Author: Kevan

Back when people lived in the country, they developed a saying, “It’s as easy as falling off a log.” Unless you have experience with logs, however, you may not realize just how easy that is. Take it from those who know: it’s easy.

You would think that falling off a ladder might be easy, too, but it’s really not. If you’d spent as much time on logs as I have, you’d have countless times in your memory of losing your balance and having to dismount suddenly. But I’ve been climbing ladders and/or working from ladders on a daily basis for over thirty years now, and I’ve only fallen twice. Ladders are much better than logs.

Ladders do have an intrinsic shortcoming, though, and that is their habit of being underneath people who are high off the ground. Logs tend to be under people who are low to the ground. When you fall off a ladder, even if you only do it at fifteen year intervals, it can rearrange your life, not to mention your skeletal structure.

I knew of a Christian minister who had such an accident around 1977. It crippled him up pretty noticeably, but he recovered. He still limps a little. Through the grapevine he eventually learned that a fellow minister in another state had fallen off a ladder on the very same day as he, and also sustained serious injury. This moved some wag to refer to the two of them as “ladder day saints.”

The first time I indulged in this diversion was about twenty years and fifty pounds ago. I was frolicking around on a drain job, running up and down the ladder like a squirrel with my usual zest for life, and the ladder disappeared somehow and I suddenly found myself up in the air like Wile E. Coyote. All parts of me hit the driveway, but my head was last. I didn’t lose consciousness, but I had a headache for a week.

That accident did not make me more careful. To be honest, I’m not sure of what went wrong. The ladder may have given way and bent. But I continued my standard methods of setting up the ladder and judging when it was safe enough to climb. That worked fine until three weeks ago.

On Jan 27th I misjudged my situation. I set the ladder on an old red brick patio (smooth) covered with old wet leaves (slick) and leaning up against an old rusted out rain gutter (ready to collpse). Then I sent an old fat plumber (me) up to clean a sewer through the roof vent.

As I began to step off the ladder onto the roof, the gutter collapsed and the jolt caused the feet of the ladder to lose any grip they had on the brick patio. After that, I quit paying attention, so I can’t be specific. I do know that I found myself in one piece with no broken bones, but the side of my right thigh was badly injured from, apparently, having struck a short brick wall that formed a flower bed. I had numerous other minor injuries. It also lowered my self esteem.

Although I could barely walk and the injury eventually laid me up for a couple of weeks, I did manage to climb back up on the roof, finish the job, load the truck, and go home. You gotta be tough to be a sewer man.

From this I have learned that I must do better. Despite the fact that I have successfully judged the safety of my ladder habits for thirty years, those habits are insufficient. They nearly got me killed. That’s a fact.

You can search for “ladder safety” and get all the specifics you need. I’ll just summarize my personal perspective. How do you fall off a ladder? By overconfidence. Let me explain by a couple of examples:

Every responsible gun owner knows that “them things’ll kill you.” We handle guns very carefully. We follow strict rules that inexperienced onlookers might consider excessive. We refuse to keep company with anyone who handles a gun unsafely. Otherwise a mistake would be easy to make and the results would not be pretty.

To a lesser extent knives have to be handled with strict care. I knew a very experienced farmer back in the ’80s who put a knife through his leg and nearly bled to death. When I asked how it happened, he said that he had gotten careless while cutting a plastic drum open and the knife had slipped. That’s usually how it happens. I’ve always taught beginners to ask WHEN this knife slips (not “if”), where will it go? If the answer involves some part of your body, stop! Change what you’re doing and assume a safe position. Knives slip; that’s the way of the world.

A ladder fall can maim or kill you. Don’t think it won’t. My first fall didn’t interrupt my life, but this last one has cost me a couple of weeks of work/income and will continue to cost me as I am currently declining jobs that are too hard for my limited capacity. I’ve probably done permanent damage to my leg, although it won’t keep me from living and working normally. But had I hit the patio a little differently, I could easily have been killed or, worse, paralyzed.

Easily.

As easy as falling off a log.

I’ve been away for a while. This blog experienced technical difficulties. (If you were my age, you’d recognize the allusion there.) I finally got the host to straighten out some problems that arose when his system was hacked and my blog (and backups) erased. Most of it is restored now and the national disaster averted.

Trump delivered a speech last night. There’s no telling who wrote it, but it claimed that everything’s coming up roses. A smart person would know better than to go out on a limb like that. Bad things happen; and if they happen during this year’s campaign, the braggart will have a hard time evading the blame.

If you are sufficiently brilliant and highly educated, perhaps you can imagine how a family would fare if, in addition to their household income, they were given a credit card with a $100,000 spending limit and the assurance that somebody else would pay the bill. Every year. That family would appear to be sittin’ pretty, you reckon? I congratulate you on your economic prowess.

The federal government, in addition to their household income (from taxes, etc.), adds a trillion dollars per year to their credit card balance. They spend that money in the marketplace one way or another; those who receive it, in turn, spend it somewhere else; and so on. Eventually the plumber gets a phone call from somebody who wants to remodel their bathroom because they now have more money than they did a couple of years ago. The plumber says, “Trump’s doing a good job with the economy; business is good.” That’s how elections are won: I’ll give you free stuff and I’ll make some other poor slob pay for it.

I remember hearing Larry Burkett say on the radio that going into debt is a blast; it’s the most fun you’ll ever have! The bills eventually arrive, though, whether it be for a household or a nation.

