Flu Numbers/Black Death Emotions

I keep thinking about COVID-19, AKA coronavirus AKA covid AKA C19 AKA C-19 AKA the Chinese Communist Party Virus. What have I been right about? What have I been wrong about?

When this thing surfaced, I kept looking at the numbers, and I saw that there was no way its ability to spread could, at that time, be compared to the seasonal flu. After a while, I concluded firmly that the disease was never going to be as common as the flu, even though the flu has to battle awareness and a strong vaccination program. That conclusion was completely correct OR there are around 700 million cases we just haven’t noticed. Take your pick. There is no third possibility.

I also opined that covid would be about like a bad flu season in terms of mortality. This was correct. The US is on track to get something like 100,000 reported fatalities, many of which will surely turn out to be bogus, and that’s not radically different from the 80,000 flu deaths the CDC reported for last year. The global figure also resembles flu data. Even if we get 200,000 deaths, that’s 2.5 times the flu figure, and that is within the flu ballpark.

For some reason, covid hit us harder than many other countries, and no, it’s not because Trump. The Chinese completely ignored covid while busily exporting it, and they still have fewer than 100,000 reported cases, and no, it’s not because they’re hiding cases. At least that doesn’t appear to be the reason.

The Chinese can’t really hide things that well. Word about covid got out in January on Youtube. If covid were still spreading significantly over there, it would be impossible to hide it.

People who are ignorant about China think the Chinese can’t communicate with the world. Wrong. Not even close to right. I subscribe to the channel of a South African expat who lived there for many years, and I watched his warnings about covid back in January. Chinese people can get around Internet blocks. This man did it for a living.

Here’s something weird. If you look at flu cases over the years, it appears that the flu also hits Americans with disproportionate zeal. We have something like 1/20 of the world’s population, and we get way more than 1/20 of the deaths. Can that possibly be right? Does it mean covid is behaving normally by flu standards?

I don’t know why America would have more flu deaths, in relative terms, than other countries. Maybe we do a better job of counting.

If the Chinese botchery and deliberate lies didn’t cause flu-like levels of transmission in China, then there is no way whatever it is people think Trump did wrong could have caused our problem. Assuming, in order to conform to Democrat/Deep State talking points that Trump did everything wrong, why did we get more cases than a country where the response was very clearly much worse?

The US makes my prediction look good, but there are many places where my guess about fatalities exceeds the actual numbers.

I didn’t buy the hysteria over the disease itself, but what about the economic pessimism? That, I accepted as gospel. This may have been a mistake. Home prices are not plummeting. The stock market isn’t that bad. We are losing a lot of businesses, but many will come back. Some were dying already because of the Internet, so should we consider them covid losses? When it comes to businesses, covid acts the same way it does with regard to people. It’s very hard on those that were likely to die soon anyway.

I thought the lockdowns were a bad idea for two reasons.

First, we don’t lock down for the flu. This is accepted policy, even among people who smoke dope for breakfast and think Caitlyn Jenner is definitely a woman. There is no left/right contention. The flu kills tens of thousands of us every year, and we don’t wear masks, close businesses, or lock people in their houses. We err on the side of poverty avoidance and personal freedom. It has always been pretty obvious that covid was going to produce flu-like numbers of fatalities, so why the inconsistency in policy?

Second, I thought it would kill the economy. I don’t really need to explain that. It’s a simple idea.

Now I’ll write about things no one else seems to be considering. If I was wrong to think the economy would be destroyed, was I also wrong to object to lockdowns?

If the lockdowns haven’t hurt the economy that much, wasn’t it a good idea to stay home?

If you say we should stay home to save ourselves from what amounts to a couple of years’ worth of flu deaths, then shouldn’t we also lock down for the flu every year? Shouldn’t we force people to be vaccinated? Shouldn’t we wear masks every year between October and April?

We can’t lock down every year. Not if we want to have the standard of living Americans expect. Even if we don’t end up in a depression, we will surely end up like second-rate countries where two-car families are unusual.

Is that acceptable, or should we accept a death rate on the order of 10 to the 5th power, just as we do in the cases of tobacco and opioid users?

I don’t have to take responsibility for that choice, because we have been making it ever since America was founded. The pattern is set. Diseases and other causes of death have always been with us, and we have accepted these things as unpleasant but tolerable and unavoidable problems. Every country in the world has the same history of going on with life in the face of similar epidemics.

When Sweden’s leaders decided not to lock the country down, someone asked one of them about the wisdom of the experiment. He said Sweden was not experimenting; other countries were. That’s really true. Sweden was doing something very normal by global historical standards.

Let me stop presenting this in a rational way for a minute. Let me try the Democrat/Deep State/MSM approach.

THOUSANDS WILL DIE IF WE DON’T FORCE FLU VACCINATIONS AND LOCK THE COUNTRY DOWN EVERY YEAR! IT WON’T JUST BE OLD PEOPLE! IT WILL BE 30-YEAR-OLD MOMS WITH NO UNDERLYING HEALTH PROBLEMS!

Maybe now you see what I mean. You can take the emotional predictions and demands that have popped up with regard to covid and apply them to the flu, seamlessly.

The other day, some anonymous Internet person went on Facebook and said covid had killed fewer people than drug overdoses, and the MSM got so upset, a rebuttal was issued. In essence, the rebuttal said, “This may not be 100% true,” while admitting facts that showed it was probably mostly true.

Whether a death is important to Americans depends mostly on how many cameras are pointed at it. If 40 people die in a fire (or because they’re Christians living in a Muslim country) and it gets very little coverage, no one cares, but if one ER nurse with three kids dies from covid and the entire MSM runs with the story, it’s a national tragedy that requires draconian measures for all of us.

Up in New York, people are disturbed by a news story that says that when new infections were counted, 66% had occurred in people who were observing lockdowns. What does that mean? It seems to mean we are shooting ourselves in the financial foot while also making the epidemic worse. It’s a data point leftists don’t like to talk about.

It makes some sense. Where does covid spread most quickly? Nursing homes, where people are not allowed to leave. “That’s because the people are old.” Is it? We know that covid is much more likely to kill elderly people, but have you seen anyone say they’re more likely to catch it? I haven’t. There is a big difference between infection and death, as Tom Hanks could tell you.

Some authorities are now saying the New York problem is the result of keeping infected people at home with people they interact with a lot. That makes sense to me. We all know how common illnesses spread inside houses. My uncle came to Christmas dinner with norovirus and nearly killed all of us.

What about masks?

I bought the MSM line in that regard. They told us masks were useless because viruses don’t even see normal masks when they go through them. It’s like flying helicopters through the Grand Canyon. The authorities told us NOT to buy masks. If you bought a mask, you were selfish and irrational. At the time, I more or less believed them, but I noted that a mask might help you not to touch your face, and I probably said it would reduce the spray to a less dangerous level. On the whole, I thought a mask was a waste of time for someone in a covid cold spot.

My county has ramped up testing, and we still have about 200 known cases, which makes this place as cold as you can get. Still, I feel like I ought to put something on at the store. What if I’m infected and I don’t know it?

The likelihood that I can protect myself with the kind of mask I can lay my hands on at the moment (without burglarizing hoarders’ houses) is extremely low, but a mask might make some tiny contribution to the protection of others.

Of course, I can also stand 6 feet away from people, which is said to be much more effective (as of 10:57 a.m. Eastern time on May 15, 2020). I’ll just have to quit offering people back rubs in the produce area. I’ll have to curtain my notorious penchant for invading people’s spaces and getting touchy-feely. People who know me won’t recognize me.

I thought the meat shortage might be a big deal, and I made very lame steps toward protecting myself. The shortage has not panned out. I can still buy anything I want. Walmart is selling bacon for $3.00 per pound, which is less than half of what it normally costs in local stores. This is ordinarily a bad area for bacon lovers. My cousin near Chicago can’t get meat without shooting her neighbors’ cats, but people in the Chicago area appear to be extremely selfish and heartless, and hoarding is clearly the reason for her problems.

Two days ago, a story came out saying vitamin D might ease covid symptoms. I take vitamin D, so I did the smart thing. I hoarded.

No I didn’t. I bought one bottle of capsules. I’ll bet the supply takes a big dent shortly. Chicagoans have probably been hoarding since 10 seconds after the story was published.

Here’s something weird. No one can explain why minorities are more likely to contract covid as well as being more likely to die once they get it. They’re saying that even if you correct for racism, oppression, Dukes of Hazzard DVD’s, general nonspecific triggeration, and so on, they still get hit worse.

In my county, something like 16% of the known cases are black. The percentage of black people here is under 12%.

A friend of mine thinks it’s because minorities are poorer and have to go to work while the rest of us stay home, but lockdowns apply to minorities, too, and let’s face it: a lot of black adults weren’t going to work before the epidemic. Just being real. Drive through a black area at 11 a.m. on a Wednesday, and you will see the high black unemployment rate in action. You will see many, many people just hanging around.

I wonder if black people are in worse shape because they trust the government more. Based on what I see online, they seem to be extremely pro-lockdown. They post very angry pro-lockdown memes. Maybe they’re being so obedient they’re spreading the disease more efficiently.

If it weren’t for paying taxes, I would have no involvement with the government at all. I don’t go to government offices for help. No one comes here to help me, unless you count a nice young lady from the University of Florida who showed up to give me non-helpful advice on gardening. When you let the government take care of you, you will have problems.

Black people have a very serious problem with susceptibilty to rumors. The more black people you know, the more you will see it. They join causes very quickly with great fervor. It’s like watching a grass fire spread. They appear to be swallowing Auntie Sam’s covid advice with very little criticality. I wonder if that’s what’s hurting them.

Is the real problem supernatural? I suppose all problems are, in the final analysis. Black people seem to have more setbacks regardless of what they do, and that can’t be 100% natural or even attributable to white people in red baseball caps. If you know a lot of black people, you will know many people who are sick. You’ll see a lot of people in wheelchairs. You’ll know people who had crazy accidents. You can’t explain all those things by looking at their natural circumstances.

My friend Travis had no involvement with gangs, drugs, or violent crime, and he still got shot and died young. He died after receiving a non-life-threatening wound from which he was expected to recover fully. His brother was run over while sitting on a bus bench, in an accident that killed at least one other black person and caused another to lose a leg, and the driver, who was from Africa, didn’t do too well afterward, either. Travis’s dad has MS. Before getting run over while minding his own business on a sidewalk, his brother had cancer.

You can’t put these things down to bad decisions or racism.

Maybe Juliette Ochieng’s thoughts about the curse of Ham are correct. But how do you get rid of it?

It’s strange that covid has spared the Chinese, since they practice traditional Chinese medicine, which is witchcraft.

Back in March, Nigerian preacher T.B. Joshua said rain was falling in Wuhan and taking away the C19 epidemic. Case transmission then dropped to nearly nothing. It seems like no one noticed! The epidemic is still essentially dead in China. If you don’t believe in the supernatural, what’s the explanation?

He made a prophecy, and then he extended it to the whole world. He was wrong about the rest of the world, but how can you explain what happened in China? I think he misinterpreted his own true prophecy.

Overall, it looks like my wild guesses regarding the virus have panned out much better than the predictions the “experts” have made. My main errors seem to have resulted from relenting and believing the high muckity-mucks.

The case numbers are still doing what I said they would do, but they’re doing it two or three weeks later than I expected. A large part of that is caused by greatly increased testing, so I’m less-not-totally-right than it seems.

I expect things to keep dropping off, and if we have a resurgence, I would expect it around the start of November. I think we’ll have a vaccine very, very quickly, and then we’ll get on with life.

I think forced covid vaccination will become a reality in many states, and if the nanny-staters are smart enough to see the leverage they have, they will probably force flu vaccinations, too. Presumably, there will be topless protests by anti-vaxxers, since they’re all women and all women’s protests have to feature nudity.

I like trying to guess what’s going to happen. For one thing, I feel…I KNOW…I am being gaslighted by the pro-hysteria crowd, and for another, it makes me feel like I have some degree of understanding of what’s going on around me. It makes me feel as though I can prepare for things.

