Life is Never Childproof

My wife and I have been talking about raising children.

One issue that came up was the nature of the property where we live. It’s mostly pasture and forest. I have a house and a workshop, and the rest of the property is full of things like nettles, poison ivy, blackberry briars, holes, and snakes. The house itself has no bedrooms for children on the first floor. We live on a private road that opens onto a two-lane highway with a 55-mph speed limit, so opportunities for riding a bike are not good, and the nearest house is probably 250 yards away.

I’m not sure what to do about the house.

We have two stairways. One is carpeted. The other is hard oak. If the kids live upstairs, what are we supposed to do to protect them?

When I was a kid, my grandparents had a two-story house. They moved into another two-story house when I was about 5. The second house had a set of steep concrete steps covered in thin, hard vinyl.

I never saw a baby gate until I was an adult. I don’t know if they existed. My grandparents had 8 grandchildren, and none of us ever fell down the steps or came close to it. Neither did my grandparents. Nobody did.

The cabinets had no childproofing. I used to play inside them. Whatever chemicals were in the house were available to all. The guns were not locked up.

I have never known anyone except me who had a poison scare as a child. I sampled some rat poison once, and nothing happened. They sent me home from the ER without doing anything for me.

I have never lived in a modern baby-safe house. I don’t even know what the rules are.

I have never known anyone who fell down the stairs as a child (or adult) and had an injury of any kind. Does that mean the concerns are overblown?

I don’t remember much of anything that happened before I was three. My dad bought a house when I was that age. It was one house over from a corner, and the street intersecting our street was somewhat busy. A block to the east, there was a big lot which was often flooded, and there were snakes.

My friends and I used to walk out the door early in the day and spend our time running around like wild Indians. We didn’t cross the busy street, but we could walk a block or two in the other direction, all by ourselves. No one cared. No one was afraid grown men would grab us and have sex with us.

We didn’t know what homosexuality was, and we didn’t know what sex was.

We built forts in the swamp area. We used to have wars. We would chase each other around and hit each other with sticks and branches. Houses went up sometimes, and we played on the construction sites. It was understood that the big sand piles were there for our amusement. I was probably in junior high before I realized people weren’t supposed to go onto other people’s property and play in their unfinished houses.

We played with what are now known as war toys. My parents got me a plastic machine gun and a plastic battleship. We always had cap pistols. I had boots and a cowboy hat. We played cowboys and Indians, and no one ever questioned the notion that the Indians were bad and had to be shot. Sorry about that. We learned from Hollywood, which is always a stupid idea.

No one I grew up with ever committed a gun crime. I did throw a knife at my sister when I was a kid, but most people would have done the same thing eventually. She was special. My gentle 103-pound mother went at her with both fists.

When I used to visit my grandparents, my grandfather would put his grandchildren in the back of a pickup and drive us around on mountain roads at up to 80 mph. We loved it. We never died. I was his favorite, and he used to let me “help” him on his farms. He would sit me on the fender of his tractor while he raked or mowed, and he would also let me steer. If I had fallen off the front of the fender, I would have gone under the rear tire.

We used to shoot together. I never had a lesson in gun safety. I think I was expected to be smart enough not to shoot anyone.

He taught my aunt to swim by throwing her in a river.

Kids were allowed to sit anywhere they wanted in cars. My father used to put me on his lap and let me steer. I sat in the front seat like other human beings. We had a station wagon, and I liked riding in “the very back,” next to the rear window. In sedans and coupes, there were “parcel shelves” against the rear windows. Flat places big enough for kids to lie down in. And we did. Sometimes we had to move the little air-freshener dogs with the bobbing heads.

There were no such things as baby seats.

When we got bicycles, we rode on the streets. There were no helmets. I knew one person who got hurt. He was a teenager who decided to ride down from the peak of Miami’s 79th Street Causeway bridge at top speed. He rode on a narrow sidewalk, and he lost control and hit a sign with his face. He ended up with dentures. A helmet wouldn’t have helped.

We didn’t wear knee or elbow pads. Sometimes we rode barefoot, which was really dumb. I tore half the nail off my big toe that way.

My elementary school was a mile from my house, and my junior high was half a mile farther away. I used to walk and ride to school. Not always, but sometimes. So did my friends. The whole time I lived in that area, I heard about one kid getting hit by a car.

It was bad. A teenaged girl with no license spread him out on the asphalt. There were big stains. We were told his brains were splattered. But the rest of us got by without school zones.

At phys. ed. class, we were told to climb ropes to the top, or maybe 15 feet, above hard-packed ground. I was the kid who could never figure out how to climb the rope, but others made it. At playgrounds, we had merry-go-rounds, and naturally, we got them going at top speed and jumped off. We had see-saws, and we used to do things like jumping off while the other kid was up in the air.

I was probably 10 when I got my first pocket knife, and I got my first rifle at 12. No one thought it was weird to let me have these things. My best friend was a year older, and he was shooting deer and antelope.

My parents thought it was okay to buy me slingshots. Two neighboring kids had bows.

On Halloween, we went out without adult supervision, even though our mothers worried about us and believed legends about razors and drugs in apples and candy.

We always threw the apples out anyway. It was so unfair; giving us fruit. We got really angry at people who gave us things they knew we didn’t like.

Today, it seems like very few kids participate in Halloween. It seems like it’s more of an adult holiday. Adults go to parties and get high and drunk, and as a female comedian said, the women only have one costume: “It’s a slut.”

“Sexy vampire.” “Sexy nurse.” “Sexy witch.” “Sexy Disney character.” “Sexy nun.” Plain old whore. That about covers it.

When kids go out now, they form little squads behind adults with flashlights, they go to a few houses on prearranged routes, where they only see the same parents they see all the time, and they go home. Halloween was never really dangerous, but this is where we are.

Halloween is a Satanic holiday. It’s huge with the witches. That’s the reason to stay home and dress normally. The razor blades and drugs are mythical.

If your parents let you did things leftists from up north thought were unsafe, or they slapped or spanked you, leftists could not do anything about it. There were no powerful agencies roaming around taking children away from old-fashioned parents. If your parents took you to the emergency room with bruises, the doctors never called anyone to interrogate you and have your kids carted off to scary facilities where bullying and sodomy took place.

It must be true that kids used to have more accidents. Surely modern practices have made some difference. I’m sure government intervention saves more kids from abuse than it used to. I guess kids are safer if they can’t leave their yards. But I think some of our measures are overprotective. The truth is that a healthy upbringing in which kids face some risks is valuable. Probably so valuable that it’s better to lose some kids than to turn the rest into helpless basket cases.

Some kids have no common sense. Some kids are smart but make stupid mistakes. These things will always be true. Bad things will always happen.

Here’s a problem: now that we have all these safety policies, even if they’re overreactions, if your child has a very rare problem because you didn’t adhere to modern nanny standards, you will be considered a bad parent. Your spouse may agree. Society is destroying fathers’ ability to do a very important job: toughening kids up. It’s siding with destructive female neuroses.

Disempowering fathers and enabling neurotic women are almost always disastrous.

When I think of the terrible ways in which my parents failed me, I never think about not having a bike helmet. I think about my dad choking my mother. I remember my parents making no effort to teach me good habits or help me succeed. They didn’t teach me to do homework. They didn’t make me do chores. They didn’t show me how to defend myself. They taught me nothing about investing. My mother didn’t teach me proper hygiene. I was not introduced to the Holy Spirit, who is the only source of safety and success. The guns, skateboards, knives, fireworks…not issues.

What do we do about the house? Do we sell it? Do we seal off the upstairs, hoping there won’t be a fire? Do we put cameras up there?

The yard is both good and bad. It’s a world of adventure for kids. On the other hand, the grass in this area is thin and awful, so you wouldn’t want to lie down on it or do much of anything not involving being upright. It has a fence and gate, and that’s good for safety, but getting to other kids will be impossible without vehicles.

The workshop might as well have been designed intentionally to put kids in the hospital. Table saw, band saw, tractor, lawnmower, sharp things, pointy things, hammers, chemicals, torches…send them in there when you get tired of feeding them, and you might get lucky. I guess locks can solve the problem.

What about cars? My Explorer is turning out to be a lemon by design, and it’s a horror to work on. Ford designed it so stupidly it is likely to need thousands of dollars’ worth of repairs even if I take care of it, so I’m thinking of getting a Toyota 4Runner. But the 4 Runner isn’t THE safest car on the road. What if my kids get in an accident, and I didn’t buy them THE safest car?

The guns can be locked in a storage room, and of course, the key will have to be hidden, and not in a place the kids will find it, unlike most things parents hide. Every dad who ever hid a dirty magazine, and every mother who ever hid a device or outfit from a dirty boutique, should be aware that their kids found them. It happens.

What are we supposed to do about schooling? DeSantis has done a lot to help, but Florida schools are still dominated by leftist morons and affirmative action cases. They didn’t disappear when he was elected. They are burrowing and hiding, waiting for him to leave.

They will still try to groom our kids and, yes, turn them into homosexuals and phony, mutilated “transgenders.” They will still teach them that socialism is a great idea. It worked out so well in Cuba and Cambodia. They will teach them that rebellion is brilliant and that their elders, with all their wisdom, are silly imbeciles. They will still see our children–God’s children–as theirs.

Some day, this blog post may be seen as proof my children should be taken from me.

Homeschooling is a must. That or private schooling. What are the odds we’ll be able to find a good private school that acknowledges the Holy Spirit?

The kids won’t be able to walk past our private road. They won’t be able to ride bikes much of anywhere. The geography won’t permit a lot of wandering.

What do we do about phones? Thanks to Disney, Florida is a pedophile’s dream, so they flock here. You can’t turn a kid loose without some means of calling for help. But if you give them smartphones, they send each other naked pictures and videos, and they watch adult pornography. If you give them cheap phones, the other kids torment them.

We can’t protect them from society, which is now extremely filthy. They have to live on this planet. It’s not like it used to be. By the time they get to high school, they will know about sodomy, VD, pornography, and seductive causes that give them excuses to cultivate sadism, bigotry, and arrogance.

What do we do about the Internet?

It’s like we’ll be raising children in a building with walls, floors, fixtures, and furnishings smeared with excrement from diseased people, hoping they won’t get sick.

With regard to the physical dangers, we’ll have to make decisions about risk and accept the consequences. That’s all we can do. We can’t raise kids, especially effeminate boys, who can’t do anything but cry and operate phones and tablets with their stick arms and muscular thumbs.

I told my wife to expect our children to get cut, scraped, burned, and bruised. It’s not preventable. They will get sick sometimes. They will get scars. We live in a cursed world. If you don’t want your kids to suffer, have yourself sterilized. If you don’t want to risk losing children, don’t have them in the first place.

God risks it, and loses, every day. He loses most of the people he creates.

I have been concerned that I might love my children so much I smother them and stunt them. It will be hard, handing a kid a new pocket knife or even letting him ride a bicycle in public. It will be hard to let him associate with other kids without me, knowing about bullying and peer pressure, which is the voice of the antichrist. I have to remind myself that human beings like me ruined the world and made it an unsafe place, and now we have to live in it without hiding from it.

Regarding the spiritual dangers–the temptation and corruption–we will just have to stay close to God and do what we know to do. After that, we have to accept what happens. Short of joining a cult and moving to an isolated compound, I see no way to raise kids in anything resembling an acceptable environment.

This world is a rotten place, and it’s our fault. It’s disgusting and dangerous. Not really fit to live in. It’s getting worse rapidly. I wish we had somewhere else to go. But it’s either have kids here or die childless.

I hate this world. Having children will make me hate it more.

God created the world so he could reproduce, and he expects people to have children. We will play the ball as it lies, and we will rely on God, thanking him and never blaming him.

I Think I Hear Trees Crying

In an earlier post, I wrote about my victory over my stubborn Echo CS-590 60cc chainsaw. I got it in 2017, and although I made a pretty good effort to get information and find competent mechanics, I was rarely able to use it. It kept clogging up from ethanol, and I also did some stupid things like revving it with the brake on. I couldn’t find anyone around here who could fix it. It was the kind of saw you usually couldn’t start, and when you could, you were afraid to shut it down, because you knew that usually meant you were done cutting for the day. Probably for the week.

I finally got some good information. I did a half-rebuild on the carb, which is bigger than the one the saw came with. I installed two performance-enhancing parts: a flywheel key to advance the timing, and a less-restrictive exhaust deflector. I learned the right way (or at least an adequate way) to tune the carb, I found out how to make the saw start and stop (slightly different from the manual procedures), and I made the saw run.

From the factory, it was supposed to do about 12,000 RPM. With the new parts and tuning, I am now a little over 13,000, and chainsaw gurus insist it won’t hurt the saw. I think I could go higher if I twiddle with the carb a little more.

Sadly, although my saw was running like never before, I didn’t have a chance to try it on actual wood. I had a lot of stuff to do, and the few times I had time to cut wood, I dealt with things a little small for the Echo.

Today I got my chance. Last week, a crew came through and wiped out a bunch of dangerous oaks near my buildings, and they left a few things, including a big downed trunk. I could have used my cordless Makita, but I really wanted to see what the Echo would do.

It’s still starting reliably. Cold, it takes about three pulls with the choke on and one to three with it off. Takes right off. It idles nice and fast so it won’t stall, but the chain doesn’t move. Hot, it starts with one or two pulls. I’m not afraid to shut it down.

When I started cutting, I felt like I was in chainsaw heaven. The reborn saw ripped through everything. It sounded enraged. Granted, semi-rotten oak isn’t the best test, but I cut enough solid wood to know the saw was doing great. I’m pretty sure it’s better than it was new, which it should be, given that it’s a different saw.