Trump has done some good things such as getting onerous regulations removed from businesses. I’ll vote for him again, I assume. I’d vote for the Republican candidate even if the candidate were a yellow dog; and that’s not because I have any affection for the party, it’s because the Dims are even worse.

And they’re so stupid! I’ll give two small examples. First: didn’t Nancy Pelosi know that ripping up Trump’s speech would make her look bad, not good? Second: the party somehow cannot see that Tulsi Gabbard would defeat Trump if they’d just nominate her instead of these circus clowns they are allowing to be front-runners.

I’m cleaning up my home computer workstation. This is somewhat like cleaning out a refrigerator: if it hasn’t been done for a long time, it can be pretty repulsive. I’m a junk collector by nature; I save stuff. “This might come in handy one day.” Or, as my father once muttered about some worn out work boots which he’d long since replaced, but was reluctant to discard, “Them things would’a been like gold in the Depression.”  It’s hard to throw away good stuff.  Hence, it accumulates.

It accumulates; it becomes disordered, it collects dust by the cubic yard; it becomes the habitation of devils and every hateful and unclean bird; and in the case of a computer workstation, it develops a Gordian knot of cables and power cords.

I rented a Bobcat down at Home Cheapo and managed to get everything off the desk and the corner cleaned out and the cables untangled and wiped down.  Carried the dirt out back and filled in some low spots.  Got the walls vacuumed clean and everything shiny.  Now it was time to set things back in place.

As it turns out, I’ve had more on that desk and in that corner than I really had room for.  Some might say I had more than the Gross Domestic Product of a small Latin American country.  In any case, I needed to discard stuff, which isn’t easy.  See paragraph [1] above.

I decided I don’t need my printer, a hulking mammoth called an “all in one” model.  I seldom use it, it usually has a bad ink cartridge when I need it, and I wind up using Wonder Wife’s printer via the network.  So I got its original packaging from the attic (“See?  I told you it might come in handy one day!”) and boxed it up nicely with a note taped to the outside to remind me of its condition.  When I carried it back up, I got to looking at a large collection of computer equipment that I’m saving until needed.  I counted seven other printers.  Down in my “closet office” (which is now only a storage closet, but I still refer to it as Fort Cloffice), I have two more.

*Sigh*

A buddy disagreed with my last post and said that I was too smart to fall for the idea that Christians should vote for Trump.  I smilingly replied that one should avoid the term “too smart” when disagreeing with the likes of theologian Wayne Grudem, whom I’d mentioned as an advocate of the position I was taking.  Grudem is scary smart.

At the end of last July, Grudem published his now-famous article “Why Voting for Donald Trump Is a Morally Good Choice.”  He stated the essence of the article in an early paragraph:

I did not support Trump in the primary season. I even spoke against him at a pastors’ conference in February. But now I plan to vote for him. I do not think it is right to call him an “evil candidate.” I think rather he is a good candidate with flaws.

This article provoked a firestorm of opposing articles, blog posts, etc. in the Christian cybersphere.  After reading about ten of them, I saw that I could dispense with the other two hundred; they all said the same things.  A major objection was that Trump is bad in a way that the world doesn’t like rather than, for instance, Hillary Clinton, who is bad in ways that the world celebrates.  For nigh on seventy years, by my reckoning, Christian leaders have repeatedly been exclaiming “Oh, horrors! We can’t do/say/think that!  Why, what would Satan say if we did that???”  Subsequently, Christianity has become so conformed to the world now that its major distinguishing point seems to be how cheesy its rock & roll is.  So everybody jumped on Grudem (who, by the way, has a long history of standing against the decline of Christianity).

This presidential election campaign season has been the most entertaining carnival that has ever come to town. Repeatedly, when you think the show is over and you’ve seen it all, another act comes dancing across the stage and the frolics resume.  Last week the nation was shocked, shocked! to discover that Trump has lived as a sexual libertine who uses vulgar language as though he were a common plumbing contractor.  True, he bragged about his behavior in his books and broadcast media appearances for decades, but the Democrat-media confederacy has somehow managed to republish the data with enough fanfare now to trick the booboisie into thinking it’s a game-changing revelation.

On cue, a swarm of Republicans called for Trump to withdraw from the race.  Among them was Wayne Grudem.  His explanation is here.

I’ve never called Trump a good candidate with flaws (as Grudem did); I’ve consistently called him a bad man who doesn’t know much and isn’t very smart.  Despite that, my position is essentially the same as was Grudem’s.  He went to great lengths to demonstrate why a Trump administration would be preferable to a Clinton one.  The voter is faced with the choice of favoring the better option or not favoring the better option.  If he chooses to favor the better option, it will entail certain actions, although individuals might disagree over exactly what those actions are.  (Ordinarily, the entailed action would be to support Trump.)

This brings me to the accusation I make in this post’s title.  With his recent article, Grudem has adopted an incoherent position.

He begins with a condemnation of Trump’s 2005 remarks about sexual aggressiveness, and similar vulgarities on–who would believe it?–Howard Stern’s radio show.  Grudem states that such behavior is “hateful in God’s eyes” and that it “turned my stomach.”  On these bases, he calls for Trump to withdraw.

So far, Grudem’s position is coherent.  Trump is, indeed, deplorable; and if a voter realizes that he no longer favors a candidate (be the epiphany ever so tardy), he is at liberty to favor a different outcome.

However, for the remainder of the article, Grudem restates the patently obvious fact that a Trump presidency is seriously preferable to its alternative.   (And readers, please keep clearly in your logic the fact that Eggan McMuffin is not a third possibility.)  He asserts that he cannot and will not vote for Clinton.  In other words, Grudem as much as admits that his upset stomach hasn’t changed anything.

