Meet the weird neighbors

  Is the low participation in the
mandatory health insurance only because of technical glitches at the
site? What will happen if everybody says “No thanks”? Again,
don't look at the politics only; look at the motives and players
behind the scenes. This administration is viscerally liberal; these
people won't have their polices and government god denied. Besides
it's just too embarrassing to have your “signature policy”
ignored. So, what are the options? Door to door style compliance
patrols? Or maybe a huge distraction that's so dangerous it makes the
mandate crisis less of a priority; maybe a war? Iran would probably
make a sufficient bad guy.

____________________________________________

A truck drove by, had a barking dog in
the back, the pitch changed: Doppler dog!

________________________________________________

(Groan alert:) If you had relatives in
Kenya, would you regard the place as Kinya?

____________________________________________________

Our children often share things, but
not always. Today, one little guy had a snack; his brother asked if
he would share it. The reply was:”I'm sharing it with myself”.

______________________________________________

Speaking of the kids, I was thinking
that letting them see me semi secretly laugh at slightly off color
topics can be really destructive. I tend to think of hypocrisy as
blatantly doing other than what I profess and teach them; but these
hints that God's ways are superficial in my life might be as bad as
any other example I could set.

_______________________________________________

I wonder if denial about coming events
has a common mental procedure. People's homes, jobs, and businesses
are such demanding accomplishments that coming threats are put into
the “We'll cross that bridge when we get there” mentality. But
consider this little display I'm making: I'll take a strip of paper,
write ascending years on one side, and descending years on the other
side. That is, one side will have 2013, 2014, 2015, so on; the other
side will have 2015, 2014, 2013, so on. Then I'll twist the strip and
glue the ends together, forming a Mobius strip. If you wait until
it's really obvious, it will probably be too late. You must act,or at
least prepare, while you still can prepare.

I wonder about Lot in the Bible. Read
his story. Not a lot in the way of details, but maybe some facts are
self evident. He once had vast flocks, and therefore, some wealth. By
he time he's living in the city, there's no mention of the flocks,
and no mention of them whatsoever upon his flight from the city, he
had to go live in a cave. Seems to me that someone with a little
money could have bought a tent. A tent was a very common dwelling in
those days, and Lot had spent his prior years living in one. It looks
to me as though Lot sold the flocks, and bought a house in the city.
If that's the sum of everything he had, with only harsh options,
could that be one reason he was halting in his actions when warned of
the dire events about to happen?

Consider the black dog. There's “a
guy I know” that lives out in the country. People are often dumping
unwanted pets near his house. Usually, an attempt is made to
accommodate them, as much as is practical. There was a time when the
number of dogs at the house got too big. Dogs dumped for obvious
reasons, the stupid dog, and the big old, slow dog with matted hair
and lots of fleas; the kids probably moved out, and the old dog was a
relic of former times. There was the reasonably smart black dog that
attacked chickens, and was shot in the leg by a neighbor. Smart in a
slinking, self serving way, not the “man's best friend” way. This guy's wife kept telling him to get rid of these numerous
unneeded dogs, so after realizing that she was right, he had a kill
day. First was the ancient horse in the pasture. It was so old that
it could hardly walk. Its bones all showed, and the hair along its
back looked like bleached out old astro turf. He said that starting
the killing wasn't easy, but by the halfway mark, it was a job to be
completed with efficiency and determination. The horse was led beside
a huge pile of dried logs and branches that would be used for burning
the carcasses. Huge as in the size of a full size van, but wider.
That's the best way of disposal, BTO, burn to oblivion. Imagine a
line from one eye crossing the forehead to the opposite ear, and the
same thing in reverse, from the other eye, forming an X on the head.
That's where the pistol shot is placed, from about 6 inches distance.
One bullet from a 9mm handgun dropped the horse instantly. Then it
was on to the dogs. It took a while, to approach the dogs with a 22
rifle, while they were still enough to get the right shot. This guy
is very particular about killing, derived from wanting a swift,
relaxed kill during the butchering of hogs and cattle. One by one
they went, the black dog last. He knew exactly what a rifle was, and
kept running away to a different part of the property, never far from
the house. I know dogs have a certain loyalty, and even if not that,
a certain pack mentality, but sheesh, if you knew for sure that this
was a repeated threat to your life, wouldn't you at least run to the
neighbor's place? Bizarre, I guess it's like we've ate here and lived
here a long time, so gee, just can't leave all that.   

