They Hear Their Master’s Voice

It looks like the coronavirus graph for the US is struggling with a plateau. This is my best guess. The steady upward progress we saw in earlier weeks is over, but the rate is oscillating.

Good enough. Even the government is acknowledging that things are winding down, so I’m satisfied.

Yesterday, I made an essential trip to an essential store. I hit Harbor Freight and bought a TV mount for the gun room. Now I have a TV/monitor on the wall, and I no longer have a TV on the floor.

I’m not sure what’s going on with the mounting. I used a stud finder to locate good places to put the two screws that hold the TV. I got positive results, and when I drilled, I didn’t pop through drywall and then hit air. On the other hand, I didn’t get any sawdust. It’s like I drilled into plastic. The TV isn’t coming loose, so I’m happy.

I moved my dad’s old $1400 office chair into the gun room. In my opinion, it’s really a $300 chair that got a lot of help from insurance. I went with him to buy it, years ago. We went to Relax the Back, a chain that specializes in furniture covered by medical insurance. His back had been bothering him. He had to pay for it. I think that if the manufacturer and the store hadn’t been using to suckling on the insurance teat, the chair would have been much, much cheaper. It’s not significantly more expensive to make than a chair from Office Depot.

Whenever loans and insurance get involved, prices go up, as anyone who has sent a kid to college or paid for medical care can tell you. It’s sad, because responsible people who pay cash and cover their own costs get taken to the cleaners while irresponsible people who rely on others get big breaks.

After my dad became demented, Asians started calling him, trying to sell him special belts for his back. These things don’t work. It probably costs ten bucks to make one, and they charge Medicare $1200. A famous huckster who calls himself Dr. Ho sells one on TV. If you were wondering where your tax dollars were going, now you know. I’m sure it will make you feel better about giving half your income to the government. Dr. Ho really appreciates it. He probably needs a back belt to help him lift your money.

He ought to be in prison, but this is how the world works.

Today I’m putting more shelves in the gun room. I have to clear the floor. I ordered shelves yesterday from the Home Depot site, and they didn’t clear the order until the store was closed. I suppose the curbside pickup policy is slowing them down.

One reason I need more shelves is that I broke down and bought 3,000 more rounds of .22 ammo. I was going to quit, because I thought other people needed a chance. But no one was answering the ad. I figured it was fine for me to buy more if no one else had the good sense to take it.

The ammo panic is teaching people to shoot odd calibers. The panic patrol is stocking up on common things like 9mm, .22 LR, and .40. Supplies are tight, but I can get all the .204 Ruger and .17 HMR I want. I haven’t checked .38 Super. Let’s see. Yes, it’s available. Some types are out of stock at Midway USA, but others are not.

I got a .38 Super pistol because I thought it was cool, not because I wanted to shoot burglars with it. It’s a great defensive round, though. The FBI used to use it to get through the heavy steel of old car bodies. Special Agent Earl Hamer carried one when he and his crew thoroughly ventilated Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.

Maybe this is the time for people to start carrying .357 SIG, a caliber experts refer to as “useless.” It approximates .40 S&W performance, for only twice the price. Maybe shelves are full of .357 SIG rounds no one wants. There is also a weird .45 ACP variant out there.

Harbor Freight has a doorman now, like Studio 54. I had to stand in line outside, hovering over my social-distancing decal, hoping to be chosen. I tipped him $50 and asked for a table near the band. Then I found out he was letting everyone in eventually. And he wasn’t even selling molly.

I actually cautioned a guy who got too close to me. I like social distancing. I don’t think I’ll get COVID-19, but the disease does exist, and there is a much bigger chance that I’ll get the flu. Why not stand 6 feet apart when it’s not inconvenient? It’s a good thing to do even when there is no virus panic. It’s good manners.

If you’re a man, you should be used to social distancing in stores. Men in their thirties and forties have problems with strange women chasing them at the grocery and other stores, and it can train us to maintain space barriers. Women’s magazines, which are full of heinous advice provided by homosexual men and single women who will never be married, tell women this is a great way to land a husband.

I always hated it. I wasn’t going to ask a strange woman out because she kept turning up beside me at Barnes & Noble. It made me wonder what was wrong with them. Of course, when you get old and they stop, it’s not flattering.

Then when you hit 65, they start up again, and they’re rabid and unrelenting. And they’re not attractive young women worried about their biological clocks. Also, it shouldn’t be taken as a compliment. It doesn’t mean you’re attractive or charming. They just want something to lie next to at night, which other women can’t get. Terrifying.

I was in line for the register when a guy took the decal behind mine. He was wearing a carpenter’s dust mask. Don’t get me started. The problem was that he stood in front of his cart, about three inches away from me. I mentioned the decal, and he apologized and moved back. He had moved close to me so he could get a better look at an item I was standing next to. Of course, he would have been next to it himself a minute later, even without the strange decision to increase intimacy. He just thought he’d save time by doing something he clearly thought was dangerous.

My friend Mike lives in New Hampshire and works in Boston, which is a hotspot. He has become militant. He has taken to standing in the middle of aisles and saying, “You’re not going past me. You can try if you want.” He’s a pretty big guy, so he can do that. Probably not the best approach.

I told him about my theory that Northeasterners were getting hit hard because they’re dirty and don’t believe in germs. I thought he might disagree. He said, “I hate them.” That was a little over the top. He gave me a long speech about how rude and narcissistic they are. He is really fed up. He said people up there are ignoring the distancing rules wholesale, while voting for Democrats who are much more likely to impose draconian measures than Republicans. I guess they think having a rule, not obeying it, is what counts.

That’s actually very normal for leftists. Make a rule that’s unsustainable and irrational, and then violate it as a matter of policy while expecting the government to make other people obey.

He says Michigan’s liberal governor won’t let people go outside. Yeah, that’s totally reasonable and science-based. We have all gotten used to the stories of people who gave other people coronavirus from 50 yards away while mowing yards. He says she won’t let people buy anything that isn’t essential, even when visiting a store for a good reason. So if you go to Target to buy canned soup, you can’t get your kids a Monopoly board to keep them from tearing the walls out of your house.

Sounds like a total nutcase, but she’s in charge because people don’t vote with their brains. It makes me dread the emasculating post-Trump future, when her kind rules the nation. Look what they’re capable of. I knew they would be socialists, but I didn’t think they could incarcerate everyone on a whim.

Death, for Christians, is pleasant and rewarding. In this respect, it is different from, and generally preferable to, living under anti-Christian leftist nanny-tyrants.

Mike has 5,000 N95 masks, with more on the way. He ordered them weeks ago for his employees, but he uses them, too. I don’t know what good they will do him, but he has real reasons for taking unusual measures. He has had heart and immune system problems. He offered to send me masks, but I wasn’t interested.

In other news, I saw a neat video from Messianic Rabbi Zev Porat. He works in Israel, reaching out to Jews. He’s from an Orthodox family, and he has helped a number of heavy-duty Orthodox Jews, including rabbis, come to Yeshua.

He spoke about the coronavirus panic, using the word “panic.” He knows what’s happening. The hysteria is from Satan.

He talked about the Hebrew word for panic. He says it’s “panikos.” Pretty creative. It comes from the name of Pan, supposedly the oldest false god. His name means “all” for some reason. I recall being taught that the reason was that he was originally the greatest of the Greek false gods.

Pan looks like our typical depiction of Satan. He’s a man with goat’s horns, a post-90’s chin beard, and a goat’s lower body. Some equate him with Satan.

It’s interesting that the ancient Jews chose to associate panic with a pagan deity.

The word “pandemic” comes from roots meaning something like “all (Pan) people.”

Among pagans, there was a belief that if one woke Pan up from a nap, he might yell and cause livestock or people to stampede. So a panic is really a stampede. Isn’t that perfect? We’re acting like scared cattle. Instead of listening to the Holy Spirit, we look to see what the other cattle are doing, and we do the same. This is why you can’t find toilet paper, which is a product totally unrelated to caring for coronavirus victims.

I’ve been telling people the Beast isn’t just a man or a spirit. It’s the herd of human beings who aren’t led by the Spirit of God.

The other day, while considering the coronavirus hysteria, I thought of a flock of birds flying in random directions as one simply because the birds in front turned this way or that. We’ve all seen this. Human beings are supposed to be smart, but we do the same thing every day. I hate it. I have always hated it. Even when I was a little kid, I could not understand other kids who did and thought as others did, without thinking. I noticed that sometimes they seemed to lose their minds. It was like something else had taken over. I didn’t understand why they couldn’t see it.

When I was in the second grade, I knew a kid named Dave. We were friends. He was a great guy. One day I went up to him after school was out, and when I spoke to him, he puffed out his chest and started barging toward me. He bellowed, saying he was a Gator fan, and he said something or other about how you have to get out of the way for Gator fans or else. I had no idea what he was talking about. He acted like he didn’t know me. I actually asked myself if I had mistaken someone else for Dave. I was seeing the Beast in action. Didn’t know it.

You’re supposed to be the head, not the tail. If you hoarded toilet paper in March, you’re a follower, not a leader. You don’t think. You’re disconnected from God, and you’re displeasing him.

Porat mentions the Banias, which is something I’ve written about. It’s a hole in the side of Baal-Hermon (“lord of the curse”), which is one name for Mount Hermon in the north of Israel. “Banias” means something like “place of Pan.” It’s an Arabic term, and the Arabs don’t have a “P” sound in their language. I suppose it would be “Panias” if they did.

According to the book of Enoch, Baal-Hermon, a snow-capped peak, is the place where Satan (or Semyaza) and a bunch of other angels came down from heaven, took physical form, and agreed to defy God and have sex with women. They exchanged curses binding each other in a pact. This is where the name of the mountain comes from.

These were angels who gave rise to a race of dominant freaks who oppressed mankind, and the flood was sent to clear them off the earth.

It’s not clear to me how Satan could have been cursed after he tempted Adam and then gone on to fall at Mount Hermon, much later. Maybe Satan and Semyaza are different spirits, or maybe the serpent wasn’t the spirit we call Satan. The book of Enoch says the angels who had sex with women tried to get forgiveness by sending Enoch to talk to God, but it certainly looks like the serpent was already damned and would not have bothered trying to get forgiveness. There is an explanation, but I don’t know what it is.

Mt. Hermon is one of three sources of the Jordan.

In the past, the hole at the bottom of the mountain contained a powerful spring with a very vigorous flow of water. Pagans used to throw their sacrifices into the spring, presumably contaminating the Jordan as it made its way through Israel to the Sea of Galilee and then the Dead Sea. An earthquake eventually reduced the flow.

The Banias was the location of Caesarea Philippi. This is the place where Jesus called Peter Satan. He said the gates of hell would not prevail against his church. The Banias was a gate of hell. It was surrounded by pagan structures. Still is.

It’s remarkable how things fit together. The Beast is the false god of the flesh. He will rule humans as a herd, and he will do it largely through panics. People who pretend to be kind and rational in normal times will turn hard and even vicious in enforcing a panicked herd’s irrational dictates. We’re seeing that now among coronavirus hysterics.

People who wouldn’t hurt you during normal times will burn your house with you in it if they think they have to do it in order to stop a plague. People who don’t know God are terrified of death. They are not like solid Christians.

A few years back, God put this word in my mind: “I will not be rushed.” I didn’t see how prophetic it was until now. When Satan rules you, you are likely to be rushed. A rush and a panic are the same thing.

There have been many times when I felt like I needed to act fast because of some perceived threat, and I deliberately chose not to do anything, simply because I remembered what God had said.