Grudem himself, though, has indeed changed something: he has changed the vote of thousands of Christian fence-sitters who were looking for a leader to confirm their gut instinct that Trump is preferable to the alternative.  Headlines immediately peppered the landscape announcing Grudem’s great reversal, part of a much grander narrative that the Dems have pushed for four months–that Trump is losing his support.  In fact, Trump has gone up and down in the polls and the recent trends were upward, apparently because Ted Cruz and others were finally admitting that someone they deplored was, sad to say, their only hope for avoiding a Clinton presidency.  Grudem’s move served only to decelerate any momentum that the idea was gaining among Christians.

That’s what is incoherent about Grudem’s present position.  He avers (still) that a Trump presidency is a better option than its alternative, but his actions favor the alternative.  To call upon Trump to withdraw is not an option because (1) obviously Trump will not and (2) if he did, his successor couldn’t possibly fare as well; so such a call is substantially a move to favor what he claims not to favor.  Even with the publishing of the vulgar recordings, and with the even more recent unsubstantiated (and highly suspicious) accusations of assaultive behavior, Grudem, I, and everyone else are left with the same choice we always had.  We may favor one of only two outcomes (any third outcomes are imaginary).  For weighty reasons (see Grudem’s original article) the preferable outcome is a Trump election.

Norman Geisler, a major Christian scholar and intellectual (now retired), recently came out for Trump, as did Ted Cruz.  They join an impressive list of people who, for various reasons, want Trump to win the election.

It is my opinion that we conservatives/Christians need to drop our opposition to electing Trump.  We have stood bravely, but our position is collapsing on all sides.  It’s time to sound the retreat so that we may live to fight another day, enduring a President Trump rather than a President Clinton.

Hundreds of articles and posts have argued against voting for Trump.  The objections amount to (1) he’s a bad man, (2) he doesn’t know much, (3) some of his positions aren’t conservative, and (4) his latest spouse, a model, has posed for some sexually improper photographs.

I would reply, “And, using that list, what objections against Clinton and her spouse can you mention?”  Even with the magnitude of Trump’s reprehensibilities, I think the comparison is laughable, myself.

Despite his outlandish claims, Trump is well aware that he doesn’t know much.  As president, he would hire knowledgeable people and delegate–as all businessmen do.  Look at his friends.  Look at the people he surrounds himself with and goes to for advice.  Now look at Clinton and her crowd.  Which crowd do you prefer?

And by the way, this “nuclear codes” business really, really needs to be put to rest.  The anti-Trumpers are trying to dupe people into picturing Trump practicing golf putts in the Oval Office, noticing a big red button on his desk, and muttering, “I wonder what this does?”  And whoosh, World War Three is underway!  It is mere scaremongering horse dung.  No president has the power to launch any attack without the concurrence of the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It is sometimes alleged that evangelical Christianity will be besmirched unless we loudly disavow Trump.  I deny this; I think that it is an expression of the never-ending technique of guilt manipulation.  I certainly think that Christians would make a grave mistake if they should tout any candidate as “the Christian candidate” or “God’s choice,” but merely choosing Trump over Clinton does not tell anyone what we think about his character.  Understand this: for the rest of your life, you are going to encounter people who say, in essence, “Do as I say or I will call you a bad Christian.”  You cannot satisfy a guilt manipulator; ignore him.

Millions of people today are gung-ho on Trump.  If he wins, I’m afraid that many of them are going to be somewhat disappointed.  I don’t trust Trump to deliver on his promises.  He might; he might not.  Either way, I’d prefer him over Clinton (and he and she are the only real options).  Wayne Grudem was certainly right when he wrote “there is nothing morally wrong with voting for a flawed candidate if you think he will do more good for the nation than his opponent.”  In our situation, we might substitute the words “less damage” for “more good.”  The principle remains.

This is the best election ever.

For years I have avoided election seasons.  I mean that literally.  I have refused to play the radio (I have no television) because I don’t want to hear the ads and I don’t want to hear pundits telling me their versions of whatever lies the candidates are spouting.  I sink my attention in books and music and audio lectures and wait for the idiocy to pass.

This time, however, I’ve been entertained like never before.  The Trump phenomenon is unprecedented and Hillary’s crookedness makes the average politician look like Pollyanna on a good day.  It’s like a three-ring circus that never ends.  I look forward to reading or listening to the news every day.

A week ago, Clinton spoke at a “LGBT for Hillary” fundraiser in Manhatten and said that half of Trump’s supporters could be grouped into a “basket of deplorables” and were, for the most part, irredeemable; but the other half just felt that government had let them down, and the Democrats needed to understand and empathize with that basket.

She wasn’t specifically talking about me.  I’m not a Trump “supporter.”  I intend to vote third-party.  Yet I’m sure that she deplores me all the same.

Hillary defined her deplorables as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.”  I think that her speechwriters did a fine job that day of restating her unending campaign theme in a new and arresting way: “basket of deplorables.”  I think it’s funny myself, and I think that I would have laughed right along with those poor, oppressed, and marginalized millionaires who can be heard on the recording laughing at the remark.

A campaigning politician is a revolting sight for many reasons, but a salient reason is their pattern of seizing upon something their opponent said and pitching a fit as though the remark deserved it.  For example, when President Obama (whom I deplore, by the way) said to businessmen “you didn’t build that,” anyone interested in the truth could perceive that he meant to say (but garbled it) that the businessman didn’t build the infrastructure of roads, utilities, etc.  That is different from, say, Michelle Obama saying

“Let me tell you something, for the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”

Those words are plain.  Likewise, when her husband said “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” nobody has to twist it to make it a calculated and blatant lie.