The fork I built for the tractor is doing great, too. I picked up most of a medium-sized tree with no problem. I used the fork to hold it up so I could cut it without getting the saw bar close to the dirt, and everything went smoothly. A breeze.

I look forward to using the Echo now, which makes me wonder if I was smart to blow money on my new 24″ Husky. I was, though. Either saw could have a problem I can’t fix quickly, and repairs, even with the new shop I found, take over two weeks.

If I had known anything about saws back in ’17, and if the entire nationwide inventory of decent new and used saws had not evaporated right when I needed a saw, I could have saved a lot of money. I could have snapped up some lightly-used saws belonging to people who didn’t know how to fix them, and I could have turned them into reliable tree-eaters.

Even though I’m getting better at this, I dumped my Echo pole saw and 16″ Jonsered at the shop. They’re ready to pick up now. I feel a strong temptation to modify the muffler on the Jonsered. I’m even itching to put a new cylinder on it.

The Jonsered is the same saw as the Husky 435, which is identical to the 440, except for the cylinder. The 440 makes almost 10% more horsepower. How can I live without that 10%? It’s embarrassing.

No idea why Husqvarna would make two saws that are identical except for one part, just to squeeze $30 more out of customers for better performance. Seems like bad marketing.

Anyway, it’s great to see the Echo come back to life, improved. Maybe now that I can tune a saw, I can avoid repair shops altogether.

Well. Unless something awful happens.

Who Was That Guy I Was?

Yesterday I dug up some things I wrote about 18 years ago. At that time I thought I was a Christian, but the things I wrote were awful. Cruel and full of R-rated language and subjects. Impossible to distinguish from things an unbeliever would write. Immature.

It was a good experience, because it helped me with pride. When you’re a Christian, it’s easy to feel as though you were born holy. You can forget what you were before you surrendered. You can find yourself being too hard on people who are actually doing better at their ages than you were.

Today I got some revelation about it. I realized that if God kept improving me, in 18 years, I would look back on the person I am today and be disturbed. That’s not flattering, but the up side is that it means God can keep blessing me with improvement. Being made better is good. Obviously.

Last week, I had some dangerous trees removed from around my buildings. I thought after that happened, I would find myself outside more, cleaning up the damage and getting the pool and yard in shape. That didn’t happen.

There is less shade than there used to be, and we are in a period of really unpleasant weather. It feels like clouds have gone away for good. The second half of May was very hot. My car’s external thermometer hit 100 one day, and that was while I was driving, not while the car was sitting in the sun.

Since the tree-cutting stopped, I have been sitting in the house doing nearly nothing. The unjust and absurd Trump verdict came in on the day the tree service left, and I felt like it was strong confirmation that normal American life had ended permanently. The viciousness of Satan’s children is blossoming like never before in my life, and worse, they now have unprecedented favor from their father. And Christians are becoming like them, so our own favor has shriveled. Satan’s children are dominant, like Muslims in Hamtramck or homosexuals in San Francisco. We are the counterculture, and we are on the decline. We’re not going to rebound.

I have been discouraged by two climates: physical and supernatural. The physical climate will recover when the heat wave passes, but the supernatural weather is going to keep getting worse.

There is a real climate change, all right, but it has nothing to do with the temperature.

I have been reading the book of Enoch. It’s an interesting book. The idea is that Enoch and his great-grandson Noah had prophetic experiences and wrote them down. Jews don’t consider the book to be scripture. Some say it’s because of the clear references to Yeshua as Messiah and God. The book was written before Yeshua was born, so these references would be problematic to the post-Malachi version of Judaism that continues to the present day.

Here is some material that very clearly refers to Yeshua:

And there I saw One who had a head of days,
And His head was white like wool,
And with Him was another being whose countenance had the appearance of a man,
And his face was full of graciousness, like one of the holy angels.

And I asked the angel who went with me and showed me all the hidden things, concerning that

Son of Man, who he was, and whence he was, (and) why he went with the Head of Days? And he answered and said unto me:
This is the son of Man who hath righteousness,
With whom dwelleth righteousness,
And who revealeth all the treasures of that which is hidden,
Because the Lord of Spirits hath chosen him,
And whose lot hath the pre-eminence before the Lord of Spirits in uprightness for ever.

And this Son of Man whom thou hast seen
Shall raise up the kings and the mighty from their seats,
[And the strong from their thrones]
And shall loosen the reins of the strong,
And break the teeth of the sinners.
[And he shall put down the kings from their thrones and kingdoms]
Because they do not extol and praise Him,
Nor humbly acknowledge whence the kingdom was bestowed upon them.
And he shall put down the countenance of the strong,
And shall fill them with shame.

And darkness shall be their dwelling,
And worms shall be their bed,
And they shall have no hope of rising from their beds,
Because they do not extol the name of the Lord of Spirits.
[And raise their hands against the Most High],
And tread upon the earth and dwell upon it.
And all their deeds manifest unrighteousness,
And their power rests upon their riches,
And their faith is in the gods which they have made with their hands,
And they deny the name of the Lord of Spirits,

And they persecute the houses of His congregations,
And the faithful who hang upon the name of the Lord of Spirits.

Whether the book of Enoch is scripture is not for me to say, but Jude quoted it in the New Testament as an authoritative reference, so at least part of it is correct. There are a few other New Testament passages that some believe to be references to Enoch.

Enoch confirms some things God has been telling me: he really hates punks, and those who belong to him praise and honor him. Read it yourself and see. Enoch predicted destruction for those who didn’t praise the name of God. If you refuse to praise Yeshua, you’re refusing to praise the name of God, because Yeshua and Yahweh are one. Bowing down before Allah or Yahweh while blaspheming Yeshua is not helpful. Rabbis and Imams aren’t men of God. They make a living blaspheming God. You can’t have the father if you reject the son.

Look at this:

And the wisdom of the Lord of Spirits hath revealed him to the holy and righteous;
For he hath preserved the lot of the righteous,
Because they have hated and despised this world of unrighteousness,
And have hated all its works and ways in the name of the Lord of Spirits:
For in his name they are saved,
And according to his good pleasure hath it been in regard to their life.

That could not be more Christian, but it was written before the Christ was born. Just like Isaiah 53, Psalms 2 and 22, and Proverbs 30:4.

The above passage from Enoch is consistent with what God has been telling me and doing in me. I say we have to distance ourselves from the world. The culture of this world is sick and leads to damnation. Popular Christians, like the Hollywood stars who acknowledge Yeshua weakly while advancing a filthy system dedicated to sin, are failures. Christians who want to be everybody’s friend are barely Christians, if at all.

Enoch tells of a time when the wicked will be removed from the world and it will be turned over to God’s children. That’s consistent with the Revelation and with things Yeshua said. It’s what he was talking about when he said the meek would inherit the earth.

Enoch mentions God’s anger at the people and spirits who have prevented God’s children from succeeding and getting the blessings that were intended for them. Satan’s children are like their father: squatters, murderers, and thieves.

It is disturbing to see the things God shows me confirmed. It would be nice to think I could have a pleasant life in America, like people in the 1950’s, surrounded by people who had some understanding of kindness, decency, and humility. Instead, we are led by famous whores and pimps. Not just whores and pimps, but unusually gross and stupid whores and pimps. Public discourse is as revolting as the discourse of sailors 70 years ago. Economic opportunities are shriveling, and to get them, you have to bend the knee to the most disgusting sorts of perverts, racists, witches, and liars.

The world has always been bad, but not like this. Not in America. We literally have perversions the Sodomites were not able to come up with in their time. At least sexually, we have outdone the filthiest people in the Bible.

It’s sad that so many people claim Sodom was only destroyed for selfishness. Not true. The Bible makes it clear that sexual sin was a big factor.

Jude said:

Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

A guy who seems to be a prophet just spoke a word in which God said he was sending famine and confusion. He said they would not touch his own children. I hope the second part of the prophecy was genuine. I don’t want to find myself eating squirrels because I have to, not just because I want to. I don’t want my wife to go from African poverty to global poverty, just when she thought she had escaped.

I don’t want to be swept up in the confusion. I can tell men from women, so I think I’m okay.

Actually, I can’t always tell men from women. Sometimes it takes a little study. That’s new. But I know that a hairy, bearded fool in a dress is not a woman. Many Americans can’t say that, and the government is on the side of the fools.

This stuff is really happening. Confirmation keeps coming. The question that obsesses me is how long it will be before we can get out of here. I am ready to go today. My wife and I keep praying God will call his children soon, and that he will do whatever it takes to help the two of us make it.

Does any intelligent person want to be here after this year’s presidential election? No matter who wins, there will be pandemonium, and I choose the word deliberately, since it means, “all demons.” I think Trump will win, and if he does, the left will erupt, as it has been trained to do. If Biden wins, who knows what the right, the military, and our police will do? Trump supporters will say the election was stolen, and this time, they will indisputably be right. The unfair things that are being done to Trump and his supporters will not be forgotten.

When I think of the post-election turmoil, I can’t help thinking of it as entertaining, like a disaster movie. I think that’s because I’ve spent my life watching shows and movies made by an industry that teaches people to be jaded. I’ve seen so many people pretend to suffer and die, I have to pause and remind myself that real people really suffer.

The post-election fighting will be an engrossing spectacle. No doubt about that. But it won’t be like watching chaos on a screen. The pain, hunger, poverty, and horror will be real.

I feel as though the world were standing still while Yeshua prepares his entrance. I feel as though I could hear the trumpet at any second. I wish it would sound. I heard it in a dream, and it made me feel like weight was falling from my shoulders.

Trump Convicted of Mystery Crime by Prosecutor With no Jurisdiction

It has been said that a New York prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Getting indictments is pretty easy. Now we have seen that ham sandwiches are also in danger of conviction. A biased New York judge, a New York prosecutor with no ethics, and a jury set on vengeance have convicted Donald Trump of crimes he did not commit, in an area where state prosecutors have no jurisdiction.

The world is populated by two groups: the children of God, and the children of Satan. If you haven’t accepted Yeshua and become Spirit-led, you are not a child of God. You are just a creation of God. The Bible calls the children of Satan “lawless” and “workers of iniquity.” Increasingly, as the tribulation approaches, we are seeing just how little the law means to Satan’s family.

My wife and I have been praying for Trump to be exonerated, which will now have to be left up to the appellate courts, the Supreme Court, or history. It didn’t happen. Why is that?

I prayed yesterday about the decision, and I felt that God told me it was nothing out of the ordinary. We live in a time of furious, escalating persecution, and anyone who seems to side with God can expect to be attacked and defeated unless he is close to God. These defeats will increase, and there will be nothing we can do about it.

Donald Trump is some sort of Christian, but we have to be honest. He is not Spirit-led. He is probably not baptized with the Holy Spirit. He has surrounded himself with destructive people like Paula White and Bill Johnson. White is a tramp who takes husbands away, and Johnson is a heretic. Trump has associated with a number of prosperity preachers, and they are lower than street whores. He has not learned much of value, and he has not been transformed.

Trump is a friend of the church, but he lies constantly. Not about important things like whether you can keep your health insurance, but about stupid, petty things. He is arrogant. He credits himself much more than God. He has a long history of the lowest kinds of fornication and adultery. He is a reviler. He has all sorts of issues he has not addressed with the Holy Spirit.

Trump is very busy. He sleeps 4 hours per night, and he is on the move all day. You can’t have a good relationship with God if you’re busy. Being overly busy, of your own free will, usually comes from pride. Donald Trump thinks he’s getting important things done, but he is not doing the most important thing: spending time with God.

You can’t expect to dwell in God’s secret place and be insulated from severe persecution if you aren’t with God for a substantial part of every day.

Trump doesn’t know how to bless and curse. He probably hasn’t experienced or assisted in demonic deliverance. He has probably never been involved in healing or prophecy, except to receive false prophecies from greasy liars who say God makes people rich for buying them jets. Trump doesn’t know the Bible. He is spiritually weak and uneducated.

I’m not saying I dislike him or that I think he shouldn’t be President. I like him as a person, and I will definitely vote for him as the lesser of two evils. But he’s not Yeshua. His faults are not hard to identify, and they open him to defeat.

It seems pretty clear that he had sex with a sleazy prostitute actress, even though he denies it. Then he tried to cover it up. While these things are legal in man’s world, they should be expected to bring a bad harvest in the supernatural, especially to a man who doesn’t admit fault or repent. If Donald Trump had behaved like most Christian men, Stormy Daniels would not be part of his life.

Once things started to go sideways, he should have admitted guilt, repented, and gotten into supernatural warfare. That’s not what happened. He hired lawyers and started blaming everyone but himself.

I’ve had sins come back to bite me, and because I am not as hard or self-confident as Donald Trump, God managed to get me to repent and handle things his way, and I have come out all right. If Trump had surrendered to God, this case probably would not have been filed. God doesn’t control our enemies. Their free will is too important. But he can see to it that they are heavily influenced to leave us alone, and he can do things to hinder them. He can even kill them.

Giuliani is another proverb in the making.

I remember Giuliani as one of the greatest prosecutors and mayors of all time. He crippled the mafia, and he cleaned up New York City. Those are astounding feats. He was admired even by Democrats.

Now we have learned that he’s pretty depraved. He had a bizarre, degrading relationship with a female employee who is now suing him. She says he ordered her to work naked. She has recordings of him saying the kinds of things you would expect Andrew Tate to say to a sex slave.

He appears to have started descending into senility maybe 15 years ago. When he represented Trump, he said things no competent attorney would say. He started spouting defamations. He opened himself up to attack, and now he has to pay a $148 million verdict. The sex lawsuit has not been resolved, so another verdict is in the works.