Here’s something else God showed me: worry is faith in Satan.

People don’t like to hear that, because many people think worry is good. The Bible is against worry. It tells us not to do it, over and over. It says it leads to evil.

If you watch Zev Porat’s video, you will see him say a remarkable thing. Talking to a man who is worried about coronavirus, he asks him who he has faith in. He says essentially the same thing God told me.

Worry is faith in Satan. Worry spawns panic. Worry leads to counterproductive herd behavior. Satan is using coronavirus to teach us to obey him, so we can become the body and bride of the Beast. It all fits together.

It also fits in with another thing God taught me, which is that there is always symmetry in the supernatural. God’s imitation is Satan. Faith’s imitation is worry. Being led by spirits of panic is an imitation of being led by the Holy Spirit. The counterpart of Jesus is the man who becomes the incarnation of the Beast. The counterpart of the body of Christ is the body of Satan, which is the body of the Beast.

The Beast’s prophet is probably the counterpart of Elijah.

It’s wonderful to see a rabbi saying things I’ve said. God tells everyone the exact same things. When people who claim to be Christians disagree, somebody is out of the loop.

I don’t know what it’s like to be terrified of death. I’m grateful for that. My mother was the same way. When she found out she had cancer, she only underwent treatment to make the rest of the family happy. She didn’t pity herself or spend her days crying. My sister, on the other hand, became hysterical and even more selfish. She was the picture of a bad cancer patient.

My great-grandmother was a healthy 85-year-old charismatic who refused to go to doctors, and one day, she got in bed and told everyone she was going to die. No shrieking or whining.

Maybe our consciences tell us where we’re going if we die.

If so, this is a bad time for leftists, who seem to be getting hit much harder than people in Christian areas.

I guess that’s all I have. Still no major celebrity deaths. Not one. Still many fewer known infections than the flu. Still below last year’s flu death total.

I better get to Home Depot.

Fodder for the Math-Challenged and Panic-Prone

My prognostications concerning the pandemic have taken a hit!

For days, the world coronavirus new-case graph has been dipping, creating an apparent maximum followed by a decline. Over the last couple of days, it has turned upward again. It’s still down from the peak, and it’s WAY down from where it would be had there been no dips. That’s the important thing. If the epidemic weren’t faltering, we would have many, many more new cases today, and the lookout for next week would be much worse.

Here is today’s graph, which comes from last night’s figures. If the epidemic had not dipped, the graph would run up and out of the frame to the right. It would be as high as the word at the beginning of this sentence.

I’m not going to keep downloading and posting this graph. I did it today so people would know I was acknowledging the upturn, but it’s getting to be a drag.

Was I wrong? I can’t know, but I don’t think so. Maybe a new country is having problems, or maybe testing or counting is changing. I’m still betting on a continued decline through the month and, well, forever, until and unless we get a second epidemic.

Here’s something I’m thinking about: why is the death rate worse than they said it would be a week ago? This disease is far less common than the flu, regardless of what anyone says, but the death toll will probably be comparable when all is said and done.

I’m going to make another wild guess: it’s because very old people are extremely susceptible, and we don’t protect them. I’m going to guess that if we ever see real figures, we will learn that the vast majority of the dead were over 70, and many were confined in homes.

A few days back, I noted that about half of the deaths in Massachusetts took place in facilities where old people live, and they were generally elderly people, not staffers. What percentage of that state’s citizens are elderly? Not half. Believe that. People in homes have an abnormally high death rate. My friend Mike, who runs a hospice up there, says it’s wiping out old folks homes.

I was talking to him about it today. I told him to imagine that he lived with his son, and one of them had the disease. Would they be able to keep the other one healthy? His answer: of course. You stay apart. You wash your hands. You watch what you touch. All of us have shared homes with people who had diseases more contagious than coronavirus, without getting infected. It’s just not that hard to protect yourself.

When my dad was alive, I was generally able to isolate him from diseases, but I only had one patient, he wasn’t cooped up with a bunch of other people, and I actually cared about him.

I guess I seem obsessed with pink eye, which I had earlier this year, but it’s one of the most contagious diseases imaginable. You spew viruses from every possible outlet for weeks. Your doctor will tell you to take your clothing to laundromats because it needs the high heat of commercial machines in order to be rendered safe. That’s how bad it is. I had pink eye when I was a kid, I lived with three other people, my mother did not use a laundromat, and no one else in the family got the disease. It’s not that hard to protect people from contagion when you know there’s a danger.

When I was looking for a home for my dad, I saw a number of local ALF’s. I toured the cheapest and the most expensive. None of them were truly clean, by the standards of ordinary houses. Even in the cleanest one, there were always smears of things that hadn’t quite been removed. There were smells. And the places were full of things old people would touch, like books, tables, and chair arms.

I don’t think my area is exceptional. In fact, the ALF industry is competitive here because of the huge number of elderly residents. This county is probably doing a better job than other places.

In my opinion, we’re letting them die. Keeping them safe is a lot of trouble, and there isn’t much motivation, because we see them as people who are nearly dead already. They’re easily replaced, from the perspective of ALF managers. There are people waiting to move in. That’s the hard truth.

When you get past a certain age, and the inconvenience of keeping you well reaches a certain threshold, people will do less and less to keep you well. It’s human nature. I’m not endorsing it. I’m pointing it out. We all know it.

We keep hearing about young and supposedly healthy people who have died, and very often, their ages have been mentioned in the headlines, to make sure we see it even if we don’t read the articles. The obvious intent: to prove that this is a disease that is equally dangerous to people of all ages. It’s a lie. The death rate for people over 80 is over 10%. Kids almost never die. If you’re under 60, the rate goes down close to 1%.

It’s like AIDS. They kept trying to convince us we were all at risk, and it wasn’t true. It’s impossible for a heterosexual man to get AIDS from a woman. Somewhere, there is probably someone who really did get syphilis from a toilet seat, but it’s considered impossible. Female-male AIDS transmission is the same way. Women who think their infected husbands are straight are living with homosexuals or intravenous drug users. You can check WHO if you don’t believe me. The “heterosexual” men in the African AIDS epidemic have had sex with other men.

Magic Johnson is a homosexual. Accept it. Either that, or he shot up. The odds against any other type of transmission are astronomical. One famous group of people were infected deliberately by a murderous homosexual dentist named Acer, but if Johnson had gotten the disease in a similar way, there would be a cluster of fellow victims. There isn’t.

They used to terrify us with numbers from Italy, and then we found out the average age of the dead was about 80. Italians didn’t look out for the elderly.

My guess is that we are going to find out that all or nearly all countries with high death rates will have unusually high average ages for their fatalities. The rest will turn out to be places with terrible medical care.

The Swedish government is with me. Their policy is to look out for the elderly and the sick, while refraining from locking the rest of the population down. I assume this is still their policy. It was last week, and it was working very well.

I’ve seen emotional guilt merchants accusing people who mention the age disparity of being insensitive. They say we don’t care about old people. Where is the basis for that claim? What if I say death in general is more likely to hit old people? It’s true. Does it mean I think they’re disposable?

The effect of age is very important, because, while it’s bad news for the elderly, it’s very good news for nearly everyone else. There is nothing wrong with spreading good news. When did good news become a bad thing?

The special vulnerability of the aged and sick is useful information. It could have been a great help in strategizing. Instead, our politicians listened to the ignorant, emotional mob and wrecked our economy unnecessarily.

It’s a terrible thing when a young mother dies from COVID-19, but it’s also a rarity, and we have to acknowledge that. We shouldn’t put her on the news and make her the face of the disease. It’s like making a lottery winner the face of the average American net worth. The most typical COVID-19 victim is a healthy-looking person who has no symptoms or coughs a little.

Where are the heart-wrenching videos of the tens of thousands of Americans who died from the flu this season? Don’t they matter? Many of them were babies and toddlers. If their tragic deaths didn’t rate coverage, why are we zooming in on atypical COVID-19 deaths?

The press made healthy heterosexual Americans the faces of AIDS, and it turned out to be baseless propaganda. We’re letting them do the same thing all over again.

Maybe if we focused on protecting the most endangered, we could save more people.

To sum up, I’m doubling down. Again. So I’m quadrupling down. No one can predict the future except God, but I’m betting on greatly reduced new infection numbers before April ends. If I’m wrong, sue me for medical malpractice. I’m just a blogger.

Now I’m going to try to make some 10mm ammunition. I can’t wait. I may also hit Harbor Freight for a mount to put a TV on the wall in the gun room. I have to have a computer in there, and I have a 37″ TV gathering dust on the floor.

Still no big celebrity coronavirus deaths. John Prine is at the top, and he was about as famous as Larry Hovis.

Dining Room Furniture is for Losers

All you single males out there, and males with wives who have their priorities straight, listen to me. Convert your dining rooms to gun rooms. You won’t believe how great it is.

Yesterday I found a way to mount a Hornady Lock-n-Load ammo press on a Rockwell Jawhorse. Today I’ve been getting out my reloading junk and putting the press in working order. It’s fantastic.

The thing that concerned me most was the state of the powder measure. This is a complicated dispenser that drops powder into cartridges. Before I understood just how bad rust is up here, as contrasted with Miami, my powder measure developed a nice orange-brown coat. This would be a problem for most people, but not for Eccentric Man, strange visitor from planet Heaven. I had a Baldor industrial buffer waiting for me with a wire wheel and an assortment of buffing compounds and buffing wheels. I disassembled the measure, cleaned off the rust, and moved on.

I found my Lyman powder scale. It can be operated using an AC adaptor or a 9-volt battery. Being me, I stuck a battery in it years ago, for no good reason. Then I left it in there. When I opened the scale up, the battery was in bad shape, but no chemicals had touched the scale. I was in business.

It almost looks like Duracell made the battery in such a way that failure would be less likely to damage anything but the battery itself. Are they that smart?

I stuck 10mm dies in the press, and now I’m trying to remember how it works.

I just downloaded a manual. With God’s help, I may be able to make some ammo tomorrow.

I learned something useful: you shouldn’t clean your brass until you remove the primers. Heh heh. I ran a 10mm shell through the deprimer, and the pocket is filthy. I soaked the shells in citric acid and water to clean them, and it looks like I’m going to have to do it all over again.

It’s amazing to see that the Jawhorse is rigid enough for this use. You could literally hold up a pickup truck on my workbench, if you could balance it, but it flexes when you make ammunition. The Jawhorse weighs about 75% less, and it doesn’t seem to move at all. We’ll see if that holds true when I’m pushing shells into dies.

I received some night sights for the new Glock. What to do? They don’t install themselves. Eccentric Man wasn’t intimidated. He has workbenches, tools, and a Panavise with Pana-hands in his dining room. I stuck the Glock’s slide in the vise and went to work. Then I realized I really needed a sight-pushing tool to do it right. I also needed a tiny 3/16″ nut driver to remove Glock’s silly front sight screw. That’s okay! Eccentric Man has Ebay and Amazon apps on his phone. The tools will be here very soon.

I’m going to make a new lever and handle for the press. I’ve seen some things other people have done, and I like their ideas. I could pay a lot of money for a new lever, but why? Eccentric Man has a propane torch, vises, and a lathe. He can make his own lever for $10.