Anything Worth Thinking About is Worth Overthinking

I don’t feel like being responsible just yet. I think I’ll write about some trivial things.

My reloading efforts ran into a speed bump. I have been trying to create 10mm cartridges with 180-grain Speer Gold Dot bullets, and I want 1225 fps from a compact Glock.

This should be simple. I did it about 10 years ago. I may get scolded for saying this, but I still carry that ammunition. There are people who are afraid of old ammunition, but in reality, it’s extremely stable. You can put it in on a shelf and shoot it 75 years later with no problems, if you can still hold a gun. It’s common to buy military surplus ammunition which is decades old.

I suppose you have to be concerned if you walk around in wet clothes a lot, but that isn’t me.

Yesterday, I fired a few rounds of my old ammunition. Zero issues. The gun itself is the weak link. It appears that lint from my holster and clothing have the potential to gum up the firing pin.

When you make your own ammunition, if you want to do it right and know what kind of velocity you’ll get, you need to know how much powder is in each casing. To do this, you need a good scale. It has to measure accurately within +/- 0.05 grains, and a grain is around 1/15 of a gram, so you’re shooting for about a 1/150-gram interval. That’s between 6 and 7 milligrams, isn’t it? Check my math.

Precision isn’t very important for moderate loads, but when you start going for more velocity, you risk blowing up cases, so you need to be more precise.

I had a Lyman digital scale, and I learned that it couldn’t be trusted. I bought a second digital scale, and I found out the resolution was 100% too big. Now I have an old RCBS beam scale. Can I trust it? Sort of. I use check weights to set it, but I don’t know how good the check weights are. I ordered better ones. I think what I have is fine, however. I’ll find out after the new weights arrive.

I got around the problem with the first digital scale by weighing two charges at once and dividing by two. I figured the powder measure was pretty consistent, and I had reasonable faith in the digital scale. I started getting 24.0-grain double charges, and I wanted 12.0 grains per cartridge, so things looked great. I made several test rounds, and they came in between 1200 and 1250 fps. Perfect.

Then I let the process sit for a few days, and before starting up again, I checked the powder measure on the beam scale. I got 11.8 grains. I guessed I had weighed the successful rounds incorrectly and that the 11.8-grain figure was accurate. I had to find out. I didn’t want to adjust the powder measure, use 12.0 rounds, and end up with 1300 fps. I made some 11.8-grain test rounds and fired them. I got velocities in the area of 1100 fps. Terrible.

Somehow, the powder measure had started throwing 11.8-grain charges, and I had to start calibrating it all over again.

On the up side, it looks like my digital scale was right. I checked some new double charges, and I got 23.6 grains if memory serves.

Why would the powder measure shift? No idea.

The check weights aren’t slated to arrive until Tuesday, so it would be stupid to go ahead and make defensive ammunition before they arrive. What do I do?

I think it’s time to crank out .45 target ammunition. I don’t really care if I know how much powder is in a target round, as long as I know the amount is safe. I have a bunch of old .45 brass and a fresh box of lead bullets.

After I typed the word “bullets,” I had to go take care of a tax matter, and while I was working on it, I heard and felt a loud thump. It was as though a truck had hit the house. I went outside and saw that the big oak in my parking circle had lost a fork. It was lying across the driveway. Had to go out, cut it up, and move it. It’s a beautiful day for working outside. It’s warm, but it’s dry, and there is a good breeze. While I was at it, I went to the pasture and moved some tree chunks from Hurricane Irma so the cattle wouldn’t have to keep walking around them.

I’m glad the oak lost a big branch, because the oak needs to be cut, and this will make it easier. A tree cutter quoted me $1000, which didn’t include hauling the wood. That’s insane. It’s a 30-minute job for him. For $500, I would have taken his offer, but $1000 is not going to work.

The smaller the tree is, the easier it will be for me to cut it myself. I hope more of it falls.

The tree is leaning, and the danger is that it will “barber chair” or split before it falls. If that happens, a part that splits off can swing around and kill me. I have read that you can prevent this by putting chains around the trunk. If it can’t split, you can’t have a barber chair.

To get back to shooting, I have to do something with the ammo I’m creating. I have very few factory-made ammunition boxes. When I used to go to gun ranges, I took cardboard ammo boxes out of the trash cans. They work pretty well, but they don’t last forever, and they fall open if you’re not careful. And the only range I go to is in my yard.

I decided to get some Harbor Freight ammo cans. These are sturdy plastic hinged cans. Like miniature plastic versions of the steel military cans, sort of. My plan is to throw ammo into them for storage, and when I want to shoot, I’ll move it to small plastic boxes with grids inside them. These boxes are made by a company called MTM. I already have some.

When I’m shooting, I like to know how many rounds I’ve used, and I don’t like to count. A box with a grid inside it will do the counting for me, and it will be lighter than a Harbor Freight box with hundreds of cartridges in it.

I’m getting a new chronograph. The Chrony F-1 I have now works fine, and it was a good choice when I only shot a few times a year. Now that I shoot more, it’s a drag. It has a display which attaches via an 18-foot cable. Attaching that to the chronograph and settling it firmly in the utility cart is a pain. I don’t like having to suspend the cable over old cow piles. The chronograph stores data, but it has some kind of primitive 1980’s-style interface for getting the data out. I don’t even know how it works. When I read about it, it was so unappealing, I decided I didn’t care to learn the details.

With my old chronograph, I had to shoot, stop, enter a number into my phone, shoot again, and so on. I’m all done with that.

Also, the company that makes the Chrony F-1 has an extremely backward website. They don’t have an online shopping cart. You have to email orders. On top of that, it looks like they don’t respond. I sent an order for parts the other day, and I haven’t heard a word. There is no conceivable excuse for doing business that way in 2020.

The chronograph has light diffusers which are held on by steel rods, and I shot one of the steel rods because I was twisting and contorting myself so I could shoot at a lower height. If you lose your steel rods, don’t buy new ones. Get some wooden ones. The diameter is 5/32″. The length is 18″. You can also order 5/32″ drill rod from Zoro Tools, which is what I have done. No idea whether the Chrony people are going to send anything.

I’m getting a newer model from a company called Competition Electronics. It has a bluetooth connection, and there is a phone app. You shoot as fast as you want, and the machine sends the velocities to your phone. I believe the app gives averages and standard deviations. Not sure. Anyway, it will be a big improvement. I should be able to use a Fire tablet instead of the phone.

I had been putting the Chrony on the same cheap tripod I use for cameras. That will not be necessary any more. I got myself an Amazon Basics tripod. Not having to remove my camera and attach the chronograph will speed things up, and it will certainly make it easier to shoot bullets and footage simultaneously.

It’s funny that we still say “footage” now that there are no feet involved in video.

I suppose it’s too late to drive to Harbor Freight. Gives me something to look forward to tomorrow.

Obituary Appears

I hate to keep writing about the death of my friend Travis long after people have lost interest, but things keep developing.

A nurse who worked in the building where Travis died found out about me and provided some information. She was a friend of his sister when she was a kid. She says the hospital was locked up tight with regard to visitors. She says she prayed by his bed. Toward the end, her impression was that he would live. So his friends weren’t crazy when they found it odd that he had passed suddenly.

She’s a black conservative. How about that? You may not understand the hostility she is up against in her milieu.

She knows how I feel about the people who dragged Travis down, and she agrees that sometimes a Christian has to cut people loose.

Travis now has an obituary. Looking at it is like dreaming while I’m awake. Can it really be true?

It says he was born on June 30 and that he lived in Miami Gardens. He was born on June 3, and he lived in South Miami. That’s about all it says, and it’s still wrong. People who know about the errors are telling me how upset they are.

To me, the errors are just more confirmation of things I already knew.

After Travis moved into the house I owned, I told him he wasn’t from Miami Gardens any more. I said he should tell people he was from Coral Gables. Miami Gardens is everything he was rising above.

People are asking about funeral arrangements. So far, the story has been that the epidemic will prevent a real funeral. That’s fine. I don’t want to go to Miami for any reason, and I don’t want to stand among people who patted him on the back in life and did little or nothing for him. I think the others will understand. I certainly don’t want to see conceited pastors who treated him like a sharecropper.

Funerals and tombstones mean less to me than they do to some people. I believe I have only seen my mother’s grave during three trips since she died, and that includes my dad’s funeral. Maybe there were four trips. I don’t think about visiting. There is no one there. My parents are no closer to the graves in Kentucky than they are to me here in Florida.

Talking to the dead is a sin. I don’t try to communicate with my parents. I won’t talk to Travis in this life.

You should be good to people while they’re alive instead of going to a funeral, competing to see who can show the most grief, and climbing into the coffin.

As far as I am concerned, this business is over with. There is a ton of money available for expenses, so my help will never be needed again. I will surely write more about Travis, but I don’t want to go on and on about the earthly business surrounding his hospitalization and death. He is far away. He can’t hear me or see me. He doesn’t know what I’m doing. He will not count the people who go to his funeral. He doesn’t care what happens to his belongings or what kind of funeral he gets. He is doing fine, and he knows who cares about him.

Regarding the concept of leaving people behind, God gave me a new way of looking at the world’s future. I always say the world will become much more vicious toward Christians and Jews and that persecution will be open, violent, and socially acceptable. That’s accurate, and we’re already seeing it, but it’s not the most effective way to describe the future. A better way would be to say that the world is going insane, literally.

One of the benefits of being connected with the Holy Spirit is that he prevents you from being deceived. He counters people and spirits that lie to you and try to control you. He counters spirits of delusion and rage. If you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit, you’re just a sleeper, waiting to be activated by spirits you can’t resist.

As we move toward the end, such spirits will develop great power among the majority of human beings. Maybe they already have. People will literally become insane. They will live in utter delusion, just as the Germans and Austrians did under Hitler. Just as the Cambodians did under Pol Pot. Just as Antifa kids and BLM rioters do.

Just as many nominal Christians do.

People will be insane, and they will prefer it, so conversion will become rare. When that happens, there will be no good reason for God to leave us here, and that explains the rapture.

Don’t I Own This Computer?

Just a brief post to help people who might be sufficiently uninformed to let Microsoft fool them into obliterating a PC just because they can’t find the Windows password.

If you inherit a computer, or you just forget your Windows password, Microsoft will not give you advice on hacking the computer to get the password. That’s fine. I can understand why they wouldn’t want to endorse competing companies that make hacking software for this purpose. Hacking your own computer is completely legal, but Microsoft may be afraid you’ll screw something up, and then you might sue them.

What isn’t fine is responding to password-recovery questions with a list of things to do to reinstall Windows. You don’t tell people to burn down their computers when it’s not necessary. I wonder how many people have done it.

There are legal programs out there that will help you get Windows running again. One is called “Lazesoft Recover my Password.” I don’t know a whole lot about the others. This one is easy to use. You make a bootable USB drive or DVD, you boot the PC from the new software, and the program deletes your Windows password. Now you have no Windows password, and you can log on with no problems.

It took me longer to create the boot drive than it did to wipe out my password, whatever it was. The program ran in a few seconds.

The obvious issue here is that unsavory characters like burglars and your mother-in-law can erase your Windows password just as easily as you can, which means a Windows password was never really good for anything except keeping you out of your own files and programs and maybe even driving you to wipe your computer clean and struggle to rebuild it from nothing except maybe some data.

That’s some fine unintended consequences right there.

Nice.

Something weird is going on with Windows right now. They’ve decided to fix it so you can’t look at your stored browser passwords without Microsoft’s permission. I found this out today. I needed a password for a website, and Windows demanded my Windows password. Of course, Microsoft did not warn me this was coming. Because Microsoft. They really do write stupid software. It’s not everyone’s imagination.

The problem with the new policy is that I had an issue while moving the computer from my late father to myself, and somehow, the Windows password got screwed up, and when I was done, I was not able to get in using the password I had chosen. I had fixed the computer to enter the password itself, so I didn’t need to know what it was in order to get to work. I let it go “temporarily.” Then I forgot to fix the underlying problem.