He has been humiliated publicly. He has declared bankruptcy, and he had to expose a lot of private information to the court. Hostile journalists have needlessly revealed that one of his Amazon purchases was a video intended to help people with pornography addiction.

Many people don’t know it, but Giuliani used to share his apartment with homosexuals. He has appeared in drag. He hasn’t led a wholesome life. He has stood up for what secular people would call decency, but he’s not a Christian, and he hasn’t stood up for God.

Now his mind is gone, he can’t pay his lawyers, and unless he moved a huge sum into trusts or gave it away, his children can’t expect to see much of the enormous fortune he amassed.

As the tribulation approaches, persecution will get worse and worse, and nominal Christians will be harmed more than anyone. Their defeats and their humiliation will expose them.

I’m not saying there are special Christians who have been so good Satan won’t be able to touch them. I’m saying people who repent and work to unify themselves with the Holy Spirit will have more protection than anyone else.

It’s hard to accept my own fate: living in a world where the worst sort of punks go after people I like and torture them into the grave.

God really, really hates punks. People need to understand that. Since about 1960, we have been building a punk culture. We have been teaching generations to be punks and to admire punks. We humiliate people we are supposed to honor. Parents. Teachers. Judges. Scholars. Employers.

We have become disrespectful brats, and because we don’t know anything about God any more, we don’t realize we have cursed ourselves. The Bible makes it clear that God loathes brats, not just their sins, and he curses them.

In the past, people of accomplishment, authority, and good character were respected, and God restrained the riff-raff that longed to destroy them. That has changed. Now the police get on their knees in front of brats with long rap sheets, apologizing for standing up for their victims. Now cities pay sexual degenerates to paint perversion symbols on our streets. We have frequent events in which young people with no brains and no fathers swarm and abuse people, including the police, and destroy property.

It wasn’t our greatness that restrained these people in the past. It was our own willingness to respect the authority of God. Take that away, and the brats grow like mildew.

God makes us go through what we make him go through.

We have tried to emasculate and humiliate God, and now the same things are happening to us.

God showed me that the mob takeovers we’ve been seeing are pictures of what is happening to America as a whole. Base, ignorant, malicious people are being built up in power.

God showed me how important praise is. You can’t expect a pleasant existence as a Christian if you don’t praise and honor God. Even saying simple things like, “I praise you,” over and over has a powerful effect. We have to honor him if we want him to look after us and defeat our enemies.

Praise is the way to stop being a punk. When you praise God and honor him, you do the opposite of what brats do, and you get blessings, not curses.

It is extremely unpleasant to be in a position of honor and receive humiliation instead. It’s intolerable. Any adult who has been abused by young people knows what I mean. We hate it, and God hates it.

Personally, I have withdrawn from every low, abusive person in my life. Going back to them would be like returning to prison. God does the same thing. He eventually retreats from people who treat him disrespectfully, and when he moves out, evil spirits move in and tear the brats to pieces.

When God raptures us and lets the tribulation begin, he will be isolating the respectful and those who should be honored (himself included) from the punks.

When punks treat God disrespectfully, it grieves the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit leaves you, along with his blessings. This is why the Holy Spirit opened the gate of the temple in Jerusalem and left before Titus sacked the city and dispersed the Jews. He shook the dust off his feet because the Jews who ran the temple refused to accept his shalom. His peace and wellbeing. These things are for people who honor Yeshua, not just Yahweh. To contemn Yeshua is to contemn Yahweh.

I’m fighting my own punk inclinations, which I built up in stupidity. I don’t want to be left behind because I belong here.

When I was younger and looking for instruction, no one told me these things. They were too busy promoting weird dead-church rules or trying to get my money. They were ignorant, so when I listened to them, I was ignorant. We have become like the Jews of the time of Yeshua, who said, “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”

Ignorance is lack of knowledge, and the word says God’s people are destroyed for lack of knowledge:

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.

The lowest, most disgusting segments of society are rising up against people who used to be honored and even feared, and it’s because we did the same thing to God.

The Vatican just sponsored a male pervert who dances in women’s clothing. They used to put people like that on trial. Such people feared exposure. Now we run from them.

I think Donald Trump will win the election, and I think some of his ridiculous court losses will be reversed, but America will be destroyed anyway, because we continue to sow the seeds of our destruction. I don’t know how to cope with having to watch it happen, even though my wife and I are safe.

I felt very tired last night. I think it was the fatigue of the Holy Spirit.

If you lose when you think you should win, you should examine yourself. Things that don’t make sense have supernatural explanations. A lot of prominent conservatives are going to lose because they will look in the wrong places for help.

Goodbye, Shade

When I moved here, one of the things I liked best was the woodsy location. The area of the property where the house is located had a lot of big oaks close to both buildings.

Since then, I have reconsidered.

The oaks drop leaves that are like little pieces of leather. They drop tons of them, literally, on the lawn. They kill the grass, but they seem to let weeds through just fine.

The trees rot. Here, whenever you cut an oak more than 10″ thick, you can expect to find a big brown spot in the center of the trunk, if not a hollow area full of giant cockroaches. The trees rot from the inside out, and they die from the tops down. Eventually, big rotten logs start to fall straight down. When a tree gets sufficiently rotten, it snaps and falls over.

The roots of these oaks are amazing, because they don’t hold the trees in place very well, but they are nearly impossible to dislodge after the trees are gone. The trees rot fast when standing, but the stumps seem to last for eternity.

Because the roots aren’t great, you never know when a strong wind will push a tree over.

The people who built this house thought the trees were cute, and they were, but a house with a tree on the roof is less cute, so today a bunch of guys who looked sort of like Vikings came and murdered most of the trees that menaced my house. The rest have a date with the saw tomorrow.

Where I used to live, arborists climbed trees. I used to work for an arborist from time to time, and he would put spikes on his feet and go right up an 80-foot Australian pine and start cutting. It was terrifying to watch. When you’re way up on a tree, and a piece of the trunk weighing 500 pounds falls off, the tree swings back and forth like a spring, and there you are with the trunk a foot from your face.

Also, when the tree snaps as you cut it, you have to be sure you did it right, because when you’re right next to a tree in the process of snapping, lots of bad things can happen. This is especially true if you’re tied to the tree.

Here, I have not seen anyone in a tree. They go up on lifts.

I think it may be because the trees are so treacherous here. The tops are full of rotten wood. If you were to climb one, the motion of your body could make the top snap off and hit you on the way to the ground. You might also anchor yourself to something rotten without knowing it.

The tree guys surprised me. I didn’t see ear protection on any of them, and they were running very big Stihls. None of them wore chainsaw chaps. The only guy who had a helmet was up on the crane, and he was the one dropping logs, not one of the ones dodging them.

I don’t know how they can hear anything after running saws every day for years.

I now have two really large piles of dead oak to burn. They’re not far from the house. I would ordinarily have the wood put in the pasture, but because the machine that moves wood is slow, it would have slowed down the work and cost me money. I’m going to go out and see if I can move one of the piles myself tonight.

The yard looks like someone fought a war in it. The grass here is feeble. If you walk across it three times, it starts to look bad. If there is no rain for 5 days, it turns brown. We have had several dry days. The grass was not ready for a crane, a grapple, and a lift.

I’m going to miss the shade, but it was an unaffordable luxury. We have an insurance crisis here, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to get a policy next year. I am not going to sit through hurricane season wondering if I’m going to have to build a new house at my own expense.

From now on, I’ll have fewer leaves, the grass will look better, and my house will be in no danger whatsoever from hurricanes. Well worth losing some shade.

The people who built the house should have removed the trash oaks and planted better stuff that would stand up to wind. Now I have to plant that stuff, and I will be dead before it looks good.

I’ll have to poison my new stumps, and later I’ll think about ways to remove them. A rented track loader with a stump bucket sounds good. Or an excavator.

If you build or buy a house, don’t be stupid. Don’t doom it with inappropriate vegetation. It will rob you of peace, and it could squoosh your investment.

Fox’s site says Trump has been found guilty in Alvin Bragg’s kangaroo court. Another big oak nibbled by bugs.

“I’m Sorry, Dave. I Can’t Let You Get Groceries”

A reader left a comment that got me thinking. Are cars today better or worse than they were in the 1970’s?

Cars are safer now. Can’t argue about that. The also have more gadgets, like USB ports for music, DVD players, devices to heat and cool seats, recordable seat positions, and so on.

Cars are also faster now. Teslas are not even worth discussing in terms of comparison, because they’re faster than many professional drag cars. They also have high top speeds. You can buy a gas SUV that will take you to 185 mph now, just like Joe Walsh’s Maserati.

Cars go around corners better now. No doubt about it. My run-of-the-mill SUV, which appeared on the market about 13 years ago, corners far better than the Z28 I drove in high school, or that year’s Corvette.

Many parts in modern cars last a lot longer than the corresponding parts in old cars. Some things are much easier to maintain.

Now for the bad things.

The paint on modern cars is eco-garbage. It WILL peel off after about 7 years in the Florida sun, even if you wax it, wash it, treat it with every conceivable maintenance chemical, and cover it with kisses every night. It can’t be repaired. You can either paint your car, at enormous expense, or live with it. At the very least, you have to paint a panel, and the painter will not match the paint correctly.

Paint used to be permanent. Now it’s a consumable, like a spark plug or tire. If your car gets a lot of sun, you can expect to spend thousands of dollars before you’re ready to sell the car. The cost is about like replacing an engine.

The paint on old cars had no clear coat, so it could not separate into two layers. It lasted as long as the cars. If it got damaged, you could repair the area of the damage. If it got dull, you could buff it back up to a high polish. It’s cheaper and much less dangerous to apply. The new stuff causes life-threatening chronic asthma that never goes away.

New cars are impossible for owners to repair, apart from the basics, and many mechanics lack the mental horsepower to get up to speed on them. When they are able to figure them out, the repairs can be incredibly expensive because of the complexity and the way cars are jammed full of parts intended solely to improve mileage and emissions. A repair that might require an hour in a ’67 Impala might require pulling the engine in a 2023 car.

Modern cars are cramped inside. People love to say modern cars are actually roomier, but it’s not true. You can literally jump into the backseat of a 1970 sedan. Try that in my Ford Explorer, and you’ll end up in the emergency room. People used to have sex in their cars. Not possible now. When I was a kid, I used to lie across the rear windows of my parents’ cars, in what was called the parcel shelf. That shelf doesn’t exist now.

Modern cars ride very badly. Young people have been convinced that European cars were always better, which is not true, and that one thing that made them better was their superior handling. Now we make cars that handle better than they need to, and the price is a harsh ride with lots and lots of noise.

We stick low-profile rapper tires on cars moms use to take their kids to school. Those tires can’t absorb bumps, and when they hit large bumps, they can fail to protect the rims, which can be permanently destroyed.

Do you need a car with fantastic handling? No, you really don’t. Not unless you want a sports car. A 1970 Sedan Deville will go right around any curve in America if you’re anywhere close to the speed limit. Isn’t that how you drive 98% of the time? When you’re going to get groceries on a curvy road with a speed limit of 45, you’re not going to try to fly around curves at 65.

I owned a sports car, and I can tell you this: the time I spent putting it to the test amounted to less than 1% of the time I was in it, but the time I spent dealing with the ride and noise amounted to 100%.

A good ride and low noise are much more valuable for most people than European-inspired handling.

We forget that Europeans built cars and roads the way they did because they were unsuccessful, not because they were smart. They built narrow, winding roads, and their cars were light because they could not afford a lot of steel or gas. If they could have built Cadillacs and nice, wide roads, they would have.

America used to have extreme economic superiority, back before we started losing God’s favor by promoting sexual sin and every other type of evil. Now rich Asians buy our farmland because we can’t match their bids.

Here’s an interesting question: do modern cars get better mileage? The answer is: sometimes.

You can get a subsidized Prius and barely ever visit a gas station. On the other hand, my normal family car probably gets 15 mpg. I haven’t checked, because I have no incentive. I have to buy gas, and I have to drive, so there is no point in measuring my mileage. It would be like measuring the price of water.

I accelerate normally, which means not like an old lady, which is what you have to do in order to get the published figure of 20 mpg combined. No one gets car company’s published figures. They’re a joke.

My gorgeous 1970 Buick Electra 225 convertible had a 455 in it. That’s 7.46 liters, or more than twice the volume of my present engine. It was rated at 370 horsepower and 510 foot-pounds of torque. You can have a somewhat slow car with 370 horses, but if the torque figure is 510, it’s another story.

That car got 17.5 miles per highway gallon, at 70 mph. I checked it.

My boring Ford has about a thousand economy-related advancements in it, but it’s still pretty close to a 1970 455 in a glorious barge that made women swoon.

In terms of pleasure, the Buick and the Ford are in different universes. I felt like a celebrity every time I drove the Buick. I loved driving with the top down, especially on clear nights. Every time I approached it as I walked back to it in a parking lot, my spirit lit up.

When I approach the Ford, I think, “There’s a nice practical car. Thank God I don’t have more problems with it.”

I miss that Buick every single day of my life. It still hurts me that I lost it.

If somebody out there made a car like a Sedan Deville today, with the same nice ride, the comfort, and the giant trunk, combined with air bags, crumple zones, and ABS, I would be sorely tempted to get one. I think there would be waiting lists to the moon and back.

I’m thinking I may get rid of the Explorer and get a Toyota 4runner. This is a truck-based SUV, whereas the Explorer is half car and half truck. A real truck has body-on-frame construction, which is superior. You can work on a 4runner, because there is room around the engine.