I guess it’s odd for a Christian who is obsessed with God’s love and who has zero interest in violence to enjoy firearms so much, but I do, just as I enjoy nice tools and good kitchen knives. It makes me wonder what will happen to me if I’m ever involved in a defensive shooting. They say cops and prosecutors really don’t like it when you defend yourself with quality equipment. They prefer you use your grandma’s rusty .25 automatic, filled with ammo your grandpa won in a poker game in 1952. It makes you look like a harmless creampuff who never thought about firearms until he was ambushed.

People say that if you use things like a laser, a 10mm, and excellent expanding hand-loaded rounds, you’re as good as indicted, even if you did nothing wrong. I would probably be very well equipped in a shooting situation, but it’s not because I’m a potential serial killer. I just like getting gun-related stuff right.

I’m not a psychopath. Really. I don’t fit the profile. I don’t start fires, except, well a few dozen times a year, because I have to get rid of downed trees. I don’t torture animals, except, yes, I do shoot squirrels because they’re annoying. You don’t know what they’re like. If Ellen DeGeneres lived here and shared the place with Richard Simmons, THEY’D shoot them. And I hardly ever wet the bed these days. Probably not even once a week. I’m not the droid you’re looking for. Pay no attention to the AK with the green laser under the rear seat of my truck.

I could carry a Kel-Tec with cheapo 9mm JHP and hope for good shot placement. That would make me look like a bona fide gun moron. Of course, it didn’t help George Zimmerman. It’s what he used, and he refused to shoot until he was on his back having his head pounded against concrete, and his prosecutors literally perjured themselves in order to railroad him. Now he’s so crazy, he may actually be what they claimed he was before they drove him around the bend.

It probably helps to live in the right county. Zimmerman lived in Seminole County, which, like Wyoming, is far to the left of my county. Where I live, the cops would probably help me hide the body.

You really need a gun room. You should even convince your doctor it’s a medical necessity, for your nerves. Then it’s deductible. If they can give you a note that forces restaurants to accommodate your filthy, smelly, stupid, untrained dog, and if they can prescribe blunts for insomnia, and if they can prescribe castration for an 8-year-old boy just because he enjoyed watching The Turning Point, surely they can prescribe gun rooms.

It might even cut some ice with your wife.

Navy Beans and Poached Squirrel

I still have not set up my reloading press. I made a platform for it yesterday, but I haven’t followed through. I plan to get on it shortly.

I thought I would say something about the epidemic, since I have been writing about it for so long. Today, again, the infection rate is dropping. At least that’s what’s happening according to the Johns Hopkins graph page, which I have linked to in the past.

The rate at which the rate is dropping seems to be slowing at the moment, but bumps are to be expected.

Toilet paper is still unavailable online, unless you order questionable Chinese coronavirus scam paper, or you get really lucky, or you pay some low-life 5 times what the paper is worth.

At some point, the expense and trouble make using the curtains an intelligent choice.

I can’t figure the toilet paper problem out. I was wrong to think the problem would only last a couple of weeks. I read that factories would keep churning it out, and I figured people could only continue buying three dozen rolls per day for a short time. I figured online sources would rebound quickly because they could limit per-person orders and no one could go in and clean them out.

Still, the paper is hard to find during reasonable shopping hours, and online sources are useless. I check because I get bored.

I saw someone trying to explain it online. The theory was that people were using home-quality paper instead of commercial-quality. They make you stay home, you can’t use the toilet at work, and you end up using ridiculous fluffy paper with baby ducks stamped on it instead of the military-looking stuff. Somehow or other, increasing the demand for fluffy paper threw things out of whack.

I don’t believe it. I never used that stuff, and I still can’t find the kind I buy. Not online. I can’t find anything that isn’t Chinese or overpriced. Several months from now, this could become a problem. I’ll have to get up early and get to the store before the hoarders, and I may have to have a late breakfast. This is how you get toilet paper. Be at the store when it opens. While you’re there, make sure you use the can. Free is free.

I think the explanation is a crock. If the only problem were the difficulty of making fluffy paper, we would be able to buy non-fluffy paper, and we’re not. The problem is that people are still buying every roll they see. The system, which isn’t designed for a 2000% increase in demand, is just not built to cope with it.

If people don’t get over it, some morning in July, I will have to be at Winn-Dixie as soon as the special old-people-only shopping hour is over.

Manufacturers are ramping production up, and distribution, contrary to what some people claim, is not out of commission due to the the millions of dead truck drivers who can’t show up for work. They don’t exist. More people have died from the flu this year.

It’s amazing how people think there are overflowing hospitals and bodies on sidewalks. Does anyone actually read the news?

I still don’t know a single person who has coronavirus or who has mentioned a relative or loved one who has it.

There are STILL STILL STILL no major celebrities who have died! Inexplicable! But there are celebrities who are trying to capitalize, and I don’t just mean the ones who are virtue-signaling and trying to tell us what to do on social media. Bill Cosby, Michael Avenatti, Bernie Madoff, R. Kelly, and Julian Assange are all trying to get released so they can avoid the virus.

Here’s how out of the loop I am: I had no idea Avenatti, Kelly, and Assange were incarcerated. I’m thrilled to see how little I know about such things.

I have to read up on Avenatti. That guy is not to be believed. Is he still posting cocky Tweets? When it comes to denial and lack of remorse, he rivals the pre-conviction Harvey Weinstein. I feel sorry for him. I’m astounded by what he did to his life.

In other news, I’ve escalated my own fight against COVID-19. Having heard that quinine will keep me well, I have committed to having a gin and tonic every day, no matter how difficult it is to choke it down. It’s definitely working. I started two days ago, and I’m as healthy as a horse.

I found a very nice brand of tonic water: Q. I’ll bet Patrick Stewart drinks it. Is there really any quinine in it? Observe my symptom-free status and judge for yourself. That’s science, right there.

I didn’t realize how nice a G&T could be. A good mixer really helps. It makes me want to buy cinchona powder–the source of quinine–and make my own tonic. Summer is coming.

There’s a good chance my resolve will fail when my 4-pack of tonic is gone, but I might want one or two G&T’s later this year.

I believe you would have to buy something like a pound of cinchona bark in order to get a therapeutic quinine dose every day for a couple of weeks. I was curious, and I checked. For malaria, you take 200 mg per day. That adds up to 4 grams of cinchona, so one ounce per week.

Okay, you have to have two or three ounces. Still a lot.

Now that the known rate of COVID-19 here is above one in 3,000, I have to admit I think more (i.e. a little bit) about protecting myself. I think about that with the flu, too. I really hate getting sick. I’ve been pretty bold about running errands. Will I still be this brave if we get up to one in 100? That would probably mean the real rate was more like 10%. The world would be a sea of cooties.

Here’s something I wonder about: what do single people do for food when they get sick? When I had pink eye, I still went to buy groceries, taking what precautions I could. Would I do the same thing if I thought I had coronavirus? Would I have a choice? I guess I could order food. I don’t know if I could eat Domino’s for three weeks. It’s hard enough to eat it once.

I bought two bags of navy beans. I wasn’t afraid stores would run out of food and leave me starving. I was afraid hoarders would buy all the navy beans in existence and that I would not be able to get them again until after the harvest. I don’t know how the bean supply chain works. I really like to have beans with cornbread occasionally.

I guess that with those beans and a canister of oatmeal, I could get through a week of quarantine without crippling constipation. Beans by themselves would be worse than coronavirus. Those things can lodge in your system for days, doing what beans do the whole time.

When the week was up, I would have to poach squirrels, in both senses of the word.

No, I guess I could still use drive-throughs.

I have some .38 Super brass soaking in water and citric acid. I should take them out and work on the press.

If I die, the first one here gets the toilet paper. It’s in the master bath in a cabinet. Sorry it doesn’t have baby ducks printed on it. This is what happens when men do the shopping.

Gun Room Starting to Blossom

I’ve been dreading attaching my ammo press to an indoor workbench because I didn’t want to drill holes in the bench. I was inventing devices that would clamp to the table without gouging it. I had some ideas for welding a plate to steel tubing. I could screw the press to the plate, put rubber under the tubing, and clamp the tubing to the bench.

Today, I realized I needed to do something if I ever expected to get started. I decided to go quick and dirty with the Rockwell Jawhorse.

The Jawhorse is a weird steel tripod with a foot-tightened vise on top. It’s very heavy. It’s awkard to move. If you can get past those problems, it’s a startlingly useful tool. It holds things for sawing. You can clamp a little table in it. You can get special attachments for sheet goods.

It’s one of those tools which is so annoying, you peridically consider selling it, but then you find yourself using it, and you’re glad you have it.

Harbor Freight now makes a good clone.

My plan: construct a wooden platform for the Jawhorse, clamp it in the jaws, and mount the press on it. Then I could keep the platform, and when I wanted to make ammo, I could slap it in the Jawhorse and go to work. IF it was rigid enough. That was the question.

I used to have my press mounted on my garage workbench, which is very sturdy. For reasons too boring to go into, even though the bench was strong, the press still tended to wobble during use, and I had to add some wood to the bench to make it stop. When a Hornady Lock n Load press wobbles, it can cause rounds to fail to complete the reloading process. It’s a problem.

I don’t want to make ammunition on my old workbench, which is now in my un-air-conditioned shop. I want to do it in my gun room, a few steps away from the refrigerator. This is why I got the Jawhorse out.

Using a Sawzall, I cut two pieces of 2 x 8 from a wet board I found behind the shop. I cleaned them up on the band saw. I used 4 Tapcons to screw them together. This gave me a platform. I drilled two 1/2″ holes in it. I found some mismatched 1/2″ bolts and some washers. I stuck the press on the platform and used the bolts to fasten it down. I guess this took 20 minutes.

I gave the press a few test pumps. I think it’s going to work. It seems more rigid than my old workbench system. How about that?

This will give me time to create a real reloading stand or come up with a device to mount my press to the indoor bench.

If I can get the press to run, I’ll be able to produce a lovely stash of 10mm, .38 Super, and .45 ACP from my components. I may use some of my endless pile of .40 S&W brass to make ammo for my buddy Mike. Then I won’t have brass overflowing from my brass container, and I’ll be able to shoot my new Glock 20 without paying ridiculous prices for ammo. It will be nice.

Seems like I have gotten much better at finishing projects. I used to be very good at starting them but not so great at following through.

Now I need to machine a handle for the press. That plastic ball loves to unscrew itself.

Goodbye, Pandemic; Hello, Needless Recession

The coronavirus news gets better and better, at least as far as the disease itself is concerned. The oppression and totally unnecessary economic destruction are different matters.

The Johns Hopkins site that graphs new cases as they appear shows that the American infection rate is down near the point where it was two weeks ago. That means transmission is decelerating. The epidemic is going away, and it’s happening fast. Some time in May, we should be walking around outdoors again, and toilet paper will be on sale everywhere. We will be using it for landfill.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to be without toilet paper for weeks. I’m so grateful. My own supply seems to grow. I had plenty before the lunacy started, and I keep discovering new rolls. Found one in a closet yesterday.

Amazon has had a run on bidet attachments for toilets. Maybe coronavirus will drive Americans to catch up with France and start cleaning their rear ends properly.

When I’m in stores, I force myself to walk by paper towels. It’s actually exciting to see them. I feel drawn to them. But I have all I need, and as long as I’m willing to shop before noon, I can always get more. If I pass them by, people with big families may get a shot.