Antihillarists are feigning shock and disgust that Clinton’s speechwriters would refer to some hard working Americans as a basket of deplorables.  But for Hillary to call Trump’s supporters names is quite unremarkable.  Appellations like “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic” and that fearsome badge of shame “you name it” are as common as graffiti in bathroom stalls.  Some of them are just stupid (homophobic: fear of the “same”), some defy rational analysis (racist is never defined so as to apply consistently to both whites and nonwhites), and some are just attempts to smear normalcy (sexism: too many male Minions in Despicable Me).  But despite the childishness of dismissing an opponent by calling him names, it’s done all the time — particularly when a leftist cannot answer an argument with facts and logic.

Me: The policeman was right.

Other: That’s racist!

Me: Homosexuals shouldn’t be Scoutmasters.

Other: That’s homophobic!

Me: Don’t draft women.

Other: You’re a sexist!

Hence my objection to considering Hillary’s insult newsworthy and somehow harmful to her campaign.  Even though she “apologized” the next day, she went right on to repeat the same insults in altered syntax.  Of course she deplores ordinary Americans with ordinary views.  She and the whole multicult have been reading that Holy Liturgy Of The New State Religion every morning and evening for thirty years.  Average folks have been cowed, which allows the multicultists to pursue the fundamental transformation of the United States nearly unopposed.

Trump scares them.  His political positions don’t scare them (for those are all negotiable); Trump himself scares them because he has no respect for political correctness and he has no fear of their insults.  Many are following his lead and stating plainly “We no longer care if you call us names; name-calling is not an argument.”

Those people, too, scare the multicultists.  Maybe we could call it normalphobia.

“Dog people” are like gravity or sunlight or something: they just are
and there’s nothing that will change it. I’m not a dog person. I like
dogs, just as most people do, but I have no desire to adopt one. I
have enough problems already.

Dog people tend to think that the world and humanity were made for
dogs, and their own dogs particularly. If it comes down to it,
humanity must give way so that the dogs can flourish. I’ve seen this
a hundred times in my travels through the tri-state area. Someone
will have a psychotic beast that barks viciously at me when I am
working in the next yard. Do they come out and correct the situation?
Hahahahaha! Of course not! They blame me for being there and bothering the dog.

People will walk their dogs on a leash and allow it to excrete its dung
on my grass where, quite obviously, I have to mow.  As I walk down the
street, they allow the beast to come up to me and plant its slobbery
muzzle in my crotch and on my hands, as though either (1) I like it or
(2) the dog has that right and it doesn’t matter if I want the
attention or not.

And, of course, dog people talk to their dogs as though they were
human. If I had a dog I’d do the same, but such behavior is
irrational. I don’t talk to my computer. I give it commands, but I
don’t pretend it converses with me and I don’t wish to get started
pretending that a dog is conversing with me.

We love dogs because they love us. They’re easier to get along with
than humans. We are tempted to ask “Why can’t so-and-so accept me the way my dog does?” The answer is that so-and-so is smarter than your dog.  Rather than flee to a dog, I think my responsibility is to mend my relationships with other people.

Americans spent $14.4 billion on dog food and treats in 2014, according
to the Pet Food Institute.  Since the annual trend was upward, I assume that it was higher in 2015 and will be higher still in 2016.  The SPCA says it costs about $1,400 to properly keep a dog for a year, including grooming, vet visits, and kenneling while you’re gone on vacation.  I suppose a few million also go into medical care for dog bites.  Doubt me?  Google “dog bite injury” images.

Why do people do this?  Oh, there has been a library’s worth of books extolling the excellencies of dog companionship — millions of pages to justify the billions of dollars — but I summarize it by simply observing that dog people are and there’s nothing that will change it.

Few of my readers will know what an MVNO is, so I will begin by explaining that it is a reseller of mobile phone services, a company such as Boost, Straight Talk, or Virgin Mobile. The closing of P’Tel could be an unfavorable omen that mobile phone costs may rise. Such things are explained by my friend Daley over at Mr. Money Mustache.

I was recently working at an apartment project inhabited entirely by blacks except for the white maintenance man.  As he and I conversed about life in general, such as the fact that he’d been mugged three times in five years (once jumped by five, who beat him up for recreational purposes and didn’t even rob him), he observed that a small number of blacks in America had been killed by police under questionable circumstances, but in our city there are one or two blacks murdered every week by other blacks, yet his neighbors weren’t complaining about that.

It caused me to point out that, even in the cases of police shootings, the officer is usually exonerated when the case is examined calmly in the process of the law.  On the other hand, I added, we are recruiting men to go up against sociopathological miscreants so that we, ourselves, don’t have to.  These men have to display courage, strength, skill, and — perhaps most importantly — the roughness of character to be cursed at, spat upon, and attacked with deadly weapons, and yet fight the goblins into submission, cuff them, and haul them down to 201.  And then we complain that they in some way or another fail to display the gentleness of a hospital chaplain?

In what reading I’ve done regarding the profession, everyone affirms that today’s police are better trained than any in the history of the world.  I’m willing to believe that.  When I was a rent-a-cop in the late ’70s (a “security guard”), I was told in no uncertain terms that I was better trained than any rookie policeman was just forty years earlier.  Street-level experience, of course, would have put a real cop back then ahead of me in a week or two, since my own duties consisted merely of signing people in and out or patrolling a property to keep an eye on things.