If, like me, you think it’s a good idea to go months without knowing your Windows password, you can get around this problem in Firefox (which has apparently gone nearly extinct since I started using it) by going to about:config and changing some value or other from “true” to “false.”

This won’t help you get into Windows, but it will allow you to view your CanHazCheezburger.com cat-picture forum password without proving you have clearance.

I think the most amazing thing the Internet has done was to make people think cats have personalities.

If I had this problem, millions of other people must be having it, except that presumably, most of them have some idea what their Windows passwords are. For the rest, I offer a solution which is a lot better than jumping off a bridge because you can’t find your tax records or keep your business running.

Is it me, or should someone at Microsoft be fired? Wasn’t it obvious to them that their bizarre new nannying policy would drive people nuts?

Now I have a bunch of information recorded in very obvious text files, to prevent me from having problems like this in the future.

Thanks, Microsoft. I really needed to spend 90 minutes working on this instead of relaxing and taking care of my pets. Thanks for making dumb decisions on my behalf so I don’t have to.

Inertia Gives Way to Dread

I feel like covid and my friend’s medical crisis put my life on pause. I have to get up tomorrow and live again, before doing nothing becomes an unbreakable habit.

On the day Travis died, there was a lot of communication. I spent a lot of time texting and talking. Yesterday, things died down. People were digesting the news. Today there was a little chatter. I had a very long phone call from a young lady he knew. Listening to her appraisal of the people he knew was like listening to a recording of myself.

Everyone seems to be saying the same things. They can’t understand why things were handled the way they were. They are fed up with Travis’s social circle.

I find myself talking to so many wonderful young women. Where were they when I was 35? Oh, right. I was a physics T.A. at a university. You could station such people strategically around a property to repel women and prevent them from entering.

I used to have someone I could hope one of these girls married.

Some people are holding Travis accountable. For too long, he held onto people who were going nowhere, in a city that was going nowhere. He was not honest with himself about their faults and the power of their negative influence. Sometimes I had to bite my tongue when he praised people he knew. He was in denial.

Today I heard something positive. I had been told that Travis had not had a single visitor during his month in the hospital. Someone now says his mother and brother visited as often as they were allowed. Whom should I believe? I hope the second source is right.

If you knew everything I knew, you would understand why I can’t assume the new information is correct.

In case anyone from Miami reads my blog (doubtful), I sincerely apologize if I said anything that was incorrect. That was not my intention. I don’t think my judgment regarding Travis’s situation has been that great over the last few days. It is an emotional time.

It appears there will be no funeral that amounts to anything. The epidemic still has South Florida shut down. I’m glad for my sake. I told Travis to cut his crowd off. I should be able to take the same advice, and it would be unpleasant to see some of these people. There are roses among the toadstools, but I don’t know if it would be worth it to wade through the toadstools to see them.

People who took advantage of him in life are posting complimentary things about him now that he’s gone. I am told preachers are praising his loyalty. This loyalty is exactly what kept him in trouble.

I am told Richie Wilkerson, Kanye West’s former pastor and the son of my former pastor, posted something. I’m glad I’m not able to see it.

I hear Kanye is now a pastor, at least in his own mind. I just checked, and the pastor’s wife is topless on Instagram with a lei around her neck. Things are going as expected.

I truly believe Kanye West is feeling a call from God, and I think that if he lives long enough, he’ll be all right, but at the moment, he ought to be keeping quiet and confessing his faults to God.

I haven’t done much of anything today, apart from communicating. I stuck a 4-terabyte drive in my new PC. That ought to hold me for a couple of years. There was no way I was going to blow for a solid state that size, if they even make them, but I got a fast hard drive with a big cache. Should be fine.

Why are nonmechanical drives called “solid state” drives? Ordinary hard disks are also solid state. They don’t have vacuum tubes.

I keep having an ominous feeling, as if the end of the world were just around the corner. I have this feeling that we may end up forgetting about responsibilities that seem important right now, because things will happen that will make them vanish into insignificance.

It’s just a feeling. Maybe it’s the pandemic combined with the unusual set of events I’m dealing with in my personal life.

Has there ever been a time like this? The black death certainly had an apocalyptic feel to it. There were places where a third of the people died, whereas covid is still only a little more lethal than the seasonal flu, for all the hype. During plague attacks, everyone saw dead bodies. They were everywhere. I still don’t know a single person who has been diagnosed with covid.

During the black death, the disease, not the panic, was the major problem. The reverse is true now. Confinement has us feeling like there’s a plague when there is not. We have a plague mentality without a plague.

A big difference between the current day and the plague years is that today’s world was already coming to the end of the slack in the rope before covid showed up. In the 14th century, the world was sparsely populated, and we weren’t faced with a rising tide of technology that could be counted on to completely destroy privacy and free will in the near future. To me, this makes the present age seem full of foreboding.

Back when God flooded the world, the earth got a fresh start when things dried up. If we lost half of humanity today, that wouldn’t happen. We would still be besieged by malignant, unstoppable technology. We would still be close to the end of free will and free thought. Humanity would have to be decimated in order for the reset button to work.

It’s wrong to call technology malignant. Technology doesn’t destroy freedom; people do.

Human beings can’t be trusted with pointed sticks or handfuls of sand. It would be insane to hope we could resist ruining the world with computers.

I have this feeling that nothing earthly matters. I feel that if I never pay my bills again or do my taxes, it won’t make any difference, because something is going to come and sweep concerns like that off the table.

I wonder if other people feel it.

It’s very quiet here right now. It feels like the day before a hurricane. If you’ve been through one, you know what I mean. Is God’s orchestra tuning up, to accompany the fateful horn? Doesn’t line up with the timeline I’m familiar with.

Whatever. I’ll get up and start moving again in the morning, God willing. I believe there will be a morning for me.

My new beam reloading scale is at the mailbox, if Skynet 9000 is giving me the straight poop. I guess I’ll go grab it, and in addition to fixing the pool and working on business, maybe I’ll tune the scale tomorrow and see if I can make some ammunition.

My expectations for the future are dramatically changed, but my life is not over yet.

Gun Nerds and Their Dubious Doctrines

I think grief is different for different people. For some, it seems to cling like tar. For me, it comes and goes. I’ll feel very bad for a time, and then later in the day, the pain will lift, and I’ll be more or less okay until the next wave. I feel good at the moment, so I want to write about trivial things instead of death.

I am still working on getting my firearms hobby back on its feet. It may seem strange that I would be interested in this right now, given that my friend just passed away after being shot, and especially considering that he had probably relayed gun recommendations from me to the young man who apparently did the shooting. In my heart, there is not much of a connection. If I gave someone driving lessons, and then they had a bad accident, I wouldn’t condemn myself for helping them learn to drive.

Owning firearms isn’t a dirty vice. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Firearms are one reason you’re free right now. I didn’t recommend a prostitute or a drug to anyone. I tried to help someone to be responsible and capable, for his sake and the sake of his future family. I’m not going to let an accident poison something I really enjoy.

I had no idea what was happening in Miami. I don’t even know the name of the young man who owned the gun. I didn’t know he had bought it. I don’t know the make or caliber. I just knew some unknown person wanted some tips regarding something he might or might not do.

I bought myself a new old stock RCBS 505 reloading scale made by the Ohaus company. I’m hoping it’s American and not Chinese. The scale is expected to arrive tomorrow. I feel like I’m stuck in place until then, because my only other scales are an old Lyman 1500 XP which drifts and a new Chinese scale which only resolves to the nearest 0.2 grains. I have worked around the new scale’s resolution by weighing two charges at once, but that’s not a terribly reliable solution.

I can make 10mm defensive ammunition right now, because my powder measure is set up perfectly for it. I used the Chinese scale to make some rounds, and the velocities were right on the money. I don’t really need to know what the charge weight is, because the only purpose of the charge weight is to get the right velocity. If the measure is giving me the right velocity, I don’t care what the charge weight is.

I can make 10mm today, but I can’t do anything else. There is no good reason to fool with different ammunition and different charge weights when a scale that actually works will be here tomorrow.

One thing I don’t have: a real set of check weights. These are precision weights used to calibrate scales.

I have a couple of weights. Each scale came with one. The Lyman came with a 20-gram weight, and the Chinese scale came with a 50-gram weight. I would guess that the Lyman weight is pretty accurate. Don’t ask me about the Chinese one. On the Chinese scale, it weighs exactly what it should, in grains, but that’s after making allowances for the scale’s large resolution. It could be a tenth off.

I suppose I should get some better weights. I would really like to be within half a tenth of a grain when I use the RCBS beam scale. I don’t want to think my powder measure is averaging 10.0 grains when it’s really averaging 10.2.

Metrology, or the science of measurement, is a very humbling field. When you start trying to measure things well, you find out just how inaccurate a lot of measures really are. Most of the time, it means nothing at all, but sometimes it matters. A grain is less than 1/15th of a gram, and a gram is less than 1/28 of an ounce, so you can see why measuring twentieths of grains takes some care.

Why did I pick a twentieth of a grain as my tolerance? Charges are measured to the nearest tenth of a grain, and to measure charges that size without completely blowing it, you really need to be within a twentieth.

When I was teaching physics to premed students, I taught a little bit of metrology. My course materials said one should always try to estimate to one-half of the smallest measuring division an instrument provides. This is often good advice. If you have a yardstick that measures down to sixteenths, you can pretty well tell whether 1-1/32″ or 1-2/32″ is closest to your actual measurement just by looking. This should be possible on a beam scale, because it has rulers on it. The beams are just rulers. When you weigh things, you’re really measuring lengths. You slide the weights up and down, and you see which graduations they settle on.

There are a lot of check weights out there, but when you calibrate reloading scales, you need weights labeled in grains. They are a lot less common. I’m going to give up looking for a deal and get a new set of weights made for reloading.

One problem with old weights is that they may not weigh what they used to. Metrology is a real pain.

I have never made .45 ACP defensive ammo, and I have never bought .45 brass. I probably have 1000 cases I picked up at gun ranges. One range officer was very impressed with my shooting, and he said he would save brass for me. Then I didn’t get around to shooting for a long time. I hope he didn’t sit around waiting beside a big bag of brass.

When I bought my press, Hornady gave me a huge number of .45 ACP XTP 230-grain hollowpoints. I have barely loaded any of them. They’re very good for defensive ammunition. Maybe I’ll buy some new casings.

I have no intention of ever using my .45 ACP 1911 for defensive purposes, but it seems wrong to own it and not have the ammunition for the purpose for which the gun was made.

I went online and asked for advice on making defensive ammunition. I was soon immersed in “proven” nonsense and mythology.

Here’s a really annoying myth: “If you use homemade ammunition to defend yourself, the cops and prosecution will say you’re a nut who is obsessed with making super killer ammunition, and you will be charged and convicted.”

Here are some threshold questions. How will the cops know you made the ammunition, and why would they care? They’ll be very interested in other matters. Was it legal for you to be where you were? Were you reasonably afraid of great harm? If you’re in a mandatory-chicken-out jurisdiction, did you try to run away? If they walk in your house and see you sitting in a recliner next to the body of a stranger and a shotgun, they are not going to confiscate your ammunition and send it to MIT for analysis. Unless they think you shouldn’t have shot the person, they won’t care if you used a howitzer. You could defend yourself legally with a flamethrower if it was all you had.

Manufacturers use a lot of the same brass and bullets as reloaders. I don’t see how a cop could tell the difference between your Starline-and-Speer cartridge and one from Underwood. You’re not going to tell them, and you don’t have to. They won’t assume it. They won’t get a warrant so they can have David Caruso’s team examine your reloading press with the Hubble telescope.

Have you ever heard of a citizen being tried because he used legal ammunition he made himself or, for that matter, ANY legal ammunition? No, and neither has anyone else. Try and find a case.

In my entire life, I have heard of one case in which ammunition made a defendant look worse to gunphobes. That person was Colin Ferguson, a deranged black racist who shot up a subway car full of non-black people. He used Black Talon ammunition, and the press had a field day with it. “Killer bullets!” “What other kind is there?”, one would ask.