I don’t want to pick on people, but I’ve seen some desperate, uninformed behavior here. I’ve seen a lot of masks. The only kind of mask that is known to protect people from coronavirus is an N95 or N100 mask. I don’t know much about it, but they’re for people in unusual situations. I read about these masks yesterday. A doctor said they were very uncomfortable and that it’s hard to wear one for more than half an hour or so. You have to push the air in and out, and that wears you out. You also have to fit them properly, which most people would not do even if they had them. And you can’t keep the same one forever. They get contaminated. They’re disposable. Health care workers just came up with an approved way to clean them, and that was out of desperation.

Even good masks don’t catch all the bugs, even if you fit them correctly. That’s interesting. They may catch a significant percentage.

I hate to cite experts, who have been wrong about all the big things, but they say you shouldn’t wear a mask. They don’t think it helps. I guess it will help you not to put virus-laden fingers in your nose and mouth, but were you planning to do that?

When I go out, I see people in bandanas and Home Depot dust respirators, often loosely fitted. They’re not being used like protective gear. They’re being used like charms. “If I wear this, the disease will stay away. And I will win the Florida lottery.”

I’m still waiting to see someone who has poked a hole in a mask for cigarettes. I guarantee you, that person is out there.

People are wearing gloves. How is that supposed to help? You can’t get the virus through your hands. If it gets on a glove, it’s just as easy to transfer to your face as it would be if it were on your bare hand.

Here’s my hat tip to neurosis: I keep a bottle of alcohol in the car. I pour it in my hand when I leave a store, and I rub it over both hands. Then I let it dry. Does it actually do anything? How would I know? If the official numbers are right, I’ve probably never seen a person with coronavirus, let alone been near one. Even if they’re off by a factor of 100, I haven’t been exposed much. But it feels nice to make the effort, and the flu and colds, which are bigger threats, are out there.

I should have been using sanitizer a long time ago, and I was, but I found that it pours out of the bottle when you leave it in a hot car. I never fixed that problem. I gave up.

I wonder what people think when they see me with the car door open, pouring precious alcohol on my hand. Maybe I should draw my gun before I do it. Couple of warning shots might be smart.

I’ve actually considered buying real quinine, which is available on Ebay. How could it hurt? But I suppose if I had the extreme misfortune to develop a serious case of COVID-19, doctors would come up with better treatments than I would. It’s just possible.

What’s going to happen when the total number of active cases drops down near zero? Will our keepers determine that hot weather really does kill coronavirus infections, giving themselves heartburn, because Donald Trump guessed it first? Maybe they’ll tell us to stay indoors because our crazy lockdowns are really what did the trick. It’s important for the powers that be to keep confirming that their bad choices were correct.

China isn’t the only place where saving face leads to doubling down on terrible decisions. Hello…Biden nomination.

No, he’s great. Democrats should rally behind him. Wonderful choice. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

I guess it’s fitting that the Democrats are nominating a man with an underlying condition.

Here’s a prediction: when all is said and done, IF we get a reliable test and IF it’s applied retroactively to samples from people who have died (as it should be), we will find out that many died from something other than COVID-19. I may be wrong. It may be easier to diagnose a fatality than someone who gets well, so maybe coronavirus fatalities have been identified with more certainty. If we test people who got well, I think the overwhelming likelihood is that a lot of coronavirus cases will become flu cases. After all, the Chinese say current tests have a 40-80% false-positive rate.

It will be great when the vaccine becomes available. They used to tell us it would be 18 months. Now one company is shooting for a 2020 release. That would pretty much kill next year’s epidemic, if one begins.

I think I’ll be good this time around. I’ll get the flu shot this year, and when the coronavirus shot becomes available, I’ll get it, too, unless all the doses have been reserved for celebrities.

STILL NO MAJOR CELEBRITY DEATHS. Incredible. Are the Illuminati giving them enchanted gluten-free suppositories?

In lighter news, I used my new, bigger propane cooker last night. I splurged on a choice rib eye instead of the selects they sell at Winn-Dixie for hamburger prices. Splurging was a mistake. It wasn’t any better. The center was just as tough. On the up side, the cap was tender, and the flavor was magnificent. There is nothing like high-temperature butter-frying for steak.

I had to use long tongs because you can’t really get that close to the cooker when it’s working. It will take the hairs right off your hands. I think that means I should use a bigger skillet which will cover more of the flames. Now that I have a proper cooker, I can use a griddle if I want. I can cook for two, in the unlikely event I have a guest.

The butter in the skillet caught fire while I was cooking. That warmed my heart. It told me things were working out.

The rib eye is THE steak. All others are inferior. Unfortunately, Winn-Dixie has been pushing T-bones lately. It’s not a good steak. Sorry, but it’s true.

Filets are good. New York strips are acceptable. A T-bone or porterhouse, which is a filet and strip attached to a bone, is a bad steak for frying. The meat shrinks, the bone doesn’t, and the bone ends up interfering with the pan-to-steak contact. This means no crust. Even if you cook a T-bone by some other means, you still have a very good cut on one side and a lesser cut on the other.

New York strips are wildly overrated. They’re dry and relatively tough. A good one is okay, but it can never compare to a better cut, and bad ones are common.

I’d rather have a good skirt steak than a T-bone or strip.

If the recession goes as expected, good beef will be cheap. I think I paid $7 per pound for prime boneless rib eye during the real estate recession. That was at Costco. I had to buy entire roasts.

Let’s check my Ebay bench grinder poverty index. Yesterday, the search “Baldor bench grinder” came up with 42 used items. Today the total is 44. If my theory is right, the number will increase. Men will be exchanging their tools for signs to hold up beside highways.

But it was worth it. To fight an epidemic which is roughly as deadly as the flu.

It will be interesting to see how the index pans out. Sad, but still interesting.

Common Cocktail in the Crosshairs

If you’re in the state of Florida, I have news you can use. It turns out liquor stores and Dunkin’ Donuts are essential businesses. You may not be able to go to work and feed your family, but you can knock back all the gin you want. There is no shortage. And you can dunk crullers in it.

Speaking of gin, I bought some. I picked Boodle’s. I am just barely a drinker, but coronavirus drove me to the bottle. I kept reading stories about quinine-related medicines which are being used successfully to treat the disease. That got me thinking about quinine, and one thing led to another.

Quinine is an essential ingredient in tonic water, which is used to make gin and tonics.

For those who don’t know, here is the history of the gin and tonic, as I recall it from listening to unreliable gossip. The British conquered most of the world so they could do helpful things like growing opium in India and forcing China to let them sell it to addicts. A lot of the places the British conquered had mosquitoes and malaria. Quinine kills the malaria parasite, so British occupiers had to take it regularly. It tasted disgusting by itself, but some clever person–this is not a surprise, considering the fact that we’re talking about the British–decided to combine it with strong drink. Eventually, the concoction morphed into the concoction known as the gin and tonic, which Americans perfected by adding ice.

Some claim the gin was added to kill bacteria in third-world drinking water, but come on. We weren’t born yesterday.

Will tonic water give you a good dose of quinine that might help you avoid coronavirus? Yes. If you drink two liters a day. That’s what I read, anyway. Modern tonic water generally contains very little quinine. Two liters of gin and tonic per day may be business as usual for a British soldier, but it would be hard on most people.

I read that there are snobby brands of tonic water that contain a lot more quinine than, say, Canada Dry. Maybe you could get by with a pint a day. You’re not driving to work anyway, so why not?

I didn’t mean that.

Funny thing: tonic water seems to be disappearing from shelves. I went to the store yesterday and today. Yesterday, I could get anything I wanted. Today I couldn’t find the snobby stuff. I wanted to see what it was like. I’ve tried it before, but I forgot how it tasted.

There is a theory that quinine softens berserk immune responses like the one that kills coronavirus fatalities. Is it true? How would I know? Interesting, though.

In related news, locals are now hoarding inexpensive sugar. There must be a story out there that says it cures coronavirus. My local groceries are running out of store-brand sugar, but the expensive stuff, which is exactly the same, is still there.

Maybe the bag itself is the cure.

I got myself a new propane cooker. I had to order it because people hoarded them. Someone explain that. I bought a wimpy one a while back, and it had to be coaxed to do an acceptable job of frying steaks in butter. When I realized it was always going to be a challenge to use it, I decided to get a bigger one, but by then, half of the county had decided that propane cookers were the answer to respiratory disease.

The first one put out something like 50,000 BTU’s, if memory serves. The new one is over 200,000, I think. Anyway, it really pumps out the heat. Perfect steak, here I come.

I ordered it from Home Depot, and they shipped it to the store. Today I got a text telling me to get curbside service. I drove to Home Depot, and a guy in the wrong kind of mask came out and lobbed it into my hatch. On the sidewalk in front of the store, people were standing in line on marks six feet apart. They had to wait for the doorman to let them in. That was new. It used to be easier to get into Studio 54.

The epidemic appears to be dying out, so I hope the weirdness subsides soon. In the meantime, coronavirus has made shopping at Home Depot much easier. You sit in your car and make them do the work. It’s hard not to like that.

Guess I’ll have a steak and a G&T. Life could be worse.

What Goes Up…

Warning: I’m pretty full of myself today. I hope people will consider that unusual. I just checked the daily Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Sky-is-Falling graph, and guess what’s happening? The curve is picking up speed…in the downward direction…in April…as a certain blogger predicted.

I’m not even looking at the numbers and my equation. What’s the point? Here’s what’s happening: the actual figures are diverging downward from my equation’s numbers, exactly as I said they would. I don’t need to get out my calculator to see that. It would be like looking at my phone to find out what the weather is like, instead of getting out of my chair and opening the front door.

I actually do that.

If this was so easy for me and maybe 4 billion other people with common sense, why couldn’t our government figure it out? No, it was better to hit the rest of us with a $17000 per capita tax bill in order to fund a bailout to respond to a self-inflicted recession.

That number is 6 trillion (6000000000000) divided by 350 million. Of course, the actual number for your household is much worse, because half of us don’t pay taxes. It also doesn’t include things like lost wages and investment crashes.

I should have just bought a new Porsche for a struggling crack addict. It would have been faster.

New prediction: get ready for a squabble which will break out between largely urban leftists who reject God and largely rural conservatives who believe in God. The question of when we should lift the ridiculous lockdowns will be put before the public, and leftists will demand they remain in place, possibly forever.

We don’t need to work. Just keep taking funds from that imaginary stockpile of money the evil rich are sitting on. Find out where they keep their golden geese and nationalize them. Why didn’t we do that a long time ago?

Leftists don’t care about freedom. They are obsessed with merely continuing to exist. Put them in kennels. Feed them Purina. Take away their right to vote. They’re fine with it, as long as they think they have security. Conservatives think more about the quality of life, both before and after death.

I’m wondering when the paper-goods hoarding will stop. By the end of May, I will have to think about buying paper towels. By July, I may need toilet paper. I can buy these things right now, but it means leaving the house before 10 a.m. Unacceptable.

I hope the ammo situation loosens up, but maybe it won’t. I heard a rumor that some crazy guy in my neighborhood bought 60 pounds of .22 cartridges.

Someone tell me if I’m guessing right: Google is in the tank for Bernie. Is that correct? I keep seeing video recommendations involving the election, and they are consistently anti-Biden. Someone at Google is steering this junk at me.

The website The Hill has a show. It features a big, loud young woman and a not overly masculine young man. Shockingly, they are leftists. Google is shoving their videos at me, one after another. I keep taking the bait. They HATE Biden. They’re making several videos every day, exposing the MSM’s dishonesty in promoting the Biden campaign.