  Lately, I've had a long stretch of
decent work, and was even able to put aside a bit of money for dental
work; which is difficult to do. In a previous post, I talked about
the mechanical ordeal I recently went through with my truck, it just
had two more. First, the distributor shaft locked up, wouldn't
turn a full revolution. Something must have worked loose in the
vacuum advance parts, The result was that the gear at the end on the
cam shaft stripped off. I lost nearly a week to this situation. The
gear in the middle back of the picture is there to show what the gear
is supposed to look like. I'll spare you the adventure of finding
parts for this old truck; save for an old guy that runs a repair shop
in the most decrepit building I've ever seen still occupied. Part of the building was actually collapsing. This guy
sold me a distributor for a 22R motor, and said not only would it fit
my old 20R motor, but that he had done that replacement a number of
times himself. It fit well, but there's a little spiral groove on the
shaft, sort of a journal lube thing. Maybe that was clogged, but for
whatever reason, this used distributor only lasted a couple days. The
damage wasn't as severe as the last time, the gear on the shaft
merely slid over, which kept the two gears from grinding against each
other. This time, the truck was down for most of a week. I use my
wife's van some, but it takes more gas, it doesn't carry ladders, and
she often uses it. I finally got the money together for a rebuilt
distributor, and it works really well.

It's hard enough to pay the bills as
it is; but preparing to move to another country adds to the burden.
So losing another 10 days of income puts one foot on the banana peel
and the other in the pit of depression. Then, I lost 4 jobs in a row,
not sure why. I got to wondering if there was any hope, but I
remembered what the pilgrims went through. If you're not familiar
with it, read about it; those people define perseverance and faith.
There was a time years ago that I made livable money for a guy with
a 5^th grade education. But technology has changed the
trade, the economy has made money tighter. Living without debt or
government assistance adds to the mix. So I can't just go get a newer
truck. I was contemplating all this after a long day; and thought
that man, this is like some movie about a guy trying to do something
huge against the odds. Sometimes it seems as likely as running for
president of the US. But I have to do it. This administration hates
what I stand for, and it's only going to get worse, that's if the
economy doesn't collapse first. A movie about a guy that feels like
an almost trapped animal, with only a little while to escape. Jim's
escape.

What's neat though, is the way so many
things I've gone through and decided are working for me now. I gave
up TV 20 something years ago, so now, when I driving around, my mind
defaults to figuring out solutions to obstacles; instead of what
Brock might say to Heather on the next episode of a TV show.

There is a branch of my work that I
haven't pursued much at all; but which can be done online. I'm
working on a web page that will allow this to happen. The way I'm
doing it is unusual, so I'll post the details, and a link, after I
get it up and running. That was something that I thought of while
driving. There is so much research I've done, things I've learned,
things I've solved, and major delays in the last few weeks that I
can't relate all of it now. Even poverty might work for me; I wonder
if most people can't be realistic about the need to emigrate because
they're tied to their stuff.

____________________________________________________

My brother in law Tony was over on
the 7^th day, he's more diligent about observing it as a
sabbath than I am. To me, the New Testament is very flexible about
the Sabbath; we take Saturdays off to do stuff with the kids, pursue
hobbies, and stuff that doesn't include “deadlines and
commitments”. If I go to church, it's Sunday morning, the afternoon
is for maintenance work. Anyway, Tony is relating some info he found
about a couple of unrelated blind guys that use clicking sounds to
navigate. Apparently, they are amazing. Researchers think they are
using that same part of the brain that sighted people use for
processing images. So Tony was contemplating one of the healings by
Jesus recorded in the Bible. The one where Jesus heals the blind man,
then the man says he sees men as trees. Tony thought that maybe the
man's eyes were healed, but his mind wasn't processing the
information. I related an article I read years ago, saying that
Japanese people can't hear the l or r sounds because they never heard
them early in life. That's not the extent of our conversation, but it
was a couple weeks ago, and some is lost.

________________________________________________________________

Another conversation I had was a week
or two prior to that one. This was with a number of in laws visiting
from out of town. Somehow the conversation turned to the moral
condition of this country, I said that though I can't prove it
absolutely, I think God left the US in the early 1960s, like what is
written in 2^nd Thessalonians. One of the ladies repeated
several times her disdain over people who say that, because the
responsibility was with the parents to be in charge of their
childrens' spiritual education; and not to rely on the schools for
prayer and such. What she's saying is quite rational, but equally
illogical in this context. I was talking about what God did, she
changed the subject to what man was doing. She felt rather strongly
about it, but her feelings don't answer the question: did God leave
the USA in 1963? Something big happened, you're deluded to think
otherwise. The book of Deuteronomy clearly instructs parents to teach
God's ways to their children, and to make it a public proclamation,
writing it upon the gate posts. Maybe having all the schools publicly
acknowledge Him to the children was the last bold endorsement this
country made of God. Conversely, I wonder if Russia is starting to
make public endorsements of Him. If that's true, it sounds as though
they're on the right track.

__________________________________________________________

I keep
encountering new problems I haven't heard of before, which means that even if I put a rule or system in place to prevent that incident from happening again; it won't help much. Even the old solutions to reoccurring problems don't always work. Maybe I'm
over-sensitized, but it's as though order itself is beginning to
unravel. Today I had one of those moments where I saw an old idea
with newer clarity: Devaluation of currency hurts working class
people because it's a devaluation of their time.

Dear reader, please contemplate big
changes that are coming.