When you buy defensive rounds, you’re supposed to get the most lethal type for your caliber, to make that caliber work as well as it can. If you’re going to buy weak ammunition on purpose, why not just drop down to a .22 and save your ears and your wrist? It makes no sense to buy a large bore pistol and use ammunition that does small bore damage.

Two things about Ferguson: his cartridges came from a factory, and…he shot a bunch of unarmed strangers on a train! Let’s assume he used plain old UMC FMJ. Would he have been acquitted?

Winchester quit selling Black Talon bullets to the general public. Because the bullet-haters had a point? No, because Winchester was afraid of lawyers and bad publicity.

It was pretty silly. You can buy things that work better than Black Talons. They weren’t particularly damaging, as the medical examiner in the Ferguson admitted. Winchester quit making them, and they started selling what was essentially the same thing with improvements to enhance lethality.

I read some other nonsense from a gun writer. He said you should use factory ammunition because defensive ammunition goes through all sorts of special testing, including being measured with lasers, presumably worn by sharks. He said it made the ammunition more reliable, and that it justified the exorbitant cost of defensive ammunition. He said it was treated very differently from plain old FMJ, which, hello, IS defensive ammunition. There are places where you’re not allowed to use anything else, and the military is forced to use it.

I’m not sure what planet actually has special standards like that, but I don’t think it’s Earth. On this planet, manufacturers perform quality control checks on all their ammunition. You can go to Youtube and see workers for Sellier & Bellot doing checks on FMJ. I don’t think manufacturers are okay with their target ammo blowing people’s guns up. Except maybe for PMC, but then they’re special. I would never buy their stuff again.

As to reliability, do you seriously think computerized machines that pump out ammunition at high speed can beat a human being who examines every cartridge? If that’s true, why do precision shooters, whose livelihoods depend on good ammunition, make their own?

They didn’t read the article.

It seems to me that if your ammo choice has any bearing on your case’s disposition, which was not true in Colin Ferguson’s case, it would have to mean you were already going under.

There is a case which is often cited to show that “scary looking” guns (meaning military-style semiautos) are more likely to get people prosecuted. I wonder about that. The case involved a submachine gun, which is definitely not a Bass Pro semiautomatic, and the shooter was an H&K rep named Gary Fadden. He didn’t shoot someone in his living room or off the top of his wife. He shot someone during a road rage incident.

He was in his truck with his girlfriend. The story, as traditionally related, says a biker darted in front of the truck and forced him to brake, and that soon after, a couple of bikers in a truck chased him while waving a pistol.

And I have a bridge to sell you.

A motorcycle cuts in front of you, you hit the brakes and go on with life, and then the rider’s pals try to kill you for no apparent reason. Sure. I’m positive there were no gestures and no expletives. There was no use of the horn, and there was no tailgating or brake-checking. Because bikers always show up with pistols to avenge their friends after their friends have done something moderately rude without provoking a response. This has probably happened over a hundred times this month in my neighborhood alone.

Fadden says he ran from the bikers and found himself in a position where he had to face them, so he got out and confronted them with a submachine gun, and he was not able to find the selector switch in time to use it. Okay.

He had to analyze and shoot this gun for a living, mind you.

His assailants advanced, and Fadden fired 9 warning shots in one burst. One kept advancing. Fadden, who was still unable to find the selector switch (!) fired 6 rounds in a single burst before he could stop himself. Again…okay. You can go on Youtube and see people firing one-round bursts from submachine guns with no problem, but maybe that was not possible with this model.

The assailant died.

Fadden was charged with first-degree murder, which is, admittedly, ridiculous even taking the facts in the worst possible light. You’re allowed to defend yourself even after you’ve given someone the finger in traffic. He was eventually acquitted.

The common line is that he was only charged because he used a submachine gun, and while I doubt that’s true, I’m sure the gun didn’t help him.

Here’s the thing. Cops and prosecutors don’t like road ragers, even when they can prove the other guy started it. And shooting one person six times, which was reasonable under the circumstances, doesn’t play well in Washington, DC, suburbs, where the shooting occurred. Finally, the “victim” was shot in the back, and that gave the prosecutor something to work with.

An article you can find online says Fadden, who is now afraid to carry scary guns, now keeps an M1 carbine and a 10mm pistol in his vehicle. The first is a semiautomatic military rifle, and it looks like one. The second is the ultimate overkill semiautomatic, not including freak calibers and Desert Eagles.

Scary weapons.

The story is a very poor tool for scaring gun owners, because the shooter used a type of gun almost none of them have, he shot a person 6 times, he fired 15 rounds and claimed he could not find the selector switch on a gun he was paid to analyze, he shot the biker in the back, it happened during a road rage event, and it happened, basically, in Washington, DC. Fadden had a lot of problems that had nothing to do with the choice of firearm.

Paul Harrell, known gun guru, seems to buy into the scary gun and unusual ammunition theories, although he seems concerned about weird cutting-edge ammo, not handloads. He has suggested that it may not be wise to use ammunition with a brand name like “R.I.P.”, and that seems reasonable.

Harrell was charged with murder once. He feels he was railroaded. He used a deer rifle, not a scary gun.

He says he has no faith in prosecutors or medical examiners. He says the medical examiner’s material said the deceased was shot in the head, and that the prosecutor mentioned it in court, and he says they didn’t mention the other huge wound in the chest. That speaks poorly of the medical examiner and prosecutor, but it’s not clear to me how it hurt Paul Harrell, since shooting someone in the chest looks just as bad as shooting him in the head. I would think he benefited from the omission, since shooting someone twice with a deer rifle looks worse than shooting him once.

I can certainly understand not trusting the medical examiner or the prosecutors, but anyway, he got in a lot of trouble using a non-scary gun with factory ammunition. I think his big problem was that he was on foot and the assailant was in a truck. Also, he shot a man a second time after inflicting a horrendous wound. It shouldn’t be that hard to convince a jury a person on foot can dodge a truck or that a person who has been shot once with a deer rifle by one of the nation’s top marksmen, with excellent shot placement, doesn’t need to be shot again. I think that was probably the center of the case. Just guessing.

Not saying he did anything wrong.

If scary guns were really a major problem, the hundreds or thousands of people who have successfully defended themselves with AR-15’s would generally have been arrested, and that is not what has happened. If the problem really existed, people would be afraid to buy what is supposedly America’s favorite rifle. You can’t hide thousands of AR-15 arrests. Where are they?

I am not giving you legal advice, and if legal advice is what you want, you should pay a lawyer before making decisions about guns and ammunition. I plan to use my own ammunition in whatever legal firearms I choose. Homemade ammunition is very good. No one seems to be able to dig up a scary-ammunition case, and the only scary-weapon case I know of might well have gone to court had the shooter used a Marlin 60.

When I make ammunition, I know the charges are right, and I chamber every round before putting it away, so I know it will work. I don’t have to ask myself how much I trust strangers who do semiskilled labor in factories. I also get to choose the velocity I like instead of picking the least-unsuitable factory choice.

If it’s bad to take a microscopic chance on getting in trouble for using a scary gun, what about the relatively large chance of dying because you used an inferior firearm in order to look less scary? Does that make any sense whatsoever? When you could have 31 rounds of 7.62x39mm plus a spare magazine, and you’re stuck with maybe a duck gun and a few rounds of buckshot, you have made a very poor decision.

I’m writing about stuff that will never matter, because I will never shoot anyone.

To get back to .45 ACP, I suppose I should get some new brass. My old brass will work fine, especially in a round that barely exceeds BB gun velocity and pressure, but who uses old brass in defensive ammo? It’s like putting used tires on the car your kids go to school in. Even if it makes no difference at all, it just sounds weird.

I may also get a belt holster for my .38 Super. It’s a barbecue gun, and you can’t have a barbecue gun without a leather holster.

Some day I may get wildly ambitious and make .357 ammo or even .204 Ruger, if it’s possible to reload that tiny round.

I’m glad I feel good this afternoon. I’ll ride it as long as I can.

Connection Lost

It’s a very beautiful day here at the farm. The air is cool, and the sun is shining.

My friend Travis died yesterday, after I prophesied that he would be healed and after a friend who is very honest and very smart said God told her the same thing.

Travis has no problems, and his family has a ton of money for his burial, assuming the Gofundme dollars go where they’re supposed to. For the first time in years, I know I won’t have to do anything for Travis. His problems are gone, but the rest of us have to sift through the repercussions of his passing.

Travis was a lot like a son to me. I won’t say “like a son.” I say “a lot like a son.” If he had been my son, I would have done more for him. Did I do enough? Should I have paid his rent every month? Should I have bought him a car so he wouldn’t have had to ride a terrible hand-me-down bicycle to class in the rain?

Whether my record is acceptable or not, he was much like a son, and he was also my prayer partner. When I wanted to talk to someone about real Christianity, without having them misunderstand or argue about doctrine, Travis was my only resource. All of the best prayer sessions I had were with Travis. He made more progress than anyone. He taught me things.

Everyone sins, and Travis was not perfect, but he was serious. He contacted me often, and when I sent him helpful material, he generally used it. Most of my friends don’t make great use of the things I tell them. He had a friend named Joe, and Joe wanted to improve, too. They used to send each other Whatsapp videos sharing things God had shown them.

Maybe I’ll bring criticism on myself for saying this, but how many young black people do things like that when they’re not at church? There is a lot of posing in black churches. Kids at Trinity Church in Miami Gardens wave their hands in the air for Jesus and then have sex in the stairwells. When I was there, active strip club employees worked there.

It’s very sad, but I was Travis’s best friend. He knew hundreds of people, and he had lots of relatives, but an old white man who lived 15 miles away and then 300 miles away was his best friend. I know several black people who say I’m their best friend. That shouldn’t have to happen. You should be able to connect with someone in your family or in your ordinary social circle. There should be someone in that collection of people you can rely on.

I was the first person he thought to contact after calling 911. Not his mother. Not his brother. Not his friends.

The black person who treated him best was the young lady I keep calling Martha. I think she would have made a magnificent wife for him. She had his back all the time, and she still does.

He knew some other people who did very generous things for him, but I still ended up with the title of best friend. The title was welcome in the sense that I was honored and glad to be held in that regard, but it was unwelcome in the sense that it should not have been necessary for it to fall to me.

When Travis died, I lost a friend, and that’s bad enough, but I lost the closest thing I had to a son, and I also lost the single biggest contributor to my Christian walk. On top of that, I lost what I thought was a connection to God.

I thought I was learning to prophesy. I was practicing all the time. It was somewhat difficult to do. It was hard to let go, and it was also scary because I was concerned that I would say something stupid and wrong. A few weeks back, I decided to quit restraining myself. I decided to go with it, do it as much as I could, and let God work it out.

I started prophesying in bed for long periods. I prophesied while I drove. I would walk through grocery stores, prophesying silently.

I heard beautiful things about God’s love for me. I heard that he would keep me safe and prevent things I worried about from happening.

Jesus definitely visited me back in the Eighties. I am not wrong about that. It was very obvious. When he visited me, I knew exactly where he was located, and I physically felt the heat of his love. I felt complete peace. I knew everything was going to be all right. I didn’t have to try to believe it. I knew it. You can’t feel any other way around him, unless he’s against you.

When I prophesied, it filled me with peace and reassurance, and I said things that were consistent with what I felt when Jesus came to me. I never heard anything inconsistent with his nature, which I knew from meeting him, or the Bible.

A few times, I said specific things about the future. I believe there were two occasions when I said Travis would be healed. I can’t think of any other things that were shown to be wrong. Some are still in the future, though.

I felt great about this new connection with God. I can’t tell you how pleasant it was to believe I was hearing him tell me things in English. As Paul said, there is a lot of profit in speaking God’s word in a language you can understand. I thought I had finally gotten to the point where I had that going for me.

