To be Sinless

 I opened this up to write about something that’s been on my heart and developing for several months now. Possibly since last November. I'm sure I've complained about it before in person, on social media, that I was tired of feeling like everything I do is a sin somehow. The conviction that everything I do is wrong, that I can’t avoid sinning. I've been recognizing an old trend from a previous church, and I remember the sermons that went through every one of the ten commandments and contorted scripture to conclude that not only have we committed them all in spirit, (which we have, and Christ pointed that out in the sermon on the mount and also when He was addressing the rich young man who could not break his idolatry of gold enough to follow Christ) but we do them every second of every day.  That seems…presumptive, like when Eve said she was forbidden to touch the fruit - that’s more than what God’s actual command was. I think it IS reasonable to say that I’ve been unjustly wrathful, often, and that’s the same root sin as murder. I’m glad there’s no secular rap on that. It’s also reasonable to say that I’ve used paid time inappropriately, I remember a particular instance with shame, and therefore have stolen, but I’m going to go ahead and make the truth claim that I’m not doing any of those things right this minute. If there is a compulsion to it, I’m resisting adeptly enough that I don’t even notice.

If you’ve just thought to yourself, “ah! What a PRIDEful thing to say, she’s committing the sin of PRIDE and she doesn’t even know it” I’ve had that conversation before, and back then, I was reading off of your copy of the script. 

Some people are so used to the notion that we commit every sin all the time that they may be quite comfortable to see me turn around and explain that such an assumption indicates a pride problem on their own part, but I hope you aren’t comfortable with the notion. It has cost me much grief, and despair, and a heavy burden to think that I cannot, never, ever ever, not even with Christ as my advocate, not even with the Holy Spirit indwelling in me, ever NOT sin. Grieving our savior should not be a light thing. We are called to repentance, is it possible to repent - turn away - from sin if we can do nothing but sin?

Maybe you’ve never experienced that ideology. I was inundated with it when I was in high school at one of my old churches. A friend of mine and I were talking about this, and she said she took it for granted that she was sinning constantly. We were having breakfast together, fellowship opened in prayer, discussion that pursued truth and companionship, and somehow, in some unseen way, we were sinning. Can you repent of whatever sin that is? Passages in the bible make it clear that if you aren’t turning away, aren’t even struggling to stop, it’s not repentance. Perhaps it was different outside the high school group. Perhaps the adult classes didn’t take the idea of original sin so far, but it seems like a lot of the sermons did. I remember feeling bombarded, as a teen, with every little nitpicky way in which everything, absolutely everything I did was somehow a sin. 

Someone else I know, who also struggled with it, described it this way: she played the piano. If she played the piano to the best of her ability, she was committing the sin of pride, but if she played anything less than to the best of her ability, she was not properly using the gifts that God had given her, and that was a sin, too. She could not play the piano and not sin, even though playing the piano was not a sin. If you got a tattoo, that was a sin because your body was a temple and you deliberately made a permanent mark on it. I don’t have any tattoos, I have a lot of scars because I subconsciously pick at my scabs: SIIIIIIIIN. Now, that passage about defiling the temple is in the context of sexual sin, it gets pretty specific, but vegan Christians have insisted that it means a cheeseburger is sin, and health obsessed Christians have pointed out that not exercising is a sin. You could probably use that passage to indicate that everything you don't like is a sin. Trying to think of something I don't like. The Eternals is a sin, 'cause that whole movie was a waste of time, and you let that nonsense enter your brain, and don't you know your body is a temple?

I’ve seen, recently, a passage in 1 Peter “...casting your burdens on Jesus, for He cares for you” interpreted into a reflection that HAVING burdens, anxieties, fears, is a sin. The passage, if you treat it like a cohesive whole is preceded by a command to humble oneself, and in that context, God is casting your anxieties/burdens on Christ, but both the command to humble oneself and the notion that we are the ones casting burdens on Christ are implications of prayer, not of sin. 

Is fear a sin? One can sin by being afraid. Joshua, who was directly commanded several times at the beginning of his campaign to not fear would have been sinning, and he was tackling the statistically impossible. Giving way to fear would have led to tremendous sin, for his office was to cleanse the land of a people who were cannibalistic, ritualistic murderers, rapists, monstrosities. It was unjust to cleanse them in the time of Joseph before they became so, but now they must be gone, and Joshua was the beginning of that. To fear was to disobey, and at one point, the people of Israel absolutely disobeyed in fear. A lot of mess came with that little incident. But my kid, waking in the night because his new room is strange, because he’s having allergy trouble and thought he couldn’t breathe, am I going to soothe him by brushing the hair tenderly off his forehead and saying “you know, the bible says that you’re sinning right now. That’s why it’s important to not be afraid.”  

I’ve met people who were afraid to pray, for fear that they were praying the wrong thing, and an agony in their soul, and a circumstance that could not be mitigated without loss of life was put only hesitantly into the arms of He who already knows all our hearts and minds. They were robbing themselves of intimacy with Him because they were afraid that their prayers would be wrong. 1 Peter 5:7 was written for them. Being told that having a burden is a sign of their sin does nothing to resolve any problems.

I need to make clear my belief that there is no action, no institution, no enterprise that a human being can engage in that cannot be corrupted. We are the great corruptors. What concerns me is a tendency to take it to the extreme that we as individuals in Christ are incapable of refraining from sin. Or that every possible instance of sin is always sin for every person: a child weeping in fear of the night, or a woman rejoicing because she played a song beautifully, or a teenage boy saying “at this moment, I’m not sinning.” It is presumptive to take what is a sin of the heart and assume that all people are committing it at all times. 

If in being told to lay our anxieties on Christ, we are being told not that we should take comfort, to pray, to involve Him in the management of those anxieties, but that having them at all is a sin, then having tears is also a sin, for Jesus told the woman at the funeral in Luke 7 “Don’t cry” - a directive, just like “do not fear”, and on the basis of that linguistic nuance was fear called a sin. And if tears and anxieties are a sin, then we make Christ, who wept at the tomb of Lazarus and sweated blood in the garden of Gethsemane, out to be a sinner. 

No! Damnable blasphemy!

I think we did it again. We took a good and right thing, and we corrupted it by taking it too far. We took the truth that we are incapable of satisfying the law, that we have unrighteousness that required the blood of God Himself to purge and said that it cannot be purged until we are dead. It’s a huge deal, and 1 John makes it clear that saying we’re without sin is miserable self-deception. But John also says that because Christ was manifested to take away our sin, whoever abides in Him does not sin, and who continues to sin has neither seen nor known Him. Sin is something that now, through Christ, I CAN STOP DOING! It’s reaffirmed later in 1 John 5:18. 

I can’t tell you the relief that came when those verses were pointed out to me. They are confirmation when I strive to do right that I am not always, at all times, grieving my Saviour. They are condemnation against those moments when I am tempted, and tell myself that since I can never avoid sinning, how could it really matter which particular sin I am committing so long as I’m not hurting other people with it? How frustrating it has been to be commanded to stop while believing, firmly, that I cannot, and know that I will be punished not only for what I was doing, but also for failing to obey the new command to stop! And if I am not punished in this life, then Christ, my Christ, receives the punishment on my behalf. 

It’s a difficult error to sort through. I’ve had a hard time even talking about this, and I’ve only broached it hitherto with people whom I trust, because quickly, quickly, quickly, my claim that it is possible for me not to sin is mistaken for a claim that I never sin anymore. Honestly, never sinning anymore should be the goal, but I don’t think it can be accomplished if I concentrate mostly on sin. My musings are mistaken for antinomianism, and the damage other people carry with them replace my words with their fears.

The notion of our ubiquitous sin is so inculcated that saying “I think that at this moment, I am not sinning” even if you clarify that it is only possible in Christ, and through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, becomes perceived as blasphemy. I remember someone doing it in the high school group, he said “I can sit here, in this chair, and not sin,” and we all shouted back, “well, try it, then!”

So he sat there, in that chair, and smiled for a few seconds.

“Well?” we demanded.

“I didn’t sin,” he said.

“Nuh-uh! You committed the sin of pride!!”

Like the unpopular girl who went out and bought herself a pair of fashionable shoes with her birthday money, we did our best to tear him to shreds because he did not know his place. Actually, I didn’t really say anything one way or the other, but I let other people govern the conversation, and even though I agreed with them at the time that his claim of having the capacity to not sin is prideful, I did think, even then, that the onslaught was unjustified, and I should do something to mitigate it.

And I don’t think it’s explicitly stated from the pulpit. It may not even be intended. I don’t know that a pastor has ever told me “you are always sinning” but I’ve been under the purview of pastors who had so focused on every way I MIGHT be sinning, and indeed with the assumption that I was sinning, that after several years during my formative years, this conclusion that the Holy Spirit is ineffectual and that I am as incapable of righteousness as I was when I was unregenerate was how I internalized it. Looking around a bit, clearly I'm not the only one. 

I remember my English course at university, the one that made me realize what the preaching I’d been under was - it won't be the last time I mention this, it was very inspiring. At a secular college, where I was having to work hard to keep my philosophies from becoming a feeble facsimile of my professors’, I’d hit some kind of glorious pocket of spiritual nourishment, where I was rejoicing in Christ and in the powerful work of the Lord Almighty twice a week and during homework. Then I’d walk into church and get bored and overwhelmed with guilt and drudgery because the English course was teaching John Donne, Edmund Spencer, John Milton, and they were all preaching Christ, but church was only preaching my sin and manifold failures.

It happened again recently, when someone described the faithfulness of the pastors in the Ukraine. The pastors were asked how to best pray for them they asked for praise because of the great work they saw God doing, through all the turmoil and suffering, that they could see His hand. And I rejoiced, and I felt fellowship with those pastors because of the occasions in which I remembered to praise in the midst of turmoil (such as my little turmoils have been) when I’ve seen the hand of God turn the wretchedness around me to His purpose. Then it all came crashing down because the pastor announced “how often do WE remember to do that?” with the implication that we hardly remember to do it at all, and my heart went from glorifying God, who teaches us to praise in the midst of sorrow, and look for Him in the agony of grief, to….blah. Guess my small snippets of turmoil aren't enough to count. I'll probably just fall away when REAL turmoil comes.

I am not making the claim that repentance does not need to be preached, it’s essential: it’s the first half of the ultimate problem of how we are made righteous before the face of a perfect God, recognizing that we are in ourselves hopelessly unrighteous. But for years the preaching was orchestrated in such a way that the other half, the crucial half, the half without which we may as well remain ignorant of our sins, was mentioned in passing at the end, the flourish at the end of a latter, the curl of a piglet’s tail, that in Christ, we are made righteous. Because of Christ, we may cease our sin, and we are free to cast our burdens on him. We are not free to continue sinning, for all that every sin we have and will ever commit is covered by the blood of Christ, we are finally free to cease. 

Honestly, as I’ve said already and firmly believe, there is no enterprise we can engage in that we cannot also corrupt. We will never make any headway playing wack-a-mole with all the ways we MIGHT sin. In the early years of teaching, I tried to make a rule for every single thing my students MIGHT do wrong. My imagination failed. How could I have known that I’d need a rule like “don’t try to dislodge the ceiling tiles by throwing your shoe at them” or “don’t lick the windows”. In the end, I had to base my rule system around what I needed them to do, not what I wanted them to never do. 

Likewise, the cure for sin is not an obsession with never sinning. It is the face of Christ. 

The inspiration to do more, do right, treat people with a modicum of respect, pray more, read scripture more, has always for me sprung not out of the necessary hatred of my sin, but out of a love for Him. I have demonstrated proficiency at self-loathing, indulging in it comes to a point where I no longer marvel and glorify that Christ has loved me, but rather regard Him a fool for it. I’m capable of hating anything, even the things I ought to despise, to the point of error. But I can never love Him enough, in fact, I'm sure that loving Christ and letting that love flow into everything else is the one thing we CANNOT corrupt. But that's a fine line, Toser's wife will tell you.

I’ve heard sermons that make opening a bible and loving my saviour such a burdensome chore because I MUST do it, because I should instinctively need to do it - and at the moment I don’t FEEL an instinctive need, so what’s wrong with me? I, I, I, me, me, me, all the time, and every sentiment is one of failure. And I’ve heard sermons that made me want to open my scriptures for the same reason that I want to open a wikipedia article about romanesco broccoli. Broccoli sounds boring, doesn't it? Go look it up.

I try to listen to sermons on my own time apart from attending church because, due to the palpable almost-two-ness of my youngest, I have difficulty listening to sermons in church. I’ve heard ones that made me feel guilty for not loving Christ enough in spite of all He’s done for me, and I’ve heard sermons that made me want to know Him more, not just the bits I always hear about that involve me, but who He is beyond that: the guy who designed romanesco broccoli and made the curve of a hurricane match the curve of a nautilus shell.

For sermons and sermons, one pastor made me feel guilty because as soon as some other thing got my attention, all my resolutions to memorize at least a little more scripture, or read a certain epistle at least once a week evaporated - it’s not hard, I have spare moments here and there, so why can’t I do it? Simpleton! In about two sermons, a different pastor had me finding time at specific stoplights and during specific tasks to regularly commit to memorizing Hebrews 1. He didn’t tell me to do it, I just knew I needed to be memorizing scripture anyway, and suddenly memorizing this was barely even hard because He, Christ, is the radiance of the glory of God, and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power…and that’s pretty cool.

There do seem to be a fair number of pastors who preach guilt and repentance and only allude to Christ, who dig out every possible mention of sin at the expense of the actual meaning of the passage. I’m not sure why it is so popular. It hasn’t served us well. I have a theory that it feeds an addiction to selfish guilt, but for obvious reasons that thought is wearying, and I haven’t tried to analyze it much. Neither have a lot of kids I went to youth group with. A lot of them walked away from the church altogether.

Whatever makes the pastors do it, they walk the edge of a knife, because when Christianity is so much about our sin and every way we might sin (which, make no mistake, is infinite) that we do not know the face of Christ except as the last 2 minutes of a “really convicting sermon”, then this statement, “everyone who is born from God does not keep on sinning” is discordant, and maybe offensive, and it’s 1 John 5:18.

I haven’t finished sorting all this out, it’s very hard to even start expressing it without being dogpiled either by people who think my notion of sin existing needs to be corrected, or people who think my notion that I don’t always sin needs to be corrected. The key to understanding this is probably through 1st John, but I don’t read Greek, so I’m stuck with translations and fallible commentators. And I’ve been a little bruised in trying to sort things out on my own in the past. I’ve had people tell me how prideful I am to go at it on my own (like a Berean, and they received praise for their diligence). Do I really, REALLY think I know better than Giants like Calvin and Augustine? I have my answer ready next time I receive this accusation, by the way: if Calvin and Augustine and anyone else are so infallible, put them in the canon, otherwise anything is questionable. Also, both Calvin and Augustine asserted a Sethite view of Genesis 6 because they had emotional difficulties with what the passage actually says and what the patriarchs of the New Testament affirm, so nuts to them - nuts when they’re wrong, at least.

I have only just yesterday noticed that John closes out a whole epistle about love, and Christ, and the possibility of righteousness through the love of Christ (which was written in response to the gnostics who asserted that all flesh is evil, the spirit is good, and it therefore didn’t matter much what the flesh did - been there, my dude) with a reassertion of what the true God, Christ, and eternal life are, and a warning to keep away from idols. 

Why? I’m not sure. It’s a little alarming. If the gnostics can make an idol of a false version of Christ, could I make an idol of Christlessness, while I obsess over every possible sin? I’ve heard of Christless Christianity in the context of churches who do not preach repentance, who do not acknowledge our sin, and therefore don’t actually have anything to be saved from and it’s all just behavior exercises. But I should say that any context where Christ is regularly put to the wayside is Christless. No matter how much or how little we sin - and I hope to sin very little - there is only one cure.

Making Yogurt

Making yogurt is not a matter of assembling, preparing and combining the correct ingredients as it is a matter of propagating an existing organism: to make yogurt, you need to have yogurt. By and large, the organism manages itself, you just have to take away all excuses for the organism to do otherwise.

Tools:

1. Thermometer.
   A candy or meat thermometer will do, so long as it will read quickly and accurately.
2. Heat source.
   Some people do this in a crock pot. I've never tried, so satisfied am I with the stove. You can even use a microwave if you want to. I have. It turned out fine, I just have a vendetta against my microwave.
3. Pot or pan or bowl in which the milk will be heated.
4. Jars with lids or sealed containers of the appropriate size to contain and incubate the treated milk.
5. A method of incubation.
   I personally use quart jars in a small cooler and periodically pour warm water into it. Some combine the sealed container with the incubator and use a thermos. Some will heat their oven, turn it off before loading the yogurt and use that as their incubator. You want something that can maintain a steady, warm-but-not-hot temperature for hours at a time. Yogurt can even be incubated by putting it in a sunny window or a warm place for a few hours, I haven't tried that. I have too many control issues to try that.
6. Yogurt starter.
   Again, to make yogurt, you need yogurt. You can get just the bacterial cultures from online sources, or you can start with a little leftover yogurt from a previous batch. A few times, I have discovered to my deep shame that my yogurt had gone awry before I could use it. On those occasions, I just ran to the store and bought a little cup of single-serve yogurt.
7. Strainers. (Optional)
   Commercial yogurts will often use pectin to thicken their yogurt. This isn't Greek yogurt, it's just a cosmetic decision, and a good one, too. Thick yogurt is more pleasant than runny yogurt. The thickness of your yogurt is affected by how long you hold the milk at the 180 degree temperature and how long you incubate it. But if you want Greek yogurt, put down the bag of tricks, you all out need a strainer to do the job. Greek yogurt strainers exist and I love mine, but if you haven't got that by some terrible twist of fate, you can accomplish the task by laying down layers of cheese cloth over a strainer, setting that in a bowl and then pouring in your yogurt.

The basic method:

1. In a pot, heat the milk to 180 degrees Fahrenheit.
   This is not a question of sterilization, though I'm sure that's an added benefit, it's preparing the proteins in the milk for the cultures they need. If you maintain the milk at this heat for a longer period of time, say, half an hour, the result will be naturally thicker yogurt. I'm lazy and impatient. I don't do that, I just use a strainer.
   The milk will of course develop a skin which can be stirred right back into the pot.
2. Allow the milk to cool down to 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
   Walk away for a while. Put the dish in an ice bath, whatever. If you add the cultures before it cools down, you'll kill the cultures.
3. Mix in the cultures.
   Rule of thumbs are nice. I haven't yet found a specific one for how much culture to how much milk and tend to go with “However much culture I set aside last time I made yogurt” and “however much milk I've decided to use this time” and haven't disappointed myself yet. But that isn't very encouraging for someone who's never done this and isn't sure they know what they are doing. So let's say this: You should use probably 2 tablespoons of yogurt to 1 quart of milk.
   Here's the best way I've found to mix it: dump the yogurt into a resealable jar, ladle out about a cup of the warm milk onto the yogurt, seal the jar and shake it vigorously. Pour the mixture back into the rest of the milk and stir well.
4. Incubate the cultures.
   Pour the mixture into whatever method you've chosen to incubate them. When I do it, I pour them into quart sized glass jars, stick them into my cooler, pour some warm water into the bottom of the cooler and walk away. If you're using the oven, heat the oven to 115 BEFORE you get to this stage and turn it off.
5. Let set.
   Leave the mixture alone, utterly alone, for 2 hours. Once you've set the cooler down/closed the oven door, poured it into the thermos, don't jostle it.
   It is still not done, not even after 2 hours, but it's okay to examine after that. It's okay to pop the oven open, or pull a jar out of the cooler and stare at it speculatively. If it's still liquid at this time, the cultures failed and nothing more is going to happen, but you can reheat it and add new cultures. I've only had this happen to me once, and it was because I had frozen the cultures beforehand, misled into thinking that would be okay. Apparently it wasn't.
   You should keep letting it incubate for at least 6 hours. It'll be fine to leave alone overnight. The longer it sets, the thicker it gets, and the stronger the flavor as well.
6. Cool.
   Stick the yogurt, for yogurt it now is, in the fridge. You can eat some of it now, but to stop the incubation process, put it in the fridge. If you prefer to strain your yogurt to make Greek yogurt, put it in the strainer, THEN put it in the fridge
   If you plan to gobble it up as is, set aside a portion of your work into a separate container. This is your starter for next time. Make it clear that this is not to be devoured, put it in a reserved part of the fridge, mark it, repeatedly lecture the other members of the household on the subject, whatever it takes. 'Course, if they eat it, you can just go out and buy a single serving for a buck.
7. Strain (optional)
   Your Greek yogurt strainer has the mosey on this. Strain out a third of the milk volume's worth of whey, and then you've got Greek yogurt. This usually takes 6-8 hours. If you strain TOO long (18 hours, for example) you're headed toward yogurt cheese, which is fantastic, but not necessarily what you want. After you strain, don't forget to set aside your starter.

Soap making

Cold process procedure.
Note: all measurements are by weight, not by volume. A digital scale set to ounces is the most effective, for the lye measurements must be precise.

1. Prepare the lye.
   Using a lye calculator, which can be found on the internet, learn how much lye and water will be needed for the recipe. Weigh the correct amount of water in a container that will never be used for any other purpose and gently pour the lye into the water. Stir the solution until all lye is dissolved. Lye is caustic, so here is my list of don'ts:
   Do not pour the water into the lye, the resulting chemical reaction is a little lye volcano.
   Do not let the mixture splash. Gentle. Be gentle.
   Do not let yourself get interrupted during this step.
   The chemical reaction will cause the water to heat above 200 degrees. Set aside to cool.
2. Prepare the fats.
   Continue to consult the lye calculator.
   In a pan, (which can still be used for other purposes afterwards) heat the solid fats first, allowing them to liquify, then add the liquid fats.
3. Allow the fats and the lye to come to the same temperature.
   This is a matter of preference or recipe instructions. Around 100 degrees is a good rule-of-thumb for the goal temperature. Plant-based fats can be lower, animal-based fats can be higher. The oils or the lye can be reheated if one has cooled too much to combine with the other, or cooled by placing the container in a tub of cold water.
4. Combine.
   When the two substances are at the same temperature, slowly pour the lye into the oils.
   Stir the mixture constantly, do not allow yourself to be interrupted during this process, and continue stirring until a trace is reached.
   A trace is reached when the solution has a pudding-like consistency, so that when the spoon or stick blender is pulled out of the mixture, the drippings leave an impression on the surface of the mixture.
5. At this point, stir in any additives that you were planning on using.
6. Pour the soap into the mold or molds.
   Cover them with a lid or a sheet of cardboard. Insulate the molds by wrapping them in 3 or 4 towels. Store the molds in a moderately warm place for about 24 hours.
7. Let cure.
   Remove the soap from the molds after about a day. If you used a loaf mold, cut the soap into smaller pieces. Lay the soap upright on a piece of cardboard or a drying rack – good airflow is the goal. Place somewhere where it will not be disturbed and let finish curing – 4 weeks unless the recipe says otherwise. For good circulation, you may wish to flip the soap every week or so. After the appropriate time, the soap is ready for use.

Tip: In some cases, a white residue may form on your soap. Brush this off before use.
Measure your additives before you combine the lye mixture with the oils.
Sometimes the soaps reach their trace and begin to harden sooner than the maker is ready, and using additives is no longer possible. The batch is not lost. Allow the soap to set for a day, then see the instructions for milling soap. 

Hot process soap procedure

Note: all measurements are by weight, not by volume. A digital scale set to ounces is the most effective, for the lye measurements must be precise.

1. Prepare the lye.
   Using a lye calculator, which can be found on the internet, learn how much lye and water will be needed for the recipe. Weigh the correct amount of water in a container that will never be used for any other purpose and gently pour the lye into the water while stirring the water. Keep stirring the solution until all lye is dissolved. Lye is caustic, so here is my list of don'ts:
   Do not pour the water into the lye, the resulting chemical reaction is a little lye volcano.
   Do not let the mixture splash. Gentle. Be gentle.
   Do not let yourself get interrupted during this step.
   The chemical reaction will cause the water to heat above 200 degrees. Set aside to cool.
2. Prepare the fats.
   Continue to consult the lye calculator. Weigh your oils and fats and place in an active crock pot. Begin with the solids and allow them to melt before adding the liquids.
3. Combine.
   It is not necessary for the lye and the fats to be the same temperature when they are combined. Slowly add the lye water to the crock pot, stirring constantly. Do not allow yourself to be interrupted during this process, and continue stirring until a trace is reached.
   A trace is reached when the solution has a pudding-like consistency, so that when the spoon or stick blender is pulled out of the mixture, the drippings leave an impression on the surface of the mixture.
4. Heat.
   Cover the crock pot, set it to low and be vigilant over it. Make sure that it does not bubble over as it cures: stir it gently if it does, it is otherwise not necessary to disturb the mixture.
5. Test the batch
   The mix will begin to take on a clear Vaseline like look after about an hour. Once the whole mix has this look, test it to see if it is done. Take a small sample of the soap and rub it between your fingers. It should have a waxy feel. Test the soap by touching it to your tongue, if it 'zaps' like a nine volt battery, it's not done. Keep cooking until it no longer 'zaps'.
6. Additives
   Turn off the crock pot and mix your additives, waiting until the batch has cooled slightly before adding your essential oils - if the batch is hotter than the flash point of your oils, the oils will vaporize, fun!
7. Add to molds

Unlike cold process soap, hot process soap is a gelatinous mass. Scoop it into the molds and then tap the molds against a hard surface to let any air bubbles escape. Allow 1-2 days for the soap to harden before removing from the molds. Cut the soap immediately after removal if using a larger mold. Soap is ready for use.

Tip: This soap has a more rustic look and softer texture than cold process. Some recipes will lend themselves better to the hardness and smoothness of cold process. In the hot process soap, you can add fragrances that would be too sensitive to the alkaline still present in the cold process soap.
Soaps like floating soap and whipped soap need to be done with the cold process.

Milled Soap process.

1. Prep soap
   Grate the soap down into small pieces, this can be done with just a cheese grater, anything electronic like a food processor tends to get gummed up after a few minutes. It is important that the soap be reduced to little pieces, for it can be difficult to melt.
   Add liquid to the soap when you go to melt it. The liquid can be milk or tea or water, a general rule of thumb is 2-3 ounces of liquid per pound of soap. Newer soap will require less, older soap will require more. If you add too much, the soap will take a long time to dry or harden after the process.
2. Melt soap
   Begin with a completed bar of soap. If the soap is cold process and has not yet cured, take steps to protect yourself from the alkaline still in the soap.
   Grate the soap and melt it in the microwave, in a double boiler, in a crock pot, or in a boil bag. It is important that the soap be heated without being scorched, the which purpose can be messy and complicated.
   If you decide to use the microwave to melt the soap, microwave it in a safe bowl in 1 minute increments and stir as you go.
   If you decide to use the crock pot or double boiler, patience is key. The author of this guide does not have enough to have successfully used the technique.
   If you decide to use a boil bag, set a pot of water to boil, put the soap shavings in a heat safe freezer bag and seal it. Put that bag in another bag and seal it, drop the bag into the boiling water, try to avoid it touching the sides of the pot and let it boil for 40 minutes. If it has not yet melted, add a tablespoon of liquid and let it continue to boil for another 20 minutes. Please wear heat safe gloves.
   The melted soap will have a gummy, mashed potato-like texture, or can be comparable to vaseline.
3. Pour in the additives.
   Once the soap has liquified, add in any dyes, substances or fragrances. Mix the soap as much as necessary to distribute the substances.
   Pour the milled soaps into their molds and allow them to harden. This can take up to 48 hours. Leave the molds where they will be dry and undisturbed. Use your judgment if the hardening seems to take even longer.
4. Remove the soap from the molds.
   If you used one large mold, cut them now.
   If you used a cold process base that was not fully cured, let the soap air dry as you would an uncured cold process soap. Otherwise, they are ready to use as long as they are hardened.

Tips. Generally, it makes more sense to insert any additives in your soap during the initial cure and avoid this process altogether, however, some soap recipes need to be made with cold process, some additives cannot be used during cold process due to their sensitivity to the alkaline. Occasionally, stupid happens, distraction takes place, spontaneous improvisation becomes necessary, whatever, so it is as well to know how to mill as not.
Be warned: using the milling process to save a batch of soap that has gone awry IS a gamble.

Tools
The soap making process is not necessarily one which requires complicated or specific tools. You need the following.

1. A scale.
   In this process, precision is key, particularly when it comes to measuring lye. An accurate scale is essential, a digital scale that measures ounces to the decimal is recommended.
2. A thermometer.
   During the cold process, it is necessary to combine the lye with the oils and fats while they are almost the same temperature, and a good thermometer is necessary. Even if you are doing the hot process, though, and choose to have essential oils, it is necessary to make sure your batch hasn't exceeded their flash points. A candy thermometer is great.
3. Other measuring implements.
   Measuring cups, spoons, plastic containers for weighing the fats. These will never come into contact with the pure lye, so you needn't worry about exclusive measuring implements unless you like things organized that way.
4. A heat source.
   You need a means to heat the oils and fats, and during the hot process, to cook the batch. A crock pot is specified, but you can also do your heating in the oven, at 170-190 degrees Fahrenheit. For the cold process, a pan on the stove will do the trick.
5. Two lye containers.
   A little one for weighing out the lye and a larger one for weighing the water and adding the lye – these containers should never be used for anything else. Lye is a very caustic substance which heats the water to 200 degrees, don't use glass or aluminum. Plastic will be fine.
6. A stirrer.
   To mix the batch, constant stirring is necessary. This can be done with a sturdy wooden spoon, or, recommended, a stick blender.
7. Molds
   You need containers into which to pour your soaps while they cure. These should be sturdy, somewhat flexible (if they are not, line them with plastic wrap before pouring). They can be decorative, they can be plain, they can be an old loaf pan that no one cares about. They can be silicone, they can be plastic, they can be rinsed out half-gallon milk cartons with the lid chopped off. Just make sure you know what you're going to do with your soap when you take it off the heat source.
   The writer of this guide prefers silicone because they are reusable and the soap pops out like a dream, but don't knock yourself out trying to find them.
8. Protective gear
   Lye is caustic, and without lye you can't make soap. As mentioned, lye heats up to 200 degrees when it reacts to water. When it mixes with water, it gives off fumes. Inhaling it or getting it on yourself is a legitimate concern, and a pair of gloves and goggles, and even a mask wouldn't go amiss. Indeed, it falls into the category of common sense.
   That said, the writer of this guide finds these implements cumbersome and does not use them. Whether you do or not, don't inhale the fumes and if lye splashes on you rush to the sink and flush the affected area. Do not apply vinegar, no matter who tells you it's a good idea. It isn't.
   