Despite the training that policemen undergo, there is still the problem of trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.  Cops aren’t like the rest of us; that’s why we hire them.  If we could do it ourselves, we would.  When we are threatened by criminals, we say in essence, “Officer, wade into that pack of feral dogs and throw those suckers up against the wall for me.”  And he does, usually.  He’s ready for confrontation, unlike you and me.

I asked the white maintenance man, “You ever been mistreated by a cop?”  He replied, “Sure!”  I smiled and said, “Me, too.”  I’ve always considered such events a small price to pay for an effective police force.  Once I was driving a used car which I’d purchased from an individual the day before: cop wrote me up for an expired license tag, even though I had the paperwork to show him that I’d had no time yet to change the vehicle’s registration.  A cop hid near a malfunctioning traffic light and, when my wife finally proceeded through the intersection carefully, he pulled her over and wrote her up, just collecting scalps.  When I was a long haired teenager, I commonly got pulled over on some pretext and my car was searched illegally (without my consent).  The maintenance man told me of a recent case where he, his car, and a passenger were stopped and searched because he looked suspicious: lower-class white man with black female passenger.  He consented to the search because (1) he knew he was clean and (2) it’s better to have your rights violated than to endure the difficulty of standing up for them.

Police misbehavior has always existed and always will.  “Bad cops” are continually being culled from the herd in every large police department in the nation.  But even “good cops” often find it expedient to ignore certain proscriptions in order to catch offenders and keep order.  I remember one case a couple of years ago where a cop was struggling with a problem and somehow solved it by thrashing several of the scumbags who were making society unfit to live in.  There was a national outcry against him for his unprofessionalism.  My own opinion was that, indeed, if he cannot control his anger, he cannot work as a cop — but give the guy a medal for valiant service as he leaves, because he made the world a better place by taking out the trash for us.

I don’t want counselors and massage therapists patrolling Memphis and trying to keep our diverse population from dragging the city into third-world status.  I want tough and aggressive warriors.  That means they will sometimes make problems that we have to work through, but it is suicidal to shame them for being tough.

I would add in closing that I’ve been ticketed a dozen times for minor traffic infractions over the past forty-four years and almost always the officer has been polite and professional.  I heard some professional whiners on NPR recently complaining that blacks shouldn’t have to learn how to strategize a traffic stop to avoid getting shot, as though keeping your hands visible and following instructions were beyond them.  Apparently having been taught to submit to authority is an element of white privilege.

Stupidity is a word that appears often as a general intensifier: “Bring me the stupid hammer.”  In fact, such usage is the topic of this post: the stupidity of using words senselessly.

“Stupid” is derived from a Latin word for being knocked senseless.  Sadly, such trauma isn’t even necessary to evoke what passes for English now.  I don’t know if things were ever better in English and I assume that every language has the same malevolent aberrations.  I call it “grunt & point” English, as though one were pointing at the salt and uttering “Ugh!” instead of “Pass the salt, please.”  When confronted (which only happens when a parent corrects a child), the offender offers “Oh, you know what I mean.”  And indeed I do: pointing at the salt and uttering “Ugh!” would indicate clearly that the speaker wishes for me to pass the salt.  And having studied Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, and German, I have enough linguistic facility to decipher such barbarity as: And I was like, “Duhhh,” and he was like, “Really?” and I was like, “Dude!” and he was like, “HellO?” and I was like, “Come ON,” and he was like, “AWKward,” and I was like . . . you get the idea.  But the fact that I can decipher it does not lessen its stupidity.

Today I decided to read up on how to plant a tree.  I came across this statement: As you look around town at well formed and healthy trees, invariably you will discover that the root flare is exposed.  It isn’t important that you understand what a root flare is, or what its benefit is.  Just read the claim as it lies, noticing the word “invariably.”  That word means “there are no exceptions.”  But the next sentence in the article said There are always exceptions to the rule.  In other words, there are no exceptions except when there are exceptions.  The writer should have said “usually” instead of “invariably.”  And if he were to object with the defense “Well, you know what I meant,” I would point at my previous paragraph and utter “Ugh!”  He used the word “invariably” with stupid disregard (or ignorance) of its meaning.  The meaning was of no more significance than “Ugh! would  have been; it’s just a placeholder.

Reading that barbarism this morning reminded me of a letter to the editor that I read in a magazine years ago.  A woman gushed that she enjoyed the magazine a lot and her young son did, too.  In fact, “He literally devours each issue as soon as I bring in the mail.”  I needn’t explain to you that “literally” is exactly what she did not mean.

You: Oh, you know what she meant.

Me: Ugh!

The very word “barbarism” is enlightening.  It referred originally to the unintelligibility of a foreigner’s speech, as though it sounded like “bar bar bar bar.”  Now it refers generally to an inability to conduct oneself according to traditional standards.  Verbal stupidity is a kind of barbarism: using words not for their meaning, but just as meaningless sounds which get the listener’s attention and help, along with gestures, intonation, facial expression, and the situation generally, to convey the speaker’s intention.

I rent cars several times per year for long-distance trips, usually to visit relatives.  Ordinarily I use Enterprise.  I used to price-shop until Budget cut my throat one day: they took my reservation, but when it was time for me to depart, they announced that they didn’t have any cars.  That can really mess up your travel plans, so I swore off Budget (which is owned by Avis).  I used Enterprise exclusively after that, always with good results.