The 4runner is more like an old car because it is an old car. It debuted in 1984. Through its generations, Toyota has been extremely slow to make changes. As a result, it is one of the most trouble-free cars in existence. Nearly everything that could have gone bad went bad years ago, and Toyota fixed it. Toyota has an obsessive model-improvement program even Honda can’t match. It approaches mental illness.

People put the 4runner down, saying it’s like driving a truck. I have a truck, and I love driving it, except for parking. The 4runner has high-profile tires, so surely it can’t have that driving-on-the-rims feeling nearly all ordinary cars have. It’s about the same size as an Explorer, so parking would not be harder. The Explorer is wider than other cars, and width is the main thing that makes parking difficult. The 4runner is 2″ narrower.

The Explorer is 191″ long, and a 4runner is 198″ long. My old Camaro, a small car for the time, was 198″ long.

People say the 4runner has a truck-like interior. “Bonus,” I say. I don’t know why that would be a disadvantage. Maybe it bothers men who wear women’s underwear and have a hard time opening jars. My truck has a truck-like interior, and it’s great. More comfortable than the Ford.

To get back to my theme, cars all look like suppositories now. They look like mints that have been sucked on for a while. Parallel evolution dictated by socialist nuts has made them all look alike.

Modern cars spy on you. Not all, but some. And they are starting to incorporate gadgetry that allows them to be shut down by other people, remotely. Cars record private data about their owners, and manufacturers sell it without permission. In the near future, if the left gets its way, the government and the manufacturers (and random criminals, possibly including rapists and wife-beaters) will be able to shut your car’s engine off from a distance.

Old cars don’t have that problem. We’re talking about a fundamental threat to liberty. If there is a schism between the states, who will the carmakers side with? Not conservatives. Not Christians. People in red areas will have to pay hackers to hack-proof the vehicles they paid for.

I would say cars are fundamentally worse now, but the safety upgrades are huge blessings. There is no reason those upgrades could not be incorporated in a car that’s actually a pleasure to drive and work on.

Questionable car expert James May says he doesn’t like old cars. He loves to rattle on about all the ways in which modern cars are better. Thing is, he’s rich, and most of the cars he has driven were handed to him, in perfect condition, by manufacturers who worked on them beforehand to make sure they were as good as they could be. He got to abandon nearly all of them before anything bad could happen.

It’s very different when you have to drive a car for 10 years, you have to pay for every repair, and the manufacturer sees you as an orange to be run through the juicing machine and discarded.

If James May had to pay $4000 for a water pump or $12,000 for new paint, he wouldn’t care. That’s like you buying a new shoelace. If one of his cars has a problem, he makes a call, someone comes around to get the car, someone brings it back fixed, and an inconsequential charge appears on his American Express Plutonium Card. He never has to touch a wrench or his savings. And what are the odds any of his cars have expired warranties?

Also, he drives on horrible, shoulderless British roads originally designed by the Romans for carts pulled by pigs. A real American car would occupy two lanes.

May is a leftist, so he can’t possibly fear having his car controlled by the establishment. He is the establishment. He doesn’t realize he’s a fascist. If our government starts bricking the cars of people who don’t believe in global warming or reject bizarre “pronouns,” he’ll probably be thrilled. I’ll bet he would have supported bricking for people who didn’t wear face diapers.

Many young people have no idea what riding in a real luxury car is like. They will never know what they missed. My dad had a 1985 Town Car, which was one of the last true luxury cars made. It was like riding around in an expensive hotel room. I loved it. No kid raised on Accords and Camrys will ever know that feeling. They’ll never know how it feels to be riding in the backseat of a car and turn around to face the person beside them. Do that in an Explorer, and you’ll tear an ACL. Your head will face one way, and your feet another.

I admit, the smaller cars of the past were worse than today’s small cars. They were just as cramped, and they had none of the advantages of modern cars. I would rather have my Explorer than a like-new 1970 Camaro or Cutlass. Economy cars like Mavericks and Vegas were actually insulting to buyers. Economy cars were almost always ugly.

I think the carmakers made them repulsive to shame buyers into buying more-expensive vehicles. I doubt anyone ever drove home from a showroom in a Vega, full of a sensation of triumph.

Maybe immigrants from poor countries.

The pleasure of driving a nice, big, powerful American car with high sidewalls and no emissions control. One more thing I got to experience that today’s kids can only dream about.

You are Smarter Than all of Ford’s Engineers

All sorts of nagging problems seem to be getting solved here. God’s grace in action.

My car has been annoying me. It’s a Ford Explorer. These cars have some really stupid–I mean seriously stupid–engineering.

1. They put a foam rubber cover on the engine. It has a very high R-value, so it’s like putting several inches of attic insulation on the motor. The general rule throughout the automobile age has been that you want your car to run hot enough to do its thing well, but no hotter. You don’t want to roast everything under your hood, like your expensive battery and all the weak modern plastic parts that eventually crumble after a lot of heat cycles. You don’t want to have to strain your cooling system to get rid of heat that would happily leave on its own if permitted. My car was designed so a rubber blanket would keep it hot while a complicated cooling system tried to get rid of the same heat. I have placed the engine cover where it can keep the garage floor warm.

2. They put the water pump–a cheap part that fails often because Ford makes junk on purpose–inside the engine. That sounds like something out of Dilbert, but it’s completely true. In about 1985, the water pump on my gorgeous 1970 Buick deuce-and-a-quarter convertible died, and with almost no mechanical skills, I replaced it by myself in an afternoon. The cost was probably around $30. The cost of replacing a Ford Explorer water pump can be as high as $4500 if you’re stupid enough to go to a dealer, and even private mechanics sometimes charge half that much.

Explorer engine pumps fail very, very often. So do their gaskets. The design is amazing. There are two gaskets, one inside the other. When your inner gasket fails, coolant goes out of the car through a hole between the gaskets. You’re supposed to see this even though it happens under the car. When the outer gasket fails, coolant goes into your oil pan.

Hey, I’m no engineer, but let me spitball here a minute. My car has about 8,000,000 sensors, most of which were a bad idea to install. Why not have a coolant level sensor instead of using ME as a sensor?

Why not use three gaskets? Why not 4? If you’re determined to go stupid, go big. Maybe a lot of Explorer engines with three bad gaskets and one good one would still be running.

You read the stuff about the oil pan right. Ford designed its water pumps to shoot coolant into the oil pans of running engines. Guess what you have to buy when that happens? Starts with an “E.” For “Edsel.”

My car is probably worth $18000. Cost of a new “E”? Call it $8000 if you’re really lucky. Then you have the same kind of engine that committed suicide once already.

3. The car has shutters on the radiator. What can you say about a feature that dumb? At highway speeds, they close. That means you also paid for a shutter motor and a bunch of electronics and programming. When they close, the drag coefficient of the car drops by about 0.01%, and you gain half a mile per gallon. Look it up. I’m not lying. This is Ford’s way of trying to cope with ridiculous mileage mandates which, ultimately, come from allowing women to vote. Don’t get me started. Although I already am.

What happens if the shutters close at the wrong time, which they obviously will, because there are trillions of Explorers, and that’s how probability works? The radiator won’t get air. Personally, I would rather lose the half-mile per gallon, since this car gets bad mileage anyway, and not bake everything in my engine compartment.

My car has been sending me false overheating signals. This is disturbing, because when it happens, all you can think is, “IF I DON’T PULL OVER IN THE NEXT MINUTE, IT WILL COST ME TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.”

Lots of bad things can happen when a car overheats. You can lose an engine. You can get hidden damage that causes you to lose the engine later, long after you congratulated yourself on dodging a bullet.

The car started beeping on a very hot day while I was in a Burger King drive-through. I went in and ate, and when I came out maybe 15 minutes later, the car was miraculously cool. That’s not long enough for a car to cool down.

I started out of the parking lot, and the temperature gauge shot up. Too fast to make sense. I got out of the lot, and it dropped within maybe 15 seconds.

I checked the coolant level, it was low. I topped it off. The car behaved for a while. Then it beeped again while the wife and I were running errands.

I started Googling. I interrogated people on a forum. I thought I might be looking at a second thermostat replacement, and I considered using a cooler thermostat than the super-hot job Ford installed.

The coolant level dropped again, after one day, so I bought some fluorescent dye and a UV flashlight. If there was a leak, I would be able to find it under the hood.

I added dye. I drove around. I saw a lot of coolant spillage lighting up under the hood. It occurred to me that I might have spilled dye myself, so I hosed everything off, topped off the coolant, and ran errands on a blistering-hot day.

Nothing happened. The coolant level stayed high. I saw no leaks.

I can’t figure it out, but it looks like I don’t have a problem after all. Maybe the people who replaced the first thermostat left the coolant low, and over time, it got so low it messed with the temperature sensor. Maybe the coolant level dropped after I added the first dose because it was being sucked into the system.

I don’t know. I do know I was planning to take the car to a shop tomorrow, and now that’s off. I bought a third thermostat and some coolant and distilled water, so I plan to flush the system. I’m hoping the car doesn’t really have a problem.

I was actually starting to look at Toyota Highlanders on the web. The Highlander is supposed to be a better car. Every car has weak points, and the Highlander is no exception, but not every car has a water pump inside the engine. A water pump which is known to go bad frequently. Along with a timing chain which has a predicted service life of 100,000 miles.

A modern car should go 300,000 miles without major problems if maintained well, so what kind of fool makes a car with a 100,000-mile timing chain that costs thousands to replace?

A Highlander timing chain is very expensive to replace, but on the other hand, Toyota says there is no recommended interval, so that means they don’t expect it to fail at 100,000 miles. I don’t know what Ford says. I don’t feel like checking. I do know that people all over the web say it’s a maintenance part, like a spark plug or air filter, as contrasted with a lifetime part, like a rear differential.

A maintenance part. Deep inside your engine. It’s like doing a tonsillectomy through your butt.

I think I got my Makita cordless chainsaw fixed.

The saw was running dry. It has an oil tank like a gas saw, and it has the same sort of pump, sending oil to the bar and chain through a hole in the saw body.

I was afraid the $22 oil pump had failed.I took the bar off and cleaned a lot of crud out, hoping crud was blocking the oil. Better than waiting for a pump.

I ran the saw with the bar off to see if the pump worked, and oil dripped out of the saw body, as expected. It seemed like less oil than a gas saw would drip, but that is supposedly normal. I closed the saw up and used it to move an oak I felled by the driveway.

Today I looked at the saw and noticed that the bar was blue around the edges, which some people say is a sign the saw ran hot and toasted the steel. Others say bars are blue from the factory because they harden the edges where the chains run. I don’t know what the truth is.

I opened the saw up again and saw something amazing.

When cleaning saw oil passages up in the past, I have thought mainly about the saw bodies. Wood dust jams into the little slots the oil comes out of, so you knock it out with something and go on. Exactly what I did the first time I checked the Makita.

What I did not know was that fine dust and bar oil could harden and turn into something like wood filler or just plain concrete.

On the bar itself, I found little accumulations of hardened dust shaped just like the oil slot. When the saw was closed up, these accumulations pressed into the slot and sealed it up like a gasket.

I had to scrape the bar itself. It took a while. That stuff was hard.

I learned something. When you run a saw, before you do anything, floor it with the bar pointed at something. If oil doesn’t spray onto whatever you’re aiming at, fix the saw, because the chain is dry. You can have oil dripping from the bottom of a saw without getting any on the chain.

I have 5 saws on the premises right now. I have had so many saw problems, my former biggest saw has an old bar that has been run so little, it’s practically new. Another saw is actually new. The rest needed to be sharpened. I knocked that off.

I generally use files, but I decided to try Pferd sharpeners because they file not just the teeth, but the depth gauges, which are the pointy things between teeth. Gauges tell your teeth how deep to cut, and if you keep filing the teeth and not the gauges, you end up cutting with the gauges alone, and that’s not very fast.

Pferd sharpeners are almost exactly the same as Stihl sharpeners, but when I got mine, they cost way less.

Sharpening your saw is very important. A dull chain can make a 70-cc saw cut like a 30-cc saw, and if you don’t know it’s dull, you may think a bigger saw is the answer. You may spend money needlessly. Also, a dull saw can make a saw overheat, destroying the piston, cylinder, and maybe some other stuff. A small saw with a sharp chain is better than a big saw with the kind of chain most people use.

Speaking of things that are better than a big saw, I have a phenomenal tip for you, born of experience. Buy a cordless pole saw, not a chainsaw. You probably don’t even need a chainsaw. They’re only appropriate for firewood and thick trees. No one says this, but it’s 100% true, and it should be considered canon by now.

With a 10″ pole saw, you can cut trees 12″ thick. Not gracefully, but safely and effectively. You don’t need a 16″ chainsaw, the homeowner’s preferred size, unless you’re cutting bigger stuff.

With a chainsaw, you have to stand right next to what you’re cutting, and believe me, you will make mistakes when you try to guess which way things will go when you cut them. The farther away you are, the safer you are. With a pole saw, you can be 6 feet or more away from your stupid mistakes.

Most chainsaw tree-whacking injuries occur within a couple of steps of the cut, and if you have a pole saw, you’re already two steps away when you need to run. This is a very, very big deal no one talks about.

If you have a pole saw, you can cut things higher than your shoulders. “I’m already doing that.” Yes, I know. You’re an idiot. You never raise a chainsaw above your shoulders. What do chainsaws do when operators have problems? They fall. They don’t levitate and fly away. The lower a saw is when you use it, the better off you are, because less of you is where it may fall.

When you cut your leg off with a chainsaw, why does it happen? It happens because the saw was higher than your leg when you had your problem, and because a chainsaw is so short, you were able to keep your finger on the trigger while the bar was cutting you.

