Hail to the VW Chief!

I'm totally for this! Let's get the write-in vote started.

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You can see more about VW Charles' groundswell support on the news website.

He's got my vote! After all, why choose the lesser of two evils?

'Twas grilling and the slithy toves...

From Movable Jewel comes part of the secret to Bro. Don's "Top Secret" ribs:

"It starts the day before with selecting the best meat I can find."

From Ashida Kim's "Zen Koans:"

31. Everything Is Best

When Banzan was walking through a market he overheard a conversation between a butcher and his customer.

"Give me the best piece of meat you have," said the customer.

"Everything in my shop is the best," replied the butcher. "You cannot find here any piece of meat that is not the best."

At these words Banzan became enlightened.

It's interesting to hear a bunch of middle-aged guys talk cooking. Invariably, it involves grilling.

This is a picture of the birthday present I bought myself last year. All stainless - although you'd hardly know it after a solid year of use; right now it's pretty black inside. Black, however, is much better than how my twelve previous grills have ended up. I'm one of those guys who grills all year - summer, winter, monsoon season, dust storms, blizzards, plagues of locusts - and predictably I'd end up replacing the inner parts by the end of the year. Last year, I decided that I needed a more professional model.

I shopped for a month before deciding on this grill from Costco. It is very well made, and when compared to grills in a similar price range, the workmanship was superior to some of the better known brands. So I grabbed the shop pickup truck and went to Costco on a Friday afternoon. I wheeled a cart down to the outdoor department, and tried to drag one of the boxes onto the cart.

It wouldn't budge.

I figured that it was hung up on the skid, so I tried the next box.

It moved about two inches and stopped.

A guy behind me who had previously voiced some good-natured jealousy that I was buying the rather pricey piece of cookware, pitched in to help. A third guy saw us struggling, and joined the battle. We managed to drag the box onto the cart. Just as we got the box situated, I saw the shipping label. Remembering that there are 2.2 lbs. in a kilo, I did the math in my head.

"Holy c*w!" I exclaimed, "No wonder we couldn't drag it. The grill weighs 300 pounds!"

The two guys shook their head and wished me luck. At the checkout, I asked for help getting it on the truck, and after securing it in the bed, I drove home.

That's where the fun began. The pickup has big tires and high springs. There was no way that I was going to lift it off the bed. I managed to drop the tailgate, and used a piece of plywood as a ramp and slid it to the ground. My wife was smart enough to come out just as I finished.

"How the hell are you going to get that up to the deck?" she asked.

Good question. The deck was in the back of the house, up seven steps, then up another two.

"No problem," I assured her, "I'll open the carton and just bring the pieces up and assemble it on the deck."

I cut the metal straps and pried open the crate.

The grill was already assembled.

That's right; in an age in which one needs an engineering degree to put together bookshelves and magazine racks from Ikea, my new grill was almost completely put together. I actually had to dismantle it in order to get the weight low enough to manage it up the stairs. For a half hour I undid screws and bolts, and managed to drag the now-200 pound behemoth around the back of the house. My wife, ever resourceful, remembered that she needed to clean the kitchen. I, stuck on the bottom stair to the deck, balanced the grill with one hand and called the house phone from my cell phone.

"I'm stuck," I told her, "I need your help." She reminded me that moving heavy objects was not in the wedding vows - her way of hinting that I was going to owe her a vacation, or at least a weekend painting the closets. She came out to the deck and while I held the back end of the crate, she lifted the front up one stair at a time. At the top of the first deck, she declared her part of the process finished, and retreated to the safety of the kitchen. Somehow I managed to get the crate up two more stairs and across the deck.

By that time it was 6:30 pm, and she poked her head out to ask if I could fire it up to cook some burgers for dinner. I reminded her that one third of the grill was still in the garage; we sent out for pizza and ate outside. That is, she and our daughter ate while watching the floor show called "Daddy trying to reassemble the grill before it's too dark to see."

By 9:00 pm, the grill was finally reassembled, the gas hooked up (I have not one, not two, but three tanks of propane - as I wrote, I do a lot of grilling), and the bugs were biting. I fired up the grill and admired the ceramic searing burner and the smooth, shiny stainless grill. I rummaged through the freezer and found a few frozen hot dogs; moments later they were sizzling... well, mainly that was the sound of the ice melting.