   Do not let the warnings about lye cripple your ability to do the task in front of you. Respect the substance, don't fear it. Store it in a sensible place, keep your head, wash it off if it gets on you. Unless you panic, you'll be fine...in fact, even IF you panic, you're probably fine. Flush the affected area with water.

A Little Weary

As an art teacher, the crowning moment of my work is in the penultimate week of school: the art show week, the week where I take the prime examples of each individual student's work and display it.  It's quite a bit of work, and for me, because we have different students filtering in each day, it expands and consumes the whole entire week.  A different set of art up each day to be a focus of the flood of people rushing through my space and then taken down and replaced with the artwork of the next day.
For an introvert, the phrase "Flood of people" is similar to the phrase "approaching tsunami." But because this is art, my art, the art of the kids that I'm so very proud of, it's worth the sense of drowning, and my gracious colleagues are all so kind and willing to help me at the end of each day.
However, due to the timing, everyone is also bustling about grading, reviewing papers, filling out student reports and getting their final efforts pushed through the system.  Even I have to worry about this, I have to give my reports to the parents, too, and we work with a system where our reports are rotated through two or three other teachers.  The reports are due Friday, I didn't see them until Wednesday and that was only because I insisted and kicked up a bit of an email stink.  I figured I'd been overlooked and they were submitted without being sent to me, but what had really happened was that the teacher who had taken a good portion of them all at once a week ago found that she did not have the time to fill them in after all, which means that all three of us still have to rotate them around and fill them out. One scrambles to get this task done in time.  Monday was a panicked priority, and I prayed my reports were fair and accurate as I passed them off to the next person.
 Administration is looking for a better system already.  It is pointless to complain, so the travail must be expressed as an amusing anecdote instead.  My listeners sympathize consistently and it helps to know that I am not insane in this matter: my frustration was legitimate as I stayed up to get the next day's reports done in time to pass them on.
I overslept this fine, Thursday morning.
Thursday is the biggest day of the art show bombardment.  It encompasses the day with the largest attendance, the oldest students.  It overlaps with the long-spanned efforts of another teacher right next door, and it's her first time doing this, so she's very nervous.  This means she is vulnerable.  Hurting her feelings and convincing her that she'd done wrong would be easier than thought, and this sort of infamy cannot be countenanced.  So I try very carefully to use positive words, upward inflections, to smile more than I normally would, striving to be aware of the consequences of my every gesture because friendliness does not come naturally to me.  The families shuffle between our rooms like sand in the hourglass, while we work to make sure the balance of people is stable, that people can get in and out. 
Two or three children come to me begging for minor impossibilities, and my polite denials are wrapped in smiles and crinkly eyes to lessen the blow.  They are mostly gone after an hour, one or two families are still straggling and chatting.
The last to leave is ten minutes later than everyone else as the mother in question insists on taking photos of her increasingly drooping daughters next to every scrap of dust that pertained to them.
All of their work is in the next room, it will be no grievance to them if I begin taking care of the art in my neighbor's room, surely.  It's after 4, and there are still so many things to be done, not the least my appointment at 5.  All the kind people who meant to help me set up tomorrow's show have already had to leave and attend to lives of their own.  
And then I hear the quell of the mother's voice.  "Lookit, there's Miss E already taking everything down.  Awwwwww."
I have spoken often to this particular woman, who is painfully nice in her propensity to create impositions.  I never know if her habit of talking this way is supposed to be a biting criticism, as is the case with one of my older relatives, or if she has an intrinsic need to state the obvious repeatedly or feel unfulfilled, but my response must be the same either way.  I turn and smile.  "Sorry, I have tomorrow's show to set up, but all your things are in the next room, and I think you've already seen this."  Think?  I know they have.  I've been watching them float back and forth, alone, for the past ten minutes.   "Oh dear!" Her blue eyes go wide. "I'm so sorry to be in your way!"
Again, I have spoken to this woman many times.  One is legally obliged to reply, "Oh, you're fine." Instead of the more honest "no, you're not. You're nowhere NEAR finished pottering around, you just want my sanction so that you can keep doing it."
So, I explain that I'm just tired and I must hurry to get done, and she proceeds to explain...I dunno.  I don't know what she's talking about.  I don't even know why she's still talking.  I try to imagine that she has no idea that having to chat after a long, heavy series of days actually makes some people feel even more tired, rather than giving them fresh energy.  I imagine that she sees me drooping, and overwhelmed and thinks that she is helping me by assailing my brain with heavy smatterings of repetition, and I'm sorry I cannot validate her bizarre perception of the world by giving more enthusiastic responses.  She notices my inability to match her own enthusiasm and tries to engage me by mentioning the one place besides school where she'd noticed me enjoying myself: the local historical ranch.  I grunt, with an upward inflection, while I wrestle with the staples lodged in the wall.  I know she wants me to drop everything I'm doing and carry on a ten minute conversation with her.  She will eventually try to manipulate me into offering to tutor her daughters for free, but there simply isn't time for this.  
Desperately she begins to list alllllllllll the people who will be coming to that Ranch....slowly.....by last name....with a two second pause between each one.  Her vampiric presence saps me until I feel my knees getting weak, my heels burrowing into the soles of my shoes.  She bombards me with useless compliments and old information, and I respond with civilized murmurs until I can't tell one murmur from the next.  Her children beside her look as ready to fall over as I feel.  At last, we say our farewells and she departs, and I hope, very sincerely, that I wasn't rude.
My neighbor lets out a long puff of breath and says "wow.  She's always like that, isn't she?"
Thank God!  I'm not insane.  "I wonder if we're the only adults she's able to spend any time with, and that's why she latches on like that," I say. 
"Ya," says my neighbor, "but still....."
I'm not insane.  How glad I am, now, that I've tried to be kind to my neighbor.  This reassurance alone is adequate repayment.
 Her children are here and always politely willing to be of service. My boss comes up the stairs.  The help that I had despaired of having crawls out of the woodwork and props me up for the last twenty minutes or so of effort, and when it is done I double-check with my neighbor to see if there is anything I can do for her.  Being quietly helpful, feeling useful without having to measure my actions and reactions like a miser is a pleasant diversion for me, but she says she doesn't need any help.
"Do you want to set up tomorrow's show?"  My boss asks.  "I can stay and help for that."
"No,"  I smile, but I make sure my weariness shows.  "I'm knackered. My judgement will be too poor.  And it's only two classes tomorrow, I'll do it in the morning."
It's only 4:30 when I get into my car, there is still time to go to the bank before my appointment, though my dreams of dropping off the rent and the utility bill have evaporated.  I was polite and engaging at the bank, and I even managed to maintain consciousness all through my 5 o'clock appointment - I probably could have canceled, but I really didn't want to.  When it is over, all I want to do is sit and watch stupid tv shows until the universe stretches and contracts again into a more efficient order, but the dog, attention starved from my week of activity, wants nothing more than to be in my face, licking it and pushing against me incessantly.
I must have yelled at him, because suddenly he started sulking on the sofa.  Well, good.  Now my displays of affection can be on my terms instead of his.  I sit and cuddle him and rubbing his ears for some minutes, and then I remember that something I need from the department store has to be bought before tomorrow.  I drag myself over to the store and shamble in.
I'm fast when it comes to this particular purchase.  The store is well organized and clean and I know exactly what I need.  The moment I liked best was walking past the jewelry counter and watching all the bright gaudy things flash at me, friendly, twinkling eyes, giving pleasure and letting me pass unhindered.  
 I went to the check-out lane where a politely bombastic woman was demanding the sort of attention from the only cashier in the area that meant the cashier needed to guide them through the wastes of the store's stock, and possibly up mount Everest.  An apologetic glance at me and the cashier evaporated.  I turned and went to the other set of registers and stood, waiting.  The employees here are dressed like everyone else.  I cannot go about assailing strangers in the hopes that they have the power to check out my purchase.   My presence finally caught the attention of another cashier. She rings me up.  The normally 40$ purchase, thanks to a coupon and a sale, comes out to less than 15$ and I privately high-five my sense of timing.
Then the cashier asks if I have the store credit card, but since I only set foot in here four times a year, I don't.  
"But it only takes a minute to fill it out, and even if you don't get approved, you still get the savings. It would bring your total down to $11.46."
"No thanks," I reply "I'm too wiped out."
"Oh," the woman smiles.  Her blue eyes emphasize the gray line of her un-dyed roots.  I try hard not to stare, though it is the only feature of interest about her.   "Were you at Muldoon's?" she asks.
"What the hell is Muldoon's and why am I expected to care?" I check myself, blink.  She's staring at me expectantly so, thank God, I hadn't said that out loud.  I try to trace the communication glitch.   Muldoon's is probably a bar or a club or something.  My choice of words must have made her mistake my character, Lord only knows how.  No more idioms for this woman.  
"I'm just tired, you know?"
 "Oh, I see. So do you want to apply for the card? It barely takes any time and even if you're not approved, you get the savings? You want the savings?"
"No thanks, I really just want to get home." This woman, this wrinkly, wiry arrangement of flesh who has mistaken weariness for weakness on my part does not know how perilously close I am getting to dropping my facade of humanity. She does not know that it is not my will that shall give way first, but that little bit of self-control still restraining all the things that run through my head.  She doesn't know that she's wearing away at her own protection.  She pushes the @#$% card a third time. 2$ of lousy savings, does this pitch even work on normal people?
"I only takes a minute," she insists, "I mean, you may as well."  
A minute when, were it not for this discussion, I'd be on my way home already.  A minute, a bloody minute when I know perfectly well what kind of a number-writing, information sifting, finger-tapping wait filling out a credit card application really is.  LIES!  Why do normal people lie so much?
My own personal curse, my wit, congeals on my tongue: a poisonous vapor.  I look at the counter so that I will not automatically catalogue all the cruel, spiteful things I could list about her appearance, her character, her sales pitch in alphabetical order.  
I know it's her job to push this useless piece of plastic.  I know she has people at home who, somehow, love her.  She is made in the image of God and she must be respected as such.  So instead of screaming, "FOOOLISH MORTAL!!!! TAKE MY @#$% MONEY AND LET ME GO HOME OR BE DESTROYED!!!!!!!" I simply say, "no. thank you." a third time. It was her last chance.
I don't think she saw the murder in my eyes. She didn't seem to know that she teetered on the brink of her own personal apocalypse.  Maybe she's only allowed to try to force people into getting something they don't want three times before quitting. Whatever her motivation, she at last gave up her cause and let me buy the @#$% garment.  
I return to the house, trick the dog into thinking that I'd gone into the bedroom and lock myself in the bathroom. I can hear him squealing anxiously on the other side, but this is for his own good.
I inhale deeply the dank smell of my surroundings, barely masked by perfumed candles.  Yes.  Darkness.  Solitude.  This is where creatures like me belong.