If you drop a pole saw, it’s pretty unlikely the bar will come near you on the way down. Cutting your leg with a pole saw is virtually impossible.

You’re supposed to wear safety chaps when you use a chainsaw. They really work, and no one uses them. They’re hot, and they look kind of gay. If you’re using a tool that can’t cut your leg, the fact that you refuse to wear chaps won’t be a problem.

Even safety experts have no issues with operating pole saws overhead. It’s what they’re for. You can even use one from a ladder. You never, ever use a chainsaw from a ladder.

A pole saw will always turn off when you let go of the handle, and you have to let go of the handle in order to get near the bar. It’s brilliant.

You also get less sawdust on you when you use a pole saw because it’s not ejecting things directly at you from one foot away.

If you go cordless, you will never need ear protection. That’s a huge bonus. Earmuffs cause painful headaches, they’re hot, they may eventually smell, and they’re disgusting because they’re filthy. And they don’t really protect your hearing well. With a big saw, you also need plugs.

Unless you’re cutting things over 12″ thick regularly, or you’re cutting firewood, you don’t need a chainsaw, even though they’re cool and you want one. You should get a 10″ Kobalt battery pole saw from Lowe’s for less than the price of a homeowner-grade Husky 16″ gas saw that plugs up with ethanol gas at least once a year. Get an extra battery. Do it, and you will almost never need to reach for a chainsaw.

It’s so much safer, it’s in a different safety universe. It’s cheaper. It works better. It’s easier on your back. It can do lots of things a chainsaw can’t do. It can do nearly anything a chainsaw can do.

You won’t even have to adjust the chain. The saw does it for you.

You want it.

I have a tree crew coming this week to do major cutting and moving so I will never need hurricane insurance again. They need places to dump wood for burning, and they need to be able to get to the back of my shop, where some of the worst trees are.

I had two big piles of trash wood waiting to be burned, so yesterday, I called for a permit. They told me I could not have one. They said dispersion was too low. What?

I found out this meant there was not enough wind to disperse the smoke, and they were worried that soy people might get a widdle cough.

They said I could take a $50 course and become a second-level burn pile guru, and then they would give me permits when other people could not get them. I checked online. No courses were available. NICE.

Help me understand why being a burning expert should entitle you to burn more wood than other people. It produces the same amount of smoke. It must be a gimmick to direct money to the government or some contractors who bought the government some escorts.

Look how smart old people are. A young person would still be wondering.

Being old means you know how the world really works. This is one of the best parts of being old. And one of the worst.

I called today before 7 a.m., thinking they were more likely to be nice to me if I showed I was serious. They told me it was too early, so I called again at 7. I got a different person. Not the masculine-sounding lady who had been so terse and authoritative in the past and probably wears plaid shirts. Yes, I’m insinuating something. Just a guess.

The lady I got could not have been nicer. Same weather, but I got my burn permit anyway.

Now I have two smoldering circles of ash, and I won’t have to sacrifice pasture needlessly for extra piles.

I took the tractor out and moved all sorts of junk from behind the shop. My bush hog. Two rolls of fence wire. A bunch of treated lumber. A hay bale spike. A subsoiler. My debris fork. My tractor bucket. A harrow. Now there’s lots of acreage back there so they can get their machines in.

I was afraid I would need my truck because of the car’s problems, and it has refused to turn over. I finally decided to address it. I am charging the batteries up, and I checked the wiring. Yes, the horrible squirrels have nibbled a bit, but not enough to prevent the truck from running.

I think I have a ground issue, so I’m going to clean and grease every ground that looks relevant, and I’m hoping to get the truck going by Wednesday.

I also decided to check out a problem I had been dreading dealing with. My truck’s 4WD shift has been swinging freely as though it were not connected to anything. I got under the truck, and guess what? It’s not connected to anything.

Remember what I said about stupid engineering? Dodge makes these trucks so the transfer linkages fall out with no warning. A linkage is a funny-looking rod, and it has two weak bushings at the ends. The bushings WILL fail even if you don’t use the transfer case, and when they do, the linkage goes away without telling you, perhaps hitting the car behind you as it tinkles and bounces down the interstate.

I have parts ordered. I’m thinking of finding a way to make sure the linkage can’t fall out again. Dodge’s engineers couldn’t do it, but I can, because IT’S REALLY SIMPLE.

Dodge wants something like $60 for the parts, but the Chinese sell basically the same thing for $15. They’re all over Amazon because THEY FALL OUT ALL THE TIME AND DODGE CAN’T FIGURE OUT HOW TO STOP IT.

I looked up my Harley’s value, and I plan to put it on Craigslist so I can get the truck indoors away from squirrels. The title is around here somewhere, and as soon as I find it, goodbye, Softail.

I also found myself and my wife better car insurance. By going from GEICO to State Farm, we can cut over 50% from our bill and get nearly the same coverage. Insurance rates are insane. One company wants x. Another company wants 0.5x. Another company wants 3x. A 4th company will not insure anyone in Florida, for no clear reason. Rates bear no relationship to reality that I can perceive. I guess we’ll switch tomorrow.

Things are coming together. With God’s help, the car won’t blow up, the tree job will go smoothly, the truck will roar again, and my chainsaws will again be useful as well as ornamental.

You Can’t Stand Bad Company Forever

When I pray these days, I often complain to God about having to live in this world. I don’t blame him for anything. I just want someone to vent to. I keep telling him, “I hate this place.” I keep telling him he has been right about everything. The state of the world proves it over and over.

My life is excellent. I have health, prosperity, a wonderful wife, and a home pretty far from most of the vicious, demonized, leftist and Muslim nuts who are sincerely looking forward to a chance to kill every person like my wife and me. I enjoy life a great deal. I’m extremely grateful, because I know my blessings are extreme. But I will never feel at home here while demons rule the world. I always say it’s like I went to a Mexican resort for a luxury vacation and was not allowed to go home.

The Bible says Lot was in a similar situation. It says:

[B]ut he rescued Lot, a righteous man who was distressed by the debauchery of those unprincipled people; for the wicked deeds which that righteous man saw and heard, as he lived among them, tormented his righteous heart day after day.

I am not calling myself righteous, but I have some awareness of right and wrong. Enough to make the spectacle of the modern West revolting to me, every day. Enough to make me understand how much worse it will get.

Living on this earth is like living on a somewhat clean platform in the middle of a tank full of feces, urine, pus, menstrual fluid, dead bodies, rotten fish, and every kind of filth imaginable. The platform may be a big blessing, but you’re still in a bad place.

The other day I realized I should not say that I hate this place. The place is not the problem. A place can’t be good or bad. It’s the people.

I hated Miami because the people were rude and trashy. I could not wait to get out. What if the people were nice?

Miami has a magnificent bay and barrier islands. It has quick access to Gulf Stream fish. In a couple of hours, you can take a boat to the Bahamas. There is never any snow or ice. It’s sunny, and the sun improves people’s moods. It’s easy to grow fruit and ormamental plants there. Put the right people there, and it would be very nice.

What if you took all the Swiss and put them in Dade County, Florida, and you moved everyone in Dade to Switzerland?

Miami would be wonderful. People would get along. The economy would be fantastic. Crime would be almost nonexistent. The educational system would be tops. Switzerland, on the other hand, would be mostly ghetto, and everyone there would hate each other, because they hated each other where they came from. Crime would explode. The murder rate would skyrocket. Tourism would plummet.

God showed me this: I should not complain about a place. I should complain about the power and presence of the wicked. Where the wicked are few and weak, things are good. Where they are many and dominant, you end up with something like Somalia or San Francisco. Places where decent people are unhappy and persecuted, and the filthy are rewarded and promoted.

We hear a lot about genocide these days. From liars. Liars keep making the insane claim that Israel’s actions of self-defense are genocide.

Unlike Gazans, Israel and the Jews are truly threatened with genocide, and genocide is the openly-stated aim of their Muslim enemies. It’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s clearly true. The interesting thing is that genocide really is in the works from our side, but it will come from God, not his children or the Jews. God himself is going to clear the majority of those who hate Yeshua off the planet. He won’t send us out with ridiculous AR-15’s with skulls engraved on the magazine wells. He’ll do it personally, with the help of angels. He’ll also let the wicked kill each other off. He’ll even let animals kill them. That’s in the Revelation.

Eventually, God is going to decide he and his children have had enough of the presence and power of the wicked, and he will get rid of them and put the cleansed world back in our hands.

Genocide against the wicked is inevitable, because the mere presence of evil people and spirits is unsustainable for everyone else. It can’t be tolerated forever. Similarly, those who are against us are not looking for coexistence. They want us gone. Dead. Not just dead, but erased from history. Many religious Jews pronounce this curse on Yeshua: “May his name and memory be blotted out forever.” That came from Satan. Satan wants it for Yeshua and all those who are important to him. This is why Holocaust-deniers, and those who claim ancient Israel was not Jewish, exist.

It’s the people and the spirits. They ruin the world. When they’re gone, the world will be like a big petting zoo. Even animals will get along. Finally, the dream of leftists will be actualized: a vegetarian world. But they will be elsewhere.

I know what it is to have unbearable people removed from my life. My sister is the biggest example. It’s not enough to have peace with her. Having to interact with her is intolerable. The constant flow of lies, slanders, and emasculation can’t be tolerated. I can’t coexist with someone who pits everyone against me and tells lies to people who like me. She can’t be permitted to have a conversation with my wife. It would be like putting my wife on the phone with Hannibal Lecter.

My sister can’t be near me. I can’t have dealings with her. I’ve had enough. Having her in another state and not communicating with her are enormous blessings. She will probably die before I do, and I will not go to her funeral. She makes every interaction a source of persecution to me.

The children of Satan, on a large scale, are the same way. The worse and more numerous they get, the more they need to be gotten rid of. I understand why hell was created. There is no other solution.

Hell is full of beings who are against God, and even there, seeing where being hateful put them, they are still vile and sadistic. They could be trying to unite and make the best of it, but the fallen spirits torture dead human beings around the clock, for no constructive purpose. They literally make hell worse.

If there is a nice thing about hell, it’s this: there is no way for the dead to get here from there. The people who are there now will never, ever bother any of us again.

I keep praying for God to set his children aside in places where they are concentrated and dominant. I ask him to drive out the wicked and give their land and wealth to his children in these places. I ask him to keep the plagues of this time off these places. I say that if curses have to come, they should fall on places where he has been rejected openly, like New York City and Japan.

I want us to have some peace and comfort in places where we are improved and blessed while waiting to be extracted. Let the children of Satan torment each other, far away, if they have to be hateful. They can’t be saved, but maybe they can be kept away from us.

Has Anyone Seen my 56 Million?

The other day, I was confused about some things somewhat-conservative actor Tom Selleck said, and I wrote about it. He lives on a 63-acre avocado farm in California, and at the age of 79, after a very successful acting career (for a conservative), he says he may have to sell his farm in order to finance a pleasant old age.

Thomas Magnum, the eighties pinup man, is 79. About as old as Biden. Can you believe it? He’s not in the same boat, though. Biden looks like his father or even grandfather. I wonder how old Higgins is. I’ll check. The actor who played him would be 91 today. Zeus and Apollo have been dead since no later than 1995.

I looked up his taxes, and I found out he pays about a thousand dollars per acre per year, which is bad, but not shocking. My dad’s home near Miami had a tax bill not far from half that high one year, and it’s a merely somewhat above average home on half an acre. Thank God that place is gone. What a horrible area. Living in that miserable place is bad enough, but then they force you to pay an amount equal to a living wage in exchange for the privilege of suffering. I can’t understand the people who bought that house.

I wondered how Selleck could be worried about his finances given the money he has made, the value of his property (about $12 million), and the fact that he will almost certainly die within 15 years. His kids are grown. Even a reverse mortgage should keep him up in fine style, and surely he has assets other than his home.

Well, someone in Hollywood got mad at Selleck and criticized him for complaining. This person says he was paid $56 million over the last 14 years for his work on a CBS series. Maybe I’m easily impressed, but that seems like a lot of money to me.

Unless he has a drug addiction or a gambling problem, he should have been able to pocket over $20 million, even in California, even after paying his agent. That’s just the last 14 years. Doesn’t include Magnum, P.I., his movies, or his ad work.

I don’t know, man. I’m starting to wonder about this guy.

Maybe he doesn’t realize he will be dead by 2040. He has already exceeded the average American life expectancy, and he is about 7″ above average height. Tall people don’t live as long as short people. If he can support himself for 15 years, he’s okay.

I remember telling my dad he needed to get professional help with his weight, and he would always say his grandfather lived to be 100. That was true, but his grandfather didn’t drink and weighed about 140 pounds. My dad started to lose it noticeably at about 82, and he died in assisted living when he was not far into his 86th year, at the age of 85. His older sister had the same grandfather, and she died at 84. She was huge.

My mother’s father didn’t think realistically about age, either. He rented a farm to a 68-year-old man with the provision that the man could stay as long as he lived. When he was questioned about this, he said, “That old man can’t live long.” My grandfather was 72.

I think I’m pretty realistic about being old. When I think about taking up a new pastime, I think, “I’ll be dead before I get anywhere with it.” I have thought about planting trees here, but barring the rapture, they will still be small and useless when I die. When I work in the yard and I get tired, I go in the house, leaving branches and leaves and whatever on the ground if I have to. I’m not going to die for yard work. Heat exhaustion is something old people can’t play with.

When I put heavy things on high shelves, I wonder if I’ll be strong enough to take them down if I ever need them. I take that into account.

Regarding Selleck, maybe he has spent a lot of money enjoying life. Maybe he has put millions in trust for his two grown kids, where he and his wife can’t get it. I certainly hope he has arranged for his kids to be rich without work. That’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re not supposed to stuff yourself like a turkey and then die poor.