That's when I discovered that "stainless" does not mean "immune to discoloration."

And if anyone knows how to clean a stainless steel grill, I'd appreciate any advice - as I mentioned earlier, it's beginning to look like it came out of an old diner. But that's okay - after well over a year of near-continuous use, nothing has burned out, worn out or broken off.

I wish I could say as much about the griller as I can about the grill.

Tao of Masonry | Freemasonry | Masonry

... and so it went.

"'I am not your father,'" said Redwine. "'Rather call me brother. But I am not your brother. Rather call me son. But I am not your son. Rather call me a dog. But I am not your dog. Rather call me a flea on your dog. But I am not a flea. Rather call me a germ on a flea on your dog. As a germ on a flea on your dog, I am eager to serve you in any way I can, just as you are willing to serve God Almighty, Creator of the Universe.'"

"O Lord Most High, Creator of the Cosmos, Spinner of Galaxies, Soul of Electromagnetic Waves, Inhaler and Exhaler of Inconceivable Volumes of Vacuum, Spitter of Fire and Rock, Trifler with Millennia - what could we do for Thee that Thou couldst not do for Thyself one octillion times better? Nothing. What could we do or say that could possibly interest Thee? Nothing.

"Oh, Mankind, rejoice in the apathy of our Creator, for it makes us free and truthful and dignified at last. No longer can a fool like Malachi Constant point to a ridiculous accident of good luck and say, 'Somebody up there likes me.' And no longer can a tyrant say, 'God wants this or that to happen, and anybody who doesn't help this or that to happen is against God.' O Lord Most High, what a glorious weapon is Thy Apathy, for we have unsheathed it, have thrust and slashed mightily with it, and the claptrap that has so often enslaved us or driven us into the madhouse lies slain!"

- THE REVEREND C. HORNER REDWINE

Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

By now, anybody who'd be interested in reading this blog probably has heard of the death of author Kurt Vonnegut. I was not a huge fan, and I'm sure that others have written - or will be writing - more eloquent soliloquies than I, a casual reader.

I was just out of high school when a college friend gave me a copy of The Sirens of Titan. I read it. And again. And again. I must have read that book five times, each time gleaning a little more, and each time wondering if I were missing some hidden meaning. It took me all that time before I really noticed the "quote" from Rev. C. Horner Redwine, about 2/3 of the way through the book, and my eighteen year old mind nearly exploded. It was, to me, a fantastic concept, somewhere between religion and atheism. A God that doesn't need men to do His work? Amazing!

Why do I bring this up? Because there is a synchronicity (not to be confused with a Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum) in that one of my Masonic brothers has a discussion going on in which he quotes yet another esteemed author from the Sci-Fi genre, Robert Heinlein, and introduces a concept not unlike the one that prefaces this blog article.

From the Comments in The Burning Taper:

"The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens have ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history." — Robert A. Heinlein in Time Enough for Love.

Widow's Son replied with this because of a recent spate of posts from religious fundamentalists (all of them seeming to be of some brand of the Christian faith) who for some unknown reason believe that the best place to make their views known about Masonry would be on a blog authored by a Mason. Actually, I'm writing all of them, but it's quite possible that it's the same person. Some of those opposed to the fraternity seem to believe that they should use any means possible, even morally wrong ones, to achieve their goal of promoting goodness.

Perhaps a sign of my own naivete, I'm always taken aback when somebody suggests that my belonging to an organization that promotes tolerance for those of different faiths is not only misguided, but is actually making me a tool of evil.

I don't know what the anonymous commentators who feel the need to prevaricate about Freemasonry are trying to accomplish. Scaring me? Spreading the Good Word by showing me their virtue and morality? Leading me to the path of righteousness by demonstrating their ethical behavior?

I never know quite what to say to accusations that some demon hijacks my prayers, as if it were as easy to steal as cable tv. But now, thanks to Rev. Redwine, I know how to respond to those who believe that only their own particular, narrow-minded interpretation of ancient scriptures.

For that, God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut.