Rough Play

Posted on November 28, 2011 by ehurst

We may never know the whole story, but it would appear the NATO forces attacked a Pak border unit out of sheer meanness.
So far, the NATO apologists can’t come up with a good lie.

The elephant in the room of course, is the possibility that the US warplanes intentionally attacked a Pakistani military base. It isn’t clear why they would do this, but in the absence of a decent excuse for why warplanes would cross the border and attack a known base on top of a mountain on a clear night, it remains impossible to discount.

Having been forced to participate in several official coverups as a Military Policeman, I can assure you the US and NATO are lying through their teeth. Whether the Pak are lying is not the point, because two wrongs don’t make a right. Wanton murder of allied troops is not good policy execution.
Of course, a great many non-MSM commentators have long believed our government had already decided Pakistan was the enemy without publicly admitting it. So we are playing games, and we aren’t playing by any rules anyone in human history would recognize as representing even a smidgen of statecraft. It violates all the international treaties we’ve ever signed.
Edit: Of course, we treat our own even worse. Such is the new policy of American government: everyone is an enemy.
This is just one more reason God has already condemned the US, along with the rest of the West. His wrath upon us is just.

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Idle Wish

Posted on November 27, 2011 by ehurst

Someday before I die, I’d love to visit the Aegean Sea. I want to swim on some small island shore, maybe row a good bit. No, there is absolutely no justification, aside from perhaps just hoping to see some of the places which figure so large in the First Century Church.

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Leftover Turkey Salad

Posted on November 26, 2011 by ehurst

It’s not the salad left over, but the leftover turkey.
Any meat will do, but for this time of year in the US, turkey is abundant and cheap. I frankly enjoy using my bare hands to strip all the meat off the carcass when the feast is done, because it allows me to find the gristle and pull the meat away.
Grind the meat. I have one of those old hand-cranked kitchen food grinders, which I still love to use. I push through as much as a pound of meat, then add fresh carrots and celery. I also added half a small yellow onion. If you don’t have pickle relish, run the pickles through. Most people prefer a sweet relish. In this case, I used some pickled sweet peppers my wife made from our garden produce using her own recipe. The point is to sweeten the whole thing and add some moisture; I even dump in some of the sweet pickle juice. I run a slice of whole wheat bread behind everything else through the grinder to push through the last bit of vegetables.
Finally, add some creamy salad dressing. Here in the US, most people like mayonnaise, but I grew up hating the taste. I still hate it; nowhere have I been in the world where I’ve liked the local version of mayonnaise. So we’ve always used Kraft Miracle Whip. Stir in your favorite until it reaches the consistency you like. I want it to stick together and be spreadable. It will keep for several days in the refrigerator without any hint of spoilage due to the pickle vinegar.
Today I ate it on a slice of pita bread, which I lay in the skillet with a pat of real butter. Using low heat, I put a lid over it to catch the moisture from the melting butter. I heat the pale side down first, then turn it and lay thinly sliced cheese across that face while the browner side gets warm. Because of the low heat, it gets just slightly crispy. Dump a large serving of the turkey salad on top, spread, and eat.
Yes, I use my fingers so I can lick off the butter. Men are like that. And I’m still losing weight.

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Open Communication Lines

Posted on November 25, 2011 by ehurst

Necessity is the mother of implementation.

Users of the social news and community site Reddit don’t like the way the government seems to be muscling in on the Internet. So they plan to build a new one.

So far, it’s being called Meshnet. The technology and basic concept are hardly new, and the idea has been kicked around since at least as long as I have been on the Internet, more than 15 years. Now that there is a real threat to the freedom of the current network, people are actually digging into the ugly details of implementation.
I’m likely to participate if I can. It would mean buying some new hardware. Where I live, that would include running an antenna up atop the house because significant range depends on line-of-sight. To our advantage, we do live perched on a hilltop. That we live in a relatively rural area is symbolic of why I love the Net so much.
I’ll probably never have a “best friend” sort of buddy; the things which matter most to me are too esoteric. So much so my very closest pals are currently virtual ones, scattered across the face of the earth. The nearest one would be more than 300 miles (480km) geographically. About half of my real friends are on other continents. Without the Internet, I would be even more isolated.
Unlike some Net nerds and geeks, I didn’t choose the Net because I couldn’t handle people in meat space. I didn’t dig into computers because they made more sense than people. Mine is simply a glorified typewriter. It has always been a means of communication with other people.
We may need this Meshnet all too soon, I’m afraid.

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Trail: Ready for 2011-2012 Season

Posted on November 24, 2011 by ehurst

Today I went out in two different sessions and finished the trail.
I am leaving it a little rougher this year, instead of clipping every single bit of growth. I’ll see if there is sufficient use to keep it all tromped down. I plan to hit it at least once each day as part of my ongoing work out plans.
Side note: I try to work out five times every day. I usually get at least three. That’s a heavy workout at wake-up to get the metabolism going. Then again around mid-morning just enough to make me break a sweat. Somewhere around mid-day I do the aerobic portion, either walking or riding my bike. Then in the afternoon I try to do something vigorous, again until I break a sweat. Lately that’s been turning a few rows with shovel in my garden. Finally, unless something has caused me to hurt too much, I try to workout before bedtime.
I made sure the trail is just barely bike-able, too.

Aerial photo of woodland with trail overlay

Approximate trail in orange.

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Unholy Days

Posted on November 24, 2011 by ehurst

Holidays reveal the best and worst of humanity, but often more of the latter.
Here in the US we celebrate something called Thanksgiving Day. It’s hardly what the label implies. The mythology taught in public institutions is tiresome. We aren’t going to explore that, but look at what the mere existence of statist orthodoxy has produced.
It would be easy to go too far either way. I could fully engage and be all social, even though I feel nothing of the sort. I’m an introvert. I have better things to do than lie to Aunt Hildie about how wonderful her foul concoctions are stinking up the house. Civility does have limits; they are rules about how we do or don’t discuss what really matters. It’s about diverting unjustified demands, from within ourselves and coming from others. It’s as much about stopping fakery as it is sparing feelings.
Because we refuse to balance, holidays often turn into disasters, or at least a form of hateful drudgery that serves no good purpose. They certainly bring no joy.
The basic assumption is feelings matter. They don’t. The agreement which is fundamental to civility is we don’t get too deeply into each other’s business, and this crap which says I’m supposed to care about yours but you don’t have to care about mine is evil. I’ll keep my rude thoughts to myself; you keep your rude demands I like your crap to yourself. Success should not be keeping peace long enough for everyone to suffer equally through a very unpleasant social constraint. This Germanic feudal demand that one party must submit to the other should have been mercilessly slaughtered long ago.
You aren’t permitted to demand I appear in your court. You aren’t permitted to burden me with social obligations for your own convenience and conceit. Too often what is promoted as “respect for the family” is simply “respect for my ego” when it comes from some wannabe matron. It’s rule by embarrassment; a raw and brutal coercion as ugly as that on the bloody streets of political protest. I’m not your servant, and you aren’t mine.
That is, unless we agree to something under a godly covenant. Your personal fantasies of family tradition is not a covenant. If you were willing to submit to God’s Laws and more ancient traditions, we would have room for discussion. Otherwise it’s just projecting your wishes, demanding everyone feel what you feel. This is about as evil and dehumanizing as it gets.
So long as Western Civilization demonizes the “live and let live” ethic necessary for world peace, no Western holiday will be a “holy day.”

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That Eternal Debate

Posted on November 23, 2011 by ehurst

To eat when it’s ready or wait for the appointed guests? (Danger: There’s a little sarcasm mixed in this recipe.)
Kids and menfolk agree you don’t wait. Women seem to be downright hateful about making everyone wait, muttering darkly about being civilized and such. It’s the same crap we go through when trying to get a woman ready to go anywhere outside the front yard, and sometimes even then. Women are not angels, nor are they particularly civilizing. Too much of what they do is for show, and that’s not civilization. That’s pure fakery.
I’ve seen people put on a huge spread, then the household matron make everyone wait while the food starts frosting over because some female guest took too long getting herself all dolled up. We’ve established long ago women never dress up to bless their men, but to compete with each other. So we have to microwave it, which destroys the food molecules, or stick it back in the oven to dessicate.
Women can claim it is a problem with immaturity and uncivilized impatience, but that’s just their excuse for being hateful about it. If you’ve ever cleaned a woman’s restroom and the men’s room at the same time, you tell me who is considerate and civilized. If you are late, eat what’s left. It’s not as if there won’t be enough to go around. In my case, I eat multiple small meals over the day because that’s far healthier. So because I’m the one who carves the turkey, I simply eat what I want when it’s ready. Thanksgiving is no excuse for gorging yourself. Sit down feasts are simply one more way for women to force us to behave by their silly standards, while killing us slowly with fattening food.
And people wonder why men so quickly become hermits.