Of course, I counted on the scriptures. Regarding the possibility that a person might ask God for a gift and receive something evil instead, he said this:

And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

He said this right after he gave us the Lord’s Prayer, in which he said, “Give us this day our daily bread.” To me, “bread” means God’s word; his communication. Jesus said he was the bread of life, and he said he was the head of the church, which is the body of Christ. The head has to communicate to the body’s parts.

This is what I stood on, and then I said someone would be healed, and he died.

I can’t behave like a preacher who makes a wrong prediction on Youtube and then has his people take the video down. That does happen, and it’s very harmful.

I have to look over the things I believe, and I have to learn which ones are true.

Prayer in tongues is real. There is no question at all about that. It has never not worked for me. It changed my life. I can keep that.

I have received a lot of phrases and sentences during prayer. I have not had problems with them. I have relied on them, and they have held up.

Blessing and cursing work. They don’t get me the desired result every single time, but most of the time, they do. And it seems that how well they work depend on the power of the forces that are against you. It’s probably more difficult to get results when powerful spirits are against you, and obviously, you wouldn’t expect to succeed if you make a mistake and say something God is opposed to.

It seems that it’s often necessary to repeat the same blessing or curse, like a boxer who keeps punching the same opponent.

Casting out demons works. Healing works, although the results are inconsistent and some physical problems seem to have great authority and resistance.

Asking God yes or no questions seems to work the vast majority of the time, but it is not unusual to be wrong, so maybe I should let that go.

Reading the Bible and listening to an audio version work. These things will change you and revive you every day.

It looks like my big problems involve getting the word of God to flow through me at will, in forms my mind understands.

So what’s the problem? Doesn’t God want me to prophesy? No, he wants it. Paul made that clear. The apostles were prophets, as was Jesus, and Paul said we should covet the gift of prophecy, which is specifically listed among the gifts of the Spirit. He said this as a general admonition. He didn’t say, “Only a few people will prophesy.” He told all of us to seek the gift. If it weren’t available to all of us, he would not have done that. I wouldn’t. It would be irresponsible.

God does want me to prophesy, and he will help me do it.

If God wants me to prophesy, is the problem that I’m trying to do it the wrong way? Are we not able to prophesy at will?

The Bible says the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. You can speak in tongues whenever you want for as long as you want, so it is certainly possible to control your spirit in the exercise of at least one gift.

Here is what Paul said about prophesying:

Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge. If any thing be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace. For ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.

That is very unambiguous except for the last sentence, and even though that sentence is not completely clear in English, it seems to indicate that a person can prophesy or stop at will. I will look at the Greek.

The word translated “are subject to” is hupotassó, and it means to be under the command of another. It’s the same word that was used to tell us demons had to obey Jesus. It’s the word that was used to tell us demons have to obey us, for that matter. The word translated “prophets” means “interpreters or forth-tellers of the divine will.” It doesn’t mean “encourager” or “exhorter” as some people claim. Some say Christian prophets aren’t supposed to reveal facts or tell the future, but that’s clearly wrong. The New Testament uses the same word Paul used to describe Old Testament prophets. If you’re a Christian prophet, you’re supposed to have the same gift Elijah and Isaiah had. You’re not just a motivational speaker.

There are plenty of prophecies about the future in the New Testament. Remember Agabus. Don’t forget Jude. Don’t forget the Revelation.

If Christian prophets don’t foretell the future, why did Agabus tell Paul he would be imprisoned if he went to Jerusalem? Why did Jesus, our model, foretell the future?

The idea that Christian prophesy doesn’t involve telling the future or revealing hidden facts is clearly nonsense.

Let’s add up the things we can’t question.

1. We are all supposed to be able to prophesy.

2. In prophecy, we are supposed to tell the future and reveal hidden facts.

3. God says he will give us real gifts, not demons, if we ask.

4. When we exercise the gifts of the Spirit, our spirits are forced to obey us, just as demons are forced to obey us.

These statements can’t be refuted without contradicting scripture, unless there is something I still don’t understand about our spirits being subject to us.

Regarding Travis, we did what Paul said to do. I thought I got a word, and the Tina, independently and before she was informed, believed she heard the same thing. The Bible says, “Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge.” I didn’t find any fault with what Tina said, nor did she find any fault with what I said.

Well, maybe we didn’t do what Paul said to do. Neither of us found fault, but I don’t recall specifically asking God whether what she said was right, and she may not have asked him whether I was right.

Here is an interesting thing about Paul’s instructions: if he advised people to judge what prophets said, he must have expected errors. Christians are often taught that if a prophet errs, he is not a prophet, and I have even heard Christians say that in the Old Testament, a prophet who made a mistake had to be killed. I tried to look that law up, and I was not able to find it. I found a passage saying no one should be afraid of a prophet who made mistakes. Maybe the Jews were required to stone prophets who erred, but I haven’t found it, and we know from the Bible that they had plenty of false prophets who were proven wrong in their own time. Were they executed? The Bible doesn’t say they were.

The Jews only executed true prophets.

It really looks like a prophet should be able to prophesy at will. It’s hard to interpret Paul’s words any other way.

So what does this mean? Is it a matter of practicing until you’re sure you know the difference between God’s voice and your own?

I miss God intensely. I feel like I’m fasting from his company. I keep wanting to let his voice flow through me again in English, but I refuse to try. I thought we had gotten closer than ever. It seemed like a major breakthrough. Once I got things going smoothly, I wanted to hear from him all the time. I wanted his companionship and correction. Now I think I’ll just say stupid, damaging things my mind wants to hear.

False prophecy is harmful. God rewards people for listening to true prophets, and you will have problems if you hear one and don’t listen. There is symmetry in the supernatural, so it must be harmful to listen to a false prophet, including yourself. I don’t want that.

I’m in a very strange position. I lost a friend, a son figure, and my only real prayer partner, and I also feel as though I lost God’s company. That’s a lot to lose in one hour.

Part of me wants to stop eating and drinking until I get an answer. This situation is intolerable.

The idea of fasting AFTER someone dies is not normal.

I’ve considered other explanations. Will Travis be resurrected? I prayed for it, with a friend. Is it possible that Travis was about to be healed, but his relatives or someone else prevented it by taking him off life support at the wrong time? Would God say he was going to do something and then let a human being prevent it from happening?

I’m not the only one who wonders if Travis was terminated by human beings, because the circumstances of his death don’t make sense, and it is troubling a bunch of people who are baptized with the Holy Spirit. Independently, they are saying something is fishy. But would God tell you he was going to heal someone if a mere human being could stop it?

Was Travis “healed” by being removed from his body? Come on. That’s unworthy of consideration.

I will hold onto the things I know to be right, and I will try to find out what went wrong with prophecy. Sooner or later, I will do it correctly. The Bible clearly says it’s part of my inheritance. I can’t give up pursuing it, because God says we’re supposed to do it. It’s not up to me to pick and choose.

I rarely feel lonely for people, but feeling lonely for God is too much to take. It has to be fixed.

We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord

I have bad news. This afternoon, someone sent me an Instagram photo indicating that my friend Travis has died.

To a person who looks with the natural eye only, this is not shocking. Travis had been in intensive care for weeks following an accidental shooting which led to complications. To people who have felt great faith that Travis was going to be healed, it’s a major blow.

A year or two back, I listened to Derek Prince as he taught people to prophesy. I decided to try it. Paul tells us to covet prophecy, and he says it’s a better gift than tongues in some ways. God clearly wants us to do it. I started doing it once in a while, and then I made a point of doing it a lot every day.

I heard positive things. “I will build you up.” “None of the things you worry about will happen to you.” “My love will pour through you.” I rarely heard anything negative. That concerned me, because I knew from prayer in tongues that it was possible to get in the way of the Holy Spirit and add your own material. I prayed repeatedly for guidance. I had other people pray. I did not want to be a false prophet.

The other day, I heard myself saying Travis would be healed. Yesterday, someone who is very, very honest said God told her the same thing.

Look, it can still happen. He can still recover. As I said before, Lazarus stank when he was healed. He was dead and rotting. But generally, the dead stay dead.

I knew before this happened that if Travis died, I would have a major problem apart from the grief. I knew I would have to question what I thought I heard from God. That’s a big deal. I have been relying very strongly on what I thought was God’s voice for years. How much am I wrong about? What do I have left to hold onto?

You can’t sweep problems like this under the rug. Pretending things didn’t happen is not acceptable. You have to hold yourself accountable.

It’s as though I built several rooms onto my house, and one or more have to be torn down. I can’t entertain guests in a house that isn’t habitable. How can I talk to other people about God right now?

What can I tell the world about Travis?

He had a bad start. He got in trouble a lot when he was a kid.

He excelled in music when he was in elementary school. By the time I met him, he played 11 instruments well.

His Dad tried to raise him and his siblings well. His mother and father split, and his father deteriorated. He was isolated from the family.

I met Travis at Trinity Church in Miami. I believe he was 17. We were on the security team. We became unlikely friends. In prayer sessions behind closed doors, we talked about things the pastors didn’t want to hear about: prayer in tongues, casting out demons, confession, and transformation through the Holy Spirit. Travis got hooked, and he started to change.

He kept growing, and our friendship grew. I started making pizza for the church’s cafe, and Travis became my sous chef.

We knew the church was a mess. We both left. He came to the new church I joined. We left that one, too. We started spending a lot of time praying at my house. During one session, Travis had a vision of a woman he believed would be his wife. He never saw her face.

Travis was a teacher. He worked at a government-funded center, teaching ghetto kids music. He wanted black children to be successful and appreciated. That desire burned in him. He could not accept the way black people in America were living.

He was hurt over and over by the things that happened to young people he knew. He was frustrated with their parents, who wouldn’t drive them to lessons. Kids had unwanted babies. They got shot. One friend from church got caught driving a stolen Mercedes, and after the police handcuffed him, he jumped into a canal and drowned.

Travis wanted to see black people rise up and do well, and over and over, he was slapped in the face by deaths, illegitimate births, and incarcerations. It caused him tremendous pain. He could not let go.

He wanted to be the first member of his family to get a degree. He had started college at FAMU in Tallahassee, but he got caught up in a marching band scandal and left. I encouraged him to go to the University of Miami and audition, and one day, he went without telling me and got a full ride, less room and board.

He worked harder than any student I ever knew. He lived in rented rooms. He slept on people’s couches. He sometimes rode a bicycle 15 miles at night to get home from jobs. He was promised a car, but by the time he got it, it was in such bad shape it had to be scrapped. His cheap, wobbly secondhand bicycle was stolen by someone who must have been desperate as well as heartless. He had to scrounge up a new one. He never quit.

When I left Miami, I made him my house sitter until I sold the house. I told him he was the Fresh Prince of Coral Gables. He loved the peace and safety.

During his time there, I got baptized at a Last Reformation event. I told Travis about it, and he got so excited, he borrowed a car and drove to my house near Ocala to be baptized in my pool. He couldn’t submerge completely in my tub. It was 51 degrees out when he went into the pool. He drove up in a borrowed car, stayed one night, and drove back.

When the place finally sold, I was concerned about him, but he landed on his feet. He found a place near school. He struggled, but he didn’t live in the street.

When COVID-19 hit, he had a problem. He played gigs to make money, and the gigs were gone. We prayed over the phone. He said God would handle it.

He got a respiratory bug in March. He had a high fever and aches. I told him to get checked, but he stayed home. Some friends and I prayed, and his symptoms dropped off to nearly nothing overnight.

Travis got in contact with me a few times about a friend who wanted to get a firearm. He asked me for advice. I saw nothing odd about it. I suggested a Glock. A simple, reliable gun. I said I would consider .45 ACP if it were me. I probably mentioned .40 S&W.

On April 9, my phone rang. The caller ID named Travis, but the voice was someone else’s. The man on the other end said he was Travis’s friend. He said Travis had been shot accidentally. He stressed “accidentally.” I asked if they had called 911. Hoping for a break, I asked where Travis had been shot. The friend said, “in the chest region.” No break.