At first, I had a hard time figuring out whether they were liberal or conservative. I’m not kidding. Here are some things they were saying:

1. Joe Biden is demented.

2. Joe Biden gropes women.

3. The Democrat establishment has chosen its candidate instead of letting democracy work.

4. The evidence against Brett Kavanaugh was much weaker than the evidence against Biden, but Kavanaugh was treated as though he were guilty because he’s conservative.

5. The MSM is completely dishonest and generally treats liberals better than conservatives.

Wait. Is this Fox?

The semblance falls apart when they start talking about how they want to give Bernie Sanders full-body massages. They’re clear-headed enough to see what’s happening with the MSM and Biden, but they still think money falls from clouds populated with generous vegan transgender fairies.

What happened to the, “There is no media bias,” party line? Did we forget about that? Did Soros fire up the bat signal and send everyone texts telling them to change the narrative?

It’s quite a spectacle. As out of the loop as I am, even I can perceive it. There is going to be a WWE-style battle royale to get Biden off the ticket and resuscitate a man who is already confused without the need for dementia.

It’s imperative that the Democrats replace their elderly privileged white male with another elderly privileged white male.

Had to get that in there.

What’s more remarkable about it? The fact that leftists are being honest about bias? The fact that they would knowingly vote for a mental deficient? To me, really, it’s the fact that college graduates would vote for a socialist. Don’t they teach history in college?

Biden must be beside himself with anger and confusion. They let Bill Clinton treat women like unfeeling airline hot towels. Why can’t he do it? They let Al Gore run for president right after his term as Vice President. Why not Biden? They didn’t try to gut Hillary when she was anointed, even when they had to buy her a special van to roll her into when she fainted. It was her turn! How come it’s not Biden’s turn?

It’s never Biden’s turn! Is that fair?

I don’t know what would be worse for America: putting Trump up against a man with dementia, or putting him up against a socialist. Which one will get more support from Democrats? Wait. Democrats don’t matter. Either one will get support. Which one will get support from swing voters? They’re the ones who choose our presidents. The least-perceptive people in America make that choice for us every 4 years. God bless our system.

Leftists are apparently going to be at each other’s throats until Biden steps down or the election is over, whichever comes first. Conservatives can relax and make popcorn. When this is over, we will have a candidate most people think is a demented rapist, or we will have an eccentric whose discredited, dangerous ethos is–one hopes–so offensive it will give Trump the edge.

I hope Biden gets the nod. It’s terrible to see him exploited and exposed, but on the other hand, he lacks the capacity for self-examination and embarrassment, so it probably won’t bother him.

My guess is that a demented candidate will be so disturbing to watch that even swing voters may dimly perceive that something is wrong.

Imagine a Trump/Biden debate. It would be like watching a bullfight. Not good. Trump isn’t the greatest debater on earth, but he knows where he is, and he can remember and respond to questions.

My guess is that God is steering things. He wants 4 more years of Trump so God’s children will have some time to prepare for our socialist, persecution-heavy future. Leftists are behaving even more irrationally than usual, destroying their own effort to retake the White House, because God is confusing them. There has to be a supernatural reason for that.

I’m going to Youtube, and I’m going to remove political videos from my history and feed. I can’t believe I watched Joe Rogan. Staring at a wall is a better use of my time. It’s embarrassing. I hate this political stuff.

Here I go. “Don’t recommend channel.” “Don’t recommend channel.” “Don’t recommend channel.” They need a batch mode.

Man, my feed looks better now. It’s like someone bleached the bathroom floor after an unfortunate accident.

Rogan is a mess. He’s a middle-aged man who still thinks drugs, alcohol, and tattoos are neat. It’s like someone grabbed him when he was 17 and injected him with Peter Pan serum. His opinions are useless. He has nothing to offer me except someone to pray for.

If you have to use weed in order to feel okay, how can you not know you’re in deep trouble? That’s not normal. It’s like alcoholism. You need to get to know the Holy Spirit. He’s what you’re really looking for.

Drugs merely simulate things the Holy Spirit does much better and with no bitter aftertaste.

I’m going to see if I can avoid even thinking about the election. Here’s something God told me: “Your circumstances DO NOT MATTER.” If you let politics into your head, you’re letting tens of millions of ignorant, deluded people decide how you feel. God kept Noah happy during a flood. I’m sure he will look after me during an election year.

MORE

I always say the Trump economy can be judged by the lousy market for used tools. When Obama was president, you could find a lot of deals. As the economy improved, they dried up. People were using their tools to make money. They didn’t need to sell them.

Here’s an Ebay search I’ve done for years: “Baldor bench grinder.” I set the condition to “used.” Before Trump won, there used to be a lot of them available. A couple of months ago, they were rare, and the prices were high.

I just searched. There are 42 items for sale. Some of the prices are good.

If we don’t go back to work, I expect the number to increase. Check it out yourself and see what happens.

Braised Rubber Equals Good Eats

Interesting stuff is going on today.

First off, I received–and tried–my rice cooker today.

Cooking rice correctly is not hard if you do it several times a month, but if you lay off, you forget exactly which measurements, stove settings, and cooking times work. I gave up and ordered a computerized cooker.

I was going to go with something that only makes rice, but I saw that I could get an Instant Pot automatic pressure cooker for a reasonable price. I had to try that. Pressure cookers are wonderful, and a pressure cooker that already knows how to do a lot of basic things, and which also lets you choose how long it stays on, sounded like a godsend.

So I made rice, right? No. I made boliche, which is a Cuban dish. This may be the first time I’ve wanted any type of Cuban food since leaving Miami. Generally, it makes my stomach hurt when I see a sign for a Cuban restaurant, and the thought of eating food that reminds me of one of the most unpleasant cities in America turns me off. But today I needed something suitable for pressure-cooking, and boliche came to mind.

Boliche is eye round roast. It’s like a big piece of fat-free rubber shaped like a tongue. If you throw it in the oven and try to prepare it like a real roast, it will be inedible. If you cook it forever in the presence of the right ingredients, it’s very good.

I made a tunnel in the roast and shoved cheap chorizos into it. I covered the roast with salt, pepper, cumin, and fresh garlic. I added red wine and a little water, plus a couple of sacrificial onions for flavor. I cooked the meat for 45 minutes. Then I tossed in seasoned potatoes, carrots, and more onions and cooked everything for another 15 minutes.

You can’t cook vegetables and meat in a pressure cooker for the same amount of time, because the vegetables disintegrate. I saved most of my onions for the second cooking session. I only added onions to the first run to get their flavor into the meat.

The boliche was quite good. It would have been better had I remembered to add red bell peppers, but it was very nice. It could have been more tender, though, so after dinner, I put the meat back in the machine by itself and set it to run 15 more minutes. Really good boliche is on the verge of falling apart, and the sauce permeates it.

Is it worth it to use a computerized cooker to make boliche? It’s an improvement. It’s easier to clean than my regular pressure cookers, and it’s somewhat easier to use. It should give reproducible results easily because it has repeatable settings. On occasions when I have to cook a lot of things, it will free up a stove burner and turn itself off for me, and it will keep things warm when they’re done. It’s hard to see buyer’s remorse in this picture.

I’ll make rice sooner or later. I look forward to rice that doesn’t have little crunchy bits in the middle or a layer of leathery rice on the bottom.

Second major event: I received more .22 LR ammo. I now own too much of it to carry without risking a back injury. I have 5,000 more rounds on order, but the company I bought it from seems shady, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up disputing the charge and getting a refund from my credit card company. My lack of confidence in them is the reason I ordered the shipment that arrived today.

Now I feel good about the .22 LR supply. I can sit back and see if it loosens up. I honestly think 15,000 rounds by mid-summer would be a good sensible goal. As I have said before, it only gets more expensive with time, and I know perfectly well that I’ll shoot thousands of rounds during my life. Best to get the buying over with.

This caliber is indispensible. If you want to be a good shot, practice makes a big difference, and .22 LR makes it affordable. It’s also more pleasant to shoot than bigger calibers. It’s good for hunting. It’s good for slaughtering farm animals. You can even use it for self defense if you’re a good shot with a big magazine. For under $700, you can get a very good pistol plus enough ammo and targets to turn you into an excellent marksman.

I really like Mini-mags. I am content to settle on them for my go-to .22 cartridges for the foreseeable future. I don’t think something else will pop up next month and blow them out of the water. CCI/Speer has always given me great results. I’ve shot aluminum Blazers, brass Blazers, .22 LR, and 10mm Gold Dots. No problems at all. Can’t say that about every brand *cough cough PMC*.

I found an okay deal on 7.62x39mm, but it’s probably gone now. The company I wanted to buy from listed the price as about $250. Problem: one part of their site said it was 100 rounds, and another said 1000. I asked for clarification days ago. They had a box of ordinary pistol ammo priced at something like $35, and that suggested they were not above gouging. I didn’t want to receive a very small box of ammo with a $300 invoice.

They finally responded this afternoon. It’s 1000 rounds. Now…how likely is it that they still have it? I’ll check.

Dang. They still have it.

I have over 1000 rounds already. Why do I want more?

When I first got into AK ammo, I bought Wolf hollowpoints. I figured they were a good balance of low price and reasonable usefulness in a defensive situation. Then I found out Tulammo hollowpoints did a lot better in tests, so I ordered those. Recently, I learned that Tulammo soft points do better than hollowpoints, and the price is either identical or close.

I have no desire to harm anyone, but I did buy my Eastern-bloc guns for self-defense, and it seems to me that I might as well have ammo that works.

People say they do well with deer, using Tulammo soft points. Sounds good enough for me. Anything that works well on deer works well on unexpected guests.

There is a lot of pricey non-Russian AK ammo out there, and maybe it will work somewhat better than Tulammo. I don’t know. Tulammo seems very good, and when you’re shooting 30-round magazines, it’s hard not to think about cost.

Maybe I’m not being logical. I have a desire to make a credible effort to maintain good self-defense ammo, but on the other hand, I am not excited about shooting human beings, and I like saving money. Tulammo is where this maelstrom of motivations took me.

People love to say, “How much is your life worth?”, when discussing ammo prices. I’m not sure my life is worth $1.50 per round. Also, I don’t think a murderer will take 20 hits of Tulammo and then run over, stick a knife in me, and say, “Should have bought Hornady, vato.”

Buying the first lot of Tulammo turned my Wolf into range fodder, and buying a second lot would turn the first lot into range fodder. Guess I’ll start shooting the AK and Vz58. My steel targets are probably too small to hit from a safe distance (100 yards), so I should get a bigger gong or shoot paper.

Widener’s. That’s who has the ammo. If you’re looking for Tulammo soft points, jump on it. I’ve written about the situation before, but I didn’t want to mention the name because I was afraid someone who reads the blog would snap it all up. Before tax and shipping, it’s 25 cents per round. That’s acceptable. The shipping isn’t too bad.

Cheaper Than Dirt has been gouging like crazy. I don’t know why anyone buys from them. Maybe it’s old guys who can’t Google well enough to find good deals. Does the proprietor understand just how cheap dirt is? The name of the company is a bad joke.

I’m all set now. Nearly. I just need some more .22 rifles and pistols, rifle brass, primers, powder, and bullets, an infra-red scope or two, a rangefinder, a couple of cool shooting jackets like Paul Harrell wears, a McCormick AR trigger, several suppressors, and a tactical haircut with lots of gel.

It has been a pleasant day. Hope things are looking up in your area.

COVID-19 Graph Looking Good

Because I tried to predict what was going on with coronavirus, it seems like I have to mention it once a day.