We needed a car recently and, because I was shopping within two weeks of departure, the prices were too high.  I started price shopping again.  I found a bargain at Dollar, but I had to drive twenty miles to the Memphis airport to get it.  The tradeoff was worth it.  I booked it online and a week or so later, went to pick it up.  Time was of the essence.  I had to get there, make the transaction, and get gone.

Dollar tacked on about $200 worth of charges for garbage I’d never seen at Enterprise.  The price I paid bore little resemblance to the one I’d agreed to when I reserved the car online, except that the new price, like the old one, was written in Arabic numerals.

I’ll never use Dollar Rent A Car again.

My Eko (“eeko”) breathed its last yesterday.

I’ve had only one guitar since college.  My roommate Alan Behn sold me his Eko when I was a freshman (1973) and he taught me a basic fingerpicking pattern for folk music.  I had been a rock & roller and had an old Gibson Melody Maker, which wasn’t useful to me any more.  I paid $50 for the Eko and sold the Gibson for $50 to a friend in Houston.  I considered it an even swap.  You should search for “gibson melody maker” on eBay now.  😀

The Eko Ranger VI is built like a locomotive.  It weighs a lot more than today’s guitars and is probably harder to destroy.  Modern instruments sound better, though.  The finish on mine has cracked a lot through the decades, so it’s fairly ugly when you catch it in the light just right.  The pick guard had warped and fallen off years ago and my kids got tired of looking at the old glue (daughter said she thought it was jelly when she was a child) and they snuck it to a tech and had a new pick guard made for it one Christmas.  Another Christmas my wife bought a decent case to replace my pasteboard one that had been ruined since traveling with a drama ministry in 1975.  The thing has purtnere been through the war.

The bridge plate has been trash for years.  Half of the strings were held in by passing numerous safety pins through the ball ends and then feeding the string up from inside the body.  (Safety pins are made of hard, somewhat inflexible steel.)  The bridge itself had various shims here and there, elevating the saddle and keeping it propped in a more-or-less vertical orientation.  This probably contributed to the bridge cracking yesterday — it just split at the two ends of the saddle.

I’ve had the bridge unglued and reinstalled before and it’s just too much trouble to go through again for an instrument that’s on life support already.  So now I’m in the market for another guitar.

The Eko never gave up in the forty years I’ve played it.  The top stayed flat; the neck stayed straight; the rosewood fingerboard still looks good; the tone stayed true; the finish (albeit cracked) still shines like new, despite decades of travel and performing.

If someone wanted to repair and refinish this guitar, there’s no telling how many decades of life it still has.  But a guy like me has no business investing the requisite hours and dollars to curate an artifact from the ’70s.

Thanks, Eko; it’s been great. I don’t wanna see you go, but you’d better go now.

This December I finally got around to reading Frank Schaeffer’s Crazy for God (2008).  It was worse than I expected, and I didn’t expect it to be good.

In some ways it is well-written (or perhaps well-re-written by his editor).  Although it swarms with filthy language, it occasionally presents lucid commentary on his famous family and the evangelical world they lived in.  On the other hand, it suffers from the mixed up mind of a man who was always immoral but nevertheless was taught that he was a Christian.  His own wickedness attracted others who were like him while blinding him to the biblical Christianity he could have enjoyed and furthered.

Messed up by his weird parents?  Probably.  I wasn’t there, but he relates that his father suffered from extreme mood swings and routinely quarreled with his mother, even to the point of throwing flower pots or bruising her arms.  His mother had her own aberrations, detailing sexual information and testimony to the young boy (and his sisters).  Both parents being famous and busy, they neglected Frankie and he largely reared himself, acquiring almost no education until they sent him from their home in Switzerland to a boarding school in England.  His education progressed little even then, hampered by dyslexia (and disguised behind his natural brilliance and talent).

We “knew” Franky (as it was spelled) back in the ’80s when he was an antiabortion firebrand.  That is, I and the Christian Activists around me read, watched, and listened to Franky’s material.  It was commonly acknowledged even then that he was a jerk, but he was our jerk and we were glad that he scared and enraged the enemy.  We did not know the depth of his hypocrisy as he describes it in this memoir.

The book suffers from Schaeffer’s lack of education.  He thinks he has an inside track to the truth because he was there when it happened, but even that attitude betrays a lack of historical perspective.  He simply repeats what leftist haters say about “fundamentalism” because he, like they, doesn’t know the real history of the movement.  He takes a swipe a Charles Colson, accusing him of faking conversion in order to get out of prison — which anybody knows is false if they actually research the question.  It’s an accusation that can only be made by supposing that someone would do that.  Twice he accuses James Dobson of being a demagogue who plays people for suckers while dominating and manipulating them; but I recall that even Gil Moegerle, former co-host of Dobson’s radio program, couldn’t find much of anything to complain about when he wrote his attack, James Dobson’s War on America (1997).

All of which is to say, this book is simply unreliable because Schaeffer himself is unreliable.  Actually, he says as much in the book, but considers it to be a point of honor because he’s so honest about his deceitfulness and so enlightened about his confusion.  Not surprisingly, most reviewers agree with him because they, too, labor under delusions of what Christians must be like and they swallow whatever he feeds them, bubbling out praises for his honesty and insight.

He does say some good things, but little that couldn’t be found elsewhere in a presentation where the learner doesn’t have to wade through Schaeffer’s vulgarity and breathe its sickening odor.  He could have told the truth while still respecting the human dignity of his readers — but guys like this have been so far gone for so long, asking them for common decency is like asking a Bostonian to speak with a Southern accent.  He would consider such a request both unreasonable and demeaning.

