Boiled Stale Bread Soup and Several Other Things

1.  So if you take a bunch of stale bread and throw it in a pot with a bunch of mostly-rotten vegetables lurking malevolently in your fridge, squirt in a little tomato paste, season, and then boil it without mercy in chicken (or mushmice) broth for a good week, it turns into little soup-bowls filled with heaven. FYI. Bread soup.
2. Per my recent posts about the Champagne Commies, there has sprouted a mistaken belief that I am physically reposed in New York City.  This is profoundly not correct.  I am physically reposed nowhere near New York City, nor would I ever be.  The one and only good thing I can say about NYC is that one can assist at the Old Mass daily in NYC.  But that is the one and only nice thing I can say.  I do not live in NYC, nor would I ever live in NYC, unless under duress of a magnitude that I now struggle to imagine.  I’d sooner live in the latrine pit known as “Chicago” than NYC.  At least I have lots of homies from back in the day in Chicago. But, no.  Rest assured.  I am nowhere near either of these metroplexes.
3. I will say this.  My happy parking spot “down by the crick” ceased to be a few months ago.  I have had to move twice in the past four months (hence the sparse posts, and also my own personal sloth, let’s not mince words.) It has been a punch in the gut, but I have landed on my feet.  BUT, the rent has basically tripled (not because I am a real-estate glutton, but because that is how incredibly sweet the “down by the crick” parking spot was.  I was paying less at the parking spot down by the crick than I paid for my apartment in Manhattan, Kansas when I was a student at Kansas State OVER 20 YEARS AGO in nominal terms.  Dude.  You can’t expect to ever match something like that.  In terms of the aftermath and recovery, St. Philip Neri has been instrumental in the whole thing.  I have the utmost confidence that I am now where I am supposed to be (for now).
4. As most of you probably noticed, just as I was in the midst of physically moving and getting settled in a quasi-permanent place, two things happened simultaneously: my webmaster dropped me AND I came under cyber-attack.  Thankfully, my old webmaster realized that I wasn’t the spawn of satan because of my position on the Bergoglian Antipapacy, and that I am NOT a sedevacantist, and took me back.  This is a good thing because he is a YUUUUUUGE computer nerd.  So, he immediately attacked the attack.  And, sure enough, this website had been hacked, and there was a nasty malware thing manifesting.  All Microsoft browsers straight-up blocked this site.  Others saw a phishing thing that said that a certain font needed to be downloaded.  No.  Bad.  Malware.  Never, ever fall for that.  So, what SuperCathNerd and I decided to do was totally delete the old site, and build a new site repopulated with the text of the old site.  The transition was so seamless that even I didn’t notice it. All of the forms needed to declare the site “malware free” have been submitted.  Now we just wait for the next attack.  But, SuperCathNerd is now watching everything like a hawk.  So I have that going for me, which is nice.
5. Everything else seems to be good, including the ContinueToGive widget and service, which was never compromised.  In fact, just now, the nice people at ContinueToGive contacted me to tell me that someone had snail-mailed them, to my attention, a check.  Well, folks, while eternally appreciated, that is the LOOOONG way around and not recommended.  My snail mail address in Centennial, CO is checked regularly.
6. Which reminds me, the Cattle Marketing DVD Set is absolutely still for sale (I have several hundred copies left.) My most recent inquiry was from New Hampshire.  My response was, I don’t want to oversell the DVD.  While the information and economic theory (micro-level arbitrage) is priceless, I simply cannot bring myself to say, “Yes, in New Hampshire, no problem!”  To my knowledge, there are no livestock auctions in New Hampshire.  All cattle would have to be traded via private treaty, it seems to me.  And the private treaty pool would be very small in New Hampshire.  The closest student I ever had in a live school was from New Brunswick, Canada, which is the landmass north of Maine.  New Brunswick is very agricultural, and the student reported that he had good success.  But… New Hampshire?  No guarantees.
7. Which reminds me, in case you haven’t seen it, over a million acres of prime pastureland have burned in my old stomping grounds of Kansas, Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle and Colorado over the last few days.  The past two years’ moisture yielded exceptional grass in those areas, but high temps coupled with sub-10% humidity turned the whole region into a massive fire-waiting-to-happen.  Sure enough, whether by lightening strike or tossed cigarette butt, the whole area ignited a few days ago.  At least six people have died, including three cowboys in the Texas Panhandle who died trying to move cattle away from the flames, one from smoke and two from burns.  I have personally received terrible reports.  Try on for size a 25,000 acre ranch that now has ZERO SURVIVING FENCE.  Try on for size a 600 head cowherd in which 300 head were burned to death, and another 300 head survived, but were burned so badly that they literally could not move, and had to be shot as a mercy.  And, of course, this is calving season.  There were countless young calves on the ground that were burned alive.  Terrible.  While animals are not rational intellects, like the six humans dead from these fires, it is also a terrible thing for these noble beasts to burn to death, or worse, be burned unto death, but survive.  Also, many homes and farmsteads have been lost.  I understand well what it is like to lose your home in a flash.  And the financial hit – even assuming insurance.  No insurance policy covers EVERYTHING.  There are always intangibles.  Please, in your charity, remember in prayer the good folks who provide your yummy beef products that have been affected by these terrible and massive wildfires.
8. Which reminds me, to remind you, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is now offered for you and your intentions THREE DAYS PER WEEK, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  It is my goal to have the Holy and August Sacrifice of Calvary offered EVERY DAY for my benefactors.  How cool would that be?  How incredibly consoling and edifying would it be to know that EVERY DAY the Mass would be offered, somewhere on the planet, for you?  This is my goal.  If there are any priests who say any of the pre-Conciliar Masses (Tridentine, Dominican, etc.), Ordinariate, or Divine Liturgy and have Thursday-Friday-Saturday-Sundays free to commemorate my benefactors, let me know right away.
9. Thank you.  Be assured of my prayers, particularly in the Most Holy Rosary, and at the elevation of The Host at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.