Basically, everything I predicted is still coming true, in spades. My equation’s predicted number for today is 12.7% higher than the actual number, and I predicted a drop-off in April. I was hoping for a very large drop by the end of the month, as we always get with the flu. We’ll see.

My equation was crude to start with. The premise was oversimplified, and the underlying data was dubious. It’s very odd that it ever worked. The longer the epidemic progresses, the less the premise makes sense, so the less inclined I am to talk about the equation. We have a huge number of recoveries now, and they have to be messing things up.

All that is true, but I’m still within 12.7%, which is extremely accurate. Go figure. Who would have predicted that when I started?

If you want to know what’s happening, my suggestion is to start visiting the Johns Hopkins page with the updated graphs. Just Google “Johns Hopkins curve flattening,” and you’ll find it. I’ll post today’s graphs. It seems like the most useful guide out there.

As you can see, things continue to improve. America took a harder hit than some places, and our recovery looks like it’s starting later, but it does appear to be starting.

Still no dead major celebrities. How can that be?

I still don’t know anyone who has the disease. I don’t know anyone who has a sick family member.

Sweden is the big story. They didn’t wreck their economy with panic-driven measures, and they are doing better than their neighbor Norway. When things die down, will “experts” and politicians look back at Sweden and say, “We should have done the same thing?” No. I don’t think so. A lot of people put their reputations on the line, standing up for hysteria. A lot of people made money from hysteria. A lot of people profited politically from hysteria. If they admit fault, they’ll be giving a lot up, and the truth is, they care about themselves, not the rest of us. I think they’ll double down on hysterical. Hope I’m wrong.

Even if Sweden did somewhat worse in terms of infections and deaths, they would still be winners because they won’t have a depression.

One of the bad things about getting old is developing the ability, based on experience and an understanding of human nature, to predict that people will do rotten things. Maybe it’s a blessing that we generally die after 8 decades. Would you really want hundreds of years of watching people do the same crazy things?

My friend Mike seems to be getting caught up in the emotion. He runs a hospice, so he is seeing a lot more problems than the rest of us. Also, he works in Massachusetts, which is a hotspot. I checked. Yesterday, Massachusetts had a coronavirus rate of one in 300. They had about 700 deaths.

Interesting fact: about half of the deaths in Massachusetts happened in old folks homes. That suggests that lockdowns can cause deaths.

Think about it. What percentage of Massachusetts seniors live in old folks homes? Maybe 5%? It’s probably less than that. But half of the deaths took place in these facilities. These are places where people are cooped up together. Old people who are living at home are much, much better off. It appears that when you’re locked down with very few people, it’s not bad, but when you’re locked down with dozens, you have a problem. You and your friends are set up like dominoes, waiting for the virus to tip one over.

Makes me wonder if people in apartment buildings, dormitories, and hospitals are being put at risk by lockdowns. Some believe the Italians killed a lot of people by hospitalizing individuals who should have stayed home. When you’re in a hospital, you have more people to infect.

I’m just speculating.

I checked the coronavirus rate in my county. It’s one in 4000, even though the county is packed with ALF’s and old people (and unhealthy people). The death total here is 4.

I can’t thank God enough for moving me out of Miami. Like I needed another reason. I have no mayor to take away my rights, I’m around the nicest, most thoughtful people on earth, I get to be a Southerner again, and I’m also in a coronavirus dead zone. For now. I didn’t deserve any of these blessings.

Now that America’s epidemic appears to be in decline, maybe we need to start looking at states and counties instead of nations. Urban Northeasterners are very dirty, and they’re packed together. They’re having lots of problems. People in the South are cleaner and farther apart. I would guess that rural Midwesterners and Westerners are also cleaner than people in New York and Boston, but I don’t know. Maybe one-plunger, fork-sharing, sidewalk-spitting households are common in the plains.

Let’s see. Georgia has a rate of something like one in 800. Tennessee has something like one in 1300. Minnesota has one in 3400. New York State has a rate of one in 1000, but the city’s rate is one in 80! New York is a big state with a lot of open areas. California’s rate is one in 2000, which is great. L.A. County has a rate of one in 1000, which is still good. L.A. is not densely populated.

Miami-Dade County has a rate of one in 400, more or less, so 10 times what I have in my county. Over half of the state’s total comes from Miami-Dade and Broward, which borders Miami-Dade on the north side.

This epidemic seems to be whacking cities very hard. That means it’s whacking Democrats.

I wonder if that means anything. I wonder if it will affect the presidential election.

People pretend to be leftists when things are going well, but that can change when life provides challenges. On the other hand, panicked leftists can move farther left because they want to give more power to the god-government they worship, so it can protect them.

George Bush was reelected during tough economic times. No matter what they say, many leftists want a tough conservative in office when foreign aggression is a threat. Will they want a conservative when the threat comes from a disease?

Trump is doing a fine job of swinging left, so maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe he’ll be the new Bernie in many regards. Spending 6 trillion taxpayer dollars on a stimulus to revive an economy which is unable to benefit from it is not smart. It’s a gigantic amount of money, and it will have to be paid back with higher taxes or more currency debasement. Either way, productive people will be impoverished to support people who spend their money on weed and lottery tickets.

Maybe coronavirus’s disproportionate impact on Democrats is one of the reasons they’re more hysterical right now. In their urban provincialism, they probably think the whole world is in the same situation.

New York City’s coronavirus death toll has actually surpassed the flu’s average death toll. That’s surprising. It’s strange that they fare so poorly. Maybe it’s hitting ALF’s and hospitals.

For a long time, it has seemed like America was being centrifuged, with leftists settling in increasingly debauched cities and the rest of us remaining in pleasant rural settings. The city people keep pushing for ways to rule the rest of us and turn us into slaves. They would destroy our superior cultures and ruin the nice places where we live. I guess coronavirus is likely to widen the divide.

Anyway, there are no big surprises. Globally the great plague seems to be turning out to be a biological speed bump and a psychological holocaust. It’s too bad we blew it out of proportion.

By the way, I read up on quinine-related drugs, and they really do look promising. Journalists are playing it down. They’re actually saying chloroquine is “distantly related” to quinine, but it isn’t. It’s a synthetic quinine substitute, created for the same purpose, developed during World War Two. You can actually buy quinine sulfate in bags, and you can get tablets from overseas, if you want to have it around for a last stand. Reading about it is tempting. Real gin and tonics! I barely drink, but hot weather has arrived, and an occasional G&T might not be bad.

Also, ammonium chloride is supposed to be hard on coronaviruses. Maybe I should make pizzas with it.

The DNC Reaches a New Low

Every time election season comes around, we hear fascinating rumors, most of which are false or unproven. “Trump works for the Russians.” “Obama was born in Kenya.” “Elizabeth Warren is part Indian.” “Biden is demented.” The thing is, that last one, which we’re hearing right now, is true. Biden IS demented.

Also, Hillary really was falling apart due to old age and a severe overeating problem, but that’s a digression.

I like to watch gun-related videos in the hope that I will develop some level of competence in my firearm hobby. Sadly, this means Youtube thinks I’m interested in political videos, so I’m getting bombed with them, and I give in from time to time. This is how I know Biden is not all there.

I actually watched Joe Rogan. That’s how far I’ve sunk. I remember him as a pretty good actor (News Radio) and a third-tier comedian. In recent years, he has become one of the top Youtubers. I’m not sure how his show works, because I’ve only seen it a few times. I have the impression that he’s high a lot of the time. Maybe someone who knows more about it will say something in a comment.

He’s not a genius. I can tell you that for sure. He’s not someone to look to for sharp analysis or good advice. He’s a moderately bright guy who has a knack for providing enjoyable conversation for people who are looking for a way to kill time. And he probably appeals to stoners.

Rogan supported Bernie Sanders until he went poof. Now he says he would vote for Trump over Biden because Biden is mentally disabled. Liberals are having a fit over it.

I don’t really know how Biden got the nod. People are suggesting Elizabeth Warren stayed in the race to kill Bernie’s primary performance. Some suggest Obama put her up to it. Some leftists are saying the big leftist machine chose Biden because they felt he could attract moderates. Leftists…get this…are saying we can’t trust the left-wing media because there is a conspiracy to get rid of Bernie and push Biden.

Aren’t these the same people who insist there is no left-wing media? Did I imagine that?

Anyway, yes, Biden is demented. He starts sentences and then forgets what he’s talking about. He forgets old chestnuts he has recited in the past. He says nutty things and doesn’t acknowledge or correct them, because he has no idea he has said anything nutty. In one case, he caught himself, and he apologized and said that what he had said was stupid. That was unnerving. It’s disturbing to see a demented person get a quick glimpse of what he has become.

Does anyone remember the old Biden? He was a televangelist who missed his calling. He was polished. He was practiced. His speech was fluid. He stayed in shape. He had surgeries to keep himself looking viable. He had perfect artificial teeth always that glowed like the sun. He was a total professional, even though he was wrong about everything. This was two years ago. Now he stumbles around calling people “dog-faced pony soldier,” and his sentences aren’t sentences.

Dennis Miller says there is no way he’ll debate Trump. I agree. No one is going to let him get on a stage with a person who still has his faculties. It would be like watching a tiger kill an old Labrador retriever.

One of the weird things about Democrats is that they have no souls when it comes to using handicapped people as figureheads. They did it with James Brady, pretending he was an articulate spokesman for the denial of our civil rights when he was actually a childlike invalid with a big percentage of his brain missing. They did the same thing with Gabby Giffords, who barely knows where she is. A bullet went through one side of her brain, from one end to the other. There is a reason why she quit. They did it with that autistic kid from Europe, who probably has no idea that her neurotic fears spring from her condition. They pretend Ruth Ginsburg is still healthy and competent; as long as her heart is beating, they will glue her to her chair. Now they’ve made Biden their victim.

One of the amazing things about this is the ignorance. There are smart Democrats. Many doctors who treat dementia are leftists. Why isn’t anyone concerned about the speed with which dementia progresses?

In early 2015, my dad was practicing law and billing people, but he had to stop before the year was out. In mid-2016, I had to take over all of his affairs. In 2017, I made him stop driving. At the end of 2018, I had to get him a walker and put him on hospice, and before the year ended, he needed a wheelchair. He died in March of 2019, after becoming so demented he asked me what my mother’s name was and whether I had a sister.

This is Biden’s future, and it’s not the distant future. It’s happening right now. If he managed to stumble through the election, he might very well be in diapers before his first year in office was over. That is no exaggeration. There is zero possibility that he will not be completely mentally disabled within two years. He is declining fast. He doesn’t have a type of dementia that progresses slowly.

This is what the Democrats have decided is the right path for the presidency, and they really think it’s the best way to win the election. What on earth are they thinking?

How do they know he’ll be in good enough shape to give a victory speech or get through the inauguration? What are their plans in case he isn’t?

They’re trying to attract swing voters, who are just barely intelligent enough to breathe, but they’re not so inept they would vote for someone who is clearly demented. Even a person who isn’t clear on the difference between Elizabeth Warren and Dick Cheney can tell when a candidate is senile.

Right now, many conservative pundits are hammering on the Biden dementia problem. That’s not a great strategy. They should be wringing their hands and telling the world how scared they are of a Biden candidacy. “Don’t throw us in the briar patch!” Instead, they’re showing the Democrats how to fix their problem. If there is a solution, which may not be the case. Look at the off-putting people they’ve offered us this time around. Are any of them electable?

Buttigieg is really something. How many Americans like the idea of their president being sodomized regularly? I’ll bet it would put a lot of folks off.