I could hear Travis in the background pleading with God. He wasn’t afraid to die. He just didn’t want to die that way, so soon. He said, “Not this way, God!” That was the last time I heard his voice. His friend hung up.

After that, the information dried up. No one answered his phone. I started accounts on Instagram and Facebook, hoping to alert his family. I found his brother and let him know. I thought the family would handle things.

I didn’t want to go online and say, “TRAVIS HAS BEEN SHOT.” I thought it would make his family panic. Now I wish I had done it. Maybe more people would have tried to help. I worked with some friends who tried to look after Travis’s affairs, and the family was not responsive. We didn’t hear from them for days. I assumed things were going well because the early report was that the injury was not life-threatening.

Travis lived out his final days in a remarkable state of isolation. There was no phone in his room. He was intubated at least part of the time. They didn’t give him a laptop so he could Skype. The hospital was so strict, they would not allow cards into the room. Recently, a nurse told Martha Travis had never had a visitor.

We knew very little about what was happening.

As far as I know, he didn’t die from a gunshot wound. He died from complications. He wasn’t getting oxygen. He had an infection. He was tested regularly for covid, but the tests were negative. Of course, the tests are not reliable. He may have had covid in March, and he may have relapsed after the shooting.

Would things have been different with better communication? I don’t know, but things were handled very badly.

I thought I could point to Travis as a success story. Someone whose life had successfully repaired, partly with my participation. I thought I would see his wife and children. I thought I would be at the wedding.

He’s in heaven. That’s for sure. If he had any issues with God, you can be sure he cleaned them up while he was alone in the hospital. You can say that makes him a success, but it’s not the kind of success I had in mind.

I thought God had given him to me as a sort of son, to make up for my failure to marry.

Now the crop is gone, and it’s late in the season.

Is it right to feel sorry for him? He has seen Jesus. He is perfect. He is happy. He is fulfilled. He is safe, forever. He’s with my dad. Surely they have talked today.

I suppose if I grieve, I’m really feeling sorry for myself, not Travis. He’s practically a god now.

Over the last few days, I’ve been telling God I would be happy to take Travis’s place. It didn’t matter to me. I enjoy life, but it’s not like I have a lot of meaningful irons in the fire (one less now), and I am not far from elderly.

Now I’m still here, he’s gone, his wife will have to marry someone else, and his kids will not be born. There will be no one to help his dad, who has MS and lives in a facility, unless God sends him a friend. His dad had been very bitter, but he had come around. He had started praying with Travis. He had started calling him often instead of shutting him out. Where does a 59-year-old man in a wheelchair go to replace a son like that?

Will anyone try to save Travis’s family now? Who else will care?

I spoke to my friend Freddly about the news. She’s a nurse in a management position, and she deals with dying people, including covid patients. She is very experienced. She says something is wrong. She says young men don’t just die suddenly, even when they’re intubated and connected to ECMO machines. She says that happens to the elderly. The nurses knew Martha had a special relationship with Travis. According to Freddly, they would have made sure Martha was informed had he taken a sudden turn for the worse. Even though she was not his wife, they would have seen to it that she had a chance to come to his bedside had they thought he was about to die. They didn’t do that. Two days running, they said there was no change, and there is no chance they were wrong. They told her he was in the same condition at 9:30 this morning. So what happened?

She said she wished she could look at his chart.

It’s good to have an expert to talk to, not that it does much good now.

I talked to a mutual friend today. He was on the Trinity Church security team with Travis and me. He wants to go to the funeral if there is one. My concern is that Trinity will be in charge. I don’t want to see people who used Travis using him as a tool to boost their profiles. I am also not excited about being among people he knew who let him down consistently. But on the other hand, it might be good to show up, welcome or not, and hold my head up and look them in the eye.

I don’t want to go to Miami. Not even for this. I don’t know how it will play out.

It was a great, great privilege to know Travis and to be of some assistance to him. I’m glad he’s out of harm’s reach now. He could not catch a break in this life. It seemed like it rained on him every day. He fought the curses of black life, and he still died like a black man who was still immersed in them. That’s all finished now. I will take the good with the bad.

I won’t get to see him stand at the altar, and I won’t get to hold his kids. I won’t have a third godchild or a boy named after me. That’s okay. We have a father who makes all things right, even if it has to wait until after the resurrection.

I look forward to seeing him again. Until then, I will remember how blessed I was to know him in this life.

A friend who led the armorbearer team at Trinity Church just did a final roll call for Travis via text message. His call sign was Bass Clef.

So that’s it. Travis didn’t sound off here, but he was present at a better roll call today. It won’t be that long before I sound off as well, and then all our troubles here on earth will be forgotten.

Hope Your Morning was This Good

Some good things are happening today. First, “Martha” texted and said my friend Travis is still with us, and his condition has not changed. As always, I call that a win. Finding out that he’s alive is great. Learning that he hasn’t gotten worse is icing on the cake. Now we’re just waiting to hear that he’s improving. If you’ve been praying, thanks.

I sent the news out today via text, and my friend Tina responded. I wrote about her the other day. She called me after reading about Travis on Instagram, and since then she has been part of the prayer team.

Today Tina received the news, and I also said I had been saying, “Travis is healed, and Jesus Christ is glorified.” She said this was confirmation of what the Lord had told her the day before. Naturally, I had to ask for more information, so she called.

I can’t recall everything she said, but I can hit the high points.

Yesterday, she spent time praying for Travis in the Spirit and with her understanding. She said the Lord told her her prayers were answered. She said he said Travis was going to be healed, and that he would be healed in such a way that the doctors and providers would know the healing didn’t come from their efforts.

She said God told her she didn’t have to ask for healing. She said he told her to command it and declare it done, so that’s what she has been doing.

I hadn’t told her what I was doing. Our choices were made independently.

She said God told her he was going to work on Travis’s family. That will be nice to see.

Tina is praying for God to help the providers do things they could never do without his help. I am agreeing.

Bonus: I put Tina in touch with Martha, and they hit it off. They are very similar. Two young black women of excellent character who are responsible and successful. Tina can help Martha get to know God. Martha and I texted for a very long time yesterday. I suppose God is drawing her to people who can give her a little guidance.

I had a real text storm today. My friends are really getting behind Travis.

In the midst of all this, I made myself biscuits and gravy. I forgot to halve the recipe, so I ate a little more than I should. The biscuits were wonderful. I keep tinkering with my recipe.

Here is what I did today:

INGREDIENTS

1-3/4 cups AP flour (not self-rising)
1/4 cup starch
2/3 cup milk
1-2 tsp. salt
4 tsp. baking powder (not soda)
2 tbsp. cold bacon grease
2 tbsp. hard butter
2 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. citric acid

I should increase the acid slightly, but these were wonderful.

Maybe I can wind down a little now. Who wants to clean my kitchen?

Only Took 5 Months

Not long after the covid hype started, I began searching the news to see if any major American celebrities had died. I don’t mean people like the guy who played Otis the Drunk on The Andy Griffith Show. I mean people whose names a typical American would recognize. We finally have an example. Covid has been here since last fall, and Roy Horn died on May 8. I would call him a minor major celebrity. He’s not Tom Brady or Jennifer Lopez, but people have heard his name.

It’s remarkable how long it took. I thought we would have a couple of dozen by now. It’s even more remarkable when you consider the fact that many foreigners are famous in America.

Of course, he was in very bad shape. He was 75, and he had been crippled by a tiger bite. He was also a homosexual, so he may have had other health problems from substance abuse or infectious disease.

How are things in northern Florida? Great. That’s just how it is. Sorry if you live in New York or New Orleans. I’m not trying to make you feel bad.

We’re still waiting for the meat shortage to hit. It doesn’t look like it’s coming. I went to the grocery yesterday, and the place was swimming in chicken, beef, and even pork, which has been hit hardest. Ground chuck patties were selling for $3 per pound.

I always look at the hoarder stuff when I’m there. They had a lot of Bounty paper towels (cheap brands don’t count), and they were putting toilet paper on the shelves late in the afternoon. They even had a bottle of Dawn, which I bought. I thought I needed it for the laundry room sink, but I didn’t. Sorry about that. There was still no rubbing alcohol. People are probably pouring it on their food.

The meat problem was supposed to be here by now, wasn’t it? It has been 11 days since I noticed the story, and people were talking about a two-week delayed impact. That means everything should be gone in three days. We’ll see.

After shopping, I texted my poor cousin near Chicago. She still can’t get meat. People are still insane there. Going to Costco is like trying to beat the crowds in the movie Soylent Green. Her son says it takes hours to get in the door.

This mess is not the same for liberals and conservatives. Liberals are more hysterical, their areas are suffering the most, and the vast majority of the suffering is caused by bad behavior, not covid. It appears they really do treat others much worse than conservatives. The way they clean out stores is a wonder to behold.

Shouldn’t be a surprise. Leftists are the only people who riot and lynch. Conservatives don’t know how. When you see conservatives fighting in the streets, it’s because leftists came to their events and attacked.

It’s not like goods aren’t being shipped to liberal cities. They are. Cities are very powerful, and those in power will see to it that goods come in. Obviously, the problems arise once they get there.

Cities will get goods even if rural people have to starve. There is no electoral college for food distribution. Food will go to the power centers.

People who are against God are much more afraid of death. They think this life is all there is. What a pity. This life is pretty dreary. Childhood is hard and very degrading, then you can expect to get a job you don’t like, then your body falls apart slowly, and then you die. If this is all there is, your prospects are horrible, and the threshold for choosing suicide should be very low.

If you’re afraid of death, you are capable of just about anything. Hungry human beings have been known to eat their children.

I suppose they have a better excuse than well-fed women who have abortions.

The Christian attitude is much different. Think of all the Christians who have allowed themselves to be murdered for the good of humanity.

It’s strange that San Francisco is doing so well. It makes me wonder if something much worse is in store because of their rebellion.

I should mention my friend Travis, who is still in intensive care. The nurses open up to us occasionally, so bits of information get out. The latest news is excellent as far as I’m concerned. He is no worse. That indicates they’re not talking about unplugging things. His situation is far from good, but it’s not the kind of crisis it appeared to be two days back.

If no one you know has died in a hospital after a long illness, I’ll tell you how it works in most cases. The staff will know when your loved one is very likely to die within a day. They know the signs from experience. They will tell you to get your butt to the hospital if you’re not already there. A couple of days ago, it looked like we were in that situation, but now it’s clear that we’re not. It was misinterpreted by relatives who had been ignoring Travis and were shocked to learn he was on an ECMO machine. I’m not saying a person can’t seem stable and then die suddenly, but we had one set of expectations, and now it’s clear that we are looking at a different paradigm.

I only have two medical professionals among my close friends. Both work with gravely ill and dying people. One started out as a hospice CNA, and now she manages other nurses. She has seen hundreds of people die. She is on Travis’s prayer team. She is very positive today. She said, “We’ve got a fight!” That’s correct. We weren’t told to come drive him home, but we have a fight. She also said, “He can bounce back.”

The other professional runs a hospice. His basic sentiment was that if a person isn’t declining, he can turn around.

Of course, this is just speculation in the natural. Lazarus stank from decomposition when he was healed, and Jonah, who died, was pulled back from sheol.

I have been seeing demons in my bedroom, and my belief was that they were the demons that were trying to kill Travis. Last night, I bound and muzzled them in the name of Jesus. I spoke defeat to them. I forbade them to come near me or Travis. I slept the whole night through. I was surprised when I woke up. I have been waking up before dawn, consistently.

It will be nice when we get a better report. I’m tired of feeling distressed when a text notification goes off. I’m okay, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t unpleasant.

I’m planning to make .38 Super defensive ammunition. I don’t need it, but I feel stupid owning a gun and having so little real ammunition for it. Also, it will be fun.

I did not take notes when I reloaded a decade ago. I think all of my .38 Super reloads are from that time. To get information, I had to go back through blog posts. I’m learning my lesson. I’m creating text documents with lots of facts. I even use the outline feature. It’s almost as if I used to be a scientist!

You would think a former scientist would have done it this way from the start, but I didn’t.