It’s been nearly three weeks since I put my Nexus 4 in the repair shop and began using the Alcatel C1.  Somebody somewhere was failing to deliver the goods and my Nexus languished for want of a replacement screen until yesterday.  What went wrong?  You never really know who might be lying to whom in order to cover their mistakes, but I was told that the supplier was out of stock.

It wasn’t a problem, really.  I’ve continued to explore the little Alcatel, add Christmas wallpapers, modify the settings, add ringtones, and learn generally how to get along with it.

In my earlier post, I stated that the Alcatel’s graphics and call quality were sketchy.  As it turns out, those problems were specific to the individual handset I was using.  I returned it to Best Buy, thinking that my Nexus would be ready that day.  When I found out that another week was yet to transpire, I bought another Alcatel C1.  Interestingly, the price had dropped from $50 to $40.  There are no problems with the new one.

I don’t know what version of Android my handset started with, but it immediately upgraded itself to 4.4.2.  It restored most of my apps and settings from the Google backup.  I’m actually quite satisfied with this little phone except for one thing: the small screen makes it hard to use a map.

When I got my Nexus 4 back, the first thing I noticed was its angular edges.  The Alcatel has smooth, rounded edges.  Combined with its size, it’s much more comfortable in the hand.

I’m struck now by the elegance of the Nexus running 5.0.1.  The difference is strikingly beautiful.  But theres nothing unattractive about the Alcatel’s appearance or behavior.

I’m almost sorry to retire the C1, but such is progress.  If we have only two hands, we have to set something down in order to pick up something better.  If I’d had my way fifteen years ago, I’d still be running TRS-80s, which I liked much better than the Windows PCs I adopted in order to create and maintain a web site.

I will restate something from my earlier post.  My friend Will McClendon can show you in this article how to to leverage the power of VoIP and Wi-Fi to get talk, text, and data on a mobile phone for as little as $2/month.  Combine that with a $40 smartphone and one of the greatest of modern technological miracles is within the reach of nearly every American.

On Thursday I bought an Alcatel C1, technically known as a 4015T.

My Nexus 4 is at a repair shop, having sustained a small crack in the touchscreen.  I picked this up at Best Buy for $50, which compares favorably to the $300 I originally spent on the Nexus.  One might expect the C1 to offer 1/6th of the value; I instead place it at about 3/4ths.

To be sure, this is a $50 smartphone.  The graphics tend to be grainy and the audio (both directions) is inferior.  It has less memory, storage, and speed.  The screen only looks good if you’re looking squarely at it.  It has fewer ringtones, notification tones, and menu options.  It’s running Android 4.2.2 and seems uninterested in snagging an upgrade.  Perhaps it is incapable of running a higher version?

And yet, for all that, I like it.  I like its smallness.  The 3.5″ screen is tiny compared to the Nexus’s 4.7″, but I have to admit that I don’t mind the smallness very much.  I used to think that acreage was king when it came to smartphones and I always wondered why the iPhone, Cadillac Of Them All, didn’t grow like the others.  Now I see that the small screen has its own appeal.  Overall, the little phone is more comfortable.

It also has its problems.  Google Maps is much harder to use.  Many websites can’t get their content small enough to fit, requiring the viewer (moi) to scroll horizontally.  The poorer resolution makes the little I.D. pictures beside Facebook posts pretty much worthless, and this problem persists anywhere small graphics are displayed.

I’ll be glad to get my real phone back.  It’s a central tool in my business and daily life and, as with my other tools, quality makes me money.  Even still, it makes me happy to see a little gizmo like this Alcatel available for $50.  Its something close to a miracle.  With free wi-fi all around us and VoIP cloud numbers available for free from Google Voice (questionable quality) or for $3/month from a provider like Voipo (which I use), a person could get a $10/month plan from an MVNO and an app like CSipSimple on his $50 phone and be running with the big dogs for very little money.  (For more info, check out my friend’s essays on the topic.)

There’s a well-known rule that one mustn’t criticize a politician or an influential person.  If you haven’t heard that rule, then you must need for me to tell you the complete version of it: one mustn’t criticize a politician or an influential person if the rulers agree that you mustn’t.  For instance, even many blacks had uncomplimentary things to say about Mike King before he was murdered in Memphis in 1968 under his assumed moniker Martin Luther; but once he was apotheosized, he became untouchable.

So it is with Abraham Lincoln.  A number of books have appeared throughout the last 100 years which interpret his presidency in an accurate and unflattering way, the most devastating of which, despite some inexcusable errors of detail, is probably DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln.  Lincoln, however, has been declared untouchable by our rulers to such a degree that, for instance, Mel Bradford could be borked from his nomination for chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities because he interpreted Lincoln unfavorably.

If I were in any way dependent upon the rulers, they would do the same to me for writing this blog post.

In one episode of the Beverly Hillbillies, Granny, explaining the Civil War, declared “That was when the Yankees invaded America.”  Theres a little bit of truth in that.  The South, for all of its faults, had the Constitution on its side and, as such, held the rightful title to the American tradition.  Lincoln’s War was a revolution which, like all of Lincoln’s politics, had as its goal the fundamental transformation of the United States.

The Emancipation Proclamation now comes to mind.  Lincoln declared that the slaves in Rebel-held territory were no longer slaves.  Where did he get the authority to declare that a slave is not a slave?  He made it up.  If you pretend that he had authority from God, doesn’t that imply that everyone else had the same authority from God to declare federal laws and annul state laws in spite of the entirety of human history– pagan, Jew, and Christian alike?  Wouldn’t that make for an interesting body politic, where each man went around speaking reality into existence and declaring as law whatever he thought desirable?  Sorta sounds like a banana republic, doesn’t it?

