow cured using salt, brown sugar, and sodium nitrite and typically aged 9-10 months, though hams are available 1 year and older.” You can buy them smoked or unsmoked.

A whole smoked ham (15-17 pounds) costs $88, and in my case, the total with shipping is $123.23. That’s a little over $8 per pound, including bone and some bits you will want to cut off and throw out.

A two-year ham costs $275 before shipping.

2. Broadbent’s. Kentucky. They say they use a special curing mixture, so that means sodium nitrate is involved. Any ham producer that only uses salt will say so; it’s a bragging point. Broadbent’s makes vague references to smoking, and it appears this applies to their hams as well as their bacon; my best guess. They say their hams are aged 6-9 months, so call it 6.

They sell hams aged a year or more (call it a year) for $199.90. They say these hams are prosciutto-style, and they are smoked. The ad says “American Dry Cured Ham,” and I don’t know what that is. It must not be country ham.

A whole ham (16-17 pounds) costs $85.90, and to put it on my front porch, the cost is $108.30.

3. Burger’s/Clifty Farm. To me, “Clifty Farms” has always meant cheap, immature hams. The kind of ham Cracker Barrel serves. A tasty product, to be sure, but it’s at the bottom of the country ham hierarchy. I recall the name of the business differently. I believe it used to be “Clifty Farms” with an “S,” so maybe there has been some reorganization.

Burger’s used to be an independent business known for serious country ham, but now their website features two types of ham: Clifty Farm and an upscale product called “Attic Aged.”

The claim for Attic Aged ham: “Each fresh ham is rubbed with salt and brown sugar and aged over 210 days and hickory smoked.” So 7 months, which is pretty good. Clifty Farm hams are aged three months, and they use sodium nitrate.

The price for a 15-17-pound Clifty Farm ham is $105.00, shipped. The price for an Attic Aged ham, shipped, is $120.00. Impressive. Why would you buy the younger ham?

I remember the commercial Little Jimmy Dickens did for Clifty Farms. He said something like, “Folks, we’re blessed to be living in these times, because we have the best country ham t’ever was.” I guess if you had Clifty Farms ham and biscuits made with Martha White Flour, which Tennessee Ernie Ford said was “pea-pickin’ good,” you were living the high life.

4. Colonel Newsom’s. This is a Kentucky company. They don’t use nitrates. I see no mention of sugar on their site. They smoke their hams. The minimum aging period is one year. Colonel Newsom’s is at the top of the country ham status heap.

The price for a 16-17-pound ham is $152.83, and with shipping, it’s $189.92. You can see why I would like to find a cheaper option of similar quality.

I don’t see an option for an older ham.

5. Meacham Hams. They are located in Sturgis, Kentucky. Their hams are aged one year. They don’t tell what they put in the cure, so they probably use nitrates. They use sugar, and they smoke their hams.

A 15-17-pound ham costs $17, and with shipping, it’s $108.06. That is a real bargain for a year-old ham.

They don’t sell older hams.

6. Penn Country Hams. Situated in Kentucky, they do not list their cure ingredients, so assume nitrates. They do not mention smoking. They sell hams in two tiers: 4-6 months and 8-10 months.

For me, a 4-6-month 16-17-pound ham will cost $85.99 plus $18.24 in shipping, or $104.23. That’s very good. An 8-10-month ham will cost $99.99 plus shipping, or $118.23. I don’t know why anyone would order the cheaper ham, except to finish aging it at home.

Curing a ham is not rocket science or even ham science. You put salt on it and wait. Add nitrates if you want. Add sugar if you want. Sugar and smoking are optional.

A lot of people are afraid of nitrates, but the truth is that there is nothing sneaky or dangerous about using them. Using salt alone doesn’t make a ham better in any way, as far as I can tell.

The point I am trying to make is that any ham that covers the basics should be wonderful if aged long enough, so it is reasonable to think it’s worth risking buying a young ham and leaving it on your shelf for a few months.

Based on what I see, Meacham presents a compelling case. They will put a year-old ham by my front door for $108.06. I could buy one in January and start eating it in July. It would be 18 months old, and it should be heavenly. I could start a rotation, ordering a new ham as soon as I unwrapped the last one.

I would like to try a sample of their ham, but it would cost $56 for a small package, so I don’t think I’ll do it. But knowing me, I might.

I suppose it’s inconsistent to talk about saving money while spending a lot of it on samples. At this house, we will probably go through two hams per year, tops, so buying samples puts a big dent in any potential savings.

Consider the sampling process my gift to humanity, then. My little sacrifice. Because I care about you. Truly.

If I have properly-aged country ham available all the time, we will be able to have real country breakfasts at will, better than the ones Cracker Barrel makes. Scrambled eggs, country ham, biscuits, cream gravy, fried apples, and red eye gravy, which is just ham drippings and water.

Results will be posted when I have collected my data.

The Data

Two boxes arrived today, so I fried up a couple of ham slices, and my wife and I compared them. The companies: Newsom’s and Broadbent’s. Broadbent’s is cheaper, so I was rooting for it.

The Newsom’s ham was whole, so I had to slice it myself. I butchered it in the literal and figurative senses. Slicing a hard, slippery ham is not easy. While I was cutting, I remembered something: my grandmother didn’t slice hams well, either.

The ham was covered with a gross black substance which must have been mold. This is normal. I had to put it in the sink and scrub it with a sponge, but I never really got it clean. I guess I got about 85% of it off.

Because I sliced it myself, I was able to get nice, thick slices. I shoot for around 5/16″. The Broadbent’s slices I ordered came in a vacuum bag, and they were more like 3/16″ thick.

The Newsom’s slices had kind of a bland smell. They smelled like country ham, and that was about it. The Broadbent’s slices had a complex aroma. They smelled fermented; almost as though there was alcohol in them. Very pleasant. This gave me high hopes.

I fried one center slice of each. I put a little water in a skillet, boiled the ham briefly to remove some of the salt, and then fried them until they were lightly browned in places.

Broadbent’s: very salty, even for country ham. This is not a problem, but I would have to remove some of the salt when cooking this ham in the future, so it’s something to be aware of.

The fermented flavor hit right away, and it was very nice. I wish I could think of something to compare it to. Maybe a barnyard smell. The texture of the ham was tough, which is not unusual for country ham.

Newsom’s: less salty, but typical of country ham. I didn’t get a big hit of fermented flavor. The texture was tender, as if aging had started to make the meat break down. Like the center of an aged rib eye. It was much more pleasant to chew.

In the end, the Newsom’s ham had the flavor I associate with a good country ham. It was a lot like the hams my grandmother cured. Acidic at the end, with plenty of umami. Since I was looking for a flavor I was used to, and not something new, I preferred the flavor of the Newsom’s ham.

My wife liked the Newsom’s a little better as well, and she also noticed the fermented aroma and flavor of the Broadbent’s.

I can’t say I noticed much in the way of smoke flavor in either ham.

We thought both hams were very good. Sadly, we both preferred the more-expensive one by a narrow margin.

Two more packages will be here soon, so Newsom’s will have to take on Benton’s and Meacham Hams.