It looks like I had a lot of problems in the past with the Hornady Lock-n-Load AP press. I was getting a lot of unprimed cases. Because of that, powder spilled everywhere. I was using Accurate No.7, and the grains are tiny. They went right into the workings of the press and gummed it up.

I was not happy with Hornady. The press is a good product, but you can’t pop one on your bench and expect things to go perfectly. There are a lot of adjustments to be made, and there are things that are not deburred well or massaged at the factory. Hornady support has a great reputation, and that’s good, because press buyers need it. You can root around the web and read about all the problems they have.

People told me to buy a Dillon press, but if you check the web, you’ll see that Dillon owners complain just as much. Many knowledgeable people say Hornady’s products are the best. It appears that brand loyalty is the main reason people say either brand is better than the other.

Progressive presses are complicated, and they have to be set up just right. A manual isn’t enough. You have to have experience and good advice, and you have to be good with tools. That’s just how it is.

A well-adjusted Lock-n-Load will work great. Until it doesn’t. Then you will lose one or more rounds because the press has gone crazy, and you’ll have to make an adjustment. Then it will work great again.

When you get a press running, you may forget all the breakdowns and struggles you had getting it to where it actually worked. I did. New users who are frustrated aren’t whiners. They’re not imagining things.

A guy who calls himself 76Highboy has great videos on running the Hornady press. It’s great to see how well he knows the machine. There is no problem he can’t help you fix or avoid. But the fact that his videos have to exist tells you how hard it can be to make a Lock-n-Load work.

He’s a bona fide Lock-n-Load guru, and his dad was a proficient reloader, but he obviously had a lot of problems, because he had to learn to fix them.

Here’s something weird. The powder measure requires a fatter O-ring than all the other stations. Hornady will never tell you that. Also, you may have problems with metering the powder because of static electricity, so you should rub the affected parts with a dryer sheet.

My press had at least one defective primer seating punch. It has two, and I have only checked one. It was obstructing the slide that loads the primers. The manual doesn’t tell you about that. I had to grind material off the slide with a Dremel so it wouldn’t hit the punch. A punch that sits too high will prevent primers from loading, and then you fill unprimed cases with powder. The powder leaks through the primer holes, and then your press locks up or fails to register correctly.

When I switch to my other punch and slide, I’m going to grind the other slide before I even check to see if it works. The alteration won’t hurt it, and if the slide needs it, it will save me a ton of misery. I’m also going to stone the slide to get rid of burrs, as Highboy76 recommends.

Every Lock-n-Load should come with a friend who finally got his to work.

People will tell you you’re the problem when you’re really not. You can say a press operator is the problem if he wasn’t born knowing how to deal with the product’s many issues. That’s not really fair. It’s like saying you’re the problem if you don’t know exactly the right way to jiggle your defective toilet’s flush handle.

If a product you paid good money for doesn’t do exactly what it’s supposed to do when you follow the manual, the product or the manual is the problem. Don’t blame yourself.

I need to get out and shoot the .38 Super more. It’s wonderful. I’m concerned about losing casings, though. I’m thinking of using a red marker to color them and make them stand out after they land in the pasture.

Some day the Beast’s cruel, infantile children will take our guns away, and I won’t be able to shoot steel in my own yard. I need to take advantage of what I have while I still can.

This is Really Easy

Why go out and build a church when God will bring a ministry to your door?

I don’t seem to have time to do any of my typical activities today. I have been involved in prayer and ministry since before dawn.

A short time ago, I got a surprise call from Tina, a girl I used to drive to church. I shouldn’t call her a girl. She must be 25 now. She was a UM student, and she lived near my house, so I was the natural choice when she needed transportation on Sundays.

She had a suboptimal upbringing. I don’t know all the details, but I believe her sister had to raise her. She turned out well anyway. She participated in beauty pageants in order to get scholarships, and she also worked. Right now she’s supporting herself and getting a master’s degree. Probably an MBA. I didn’t think to ask.

She just found out that my friend Travis is in the hospital. She wanted to know what was going on, and she offered her help. She is stuck in Miami temporarily. She said that if he needed to stay here for a while, she would take time off from work and drive him up.

Tina is a charismatic. Full of the Holy Spirit. I think her walk was impeded somewhat by her experience under my last pastor, but she’s a very serious person, so I think she’ll be okay.

She knows Travis well. She was in school when he got his scholarship and started attending UM.

I gave her the lowdown on the situation, and I put her in touch with Kalea, the young lady who is doing most of the work. I think they’ll get along very well. Two young, responsible, successful black women who love God.

She didn’t know my dad had died. I told her about it, and I told her how God had changed him. She said her grandmother in the Virgin Islands has dementia and needs help approaching God.

For those who don’t know, my dad was touched supernaturally when I played audio from Derek Prince videos for him. This is how God saved him. I told Tina all about it, and I suggested she find a way to play this material for her grandmother. She doesn’t know if it can be done. I told her God had some way of reaching her, so it didn’t matter.

I told her a little bit about the way the country is turning sour for Christians, and I let her know cities would not be good places for us in the future.

She says she will keep in touch. She may get to visit the farm. Depends on Travis’s situation.

Who knows? Maybe her grandmother will be helped.

It’s strange; I know all these attractive young single women, and I’m an old guy who lives with two birds. They should all be married to suitable young men by now. It seems like the more together a young woman is, the harder it is for her to find a husband. It’s as if good character and brains negate the power of good looks. Women who are less worthy seem to get married right away.

It’s funny. Tina was very reserved when I used to drive her to church. Sometimes I wondered what she was thinking. Was she comfortable with me, or was she just happy to have a ride? We had some conversations, but most of the time, she played her cards close to the vest. On the phone, she’s much easier to communicate with. It’s nice to know she has a positive opinion of me.

I had hopes she and Travis would work something out. Didn’t happen. I hope God will supply all of these women with men who are not totally useless.

I have to go out and look for a big postcard for Travis. I meant to do it yesterday, but I could not get away. I didn’t even get to go to Walmart for one of my regular curiosity tours. I don’t know whether they have pork or toilet paper. This kind of thing is actually interesting to me now.

I used to tell Travis it was funny how he ended up ministering to so many good-looking women. Now the shoe is on the other foot, except my motivation isn’t subject to credible suspicion.

Maybe I can get some things done now.

Hooray for Hollywood

This is pretty funny. Or maybe it’s not. I’ve been proven right again, along with everyone else who thinks a big portion of the covid mess is due to fraud. Project Veritas has caught an Auschwitz…I mean “Michigan”…clinic faking testing crowds.

The basic story: a couple of people showed up at a clinic to be tested. There was a long line of cars. The rest of the cars were full of clinic volunteers who were not actually tested.

CBS News decided to do a typical honest unbiased segment about an organization called Cherry Health in Michigan. It’s a nonprofit clinic. They do covid testing. When they saw that almost no patients were waiting for testing, they and the clinic brass conspired to make things look busier and more panicky. They recruited employees to get back in their cars and sit in the testing line. To make things worse, real patients had to sit and wait while CBS arranged the scene.

Project Veritas has had its ups and downs, and for a time, it had professionalism issues revolving mainly about failing to get good legal advice before doing stories, but overall, it seems to be a great organization and an important source of news even Fox won’t touch. It’s wonderful to see them confirming something many people already knew: health care providers are faking things in order to look like they need help (AKA money). They also caught CBS demonstrating another known fact: leftists lie about covid in order to make it look worse.

It’s amazing that CBS would be so brazen. Didn’t it occur to them that employees might not like being forced to participate in fraud? Do they think every person in health care is a leftist and also extremely dishonest?

It’s disappointing that most of the employees didn’t care, but that’s human nature for you. It’s a wonder God doesn’t flood the world every Tuesday.

If you’re looking for a neck to hang this around, it belongs to Oprah confidant Gayle King. She’s responsible for the segment.

Still Kicking

My friend Travis is still alive. I call that a victory, and I thank God and everyone who prayed.

Yesterday, his brother said he and his mother were rushing to the hospital because Travis was on life support. I say “said” because I can’t assume his mother actually went without confirmation. I know a little bit about her, and I’m not willing to place a bet.

Based on various bits of information, my guess is that Travis was no worse off than the day before, but because his family was not paying attention to his case, they were shocked to learn he was connected to machines. His friends already knew.

His brother has a big social media following, and yesterday he posted a request for help. Travis was shot a month ago, so you may be wondering why the post went up yesterday. I’m right there with you.

Now a large number of people SAY (I am consistent) they’re praying for him, and there is a GoFundMe page which is currently at about $5100.

I’m not donating. Why? A wise woman pointed out that the money may be misused by those who gain control over it. I hope that doesn’t happen, and I hope the money does some good, but I’m not taking a chance on my money going to a casino or some other rathole.

You don’t actually need GoFundMe to give your friends, or their landlords, money. You just need it to put your name on the web so people can see that you donated.

I’m already wondering whether he will become a fundraising tool for a couple of churches. Travis and I met at Trinity Church, a horrible money-centered church in Miami Gardens. The pastors are drawn to publicity like flies to a substance familiar to farmers. After Trayvon Martin was killed while beating an innocent man’s head on a sidewalk, Trinity’s pastor Rich Wilkerson made a cringey video with Martin’s mother, asking her for her deep ideas about Christianity.

It’s only a matter of time until Wilkerson finds out Travis is getting social media attention. I’m sure he would have some sincere desire to help, but I think he would also be highly motivated to help himself.

A Trinity underpastor named Terrance started a church. It’s called “The COOL Church,” which ought to tell you everything you need to know. To be “cool” is to be loved by the unsaved world. Jesus said the world would hate his followers. To strive to be cool is to curry favor with Satan, the inventor and arbiter of cool. Christians have a real problem with clergymen who suck up to ignorant children. They promote Christian rap, which is insane. They dress like hipsters. They study the latest slang. In reality, Jesus was the opposite of cool, and we should be, too.

“Cool” is the Beast’s term. It’s his stamp of approval.

Terrance is very proud and very concerned about appearances. He strives to be as cool as possible. He cultivates admiration. Older people can’t tell him anything; he knows it all. For all his carnal good intentions, he’s a toxic pastor. That’s all there is to it. He has been very good to Travis, even allowing him to stay in his house for a long period, and I have no doubt that he cares, but he’s not strong in the Holy Spirit, and he’s a leftist and a Social Justice Warrior, which shows he has not been getting God’s memos.

The problem I see here is that people who go to these churches–hypocrites–may send a lot of money and make a big fuss on the Internet, and they may be used to seduce Travis and make him think Miami and these churches aren’t so bad after all. I’m sure some true Christians are actually praying, and that’s great, but overall, it doesn’t smell good.

You don’t really need 10,000 Christians to pray for you. You need one solid Christian.

There are a lot of healings and miracles in the Bible. Try to find one that required more than one person’s effort.

Last night, I saw another spirit in my bedroom. The other spirits I’ve seen since Travis was shot seemed menacing or creepy. One was actually sitting on me, trying to beat me up. The latest spirit looked like a cute little dog. Of course, I cursed it and ran it off.

Why do spirits always show up beside or at the foot of beds? It must be in their handbook.

My impression is that Satan is not getting top results from angry, nasty spirits, so he is sending warm, cuddly ones. Hence the social media campaign. If he can’t kill Travis, at least he may be able to convince him he should stay in Miami and bask in the worthless flattery of hypocrites.

I feel that this ordeal is being used by God to make Travis understand how important it is to cut people off and move. When he comes to, he will see who was with him from the start and who let him down. It will not be pretty. It would be very unfortunate if he went through all this and didn’t get the message. God uses progressive discipline. I would not want to experience whatever comes after being shot and put on life support machines.

People lie to Travis constantly. “We appreciate you, bro.” “We got you.” “We need you to help us change Miami Gardens.” They flatter him and lay guilt trips on him. They play the race card. It’s disgusting to watch. Miami and Miami Gardens aren’t going to be changed, except that they will become more rotten as more Christians leave.