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People are the Mission

Posted on November 22, 2011 by ehurst

On the walls in various military facilities, I can recall seeing any number of posters and banners proclaiming: “Mission First. People Always.”
The first part was accurate as far as it went, but the second part was pure horse manure. People never mattered, even though they were the single greatest asset the military has ever had. Such slogans are called “eyewash” — propaganda to make the right people smile.
This is the reason the US military will eventually fail. In God’s Laws, the mission for any military force is protecting the people. Since we have no concept of actual defense in the halls of government power, God has already cursed our military. It’s why “the greatest military force in human history” has been unable to defeat tribals with old rifles and a few handfuls of plastique. It’s why we spend more on our military than any other two countries combined in this world, and have nothing but misery to show for it.
Instead of defeating our erstwhile enemies, we have simply turned the whole world against us. The first military force in any nation which puts people first as the mission itself, God will let them beat us with slingshots.

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Better, But the Same Stuff

Posted on November 21, 2011 by ehurst

Life Church is much better than most of the churches with which I’ve associated in the past, but it’s still a Western church.
I’ve been attending the local campus of Life Church a few weeks now. This week began a series on “Because of You” and all the wonderful things they’ve done with the money and labor resources people have contributed. I must applaud the emphasis on pay-as-you-go building programs, the emphasis on people instead of programs, etc. I wish I could see more of this, and if you have time, I would encourage you to watch the video of the first message. It’s hard to argue with success.
I cannot deny the hand of God is supporting this, if only because it’s the best game in town. God isn’t that picky when it comes to this sort of thing. The closer you get to His ethics and morals, the better things work in the long run. I can’t pretend to know whether any of this is just good showmanship and how much is the real deal, but for now, it’s nice to be standing near it.
They are overlapping between Western Christianity and the Network Civilization. They are on the borderlands of what will someday be the world as we know it. I know of no other religious organization forging into this area. They are giving away all the software they develop, including the package which runs their online church. They give away their smartphone Bible application for free. They understand the necessity of this sort of thing, which is why it will prosper far into the future.
Still, too many of their organizational assumptions are rooted in the West. The one major flaw is blending the spiritual and organizational functions in the same leadership. The New Testament presumes dividing the spheres, so that their is a priestly function, and a ruling function, in some ways kept away from each other. That division is based on something fundamental to the nature of faith in God going back into ancient times, and it was prominent in the First Century churches. It’s also something built into human nature itself. In the long, this will create major headaches for them.
For now, they have zero interest in what I’m doing, and it’s wholly unlikely they will use me or any of my teaching. What that means is I have found a place where I can build some level of fellowship and human association necessary for survival in this broken world, but my real work for God will be outside that or any other church organization.
I am hardly surprised by this. What I believe and teach is admittedly too radical for most of the world. That was hardly the aim. I have been struggling mightily to understand things as they are, or as they were meant to be. I knew that was going to isolate me as soon as I realized the foundation included rejecting Western Civilization. It’s not as if I turned around one day and discovered I was out on the fringe of human thought; I knowingly followed a path which brought me here. I didn’t know where “here” would be in advance, but I knew where it wasn’t.
Despite a calling very much biblical in nature, I won’t be working within the church much as it now exists. I’m at peace with that, largely because there is no other alternative. I’ll follow along in worship and support them as much as their work coincides with mine, but I have a mission which isn’t theirs, and isn’t ever likely to be theirs.

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Trail: Just Like Starting Over

Posted on November 20, 2011 by ehurst

After the fire and so much being bulldozed, I had a tough time resurrecting the original trail. Several sections required a completely new route, as the old was buried and destroyed.
So during the summer I gave it a rest, as the poison ivy was everywhere.
We just had a couple of good frosts, which killed of the ivy, so I began cutting the pop-up underbrush which simply can’t be uprooted from the trail. That’s work enough, but then there was some summer dead-fall to chop and break from lying across the trail. Most rotting hollow logs aren’t that hard, regardless of being over a foot (30cm) in diameter. I found about a half-dozen.
Imagine my shock, though, that the burned over parts were completely grown over with vigorous woody shrubs. It was as if I had never cut the trail.
I’ve decided on those parts I’m simply going to bypass the woods and follow the old clearcut sections. That requires cutting underbrush, too, but nowhere nearly as much. I figure I’ll be done just about the time spring comes back and the poison ivy blooms again. At some point, I’ll cut through a bit of new trail to rejoin the old. Otherwise we end up crossing mud flats which are like quicksand when it rains.
Yeah, it’s the hobby thing, and the cutting is as important for exercise as the use of the trail. Mr. Camp Ax and Mr. Steel Shovel, we got work to do.

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