I think the choice has been made behind closed doors, and unless Biden starts running around with his pants down, claiming he’s a chicken, he will be the candidate. There is a lot of weight behind him. Bad, firm decisions have been made. People who are in on it are counting on profiting. Deals have been cemented. “You’ll get this.” “I’ll get that.” They won’t let go easily. I think Biden will have to do some spectacular things in order to get himself replaced as the chosen one.

My best guess is that we’re going to see the Democratic Party drive its train into the side of a mountain with a full head of steam and an abundance of advice to the contrary.

The decent thing would be to sit him down, have an intervention, and get him to quit. He needs to get his affairs together. He needs to make decisions about treatment and his will and so on. He has no business flying around the country, squandering what little relatively lucid time he has left.

Here’s an interesting question. If they did the right thing, would Biden listen? First, he’s a monumental egotist. Second, he’s demented. Taking advice is probably not something he does well these days. He has been trying to get this job since the Eighties. He even got to sit very close to the flame for 8 years, as Vice President. Now it’s so close, he can almost taste it. I think he’s an extremely vain and venal person, and he would probably have to be tranquilized in order to get him onto a jet for Delaware.

I guess God is looking out for us. I always say that when things don’t seem to make sense, you should look for a supernatural explanation. Four more years of Trump would be great for America, God’s children, and Israel.

It’s a shame, what they’re doing to Biden. History will not be kind to the people behind it, even though most historians are leftists. If he goes on to run, he will surely lose, and then in a year or two, we’ll read about his “sudden” dementia diagnosis, and then he’ll die, while Trump is still charging ahead. He will prove people who said he was demented were right.

Inheritance Beats Striving Any Day

I’m not even bothering to check my coronavirus equation this morning. The point appears to have been made: this was never a plague, and it never had the potential to be. You don’t need an equation. Just look at Sweden. They have a relaxed approach, and their infection rate is lower than Norway’s. Norway has a heavy-duty lockdown.

You may ask how I can say this didn’t have the potential to be a plague. How can I be so sure things won’t change? The answer is a question: why would they? The epidemic can’t just speed up because you want it to. It has to have a reason. Something new has to happen. It would have to be a completely different disease. You can say it can mutate. Why would coronavirus do that? Isn’t the common cold just as likely to turn into a plague through mutation? It’s more likely, because the common cold is caused by many viruses.

Tuberculosis hasn’t turned into a plague. Chickenpox hasn’t turned into a plague. Lots of old diseases haven’t turned into plagues, even though they’ve been with us for centuries. You can’t bank on bizarre occurrences that are so unlikely they should be considered impossible.

The known number of infections is under 1.8 million. The US alone had about 40 million flu cases this year. In all likelihood, the real coronavirus number is in the hundreds of millions, and we don’t know about it because the disease simply isn’t very severe, except for rare individuals. I think we will find out that these things are true. Just a hunch.

We still have zero major celebrity deaths. That’s astounding. Wynton Marsalis’s father died. Not a major celebrity. Most people don’t know his first name. Then we have Joe Diffie, John Prine, and Tom Dempsey. Where are the Biebers, Anistons, Pelosis, and Clooneys? I’ve been predicting a failed plague, and even I thought we would see a few dozen celebrities die.

Celebrities are behaving pretty badly. They’re posting things to get attention, as always. “Here I am, bravely weathering coronavirus in my mansion, surrounded by guards in N95 masks.” “Yoga is keeping me sane during this terrifying time.” “Why did Trump do this to us? He has to go.” “My vegan diet will protect me.” “Here is a really bad, maudlin, hysterical song I wrote in order to call attention to myself and make me look like I care.”

Here at the ranch/compound, I continue my idle pursuits. Maybe I’ll stand on my head in yoga pants, surrounded by disinfected tarot cards, and put it on Instagram.

I am not happy with my new Instagram account. While I was using it to try to get in touch with people after my friend Travis got shot, I saw that a married friend who appears to be on the outs with her husband was posting provocative swimsuit shots. This is someone who used to sing at my last church. I remember why I gave up social media.

This morning, I decided to try using citric acid to clean .45 brass. It seems to work well. I don’t know if the insides of the cases are as pretty as they would be after using a tumbler, but they look ready for reloading. I put about two teaspoons of acid in a mixing bowl, filled it partially with warm water, and added a squirt of Dawn, which I have, in spite of the hoarders. I dumped the cases in and mixed everything up. I let them go for 15 minutes, and then I rinsed.

This is much easier than using a tumbler, and it reduces my carbon footprint (practically all I think about, when I’m not crying about whaling) because it’s not electric. I mean, yes, electricity heated the water, and I guess they use electricity to make citric acid and pack it and ship it. Other than that, it’s so green, it hurts.

It makes me feel good about opening the French doors to cool the patio.

In all seriousness, tumbler media tend to make a mess, and the tumbler makes noise.

Now I just need to mount my press to a bench and go through my reloading components. Having reloading components is great, unless it means you’ve been too lazy to turn them into ammunition. It’s better to have cartridges than bullets.

I’m getting very tired of self-righteous Youtube ads. They keep popping up. “STAY AT HOME IF YOU DON’T WANT THE TORCHES AND PITCHFORKS MAKE THIS A TIME OF UNITY AND LOVE.” Today I got an ad about a ridiculous coronavirus concert. I knew this was coming. “We are the world; we have a mild cough and a slight fever.” Celebrities never, ever miss a chance to turn events into self-glorification festivals. It’s disgusting. They should sing about the giant future tax burden we just took on over nothing.

I promise you that if I die, I will not come here and act like a martyr. I’ll try to be a man about it.

The “stimulus” program is insane. They’re sending people money to stimulate the economy, but they’re also killing the economy by forcing us not to work. Can anyone see the problem with this? It’s like doing CPR on someone while holding a pillow over his face. You can’t stimulate anything while you’re doing your best to kill it.

It’s not the only remarkable piece of cognitive dissonance we’re seeing. There is a meme out there about our jails. My paraphrasal: “You’re arresting people for leaving their houses because they’ll spread coronavirus, but you’re letting criminals out of jail to keep them from spreading coronavirus. Hmm.”

I have Roku, and my home screens changed to an ominous, pseudo-friendly “STAY HOME OR ELSE” theme. Totally inappropriate. It’s not your place to tell me what to do, from a cubicle in Silicon Valley. Butt out, put on some real pants, and cut off your man bun.

The leftist power-grabbing and maternalism (definitely not paternalism) are very disturbing. It’s coming from every side. We are being mommied ruthlessly, with no regard for the disgusting consequences that prevail in a feminized society. Matriarchy is poisonous. There is a reason why Satan portrays Jesus as a helpless baby in the arms of a grown woman.

There is no “baby Jesus.” He was a baby for two years, like everyone else. Then he became a man. Would you put a baby picture on your driver’s license?

Satan is very effeminate. There is no doubt about it. Consider his vanity, his beauty, and his methods. Consider his rejection-obsessed, vindictive personality. Consider his love of attention. Look at all the feminine men he has used.

He’s like a rejected girlfriend who didn’t get palimony.

Conservatives always spout about civil rights and how great they are, but look how easily Auntie Sam took them away this year. You don’t even need a leftist president. You just need a godless mayor and governor who worship the state. One day you’re free, and the next day, BANG! It’s 1984, only without toilet paper.

The Russians were always short of toilet paper under Soviet rule. Maybe the current American shortage is Satan’s little leftist joke. “We’re coming for you and your Charmin.”

I have some uplifting news, as if the continued failure of the coronavirus plague weren’t uplifing. I’ve gotten a huge revelation about God’s status as father.

Fatherlessness is a huge curse. People whose fathers are inadequate grow up to be punks. Many males get caught up in pride and haughtiness. Many females get caught up in ugly, attention-craving female rebellion. People who don’t have fathers don’t know how to live, because no one has taught them. If you don’t have a father to tell you things, you have to learn over a very long period through trial and error.

Fatherlessness Personified

My parents were not very competent. My dad didn’t watch over me and give me tips. My mother didn’t teach me discipline. As a result, I haven’t had a good feel for the presence of a loving father who takes an interest in me and is always available and eager to advise me and solve my problems. I know such people exist, but I haven’t been able to feel what it would be like to have one in my life.

Suddenly, God has helped me understand that feeling.

One of the worst curses you can have is a heartfelt conviction that God is reluctant or unable to help you. I’ve fought that curse for a long time. In my mind, I know God forgives me and wants to work on me. I know he loves me and wants to help me get through life, all the time. But knowing and feeling are not the same, and feeling is important. Supernatural gifts don’t come through knowledge alone.

God has helped me to understand, in my heart, that I can go to him and say, “Dad, I have this problem. Will you please show me how to defeat it?”

I knew this in my mind, but it wasn’t in my heart until yesterday.

Faith doesn’t just work in the mind. It has to work in the heart. The word says to love God with all your heart and mind.

This is a wonderful breakthrough. I have a much more direct type of communication with God now. I have much more faith that he will help. The big problem is that once I get started, it’s hard to make myself get up and deal with my daily obligations. I don’t want to stop talking to him.

That, however, is a problem, and a loving father solves problems for his children.

Here is what Paul said about this:

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.

My whole life has changed, so I am anxious to see what happens from here on out. I’m looking forward to internal change. I’m looking forward to being rid of juvenile priorities and being filled with divine ones.

I feel like I’ve died. It’s very strange. I hope it continues and increases.

All this being said, I suppose I will continue to amuse myself with trivial pursuits until something important comes along.

I have at least 3,600 rounds of .22 LR on the way, so I feel I have the green light to hit the pasture and improve my shooting. I’m also thinking of giving away my bedroom furniture, which is heavy and depressing. I’d like to get something newer and lighter. Easier to deal with in a move.

I need to clean up the workshop, which has suddenly become very productive. There is a layer of steel filings and flap-wheel grit on the floor. I should consider getting a better welding table. Mine is great, and it was very cheap, but I would like something a little bigger.

I have to move my non-firearm-related junk out of the gun room and into the storage room. Or maybe I should just throw it on the burn pile. Maybe I should get some kind of man-friendly couch and chair for that room. Something like you would see in a Firestone waiting area. I have to put a computer in there and put a monitor on the wall.

There is no limit to what a single man can do to a dining room.

I need to look into holsters for full-size Glocks. Maybe a shoulder holster is best. I already have one for my Glock 29. I guess I could try it out on the farm, and if I like it, I can get one for the big Glock. Which I haven’t shot yet.

I expect things to go better for me now. If so, I can be of more help to other people.

Brass Sorted

Today I crossed a major hurdle. I sorted my brass.

When I moved from Miami, I dumped brass in whatever boxes were available. I actually threw out some military brass because I had read it was a pain to reload. I barely looked at my brass until a week or two back, when I decided to turn my dining room into a gun room/indoor workshop.

Today I got out all the dirty bags and boxes and went to work.

It looks like I have maybe a thousand .40 S&W casings. Problem: I sold my Glock 22 to my buddy Mike. I don’t have a gun that can shoot .40 S&W. In all likelihood, this works out well for Mike. Today I did some math and found out I can make him range ammo for around $7 per box. That’s even cheaper than Russian ammo, and it would probably be more accurate.

I have found that homemade pistol ammo is more accurate than store ammo. I don’t know why. I assume the powder charges are more accurate, which would be odd, because a big factory should have really accurate powder-dispensing equipment.