Analysis of an Apology.

I'm guessing most of my Dear People have seen this:

I'm hoping most of the same have seen this, as well:

All watched up?  Ten minutes of your life down the drain?
Good.  Now let's chat about the apology.

That poor man.  He did a stupid.  People do stupids all the time, and according to him, he simply did not weigh the consequences of his actions well enough before-hand.  Frankly, nobody expects to get fired and receive threats of violence and death from total strangers for posting videos, even if it's written somewhere in their work contract ("If you publicly show yourself to be an ignoramus in such a way that it reflects on this company, thou art fired!") not too many people remember every nuance of their work contracts, they won't be thinking of it when the fiery passion of a holy war shakes the core of their being, which is essentially what happened to this guy, the way he tells it.

Also, what is it with the last few generations and their passion for making death threats to express disapproval?  How, precisely, are any of us in a position to take the moral high ground when half of us aren't even trained on what the moral high ground is? It's a shame that nobody seems to be learning anything from these incidents, but here is a hint: behave like Rachel from the CFA video, and don't make death threats, seriously. You got a six-year-old boy on the youtubes right now getting himself some death threats, he and his family, for this video:

No, really.  Learn to think.  Learn to argue.  Learn to have a little class, please.  Just a smidgen, and this is coming from the girl who hangs her sandals from her belt and walks around the exterior of a public play set singing comic songs from Gilbert and Sullivan.  Think classy, people.  Think, What Would Jeeves Do?

Adam Smith didn't deserve the level of backlash that he got.  Honestly, if I jumped on the bandwagon and did something similar to what he did, I would be appalled to learn that my coworkers were getting threatened: people who had no bearing on my actions whatever.  However, I don't like bandwagons, I don't trust them,  this is why my facebook compadres see very little of the "share if you love Jesus" posts from me.  I do love Jesus, and God, and the Holy Spirit, but I have a stubborn heart, and since I do not like to confuse my brothers and sisters in Christ with my Father, I do not do everything they tell me to do just because they told me to do it.  Pray for me.

I hope the girl forgives him.  I am not in a position to publicly forgive him as a direct response to this apology, he has asked me for no such favours, he did not apologize to anyone except the girl, as an individual, and possibly his coworkers.  He did not even connect the dots and figure out that a lot of people at CFA would have handled the situation exactly as she did because the company thoroughly trains its employees to treat their guests respectfully no matter what, so ya, from his perspective, CFA is still a cesspool of hate. The guy humiliated her in a very public way, with little necessity considering how badly executed his intent was: he didn't even get as far as quoting the proverbs passage at her, and that was the stipulation of the protest he was supposed to be partaking in.  She has a little more to forgive than I do.

I've had such people in the drive-thru when I worked at CFA, with funky agendas to ram down my throat no matter who I was.  I liked it best when they handed tracks through the window: short and sweet and mildly amusing, but they aren't all sniggers and grins.  Once, some lady made one of my favourite people cry, one of the sweetest people I know, because she could not directly substitute something without making the lady pay for the difference.  The situation escalated, my friend couldn't figure out what was wrong, eventually she burst into tears and went to find a quiet place to calm down.  When the lady promised that she'd never be back and stormed out of the building, the rest of us rejoiced and also went to the walk-in fridge to give our weeping friend the good news and a hanky.  It can be a difficult job.  We don't usually look for catharsis after such incidents, we just want to move on quietly, it's not a punishment for the other person and it's not the silent treatment: it's a shield for ourselves.