If every generation in a family has to start with nothing, it’s a stupid family. Inheritance is supposed to help people not to have to have the same problems their ancestors did.

We don’t force new generations to come up with their own languages, writing, and science. We don’t burn all the books every 20 years. We treasure and protect these things and do our best to pass them on. No one ever says, proudly, “No one gave me electrical engineering and medicine. I figured it out for myself!” But fools love to say, “I’m a self-made man!” Like it’s great that their parents and ancestors were also fools.

Money is no different from other good things. It should be passed along, and so should the ability to make and handle money.

Inheritance is one of the big differences between advanced cultures and backward cultures that amounted to nothing. Africans and American Indians didn’t preserve knowledge through writing. They didn’t build things that lasted so their descendants could use them. They didn’t amass wealth and pass it on. They managed to go millennia without developing technology. As a result, they ended up living like cave men while people in other places had running water and calculus. They died from diseases that can be prevented by wearing shoes and boiling water. When advanced people showed up where they were, they were running around just about naked, and they didn’t have things like chairs. They were worse than children.

The wealthy people who didn’t have to work to get wealth make up a tiny percentage of Americans. That’s disgraceful. The grandchildren of most wealthy people have to build their own wealth, and many of them have nothing. If your grandchildren end up worse off than you, what was the purpose of making yourself rich? Was it just to make your own life better?

Americans are hypocrites. They really hate heirs, but nearly all of them want their children to be heirs. We love making fun of wealthy people who have problems, but we all want to be wealthy.

Wealth is good. It is completely good. It has no bad qualities. Christians have given it a bad name, and that’s ridiculous. Saying wealth is bad is like saying health is bad. Good looks are bad. Nice weather is bad. It’s idiotic. God himself says wealth is good. In the Bible, he promises it to people who please him. Would he reward people he likes with a curse? Of course not. Wealth is only a curse when you make it a curse. Your nature is the problem.

Giving heirs things is very good. Spoiling them is not. Two different things. Wealth can’t spoil anyone. We all know or know of rich heirs who are not spoiled, and prisons and poor ghettos are full of the most spoiled people in America.

I certainly hope the Sellecks have set their kids up.

What if he gave most of his earnings to charity, and he hasn’t said anything? That would be better than wasting it on yachting vacations, Hermes, and Balenciaga.

Looking around, I see the web says Selleck has had other homes. In 2016, he was featured in Architectural Digest, a magazine devoted to showcasing homes owned by extremely self-indulgent people with sick fringe values. The article says he had an 1800-square-foot apartment in Los Angeles, and he covered the walls with expensive paneling. He and his wife brought in very, very expensive professionals to fix the place up. They spared no expense.

They will never get that money back. Most of it is not an investment. Spending tons of money decorating a house generally will not pay off. The furniture will be removed, and the kind of people who buy fancy homes will want to remove a lot of what was done and replace it.

I fixed up a house and sold it, and it was a terrible idea. If I had sold it as-is, I would be a lot better off today. I sold another one with problems, and it was a much smarter decision. House flippers only make good money when they get good renovation work, cheap. Most of us aren’t in their shoes. Contractors generally treat their clients badly, costing them huge sums of money and wasting valuable months. If you want to live in a torn-up house and be your own general contractor, it’s different, but Tom Selleck wouldn’t do that.

In the article, he speaks lovingly of a table in the apartment, saying it used to be used for slaughtering pigs. If your grandfather made a table, I can understand why you would love it, but the pig story sounds exactly like what a designer would say in order to get you to make a sucker purchase.

“In this very chair, Vin Diesel read the script for Fast & Furious 6.”

Selleck lived in Hawaii for a long time. That’s expensive. Everything except pineapples and sand has to be brought in on boats or planes. I don’t know how many homes he had there, but one is pretty nice. The address is 4161 Akulikuli Terrace, in Honolulu. You can see a video of it below.

Does he still have the L.A. place? If so, he is paying the state serious money.

Even if, by some unforeseen fluke, I become extremely wealthy, I will never have a home in Architectural Digest, nor will I ever pay a decorator. I made a decision. I decided my home would be usable. We expect to have kids. We will have guests. I have a parrot. We can’t have really, really nice things, and I don’t want them anyway. Things have to serve me. I can’t stand serving things. If I can’t sit on a couch without taking a shower first, I don’t want it.

We will have pretty good furniture. We will make a pretty good effort to make the downstairs look pretty good. Upstairs, I have a fairly cheap couch and a recliner no woman would own, and only one of the beds has a headboard.

I have a Ford and a Dodge. Both were bought used. The newest one is 9 years old. I may replace the Ford with a Toyota because the Ford I have has a reputation for turning into a money pit after a certain number of miles, but if I buy a Toyota, it will be at least a year old.

I think we will continue to live very well by global standards, even without Selleck’s earning potential, and I don’t think we will have to move. If you have a nice house, good food, good medical care, and somewhat nice stuff, you are rich as far as I’m concerned.

It looks like Tom Selleck has spending problems, not money problems.

My grandfather may have been worth what Selleck is now, in terms of buying power, and he lived in a nice, comfortable house that was kept up perfectly. He drove Buicks from his car dealership, bought at cost. He wore his pickup trucks out. He got his clothes from department stores in Lexington, Kentucky. He didn’t have a wine cellar or a tennis court. I would guess he never flew first class in his life.

He didn’t worry that he might have to move out of his house. When his television went out, my grandmother told the people at the store to bring another one, dismissing their concerns about her ability to pay, saying, “We’ve got enough money to burn a wet mule.”

He was generous with other people. He helped his children when they didn’t deserve it or show him gratitude. He didn’t spend his money on decorators so he wouldn’t feel bad when shallow rich people showed up for expensive parties he never threw. He left some money and land behind when he died, and so did his wife.

I think he handled his money very well. He was probably the only person in Eastern Kentucky who subscribed to The Value Line, and read and understood it, in the 1950’s.

My dad bought a lot of real estate, and he did some investing. He could not match my grandfather, but he wasn’t like some of his partners, who had to spend every dime they got before they got it. He never talked about having to move out of his house, and he eventually became very concerned about making sure what he had went to me smoothly. He could have had a new Mercedes every year, but he chose to fund his future, and that of his descendants, instead.

Any couple that can’t find a way to live well until they die, on what must amount to at least $30 million, is doing something wrong. With that kind of wealth, you can take two very expensive vacations per year, wear excellent clothing, drive very nice cars, and live on an avocado farm. You should be able to get excellent help when you become feeble. I’m sure of it. Maybe you can’t have three or four mansions, and you might have to shop at normal malls sometimes, but lots of movie stars shop at malls that don’t have Neiman-Marcus or Bulgari.

Selleck will be dead by 2040. His wife will be dead by 2055, tops. They’ll both be fine if they show even below-average restraint.

Ostentation is sinful. Spending to be accepted by trashy rich people is wrong. It stirs up resentment among people who have less. It makes you think you’re better than you are. It lands you among empty, disgusting people. It sucks money away from better causes. You can have an incredibly cushy life without making a spectacle of yourself and spending in order to obey your insecurity.

Ostentation is partly aggression. It’s a way of insulting others. The Bible says that if you mock the poor, you insult God himself.

I just happened to run into an article about Antonio Brown, who was apparently an NFL player. The article says his career earnings were about $80 million. Wikipedia says he signed contracts amounting to well over $100 million, and that doesn’t include earnings off the field. Now his net worth is negative, and his earning potential is not much better.

He’s not a smart guy, so he can’t run out and get another high-paying job. Football was all he could do, at least for more than $20 an hour. It’s a horrific story. Imagine making $80 million in about 12 years, losing all of it, and then having to think about how long it would take to make that much money with your other abilities. In his case, it’s about 2000 years. That is the actual figure.

He’s a friend of Kanye West. West has a very shaky sports agency firm called Donda Sports, and Brown is the nominal president. Brown appears to be nearly illiterate, though, so it’s not clear whether he can actually perform any duties. Maybe West will pay him a lot anyway. But if he does, Brown will lose it. It won’t help.

I understand the desire to spend money on fun things, and I have certainly wasted money, but you have to have some sense of proportion. If your net worth is two million dollars, and the Lamborghini you want costs $1.5 million, it doesn’t mean you can afford it.

I can waste money, but I don’t understand insane spending.

Give me a billion dollars, and I’ll get my pickup truck fixed up really well, I’ll move to a nice rural property in Tennessee, and I’ll probably get some better heavy equipment, used. A bigger tractor and an excavator. I’ll have trouble-free appliances. If I travel long distances, I’ll definitely go business class, because long flights in coach are very unpleasant. I’ll get survival supplies and a generator. Nice stuff for the wife, but not too nice. Can’t think of much else.

Prime steaks more often. I would do that. Beef is a luxury in Biden’s world. I would probably get a lawn service. I would want an air-conditioned workshop for sure. That’s like $45,000. I’d quit buying all forms of insurance not required by law.

I really like the shoes and shorts I wear. I like Hanes T-shirts for about $3 each. I could see getting a good horsehide jacket not designed for motorcycling.

No boats. Been there. No planes. No vacation homes. Absolutely no club memberships. No jewelry for me. Jewelry on men is effeminate. No servants except maybe a maid to come in weekly. No ridiculous assistants to stand between me and commoners. No bodyguards. No entourage. No public giving of any kind. It’s ostentation.

I’ll tell you what. A comfortable home in Tennessee, all my bills paid, good food, good vehicles, zero concerns when buying things like tires and refrigerators…what else could you want?

Then I could invite Architectural Digest in to photograph my synthetic area rug from Lowe’s and the good downstairs recliner.

I’m not great with money, but I don’t see myself auctioning off private planes and gold chains to pay my creditors. I should be able to avoid getting a real job. I hope so. If I ever have to sell this farm, it will most likely be because I am too old to maintain it personally.

I hope I continue to improve, increasing my income and net worth while having the privilege of giving effectively to people who need help.

Tremble at my Mastery of Unimpressive Low-Paying Tasks

I am now a master chainsaw mechanic.

When I moved here, I managed three weeks before a hurricane came, and although we didn’t get the actual storm, a lot of trees fell. I was desperate for forestry tools, but they were not to be had. I managed to scrounge up a small Jonsered (Husqvarna) saw and a bigger Echo CS-590.

I have been lazy, and I didn’t know much about saws, and I could not find anyone around here who could fix one, so I had all sorts of trouble. I made dogged efforts to get good information so I could help myself, but I got misled over and over. Seemed like I never had a running saw when I needed one.

I just broke down and bought a pro-grade saw with a little computer in it. People call cheap saws “homeowner” saws, but the truth, I think, is that homeowners need the best saws, because we need tough equipment that can stand poor management.

I bought the new saw because I was really tired of trying to fix the others. Then once I had the Husky to rely on, naturally, I wanted to make the Echo run. I have turned it into a project saw.

Last year, I believe, I put a bigger carb in it. The carb comes from a 620P, which is a stronger saw with the same displacement. A week or two ago, I put a partial rebuild kit in the carb, which had been sitting since at least last year. That made it run, which was a huge improvement.

Today I added two other things: a better exhaust deflector to get heat out of the saw, and a little doodad that bumps the ignition timing 6 degrees forward to make the saw run more like Echo’s true pro saws.

I also tuned the carb myself, using a cheap Ebay tachometer and directions I stole from the Youtube Channel Steve’s Small Engine Saloon.

Echo says the saw should run at between 12,000 and 13,000 RPM. Web denizens say the ignition limits it to 13,000. Not true. Today I fired my saw up, and I got 14,000. It sounded really, really nice. Too nice. I didn’t want to blow it up. But I could not get the top speed to drop.

I finally realized I was turning the saw’s high-speed jet the wrong way. With that in mind, I started turning it the right way, and I settled on 13,300 RPM, roughly. Another Youtube saw guy runs his modded saws a little faster than that, and everyone thinks he’s a genius, so I guess my saw can take it.

Now the saw starts within about 6 pulls. Three with the choke in, and another two or three with it off. To me, that is astounding performance. Some people say their saws start on the first pull. Not sure how that’s possible with a choked carb, but they say that. After what I’ve been through, 6 is wonderful.

The little things I’ve done so far are supposed to bump the saw’s cutting speed up considerably, like maybe 15%. If I open the muffler up, I may see nearly 25%. That would be pretty nice. In truth, choosing the right chain and keeping it sharp make more of a difference than anything, but power is good.

Now what do I do? Use my big Husky because it’s almost guaranteed to work, or use the Echo in order to keep my nice new saw from getting dirty?

My plan is to put both in my cart when I cut big stuff. I’ll use whichever one works.

I feel almost competent.

The Real “Big Tent”

Yesterday I got some more revelation. It was not pleasant.

We’re always pushing for God to do something about the world. Open people’s eyes. Change their hearts. Give them ears to hear. Show them how good he is.

He’s already doing all those things. He’s God. He’s not lazy. He’s not incompetent. He knows what to do. Whatever he’s doing, it’s the best possible thing. It always has been.

We are the problem. The people who will not listen and the slum spirits that are already permanently lost and headed for the flames.

I was thinking about how evangelism had slowed down. The results these days are tiny compared to other centuries. It’s like we’re scraping cake batter out of a bowl after pouring the bulk out into a pan. Not much is happening.

Christians deny this with bad evidence. They say the church is growing in this country or that country. They’ll say they saw some guy hosting a big altar call somewhere. That’s denial. You can’t compare things like that to what used to happen.