From my perspective, this mess has been extremely helpful. Obviously, I suffer because my friend is in the ICU, but I am communicating a lot with people I texted for prayer. They are surprising me. People I thought might not be all that helpful are very serious about praying and helping. They’re serious about improving. One young lady said, “You know I listen to you, right?” I guess I didn’t. It’s always a shock when I find out someone listens to me.

The young woman who is doing most of the lifting for Travis is incredible. She keeps asking me about God, and I tell her everything I can. I hate talking to people who aren’t receptive, and I’m very used to it. There is nothing like talking to someone God has already softened up. It’s a lot like love at first sight, except it’s not romantic.

They’re the only people who get saved. You can’t badger someone into heaven. People are like fruit. They fall when they get ripe.

She’s very smart. She’s very honest. She did not hesitate to bring up a fault which might be contributing to Travis’s reluctance to leave Miami. She thinks for herself. When I tell her things, she checks them out. That’s exactly how it’s supposed to work. I’m not the Oracle of Delphi. People should ask God whether what I say is right.

She was raised in a solid two-parent household, and she talks about how crucial it is to have a real family. She talks about the way black people have been weakened by the one-parent model. I haven’t heard any victimspeak from her.

She’s not a joiner. She has no Facebook account. She has very few Instagram connections. She’s not posting provocative photos every day, trying to land a man. She is smart about people. She knows how low they are.

Travis used to show up at my house in her car. That amazed me. Virtually none of his friends do anything for him. They always say they’ll be there to help, and then they don’t show up. They talk a great game and then run off. It astounded me to see that someone was willing to let him drive their car for days on end.

I suggested she consider going to a Last Reformation meeting and getting baptized with the Holy Spirit. She was on their website before I could follow up. She’s going to check them out thoroughly and think it over. I told her she might also receive the baptism at home, given the fact that travel is a problem now. God is not unreasonable. He baptized me with the Holy Spirit while I was alone.

Travis is extremely blessed to know her. She makes me wish I were 30 years younger.

I’ve had a productive day of serving God, and the clock reads 10:43. That’s not bad at all. I didn’t have to get on a plane and go to Somalia and live in the dirt, battling six different kinds of diarrhea. I didn’t have to go to a seminary and dodge homosexual advances for several years. I didn’t have to carry Kenneth Copeland’s mink-lined briefcase and take care of his dry cleaning for a decade. I certainly didn’t have to be Rich Wilkerson’s degraded, used underpastor and then get him to sponsor my cool new church. God did the work, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Is it wrong to feel so good while my friend has a machine breathing for him? I don’t question it. Life contains plenty of suffering. I don’t need to cultivate and water it.

This morning I woke up early and spent a long time praying. When it was over, I wanted to catch up on the sleep I lost, so I stayed in bed and slept. I dreamed Travis was here, in a guest bedroom. He was smiling. His face almost glowed. I told him I had missed him and that I was happy to see him. I started asking him what he wanted to do. Did he want to stay on earth or go? He didn’t acknowledge my questions. He was talking about other things.

It was just a dream, but it felt great anyway.

Several days before my mother died, she was moved to a new hospital room, and my dad and my sister didn’t tell me. I didn’t get to talk to her for a while, and I thought it was okay, because we would be reconnected soon. Then she lost consciousness for good, and I didn’t get to talk with her again. All I had was a saved answering machine tape with a message she had left months before. I feel regret over what happened. Thanks to the dream, I don’t feel that way about being cut off from Travis.

I have been thinking about the way healers do things. I’ve been on a Last Reformation outing, and I’ve watched Tom Loud and others on Youtube. They simply command illness and abnormalities to go, and they command flesh to be repaired. I’m doing this for Travis now. I hope you’ll do it, too.

I also curse the campaign of seduction. It wouldn’t do Travis much good to survive and then become part of the Wilkerson soul-grinding combine.

DEPORTED

Something very strange has been happening here at the farm.

I keep waking up and seeing spirits in my bedroom. I can’t see spirits as a general rule, but I have seen a few while wide awake, and I have seen more spirits just after waking up. I don’t know if spirits remain visible until you wake up, and I caught a few that failed to hide themselves quickly enough, or if there is something special about the instant of waking up that permits people to see spirits. Anyway, that’s when it has been happening to me.

One was shaped like a fat man. Sort of like the Michelin man. He was a clear shape, like the predator character in the Schwarzenegger movies. He had projections on the side of his head so he resembled a man in a bowler hat. It didn’t occur to me until just now that his profile was like my friend Travis’s. Travis has struggled with his weight.

Another was just a dark shape in an upper corner of the room.

After that, I woke up and saw a dark male shape in what looked like a black bodystocking. Even his face was covered. There was a bright red patch on his head, toward the left side, near the top. He was sitting on me, trying to kill me. I couldn’t even feel it. He was so weak he couldn’t make me feel a blow.

The last one I saw was shaped like a two-by-six. It looked like a dark grey two-by-six standing upright by the bed.

Spirits do not scare me. I hate them. I yell at them and tell them to get off my property in the name of Jesus. I always tell God I wish he would let me rip them to pieces. I would pull their eyes out of the sockets. I would do terrible things to them. I suppose God feels the same way and created hell for that reason.

Tonight it occurred to me that these might be the spirits that are trying to kill Travis. Maybe they’re coming here because they’re angry at me for frustrating them. Filthy things.

If this is the case, and they’re hoping for a break, they will never get it. I would give them tortures worse than hell if I could, until they were so terrified of me they would never come near me again.

Traditional churches don’t teach people how to fight spirits, but Paul said we were supposed to do it. He said our weapons were not carnal but mighty, to the pulling down of strongholds. “Carnal” refers to squabbling with human beings. “Strongholds” refers to spirit power. He said we don’t wrestle against flesh (men) but “against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” The church doesn’t teach you this. It teaches you to be nice and work real hard. And to hand over your money.

I will never stop fighting these things. I ask God to give me grace to keep it up.

One Less Frustration

One of the things I have to learn about owning this farm is that I absolutely have to go outside every day. The psychological benefits of the natural beauty and space are powerful. The weather today is like my impression of the weather in heaven. Cool and moderately sunny, with a gentle breeze.

My friend Travis is in a hospital connected to machines, and I heard disturbing things about him this morning. It has not been a pleasant day, so I decided to make some more 10mm ammunition and go out and test it.

I started reloading around a decade ago. I bought a Lyman 1500 XP digital scale because I assumed digital scales worked. The ad copy didn’t say anything like, “This scale is convenient but gives crazy readings.” I have since learned that digital scales were not reliable back then, and incredibly, nothing has changed. If you want a good digital scale now, the very lowest price you can pay is over $300, and your $300 scale won’t really be all that great. If you REALLY want accuracy, you have to spend $465 on an A&D FX-120i. But if you REALLY REALLY want accuracy, you don’t even want that; you want a Prometheus scale. I believe you can buy several FX-120i’s for the price of a Prometheus.

I will never have a Prometheus. Not unless my reality changes completely and I find myself shooting competitively at 1000 yards.

I got perfectly okay results with the Lyman 10 years ago, but it looks like storing it in a garage hasn’t done it any good. I made up several test batches of 10mm, and I kept getting average speeds of something like 1070 fps. That was no good. If I wanted underpowered 10mm bullets, I’d buy a .40 S&W. I wanted at least 1225 fps.

I looked for reasons for the power shortage. I cleaned my equipment to make sure it dispensed correctly. I tried new primers. I tried a different powder. Nothing worked. Eventually, I found out my old scale was exaggerating the weights of charges, even when I calibrated it.

My power problems led me to research digital scales, and I also learned about mechanical scales, like the ones you used to use in chemistry class. Mechanical scales are slow and not fun to use, but they are a lot cheaper for a given degree of precision.

It’s even more complicated than that, I’m sorry to say.

Mechanical reloading scales used to be made very well, but…China. A company named Ohaus made scales for companies like RCBS and Lyman, and of course, they quit making the good ones about 40 seconds before I realized I needed one. Ohaus still sells reloading scales, but they get complaints.

There is a guy who is known for taking old scales and polishing them up to make them more precise. The problem with this approach is that you still have to find an old scale for a decent price. I believe you’re looking at around $125 on Ebay before even discussing his $85 fee.

Sadly, there is more.

Cheap digital scales can be made to work well enough for pistol shooting if you stay after them constantly, but you may have problems. One problem is that they drift. Another problem is that they are programmed to resist drifting. Reloaders like to dribble tiny bits of powder onto scales, very slowly, in order to get very precise loads. A cheap digital scale may think it’s drifting when you do this, so it may ignore some of your powder in order to be more accurate.

I was not planning to do any dribbling right away. The proper term is “trickling,” if it matters. I needed a scale to check my powder measure’s accuracy. A powder measure is a machine that drops premeasured weights of powder. In order to make pistol rounds, you use a scale to adjust your powder measure. You drop a charge, weigh it, adjust the measure, and so on until you get the same correct charge over and over. For that, I didn’t need a drift-proof scale. I just needed one that would weigh a premeasured charge and give me a single accurate reading.

I decided to try a new cheap digital while I worked on my problem. Covid has made it hard to get scales quickly, and I was having trouble finding anything good anyway, so I figured I would get something reviewers like and see what happened. I bought a Chinese Brifit pocket scale. It’s an amazing machine. It’s very easy to use, it will give something like 6 different units, and it seems more accurate than the manufacturer’s claim. Problem: it can’t read odd tenths. If you measure something weighing 12.3 grains, it will give you 12.2 or 12.4.

I was very discouraged, but then I realized I could weigh two charges at once and divide by two. I had faith that my powder measure was pretty consistent, and the new scale gave perfect results when I weighed my old Lyman test weight, so I thought I could probably come up with pretty good weights this way. I got the powder measure to give me 24.0 grains on the new scale, and I made 6 cartridges. I used Winchester primers because I have learned that you don’t put Wolf primers in Glock ammunition you might depend on to save your life. The failure rate is high.

Here are the speeds I got today:

1246
1222
1247
1232
1238
1237

Average: 1237.0 fps.

This will work. I guess I could go higher, but this is more than acceptable. I would probably be doing something like 1260 in the big Glock with the longer barrel.

My plan is to mark down the micrometer reading on the powder measure. I should be able to reproduce the exact setting in the future when I have a better scale. Then I can find out what my charges actually weigh, and I can put it in my log.

I have a log now. Having to guess at my old recipes has taught me a thing or two. You need a log.

I bought Blue Dot powder because I had read that it was very good for 10mm. Then I had problems because of my scale, and I went back to Accurate No.7. The old powder worked perfectly. So what do I do with two pounds of Blue Dot? It’s a powder with limited pistol applications. I guess it will be fine for target ammo.

I took the old Nylon 66 with me today. It had been too long since its last workout. That gun brings back a ton of memories. I remember shooting it into a bullet trap with my cousin, in my grandfather’s driveway. The trap was maybe 50 yards away, and we were missing part of the time, which was inexcusable. My grandfather walked by, took my cousin’s Winchester pump .22, and rapid-fired a series of shots into the trap. He handed it back and said, “There’s nothing wrong with that gun.” We were impressed.

Today I shot my gongs from maybe 30 yards, just playing. I put 13 rounds in the Nylon 66, lifted it to my shoulder, and rapid-fired at a squirrel gong until it was empty. Didn’t check the sights on a paper target. Never missed. Suddenly I realized I was shooting better than my grandfather. Wow. He was no slouch. I didn’t see this coming.

I don’t know if I would still measure up if we were shooting at the same gong from a longer distance. The bullet trap wasn’t much of a test for him.

I hope Travis gets to shoot the gongs some day.

I’m going to crank out some 10mm defensive ammo because I need it now, and then I’ll order me a scale. Then maybe I’ll move on to .45 ACP. I have a ton of 9mm brass I need to get rid of, so I might actually make 9mm target ammo I don’t need. I find it easier to store cartridges than components.

Things are going well on the firearms front. I can’t control the world and make everything perfect, but there are a lot of things to feel good about.