Back to the next 3/4s of the apology, and Adam Smith's regret at not being the champion for the homosexual community that he wanted to be.  He is now in a position to sympathize with George Zimmerman.  He is probably not GOING to sympathize with George Zimmerman because he cannot look at anything with objectivity.  He realizes his own passion for what he believes is right caused him to say and do many stupid things, to overstep the bounds of civility so dramatically as to bring great personal consequences on himself, but he did not apply that possibility to the very company against which he was trying to make a stand.  He STILL interprets the situation as a hate situation.  He learned a lesson in personal behaviour, but not in human nature.

Can I play a game with you?  Replace all the nouns and proper names with letters.  So, Adam Smith becomes (a), the CFA company becomes (b), the homosexual community becomes (c) the political group of conservatives becomes (d) and Adam Smith's employers, coworkers and family become (e)
Now, in this circumstance, (a) has made an attempt to stand up for (c) by making a political attack on (b) with the result that an unaffiliated entity who doesn't even get her own letter has been considered collateral damage.  Now (a) is reaping the results, with (d) doing everything they can from sneers to death threats to bring him down, and (a) and (e) are both suffering for it.
Let's play again.  This time, Dan Cathy is (a), the homosexual community is (b), the traditional marriage campaign is (c), and the political group of liberals is (d), the CFA company and its employees are now (e)...do you see where I am headed with this?

Now that we've taken the bare bones of the situation and applied it to something else, (and you can do this anywhere! You don't even have to use letters, you can use kittens, zebras and electric guitars! Do it to anything! It's FUN! Someday all our thought processes will look like the cover of a Lisa Frank trapper keeper!) we can kinda see that Adam Smith's defense describes Dan Cathy's actions to a magnified degree.  I say magnified because, to my knowledge, Dan Cathy has never made a deliberate full front attack on the homosexual community.

The trouble is that Mr. Cathy has a political opinion and has donated in his company's name to people who share that opinion, though if these are the companies I remember being under discussion then these aren't people who run smear the queer rallies, they have marriage seminars and make signs saying "vote for this." Ignominy!  He has not joined the kkk of gays and gone around throwing soup in people's faces.  Homosexuals are served with the same courtesy, affection, and friendliness as anyone else, and receive the same standards of employment: be courteous, be flexible, learn to count, don't make out with other people in the walk-in freezer...ever.  It can be stressful if you're not a Christian because Christians tend to flock to Christian-run corporations for employment and they all talk about Christian stuff in their downtime, but that's nothing to do with company policy.  Death threat worthy?  Absolutely...apparently.  But taking Dan Cathy's comments at their very worst, and in the same vein that caused this boycotty mess of doom in the first place, we have on our hands a beautiful, poetic, chiastic harmony, and yet Adam Smith still sees Dan Cathy and CFA alike as a monolith of villainy.

Now, the reason the situations, both situations, exploded the way they did was because CFA and its employees are both more liable to put up a beatific face and a free meal than they are to explode and try to kill everyone.  They got to become martyrs, and trust me, a martyr is a much, much better way to make a point than a screamy yelly death threat.  And as we have just seen, most martyrs don't even have to die nowadays, how cool is that?  The point I'm trying to make here is that if something happens to you that you can't even understand, or if you see some massive injustice on the internets, respond with grace.  If you need to scream and yell at stuff, go play some Zelda, s'what it's there for anyway.  You can come back later and donate money, or say something kind to the injured person, whatever is the right thing to do, but be VERY careful not to hang your anger on your sleeve, be VERY careful not to grab a torch and a pitchfork.  Put the kettle on and read 1Peter 3:13-20.  If old scripture has no bearing on your opinion and behaviour, then just think: What Would Jeeves Do?

Somebody Else

It looked like a gaffe when I first saw it, so I searched for the transcription and/or video of the full original speech.  I found myself liking it; it affirmed a thing or two that I already believed, that greatness is not achieved in a vacuum, that the general on a white horse, raising his sabre victoriously in the air as a shaft of light beams down on him only became what he was because of the various ingredients, the foot soldiers, the Flemmish archers, the bajillion pounds of canon, the God-given rain that allowed thousands to fall before the 800 that he pulled together into a vast, glorious, successful enterprise.  Cool.  Power to the rocking individuals, baby. I mean, individuals are *hardworking* and *intelligent* except that one dude who swore to me up and down that I'd like Twilight, I have no idea what that was about, but yes, even he was hardworking.

Then the President blew it with the phrase, "If you have a successful business, you didn't build that."  Even then I was willing to give him a pass.  It was an extemporaneous phrase, people sometimes say extremely retarded things when they talk all extemporaneous-like, for example all those times that I implied that I was a harlot when all I wanted to say was I was hungry...there is a significant difference between the word "ravished" and "famished" and a glib delivery just makes it worse.

I figure, Mr. Prez probably meant to put the word "alone" in there somewhere.  You know?  Like, "You alone didn't build that," or, "you didn't build that alone," or the grammatically dubious but still well intentioned, "you didn't alone build that."  Unfortunately, he just kept right on talking, "...somebody else did.  Somebody else made that happen."  Okay, somebody else did that?  Maaaaaaaaybe. I mean, workers are hired to build a building, so ya, somebody other than the person who had the idea for the building did that.  The "somebody else made that happen?"  Deario, that's the dark desert highway that mummy should have told you never to travel because that negates all ingenuity, all vision, all.....everything.

It solves the "greatness is not achieved in a vacuum" conundrum by removing greatness.  Because who made "it" happen the most?  The gainfully employed person with the hammer who follows building plans very well (and who, by the way, is an awesome guy, and did a great job, and I love him to death) or the person who decided "you know what would be cool?  Permanent bouncy castles" and then set about getting it done?

Or maybe the Prez is trying to imply that all people who own successful businesses didn't build them from the ground up 'cause they're all dishonest, and did to "somebody else" what the Eeeeevil Edison did to all 'round nice guy (and only occasionally plagued with lapses of insanity) Tesla - it really was a dirty trick.  Yes, some businessmen steal other businessmen's ideas and leave them in the dirt which is bad.  I watched The Italian Job, I know the real story behind Napster. But since political campaigns are supposed to be all about smoozing people for votes, it might be a misstep in judgement to go about it by insulting the same people you're planning on taxing lots after your re-election.  Let's pretend ol' prezzy boy is smarter than that.  He does that a lot, but I'm sure he has a benevolent reason behind it, like maybe someone told him right before the press conference that a kitten would die if he didn't say something nasty about Fox news, Republicans, rich people or non-racially disadvantaged people (who totally got themselves born white on purpose, the little jerks!) at least once during the speech.

Mr. President then went on with talk of government roads and trucks and whut....?  He's the "somebody else"?  Dear boy, a decade ago, I didn't even know who you were!  (Maybe I'm extrapolating a little too much, but when he talks about the government, he's usually talking about himself.) Okay, yes, the government did take over the contracting of the private sector to build public roads, like a century ago or something and airplanes.  Ya, I'm not a boy, all I really know about them is that clouds are prettier when you're in one so I'll take your word for it and the same goes for trucks but the basic argument that the government is responsible for the rich, so the rich should be responsible for everybody else, but only financially only because otherwise I guess we're reinstating the feudal system, well, it doesn't sit well with me.  I'm trying to imagine how that "asking the rich to give a little more" thing is going to go down.  Do they get formal invitations with party hats?  "You are cordially invited to a fundraiser to get our mandatory healthcare system off the ground"  I kid.  I'm a kidder.  I know what "asking" means 'cause I have a dad who used to "ask" me to clean my room.