Paul wandered around on foot before cameras and microphones and the printing press and reached about half of the Mediterranean coast. The charismatic revival reached hundreds of millions. We don’t see anything like that these days. It’s just a trickle. No new countries are opening up, and the ones that used to know God are attacking Christians for criticizing filthy, disgusting male perverts who want to dress up in women’s underwear and teach children in schools.

I was talking to God about how nearly everyone had rejected me when I told them things he had showed me. At Trinity Church in Miami, “Pastor” Rich Wilkerson held secret meetings about me to find out what I was up to and whether I was leading people away from his horrible church. At New Dawn Ministries, pedophile rapist “Pastor” Albert Santiago and his wife told people they were not allowed to associate with me or be my friends. My crime was that I exposed the prosperity gospel, which keeps people poor and keeps them from getting to know God.

I have had some squabbles with unbelievers, but at least 95% of my problems have come from Christians. Pastors and volunteers.

Some people have said I was too blunt, so it was my fault. It was never my fault. When people don’t want to hear the truth, it doesn’t matter how you present it, and when they love the truth, they will love harsh correction. Who was more blunt than Yeshua? Unlike him, I never stood in front of exalted religious leaders and told them they were sons of hell.

Was it his fault so many prominent Jewish priests and scribes went to hell?

While I was talking to God, I started finding myself imagining what it’s like for him. I imagined myself above the world, looking down on a filthy cloth suspended over it, between me and the earth at a considerable height. Imagine a dark brown cloth stained with blood, feces, urine, menstrual fluid, and every other disgusting thing. It completely blocked people’s view of the heavens. It was a thin, hollow ball that surrounded the planet.

Somewhere under the cloth were the people of the world, and my daily task was to try to talk to them through the cloth, which they had put up by choosing Satan over me.

I realized this was a picture of the fig leaves and the veil in the temple.

When Eve, a witch, feminist, and drug user, gave Adam, the first male feminist and beta, a drug to expand his consciousness, they both became aware of sin, and what was the first thing they did? They covered themselves up. They did not have cloth, so they used leaves which they picked, doing work with their hands. They knew it was not safe to present evil to God.

To rigid people, it may sound wrong to call the forbidden fruit a drug, but that’s what it was. Most popular recreational and ritual drugs come from plants. Tobacco, marijuana, heroin, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline are examples. There are lesser-known drugs that are literally fruit. Coffee comes from a fruit. Eve’s fruit altered minds.

Adam and Eve were supposed to fall on the ground, remain exposed, and beg forgiveness. Instead, they tried to hide their shame from the one who sees everything, and then when he came to them, they lied to him. They made excuses and denied fault.

Excuses are lies. God told me that.

God gave them animal skins to replace the leaves, because there is no remission of sin without the shedding of blood.

Think of the temple’s veil.

The holy of holies was the place where God’s presence was concentrated. The ark was a seat where he could sit, between two cherubs. The same cherubs that walked with him when he visited Abraham. They destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. The same cherubs that appeared at his tomb when he was resurrected after being murdered by religious Jews and their pagan masters and accomplices.

The temple had several areas. The outer court was open to everyone, even gentiles, except for menstruating women. The inner court was for Jews only. There were areas that were only for priests. The holy of holies was a small area behind a huge woven veil, and only the high priest could go there, once a year, to atone for the sins of the Jews on Yom Kippur.

The veil was no ordinary cloth. It was as thick as the width of a human hand, or about 4 inches. It always had dried blood on it because of the sacrifices. It would have been pretty dirty. It smelled. When Yeshua died, it was torn in half, from the top to the bottom. No human being could have done that. It would take internal combustion or hydraulics. Horses, at least.

The veil separated that which was holiest from that which was less holy or profane.

It served the same purpose as the leaves and the animal skins. People on one side of the veil were safe. If they went to the other side without preparation, they would be killed by divine fire.

When the veil was torn, it was a picture of a hymen being pierced. The man of the house was entering the body of the wife, symbolically. The high priests who had entered the holy of holies for generations were showing what Yeshua would do, as the only real high priest, as he was murdered. Only his blood could purify the temple.

The temple represented the Jews themselves. The proper and intended bride of the Messiah. Most of them rejected him, and gentiles took their places.

We use clothing to hide things. It’s disgusting to talk about, but we all know it. Every one of us has a crotch that produces things no one wants to see or smell. Clothing hides these things, absorbs them, and keeps them off of things like furniture.

Clothing makes us look better than we would naked. Most of us look fitter, stronger, and more beautiful with clothes on. This is even more true when we get old. No one stays beautiful. Nobody wants to see Jane Fonda’s body now.

The cloth I saw was like the veil and like clothing. It was a fabric woven of threads of denial. Excuses. Pride.

We deny our sins. We call them good deeds. We attack and slander God, saying the things he wants from us are actually evil. This is the person who told the Jews to execute sodomizers and witches. How can he be good? He wants to kill our cute, snarky wedding planners and hairdressers. He wants to kill nice ladies who read our palms and do our astrological charts.

Many of us, when we become Christians, twist Christianity to accommodate our preexisting, evil natures. This is where the prosperity gospel comes from. We want money. We don’t want to repent. We want to believe we get salvation that can’t ever be lost, just for one altar call.

We’re supposed to appear naked, figuratively, before God, but instead we hold onto our soiled underwear and hold it between him and ourselves like a shield. It deflects all that troublesome correction.

In Zechariah, the prophet saw Yeshua standing before the throne of Yahweh, clothed in a filthy robe. It is described as filthy, as with excrement. Not stains from spilled soup. The Bible says our own righteousness is like used menstrual rags.

Our God himself appeared in a robe caked with our feces. Yahweh forgave him, because he had never sinned, and he commanded the spirits to bring Yeshua fresh clothes.

The Bible itself confirms that sin is like a garment stiff with feces.

I am very frustrated because Christians reject the best things God shows me. Well, that just means I get a small taste of what God puts up with. He’s up there on the other side of the feces and menstrual fluid barrier, watching people march to destruction with their hands over their ears.

It’s normal. I should not have the feeling that something unusual is happening. This is how human beings have always been, and they will never be any different. Even during the millennium, when there are no evil spirits on the earth and Yeshua is here in the flesh, people will continue to sin and think they’re better than God.

This shows what pride looks like to God. A stiff garment reeking of urine, feces, dried blood, menstrual fluid, mucus, semen, sweat, sebum, pus, and every other disgusting thing. Things that come from the flesh itself. This is what homosexual activists are waving in God’s face every day. Their flag. The more colors they add, the more it looks brown. No wonder.

Preachers preach as though rejection of God proved there were something wrong with the church. That’s not quite right. It’s true that bad preaching drives people off unnecessarily, but Yeshua himself came down and preached perfectly, and he was still rejected by nearly all Jews who heard him.

The closer you get to God, the smaller your circle gets. That’s why the holy of holies was smaller than the inner court, and the inner court was smaller than the outer court.

Pride is the very worst iniquity, because it protects all the others. It’s better to be a humble rapist than a proud homosexual priest who feeds the poor. The rapist can change and be forgiven. The priest will die guilty and burn.

God told me pride was a fence we put around our sins, to protect them.

I hope this is informative to anyone who can accept it. Maybe understanding your world will help you be less disturbed by it and by the fact that it won’t be long before you are separated from most people you know and they are sent to burn. You can’t help them.

Even Better Than a Butt Lift and Taylor Swift Tickets

When I moved here, and I was looking after my dad, I was too careful with money sometimes, because most of his cash was tied up in unneeded properties that weren’t selling. I didn’t want to start dipping into my own money to deal with his problems, not knowing for sure that I would be the sole heir. What if I never got the money back? What if he proposed to an assisted living attendant?

I could have gotten rid of some dangerous trees on the property–trees I didn’t think I should cut on my own–but I was concerned about his liquidity. Every time hurricane season rolled around, instead of relaxing in safety, I counted on the odds to keep trees off my buildings. I couldn’t be completely calm. I lived for the day hurricane season ended, meaning I went through six months of rolling the dice.

I continued doing this until today. I just fixed the problem. I was going to get on it a year ago, but with all my wife’s immigration issues, I let a lot of things go.

Next week should be very, very interesting. I am paying for one and a half days of work from a crew with some very intimidating machinery. The guy who owns the company just came by, and we made a deal. He is going to do things like lifting full-grown oaks out of the ground. He is removing so much stuff, he wants to put it in three burn piles.

One burn pile will hold tons and tons of debris, so any job that fills three has to be big.

This is going to be very nice. We never, ever get hurricane-force winds here, but we do get tropical-storm-force winds sometimes, and they can knock trees down. If a tree hits your house, it’s a disaster at best, and because hurricanes damage so many houses, it can take forever to get repairs.

Insurance here is going nuts under Biden, and DeSantis hasn’t been able to fix it. I may not be able to insure my house at any price next time around. If I can insure, it will not be cheap. People with inferior properties are paying between $20,000 and $30,000 per year in some places. Suze Orman, the money guru, has a little high rise condo that can’t possibly be damaged by storms, and she says she refused to pay the $28,000 she was quoted. I’m not paying anything like that, but insurance costs me almost as much as property taxes.

Insurers blame storms for most of it. When I think about possible losses, I think a fair amount about theft, a little bit about fire, and a whole lot about storms. If the trees are removed, and the house doesn’t burn down, I can insure against theft on my own. I will not need storm insurance at all.

I might be able to retrofit a sprinkler system to make fire less of a problem, and I’m already doing a lot to keep burglars away. The political spirit of the area and the normality of the non-feminized males keep the relatively bright ones in terror, and the local cops openly say they like it when homeowners kill undocumented guests, so things could be worse.

When my dad bought this place, the appraiser raved about it. Underpriced, he said. That may have been true, but the driveway was looking shabby, the roof only had a couple of years of life in it, and the trees, he ignored. I now have a new driveway and roof. That should hold me for 20 years. The trees are the last major concern that has to be addressed. The rest is all piddly stuff.

When you buy a house, look at the trees around it, because in all likelihood, no one else will. How close are they to the foundation and the roof? How fast do they grow? How long do they live? How strong are they? Do the analysis before you buy so you won’t be sandbagged later. That’s my advice.

Man, I can’t wait. I arranged the work at the last minute. The first named storm will be here this month, barring a statistical anomaly. All the people who procrastinated worse than I did will be looking for tree surgeons, and they’ll be busy. I took too long, but I took care of business just in time, and I’m not paying the mid-season price.

I’m paying less than the cost of a year’s property insurance.

I am going to hate losing the shade, and the trees looked very nice. It’s worth it to know my wife and I will not even have to think about seeing our house crushed.

Removing some trees will help with the leaf problem here. Our oaks produce thick, heavy leaves that feel like leather. They sink in water. When you shoot a leaf blower at them, they actually seem to grip the ground harder. They resist mulching and raking. When you burn them, they burn for days and can’t be put out. They kill grass but somehow allow weeds to grow freely. I hate them. Destroying a dozen or so major leaf droppers should improve things a great deal. I’ve managed to make great progress with a mower mulching kit and the world’s most powerful backpack blower, but having fewer leaves would be better.

Maybe I could plant some decent trees to take their places. Mulberries. Bushy magnolias. Pecans. I’ll be ancient before they grow tall, but at least they’ll get a start.

As a person who loves tools, I am eager to see what kind of tree can lift a grown oak up out of the ground. Whatever it is, I want one.

Stop Being a Fruit and Buy Man Tools Before It’s Too Late

Cutting up fallen trees is maybe 95% of my tree work. On this property, they fell themselves due to rot, so I don’t have to do it. And I’m afraid to fell them, because a lot of them are rotten and could drop logs on me if disturbed.

Nonetheless, I decided to fell a water oak today.

When this house was built, someone who didn’t know what he or she was doing allowed several oaks to remain right beside the driveway. I mean RIGHT beside it. Within two feet or even one foot.

This was stupid. Pavement and tree roots don’t get along, and oaks grow silly horizontal branches from their trunks whenever they feel like it. On a tree close to a road, these branches block cars. Pushing a tree over is the safest and cheapest way to get rid of it, but if you push over a tree next to a road or sidewalk, the roots may lift the pavement or concrete. The trunk acts like a prybar. This means you have to cut the trees the hard, slow, unsafe way.

It’s also a pain to make it up a curved driveway with oaks up against it. Your guests are likely to ding their cars.

Today I was mowing, and I decided to try to cut the tree, even though the top was rotten and could conceivably drop wood on me.

The tree was about 12″ thick at knee level, and I would say it was 50 feet tall. It was in a place where it couldn’t hit anything expensive when it fell, except for me. I looked at it carefully, and it seemed to be leaning slightly over the driveway.

I got out my 18″ Makita cordless saw, because it’s strong and handy, and I made a homeowner-grade notch on the side to which I thought the tree would fall. Then I started the back cut.

The saw got pinched. How? If a tree is leaning away from a back cut, the cut should get bigger, if anything, as the cut progresses.

I had to pound a wedge in to get the saw out. Then I got a 10″ EGO cordless pole saw and continued working, thinking a few feet of pole length would make me less likely to be crushed.

The tree started to move, and I fled like Biden from an unscripted interview, only the soles of my footwear actually left the ground. It fell exactly where I thought it would. So why did the saw get pinched?

The wood was very wet, and wet wood likes to swell. I don’t know if that explains it.

Getting rid of the tree was real work, but it wasn’t unpleasant. A tractor, a great brush fork, a timberjack, gloves, and some good saws made everything go smoothly. I am old, but I can get rid of a pretty big oak in about two hours.

The stump was a problem. When I used the Makita to cut it close to the ground, it didn’t want to finish. I fired up the new Husqvanra 562XP with its 24″ bar, and it slid right through the stump. That saw is perfect for this property. It has enough grunt to make a 24″ bar work, and it’s not too heavy.

