Chris,
I underlined a line you kept repeating at the cigar shop 6 or 7 months ago (you kept saying vessels prepared for destruction). I would like to suggest that maybe this verse is not what you intended it (a proof for God doing things completely inexplicable other to say that I AM God) but rather a verse about judgement, it indicates that the vessels to be destroyed were actively incurring God’s wrath, while He patiently waited. This is obviously a different thought than God makes some clay pots and smashes them because He can and He makes others and uses them in a productive manner also because He can. I’m not saying we are to understand why God does everything, but the way we think about God is important. If we think of Him as the cosmic brat breaking his toys because he can, what is then to become of our theology. This is the God of animism, whose worshipers only understand him through random and violent judgement. Understand that I made no pronouncement on Gods judgment, only the view in which God judges without cause or reason. Judgment for the sake of judgment is not judgment, this is the god that some ascribe to, this is the god I spoke of. The point of judgment is for correction.

Romans 9:19-24 (New American Standard Bible)

19(A)You will say to me then, "(B)Why does He still find fault? For (C)who resists His will?"
20On the contrary, who are you, (D)O man, who (E)answers back to God? (F)The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it?
21Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?
22What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much (G)patience vessels of wrath (H)prepared for destruction?
23And He did so to make known (I)the riches of His glory upon (J)vessels of mercy, which He(K)prepared beforehand for glory,
24even us, whom He also (L)called, (M)not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.