What I would like to point out is that back before the government made it its business to give us these shiny highways and airplanes and trucks and stuff, businessmen were still capable of success.  When they needed a road, they hung out with other business men and smooth talked them until *poof!* gentlemen...we have transport.  Again, I'm talking out of my hat on a weak area, but if such things were not so then all those Westerns with Eeeeevil businessmen buying people out to build a railroad or a business or some other eeevil investment need a bit of revamping, and I liked those Westerns!  Anyway, it's different now 'cause if something's wrong with the road but it's still kinda driveable, it'd better be in a good city; otherwise nothing ain't happening (sniffity, oh Pueblo...I weep for you).  As for the trucks that have been allowed to drive freely on the shiny roads...I'm really glad that taxes on petrol are such a high percentage of the actual price, because otherwise the shipping system in the private sector would be *really* complicated.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, "thanks, sweetie, thanks for the shiny technology, but I think probably we could have done most of it ourselves...but you're just so cute behind that podium.  I can't stay mad at you!"

Before I close off, I just want to say: my thanks to the people who invented the Arial font, and the people who invented the non-serif-based font-system, and also the google empire, and whoever invented the keyboard, and the laptop, and also Al Gore for taking the initiative in creating the internet, and the government for inventing either Al Gore or the internet.  Honourable mention for the contributions of Nickolai Tesla and Thomas Edison to the harnessing of electricity.  If anyone is annoyed by my comments, just remember:  I didn't write this post. Somebody else did that.

An Evening Stroll

     My roommate stepped out.  I didn't know where she went or when she'd be back, sometimes she doesn't come back until the next morning.  And it was dark, and the house was so warm.  I checked the weather five or six times, there doesn't seem to be much chance of rain, but for some reason there's a flash flood warning for tomorrow.  Maybe that's wishful thinking on the part of a kindly soul.
     If I wanted, I could pretend I was being active by jumping into one of the flame wars someone dear to me likes to start.  She doesn't care for this city, and she doesn't remember her sense of timing or decorum, she just remembers the hurt that reverbrates from a decade and a half ago and responds with her usual, Pavlovian responses, lashing out at anyone that calls her on it.  It probably wasn't a good idea at that moment, just reading what she had said already only made me want to run around in screaming frenzied circles more, or throw up, or something.
     Cycling through all the photos that people are posting on Facebook isn't as satisfying as one would expect.  The joke photos were funny, even now, but the things some of the people wrote threw me into an impotent mass of energy. I thought about putting in a movie and laying prone on the sofa until my adrenaline slowed - I REALLY shouldn't have read what she wrote - or maybe I would play a computer game, one in which you brutally slay imaginary things, until I felt better. Instead, I worked out for a little bit, I needed the action, and then I took a shower.
  After I got out, my hair dripping and me wrapped up in my night clothes, I put on a jacket, got into my car, and drove.
The cd player, a wise old gadget, played Peter Gabriel, and All American Rejects, and Shiny Toy Guns' rendition of "Major Tom," while I drove West, West, West, into the night, with other cars, other people on the road dispersing my illusion that I lived in a vacuum and can't help anyone, can't reach anyone, can't do anything.  I drove towards the Church because that was a comfortable, Westbound direction to be headed in, and then I skipped that and veered towards Circle, which was even more Westy.  I would drive until I saw the lights, even if it took me into Filmore, past stone, past the interstate, past the evacuation area if need be. But when Circle hit Union, the road rose up and I saw them, so instead I turned North, to follow the lights on my left until they took me somewhere where I could park.
Pulling in to the parking lot at the East library, (Heh, East Library, I guess that just goes to show how far East I live) I counted three other cars doing the same exact thing I was doing, and all the lights in the building were still on even though it was after 10 pm. Maybe this had become an evacuee station.  I parked with a small slough of other cars, and I got out to see rows of people who had the same late-night need that I did, and I saw the lights.
 Families, with pj clad children holding hands between the parents, made their way back to their cars, and groups of teenagers were walking up the hill toward me.  "Look, you can see it better from here," one of them commented.
I mingled among the people with their cameras on tripods, standing, taking photos, looking West.  I didn't regret leaving my camera behind, I'd had enough of photos, I came to see it for myself.  The ridge dotted with dull, angry orange flares, and the sky glowing and glowing, and never stopping, and the barrage of hushed voices chattering.
"...Million dollar homes, burned to the ground..."
"...Up towards Woodland park...."
"...God, they should do something.  Why don't they DO something?!"
"The animals.  Their instincts'll serve them, they'll be okay.  They were probably looooong gone as soon as they smelled the fire."
"Ten thousand years ago," said a man with a wide brimmed hat and a tripod, "there were no humans.  Something like this happened, there was no one to help, it just burned and burned."
"...bulldozers, going through the dead trees trying to block it, that's what they're doing now."
"This is so surreal.  I can't believe this."
Along the ridge, one of the lights flares, brightens, they can see it even at this distance, and they oooooo as if they were watching a fireworks show, several of the cameras click, but they aren't entertained, they're horrified.  Oh!  The volunteers!  I hope they're okay, whatever just happened.
"How old is your kid?" said one stranger to another.
"He's 13," said the man with the wide brimmed hat.  "He's not here for this, he's in California for six weeks with his dad.  I'll have to deprogram him when he gets back."
"Mine's nine," says the other man.  "My ex-wife...."
"This is it.  This is our economy boost, thanks for the stimulus package," and everyone chuckles.
Everything is so broken, but it's still normal.
A woman in her fifties stands at the edge of the sidewalk, staring, silent.  She shakes her head at the lights.  After a minute, she turns, jumps a little when she sees me behind her, and walks back towards the parking lot.
There's a little boy in only his pajama bottoms capering around the base of the hill, doing cartwheels. I walk towards him because the coolness of the green grass feels like a dream, and I wander around the paths for a while, thinking of woods and forests, thinking about ash and smoke, and glowing lights, thinking about all the places that don't exist as of this afternoon.  When I come back to the row of people at the top of the hill, they're still talking.
"Look at the time, it's WAAAAY past my bedtime."
"It never ends, you can see it there, and there, and there, it goes on forever."
"Our mountains were so beautiful, so beautiful."
"It's insane," says a little boy, he looks like he's about five years old.
"It's more than insane, baby," says his mother.
I start to walk back to my car.  A woman with a pretty snake tattooed around her leg helps balance her friend on top of a truck to get a better view, there's a camera propped on top of a small pink box between the friend's arms.
Another woman pulls in with her family, her car is old, there's a trash bag taped over the rear passenger window.  "If anyone steals this car," she announces, "they're desperate."
The CD player offered up to me sounds of Evanescence, one of their very early songs before they got so flipping angry; and some Mr. Mister; and "Goreki" by Lamb: Could we stay right here 'til the end of time, 'til the earth stops turning?  The drive home was much faster than the drive away.  Roommate's car wasn't in the driveway.  When I opened the door, the dog bounced around excitedly to see me again.  Every minute away from me was agony, apparently.   I picked him up so that he wouldn't continue to suffer emotional withdrawl while I opened every door and window I could find to let the night in.  He wagged his tail so hard that his whole body shook.  I sat down at the dining room table and listened to the cars driving along the road.
   If she stays out later than 1am, I'll turn off the porch light and lock the door.

When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you. - Friedrich Nietzche.

The abyss isn't half as impressed with you as you are with it.