Where I cut the stump close to the ground, it was around 20″ across.

I poured pure Roundup concentrate on it, like I did some other stumps. Is it legal? Don’t really care. Come arrest me. If I had any used motor oil, I would have used that, too. “Here’s one for my homies at Exxon Mobil. Deepwater Horizon style, y’all.”

This is all fun, but I will probably still have to pay to get some things moved. I have big trees too close to the shop and house, and I can’t make them all fall where I want with the tools and skills I have. Tomorrow a guy is coming to give me an estimate.

I’ll miss the shade very badly, but you would have to be an idiot to keep trees like these. The guy who built the house was not thinking. Maybe his wife put her foot down, thinking trees were more important than shelter and their life savings. I want the problem trees gone before the hurricane season really gets going. If my buildings are safe, I will be at peace all season long instead of hoping trees fall the right way.

So how much money have I saved this weekend? Based on previous estimates from arborists with unrealistic conceptions of my unwillingness to handle my own problems, I would say at least $2500.

That is offset by the grand or so I spent on a new saw and some parts for other machines. Maybe I should have made my old Echo function instead of springing for a second big saw, but based on my horrible experiences with shops and trying to do my own repairs, I think I did the right thing. From now on, I will ALWAYS have one big saw ready to cut. I will never again have to wait three months and put up with downed trees while shop nincompoops keep my only big saw.

I’m not counting the other stuff I’ve done for myself when I figure what I’ve saved. I had to go to a neighboring property to cut trees rooted on my side of the fence, and that had to save me another $2500. I must have done $15,000 worth of work since I’ve lived here, not including this year.

Arborists charge too much. If you’re an uneducated tradesman, and you can’t make a very good living charging $500 for an hour’s work, you are incompetent. If you insist on getting over twice that much, go ahead and lose your business and find a job shoveling manure. I was willing to work with you. I’m not your sugar daddy.

An arborist here should be able to gross three grand a day without pushing it or overcharging. He should be able to keep half of that. That’s $7500 per week, assuming he doesn’t have a subordinate who can use his equipment to handle Saturday jobs and bring in another $750.

Keep $2000 to live on, and invest the rest in your business. Get a second lift truck. Find a guy to run a second crew. There’s another $6500 per week.

Am I wrong? I doubt it. I think an arborist who charged reasonable prices would be booked up solid, all the time. The volume would pay off much better than sitting idle while trying to talk people into giving you their IRA’s for quick, easy jobs.

Quick nickels make people richer than slow dollars. Sam Walmart died a billionaire because he got that.

If they mess with me tomorrow, I am completely capable of renting a cherry picker and removing most of the problem trees. It’s not that hard if you take things slowly and minimize the risk. The smaller the pieces you cut, the safer you are. It’s hard to hurt yourself if you’re willing to spend hours cutting three feet at a time.

I should rent one anyway, just to get over the intimidation.

Moving the pieces is easy. It’s a joke. It’s safe. The fork I created for my tractor is nothing short of amazing. It does nearly everything a grapple will do, much, much better. The other things a grapple will do, I generally don’t need, or I can easily work around them.

I was told I could get this place cleaned up by a crew for $4500. If that’s true, consider the check signed. If not, I’ll be renting, doing most of the work by myself, and then paying a much lower figure for the rest. The $4500 figure I heard was unreasonable, but not so high I would refuse to pay it in order to avoid a huge hassle. Let’s see what happens.

I have 4 new wedges coming tomorrow, because I cut up and/or lost the ones I already had. One vanished into thin air while I was cutting a leaning tree. The parts I ordered for hot-rodding the Echo will arrive tomorrow, too. I finally got a decent helmet with a mesh mask and ear covers.

I need to start killing more small trees before they cause problems. Letting small trees grow in bad places is like encouraging small amounts of immigration from Muslim countries. Decades later, you will pay a large price.

It’s Working

Here’s to traditional marriage. I think my wife will agree.

Today I decided to make a big step on making this property my own. Sometimes I’m intimidated because I can’t help thinking the original owners knew what they were doing when they made bad landscaping decisions. I am getting over that. Today I killed a magnolia and two bottlebrush trees.

It seems like I fix just about everything these days. My tractor’s poorly-situated steering cylinder started gushing oil, so I took it out, modified the frame (drilled and painted a big hole) to make it easier to remove next time, and took it to a hydraulic place for a rebuild. I would have rebuilt it myself, but there were problems identifying the parts. Now I have the numbers, because they were on the receipt.

I managed to bust the engine’s front cover while putting the cylinder back in, necessitating an expensive visit to the dealer, but at least I know how to deal with the cylinder in the future. And I painted up the new cover I bought, so it looks a lot better than the old one.

The house’s original owner had some horrible brush tines that were held on with chains and chunks of wood. I cut them in pieces and turned them into a quick-attach fork which is a thousand times as good. Welding, cutting, painting. Got it all done without help. No one else has a fork like this one. It’s fantastic.

I put a Pat’s quick attach set on my 3-point hitch, and it made it easy to switch attachments. Totally superior to the heavy, overpriced adaptors other people still, for unknown reasons, buy. I stuck a ballast box on the hitch, so now I have a compact ballast and a great brush fork to work together.

Today I went out and ripped my bottlebrush trees out because they were sick and planted two feet from my workshop. You never plant anything two feet from a building. Not even shrubs. The trees threatened to beat up the eaves during storms, and if they had been big trees, their roots would have threatened the foundation. They were in the way. Planting them was a bad choice. I pulled one out pretty easily with a chain and strap. The other one took more work, but now it’s on the burn pile. I plan to replace them with this: dirt. Or maybe two small shrubs with roots at least three feet out.

The magnolia was maybe 15 feet from the workshop and 10 feet from a water oak. It had to go. It had no future. It could have fallen on the shop. Every tree that poses a falling hazard is on the way out.

I am terrible at felling trees because I rarely have to do it. To gain practice, I tried to lean the magnolia away from the shop. When it started to move, I ran away like Sir Robin facing the Mad Chicken of Bristol, and the tree decided to stop falling. I decided brute force was the answer, as it so often is, so I chained it to the tractor and pulled it over.

I cut it in pieces and got rid of it, and now the cattle are snacking on magnolia leaves. I put glyphosate concentrate on the stumps.

When I came back in the house for breaks and to shower, my wife stared at me. I think she was starting to appreciate what I do around here. I was soaked in sweat. I had a mashed fingernail from a farm jack. I had a stick in my hair.

I had done maybe $1000 worth of work in around 3 hours. I base that on absurd quotes I’ve received for tree work. It was definitely work, but I enjoyed it. I have good tools, and my skills are adequate.

When I started taking off my work clothes, I was going to put them in the laundry room, but she told me to leave them where they were and let her know when I wanted food.

I showered, drew myself a Yard Boss Lager, put on my new glasses, sat in my new recliner, and relaxed.

My wife doesn’t know how to weld, cut metal, paint, fix chainsaws, cut trees, take a tractor apart, or operate tractor hydraulics. She can’t cut a tree. She has no idea who to call for a burn permit. She doesn’t know what one is. These things are not her problems. On the other hand, I don’t do laundry any more. I don’t wash dishes. I open drawers, and my ironed clothes are there. I open cupboards and see clean dishes.

It’s a pretty good system. God knew what he was doing when he designed it.

I got up yesterday, prayed, ate, dealt with a business lease for a rental property, fixed a cabinet door my wife had leaned on…I did all sorts of stuff. I can handle things that would leave metrosexual modern husbands in tears. I can drive a manual transmission. I can shoot, and it doesn’t bother me to kill cute animals that cause problems. I can make ammunition. I own taps and dies.

In return, my wife looks after wife stuff. She doesn’t compete with me and try to find an edge every day. She leaves the toilet seat up.

Satan has turned modern marriage into an endless competition. A series of selfish negotiations. It was never supposed to be like that. We were supposed to know and love our roles.

When you drive a car, the engine doesn’t decide it wants to be an air conditioner. The battery doesn’t decide it wants to be a transmission. The parts of a family should work together the same way.

Interestingly, in news related to old guys with rural properties, I have read that Tom Selleck is afraid he will have to sell his farm.

Tom Selleck must surely have a lot of money. He was in a very successful TV series 40 years ago, and he made a number of okay movies. He did a bunch of Hallmark movies. He has been in a CBS series for the last 14 years.

He lives on an avocado farm in Ventura County, California. Reports about the size of the farm vary, but it’s around 60 acres. He says he may have to sell if his series is cancelled, in order to have a good lifestyle until he dies.

How can that be true?

I looked it up. You can find the address on the web. He pays about $65,000 per year in property taxes. He may live another 15 years, so let’s say $1.5 million yet to pay, with numerical increases for inflation. Shouldn’t he be able to pay that?

His home is an avocado farm. Aren’t avocados expensive? Shouldn’t there be at least six figures of net income from that?

I decided to find out what John Travolta pays in my county. It’s about $27,000 per year. He has a smaller property, but on the other hand, the improvements are nuts. An incredible mansion that connects to a system of runways. He has carports with jets in them, at his house! One jet is a commercial airliner QANTAS used to own.

Travolta pays no state income tax, unless he has property in other states. He pays no county or city income tax. His property tax, during the same period during which Selleck will pay $1.5 million plus increases, will be about $400,000 with increases.

He can have all the guns he wants. He can keep an AK-47 in his car. If he shoots a criminal, our sheriff, Billy Woods, will probably take him to Dairy Queen.

He doesn’t have rolling blackouts. The power is always on.

I wonder what Tom Selleck is paying California, his county, and his municipality. And why is he there? He’s supposed to be conservative. My guess is that his wife won’t let him move. Or maybe he’s a RINO.

He could be in Tennessee or Florida right now. Or Idaho. Or Wyoming.

Zillow says his property is worth about $12 million, and Zillow is usually pretty accurate. Zillow thinks Travolta’s house is worth $3.5 million, which is very modest considering his wealth. The acreage is about a third of Selleck’s, which is still pretty good for a non-agricultural property.

If you don’t need runways, I guarantee you, you can get 60 acres here for what Travolta’s house is worth. With an agricultural exemption, your taxes will be around $16,000 per year.

You can have horses, cattle, goats, sheep, ostriches, emus, donkeys, or just about anything else you want. What you can’t have is California.

Selleck should not have a mortgage right now. Unless something is wrong, his home is paid for. He should be able to sell his ranch, pocket maybe $9,000,000 after capital gains, move to a better state, buy a better farm, and have well over $5,000,000 in additional retirement funds. He should have something saved up from his work. He should have the maximum Social Security benefit.

Maybe he just spends too much. When you’re 79, and you’re worried about your future, you ought to be able to rein in your spending and survive on a net worth of over $12 million. Even if all he has is a reverse mortgage, he should be able to fly business class to nice places every year and eat anything he wants.

If he moves in next door, I’ll be happy to help him and his wife find the best local barbecue.

Consider Your Chains Broken

I’m starting to feel like my mission in life is to shame manufacturers who make it hard to get parts and information.

Today I’m going after Textron/EZ-GO. This annoying company makes good carts, but finding parts on their antiquated site is impossible, and their customer service is bad. On top of that, they charge like crazy.

Right now, I have a request for information waiting, and I am not sure they’ll ever respond.

I did something stupid, causing a wheel to fall off my ST350, and I messed up some lug studs. I fixed them with a die, but I don’t trust them, so I need new studs. Problem: it’s very hard to find them.

If you look for EZGO studs on the web, you will see endless ads that say “except ST350.” Sites that sell all kinds of EZGO parts generally don’t sell these studs. You can get a new rear hub with studs in it, but expect to pay at least $85.

Some kind person found a site that sells the studs. It’s called Country Cat, probably because all us cats in the country have carts. I’ve used it before. I bought a $250 OEM carb for about $125. I have a China carb that works, but I wanted insurance for the future because of the difficulty of getting EZGO parts, and the price was impossible to turn down.

In case anyone else out there wants these studs, here is a link:

LINK

You can try a car parts place, hoping a similar stud will work, but only one place near me had a book listing studs by measurements. Generally, they are sold by car model. The studs I found would have required precision boring, which I did not want to do.

If you have an EZGO Workhorse, you should buy these studs and set them aside, and you might consider buying a carb, because the Subaru Robin engines in these “old” (two short decades) carts get very bad support.

I’m compiling info on my power equipment, and I just got my Husqvarna 125B blower figured out. This is a very small, light gas blower which is very handy for things like blowing crud off a porch or out of a garage. If you’re very old, it’s good for birthday cakes and discouraging old women who want to kiss you.

The carburetor in the 125 series is a Zama C1Q-W37. The Husky part number is 5904601-02. Unfortunately, Husky makes it hard to find the carb partial rebuild kit, which is what is needed in nearly all cases when a 125 blower won’t run. The Zama carb kit’s part number is RB-47. It’s very cheap. This is a total rebuild kit. The diaphragm kit is GND-18.

I have a Chinese carb in the blower, and it runs nearly perfectly, so I have little motivation to change it, but I probably have the Zama in a box somewhere, so I ordered the kit, and I’m going to try to repair it.

The OEM carb is cheap, so don’t pay the highest price you find. You can get it for something like $35.

I looked into my new Husqvarna 562XP saw so I would have a rebuild kit on hand. The carb is from Zama. The entire carb designation is C1M-EL48, and the diaphragm kit from Zama is the GND-105, which is cheap. The total rebuild kit is the RB-181.

This is only for saws from number 20121401173 forward. Before that, the saw came with an EL44 or EL46 carb, and they are not as highly regarded.

Excuse me if any of this stuff has already been published here. It’s hard to keep it all straight.