Lincoln didn’t have the authority, but he did have lots and lots of guns; and, as Chairman Mao pointed out, “Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”  In the Western Christian tradition, however, we believe that the natural rights of man dictate that constitutional laws are supreme over all government officials.

I’m writing, of course, because Obama made his own Mexification Proclamation tonight in defiance of Congress and the clear majority of Americans.  Where did he get the authority?  Why, from Lincoln, of course!  And Lincoln won it through conquest.

What we’ve been enduring for the past century is the outworking of the principles set in place by the revolution of 1861.  Clear-sighted men wrote about it, especially in the years 1830-1860.  Many understood then, but they were outgunned.  As Jefferson Davis observed later in his monumental Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, “When the cause was lost, what cause was it? Not that of the South only, but the cause of constitutional government, of the supremacy of law, of the natural rights of man” (2:763).

This alone explains the unbroken failure of conservative activism and the steady slide of the nation into Marxism.  Blaspheme a god and you’ll be excommunicated; that is to say, criticize Lincoln and his heirs and “you’ll never work in this town again.”  Theoreticians are therefore cowed, and their strategies can never strike at the root.

I like cheap stuff and do-it-yourself stuff.  I wish that there were a way to generate my own electricity.  I’ve looked into it for years.  The answer is always the same.

I got to thinking about the solar farm at the Agricenter this evening.  I drive by it occasionally while traveling out Walnut Grove.  It is one big honker.

I decided to run the numbers on that boondoggle and see what they looked like.  I got the data (and the above photo) here.

The farm was supposed to generate 1.6 gigawatt-hours per year.   Whether it is meeting that goal, I don’t know, but it seems very unlikely that the goal was understated, so let’s assume it’s reliable.  Basic arithmetic converts that into 1,600,000 KWH.  Residential rates for electricity vary somewhat, but $0.07/KWH is pretty close, so multiplying that by the farm’s output yields $112,000 worth of juice per year.  And that’s the retail price.

The farm cost $4,300,000.  Dividing that by its annual output, it would take over thirty eight years to reach the break-even point.  Of course, a solar farm doesn’t operate itself.  You must pay maintenance people, some of whom must be technically astute and, therefore, expensive.  One salary might run $50,000 when you include benefits, Social Security, and so forth.  Can they maintain that farm completely by hiring one person and no outside contractors?  Is the equipment insured against hailstorms, tornados, and flying beer bottles?  Just what are the annual maintenance costs?  Might be approaching $112,000, depending on how you figure it.

Will it last thirty eight years?  Oh, be serious!  Warranties on these panels tend to be twenty to twenty five years, but even with that, their electrical output diminishes with age, which shifts the numbers into even more unfavorable territory.  Additionally, the Agricenter is proud to point out that their panels slowly rotate in order to be always facing the sun, which improves their output twenty percent!  How much power is consumed moving 4,160 solar panels throughout every sunny day?  And how long will the motors last which accomplish this nifty feat?

This nonsense is built and owned by an outfit called Silicon Ranch, the principal of which is former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen.  You might think that poor Phil isnt good at arithmetic, spending $4.3 million on something that is guaranteed to lose money.  But I assure you, his arithmetic skills are doing just fine.  First, he sells the electricity to MLGW at market rates.  Next, he gets a handout from the TVA (your wallet, in other words) amounting to $0.12/KWH.  Thats $192,000/year, in case you don’t have a calculator handy.  Last, he will sell the junk to the Agricenter in ten years.

Is this a great country, or what?

Earlier I wrote a post about a scam that’s going around, but I didn’t name names.  I got another version of the scam in the mail today and it irritates me enough to go ahead and identify the perps.  Luckily, nobody reads my blog; so if they come after me, they can’t claim damages.

The outfit is HomeServe and the big name they use for promotion is Rudy Giuliani.  (Apparently hes got some skin in the game which doesn’t matter one way or the other.)

Their latest disgraceful move has been to mail out material that is carefully crafted to look like it came from the utility company.  To be sure, each piece in the mailing has a paragraph stating that HomeServe is an independent company separate from the utility company.  But why did the graphic designers make it look like it came from the utility company?

I know the answer.  And if your capacity for abstract thinking is high enough that you can read this without moving your lips, you know the answer, too.

For several reasons, I consider such deception to be nearly the lowest form of scumbaggery.

Glacier Bay is the house brand for Home Cheapo’s plumbing fixtures. In other words, it’s just a label they slap onto some disgraceful junk made by Hu Flung Dung far across the ocean.

Glacier Bay is good at making their stuff look presentable. A hapless shopper wouldn’t know the difference. Six months later it’s gonna look like its been through the war; but on the shelf at Home Cheapo, a Glacier Bay faucet looks pretty good.

But it isn’t good. It’s bad. Bad, bad, bad!

I found one on a customer’s sink one day, dripping woefully. Customer said it was installed about a year previously. I took it apart and found that the actual cartridge had broken. (The cartridge is the internal part under a hot or cold handle.) I had never before seen a broken cartridge, especially not one that had barely seen one year’s worth of residential use.

And get this: I took it to Home Cheapo to buy a replacement and was informed that such cartridges were not available any more. The customer had to buy a whole new faucet. You can bet the new one wasn’t a Glacier Bay.

Tonight I got to a house where a Glacier Bay faucet had been leaking internally for quite a while and dripping into the cabinet below.

Don’t you make the same mistake.