I haven’t set my ammo press up yet. I moved my workbenches into the dining room. I’m reluctant to drill holes in a bench. My benches are very nice, and besides, once you drill a hole in a bench, things fall into it. If you plug the holes when you’re not using your press, you have screw heads sticking up, banging into things.

I’m wondering if I can fasten the press to a long board and clamp it to a bench. I’m also considering welding a stand-alone stand together.

I’m looking into ways to clean casings. My first case-cleaning tool was a tumbler full of corn cob media. I still have it, but since the last time I used it, I got a sonic cleaner. I was looking up information on using sonic cleaners to clean brass, and I found I could do it with citric acid instead. This process has been used for years, so why didn’t I know about it when I bought my tumbler?

If I understand things correctly, you can clean brass perfectly well with citric acid with no sonic cleaner or tumbler. You just let the brass sit in the acid for a few minutes. If this is true, I regret buying the tumbler.

I don’t regret it that much, though, because it’s useful for other things.

If citric acid works, why do people use tumblers, which make a mess, cost a lot, and work slowly? Maybe it’s because they want super-shiny brass, which is pretty silly. Tumblers shine things well.

The obvious question is this: how does the citric acid trick help me, when no one keeps citric acid in their house? Well, this is me we’re talking about. I think I have 9 pounds of citric acid, down from 15.

I have a pretty decent amount of 9mm brass. Not sure why I bothered to save it. When life is normal, 9mm is very cheap. I’ll bet I can make it for $6 per box. The other day, I paid a little over $7 for new ammo with brass casings. How hard should I work to save a dollar per box?

Ammo prices don’t seem to make sense. There are fairly big cartridges which aren’t terribly expensive, and there are smaller ones that cost more. It seems to even out when you reload.

I was working on my gun room with great enthusiasm when I found out my friend Travis had been shot. Was it a message from God? Was I being punished for owning guns? Was he being punished because he wanted one? No. Is it wrong to continue working on them and shooting them now that I see what they can do? No. Owning guns is fine with God, and I already knew what they could do.

I don’t recommend using any form of tobacco, but I smoked a number of cigars after my mother and aunt died from lung cancer. There was no connection. I wan’t killing them retroactively with my cigars. I’ve had two pets run over, but I still drive cars, and I do not slow down for squirrels. My dad used to drink and get abusive. I have beer in my fridge.

God has no problem with guns. Take my word for it. Misuse and accidents don’t change that. If a refrigerator fell on your dad, you wouldn’t sell your refrigerator.

I’m going to make a firm decision and choose a way to mount my ammo press. I picked up a new 10mm Glock yesterday, and it’s no good without ammunition.

Men, if you can’t throw out your dining room furniture and turn the room into something useful, I feel your pain.

By the way, I checked my coronavirus prediction equation today, and I’m about 7.5% high. It looks like the real numbers are diverging downward from the curve the infection had been following, and that’s good. I’m going to have to quit fooling with the equation, because as the number of recoveries increases, the total number of people who have been infected means less and less, and my equation isn’t set up to take it into account anyway.

It seems like the USA is the only reason we are still seeing a lot of new infections. Other countries have infection rates with decelerating accelerations, if you know what I mean. We’re still infecting each other pretty well. Is it because our epidemic started later? I don’t know. The numbers have always been crazy, so how can you draw conclusions? We know not many people have been gravely or killed, by pandemic standards, because those things are relatively easy to check, but we don’t really know how many mild or asymptomatic cases there have been.

A reader mentioned a study that suggests a whole lot of us have been infected and don’t know it. The study was conducted in Germany. A snippet:

Over the last two weeks, German virologists tested nearly 80 percent of the population of Gangelt for antibodies that indicate whether they’d been infected by the coronavirus. Around 15 percent had been infected, allowing them to calculate a COVID-19 infection fatality rate of about 0.37 percent. The researchers also concluded that people who recover from the infection are immune to reinfection, at least for a while.

It may well be true that this disease is more contagious and less dangerous than we thought. I’ve suspected this was true, but how do you prove test results are bad when you already know testing is faulty? Can you use bad tests to prove tests are bad?

News of a high infection rate would be wonderful, because a high infection rate means a high number of recovered patients who are now immune. This will force the infection rate to drop. What if 15% of Americans are now immune? That’s great. Even better: finding out how already had the big, scary disease and didn’t notice it. Next time it hits us, will you be scared? No. You’ll march right out to Safeway and buy your toilet paper with confidence.

Trump is talking about ending the social distancing guidelines. I like the guidelines. We should hold onto them in situations where it’s practical, especially in the winter. It’s always a good idea to think about the spread of disease. People should also continue to be clean. That would be a nice, and very great, change. But we need to get rid of the lockdowns, unless riots and a depression are our goals. Sometimes you have to take a punch in order to avoid something worse.

I’m going to try the citric acid. If it works, I’ll be happy that it’s so easy and sad that I spent money on a tumbler, simultaneously.

Stuff You Think About When Someone Gets Shot

I am beat. I have to say it.

As mentioned earlier, my friend Travis got shot last night. I got word at 8 p.m., from the young man who shot him. He called from Travis’s phone. He hung up while I was talking to him, and I spent a lot of time after that scrambling to get information from other sources.

Needless to say, I got to bed very late. I probably slept about 4 hours. I don’t just have bags under my eyes. My whole face looks like a bag. It looks like a souffle that fell. My features look like slits in Jabba the Hutt’s belly.

It’s quite an experience, going 12 hours wondering whether one of your best friends is alive or dead.

I couldn’t help trying to make deductions. For a while, I thought I wasn’t able to call the friend back on Travis’s phone because the friend was in custody and the phone was being held for evidence. I also considered the possibility that the friend hung up because he thought Travis was about to die. I kept trying to come up with explanations for the limited facts that were available to work with.

For a time, I kept thinking how much better it would have been had I been the one who got shot. I’m older, and I’m single and childless. I enjoy life, but I’m ready to go. Travis is young, and he wants to have a family.

I also felt as though part of me would die if Travis died. He’s a big part of my life. I’ve put effort into him. Losing him at his age would be like growing an arm over a period of years and then having it sliced off in an accident. I knew my life wouldn’t lose all purpose, but emotionally, I felt as though I would. It was just an irrational feeling.

Of course, I prayed a lot. The oddest thing that happened to me took place after I prayed. For long periods, I felt complete supernatural peace. It made me feel as though something were wrong with me. How can you have a conscience and feel peace when someone you care about could be lying on a stainless steel drawer in a refrigerator?

I didn’t want to fight it. My belief is that when you feel good, you should let it happen. Don’t worry about not feeling bad. You’ll have plenty of chances to do it later if you really want to. And if the Holy Spirit is the one making you feel good, why would you reject it?

I tried prophesying, which is something I do every day. I have been taught that prophesy is a gift that can be operated at will. You can’t guess upcoming lottery numbers. It doesn’t make you a Magic 8 Ball. You can only say what the Lord wants to say. But you can do it at will. I heard myself saying Travis would be fine.

That seemed like a potential problem. He was shot in the chest with a large-bore pistol. There was no natural reason to think he would be fine. What if I got up the next day and received a text saying he was dead? Not only would he be dead, but I would have to rethink a very important teaching, and that could impact my relationship with God in a very damaging way. It would be a great setback.

I have a lot invested in certain people, and I also have a lot invested in the Holy Spirit. It would be hard to go back and learn a new, powerless kind of Christianity.

Paul told Christians to prophesy. He told them to covet the gift. Clearly, we’re supposed to be doing it. He also seemed to say prophecy was superior to speaking in tongues. Here is what he said:

I wish you all spoke with tongues, but even more that you prophesied; for he who prophesies is greater than he who speaks with tongues, unless indeed he interprets, that the church may receive edification.

He also said:

Therefore let him who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful.

It appears he believed prophecy was better than tongues even for personal use. That’s saying something. Regular prolonged prayer in tongues will change your life and put you on a new level. Anything that beats that is worth seeking.

When I heard that Travis was fundamentally all right, one of the first things I thought of was prophecy. If there were problems with it, they hadn’t been demonstrated. I was not in immediate danger of losing a friend and a big part of my relationship with God, simultaneously.

It’s funny how our spiritual infrastructure can seem to depend on how things turn out in the natural world. If Satan can “prove” faith is a lie, he can take away everything you stand on.

Speaking of prophecy, I’m very disappointed in T.B. Joshua, the African preacher who said the coronavirus epidemic was over in Wuhan. Some things have disappeared from his Youtube record. I’ve mentioned this before. If you issue a prophecy, and it seems to turn out to be wrong, you need to leave it in front of the public. They need to know what they’re buying when they believe you.

He said rain was washing away the epidemic in Wuhan, and he went on to say the epidemic was over everywhere. The China numbers froze in time (at least according to whoever provides them), which seemed to back up what he actually predicted, but as we all know, the rest of the world didn’t do as well. He should have confronted the issue. Was the whole prophecy false? Did he simply misunderstand it, which is completely possible? I can’t answer, but regardless, covering up was wrong. The cover-up is a huge problem. Prophesying and missing are much less significant.

He should have left all the videos up.

You can say overzealous underlings are probably to blame. I’ll bet that’s true, but he’s in charge, so it’s still on him.

You have to get to know God for yourself. You can’t breastfeed from churches and preachers for the rest of your life. Other people will lie or make mistakes. If you’re connected to the source, you’ll always be okay. You will never thirst.

I am not watching any Christian videos these days. I can’t find anything that makes me feel like I’m being improved. I feel like I’ve exhausted the available material, like a Trivial Pursuit player who has memorized all the cards.

I don’t see this as a bad thing, but I do miss watching good videos.

My big job today was driving to Rural King to pick up a Glock I ordered a couple of weeks back. Rural King is like Tractor Supply multiplied by 10. They had a new system. When you go in, they give you a freshly bleached cart, and you have to take it, because they count carts in order to count people. When the available carts are used up, people have to wait.

I would guess my background check took an hour. The FBI is still that backed up.

It was a pain, but I had nothing better to do, and I’ve been wanting a full-size Glock for open carry at home. I don’t know if it was a good idea or not. It may also be a good gun to keep in the car. I used to rely on rifles, but now I know I can hit people a long way off, and 10mm is nothing to sneeze at. A pistol is handier than a rifle, especially in a vehicle.

Rural King had paper towels. The world has not ended. I resisted buying them. I probably have 12 rolls in my house. Other people matter. Somewhat.

I’m going to try to be in bed at nine. I don’t care if I sleep till Monday.

Joy Comes in the Morning

Last night I was informed that my friend Travis had been shot in the chest. I got the news at 8 p.m. Travis told a friend who was with him to call me for prayer. After a lot of networking and help from friends, I got this information: Travis is in stable condition. As far as his brother knows, he is not going to have major physical problems because of the injury.

I found this out at around 8 a.m. It was an unpleasant night.

I thank everyone who prayed, and of course, I thank God, who did all the work.

MORE

In case anyone is wondering, I don’t know all the facts, but I have a pretty good theory.

Travis had been telling me a friend of his wanted to buy a pistol. He asked me for advice I could relay. I said I would go for a Glock in .45 ACP or 9mm.

When the call came last night, there were only two people in the room: Travis and a friend. That indicates that the friend probably shot him. I think he was a new gun owner without training, and he made a mistake.

If you’re a new gun owner thanks to coronavirus, do everything right. Learn the safety rules. Learn how to shoot well by getting expert advice. Practice. Run at least a hundred rounds through your gun if you can. I would suggest at least a hundred per week until you feel comfortable.