Monthly Archives: September 2013

J. D. Salinger needs a good horse-whipping

Posted on September 4, 2013 by | 2 comments

Five new JD Salinger books on the way

Titles expected between 2015 and 2020

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/03/new-jd-salinger-fiction-documentary

Hi readers.

When J.D. Salinger went stealth in the 1960s I didn’t think he could hold out.  I snickered to myself and said he was in there writing books and one day he’d lose his determination and drop them on me like depth charges.  I figured I could hold out longer than he could.

Eventually I began to think I had him figured wrong maybe.  That he’d either burned all his stuff and wasn’t writing more, or that he was a Class A horses ass and just wasn’t going to let any of it go public until after he died.  Then he died and for a while I was sure that now, now, now, here they’d come!

They didn’t, and when I turned 70 one of the things I had to reconcile myself to was that J.D. Salinger wasn’t gonna have anymore books during my lifetime.  Decided he was indeed a Class A horses ass.

But yesterday Jeanne sent me the link above.  Oh, yeah.  Thanks a lot, J.D. Salinger.  2015.  Hell, I went out to the RV, took some mega vitamins checked my blood pressure, then checked over the cats trying to figure out what we all need to do in order to survive until 2015.

I’m thinking it’s going to be a cliff-hanger, but we’ve got a middling good shot at lasting until the first one.  I’m okay, the cats seem okay.  I’ll gear up the cat-vitamins just to help us along, make sure they eat less hard food and more canned food, and we’ll take a run at it.  Might even squeeze it all the way to the last one in 2020.

But if J.D. Salinger happens to only be pretending to be dead I’d love to say a few choice words to him.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1960's, 2013, Adventure, Book Reviews, Books

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Wouldn’t go to San Antonio, TX for a $100 bill plus gas

Posted on September 4, 2013 by | 6 comments

Hi readers.  When I got back from town yesterday and was putting the groceries into hideyholes and places they wouldn’t scatter hell-to-breakfast in the RV when it went up the hill again I came across a slip of paper the cashier put in one of the bags.  Had a ‘code’ number on it and said if I went to HEB.com/viva and put in that number I could win valuable prizes.

Well, heck.  I was thinking I wouldn’t mind winning a free bag of potatoes, a bag of onions, who knows?  Maybe some cat food or a pound of cheese.  A nice brisket would be nice.

So naturally I plugged in the website, went through my name, email address, zipcode and age to get all whetted down so’s I could find out if my number was a big winner.

Whoopteedooo!  I won a free pass to some museum 100, 150 miles away from here I wouldn’t go to without a gun to my head.  Those folks surely do take care of their customers and know how to build enthusiasm for promotions.


Hi D M,Thanks for celebrating 70 years with H-E-B in San Antonio and entering the ¡Viva! SA Giveaway today! You’re now in the running for the chance to win free passes to exciting San Antonio landmarks, gift cards to great SA shops and restaurants and MUCH MORE.There are plenty of other spots on the iViva! SA Game Board to visit. Don’t miss a single chance to win – come back with a new code† soon to unlock a space on the board!

Visit all 8 hot spots by October 1, 2013!

Good luck,

Your friends at H-E-B

I should have known a grocery store chain had better sense than to give away something valuable such as a bag of potatoes or onions.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2000's, America, Texas

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Superb judge of character, me

Posted on September 4, 2013 by | 10 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I slipped over to Yahoo News when I got online this morning, wanted to find out whether the world went up in smoke during the night.  Turns out all the news is piddly stuff mostly, nosy things allowing the non-celebrities spot checks into what life’s like for the sainted big named and big-breasted.

But something caught my eye about some 10 year old kid who found a mummy in the attic of the house his grandparents owned.  Brought to mind what a great judge of character I pride myself being.

Early 2000s a friend of mine died near Belen, NM.  He and I loved the same books about history, etc, and he used to joke he’d leave me that several walls of books we both cherished, when he died.  And I’d tell him I would kill him if he left me those books to have to drag around and find someone else to leave them to.

His house was a museum of artifacts he’d found.  We’d even done some artifact searching together.  I think some of those mini-balls on one of the lead pictures on this blog were found when we were somewhere together.

So when I saw in the Albuquerque paper that he’d died I was careful not to contact anyone concerning the fact we knew one another.  Not because I was afraid he’d left me those books, either.

Turned out he’d been robbing graves down in the neighborhood of where those mini-balls were found.  Maybe graves elsewhere, old ones.

Back room of that house was jam-packed with human remains a century-or-more old.  Bastard never showed them to me, all the time we were sitting around drinking coffee and talking about history.

Which I suppose is okay, because I put a high value on his friendship, enjoyed knowing him a lot.  And sometimes even then I’d forget how old I was and have to decide spur-of-the-moment whether to open a can of whupass on someone.

In his case if I’d known what he had in that back room we might have had to pick our weapons out of his museum and go at it.  I had a lot of mixed feelings swirling around inside me when the news came out and he had his brief day in the sun.

I’d have never suspected it of him.  So he’s the exception proving the rule.  I’ve got everyone else figured out.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2000's, Adventure, America, History, Libraries, New Mexico, NM

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Just to clarify the JFK LBJ thing

Posted on September 3, 2013 by | 10 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Jeanne told me on the phone last night she was surprised by my several references to LBJ arranging for the death of JFK.  “I didn’t think you believed in conspiracies, for the most part.”

And for the most part she’s right.  I don’t believe human beings are honest enough and consistent enough to pull off successful conspiracies over the long haul.  Someone’s going to let the cat out of the bag.  And I think the cat has been coming out of the bag about the Kennedy assassination gradually for a considerable while.

I don’t know or care who was directly responsible for the Dallas shooting.  To me, JFK was just another US President, no better, no worse than the last several.  I’m not offended, not in any way exercized by the fact someone offed him.

But I do believe there’s a fair body of evidence LBJ knew ahead of time Kennedy was going to be killed.  And he knew who knew everything else about it.  Other than that he mightn’t have been involved, beyond giving it his tacit approval.

The LBJ Library in Austin has the tapes of all the White House LBJ telephone conversations of the time.  Here’s a conversation between LBJ and J Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, shortly after the Dallas event.  LBJ starts by grilling Hoover about why his friend John Connally, Governor of Texas, got a bullet.  Then he goes on to discuss how the investigation into the assassination can be kept small.

LBJ TAPES: Kennedy Assassination 1 (J. Edgar Hoover) .
http://youtu.be/4ZWERQevzms

Seems to me it’s clear that Hoover knew exactly who did the shooting and what the shooter intended to hit.  And that LBJ knew that Hoover knew.

The people who upload YouTube videos frequently intend to use the videos to help watchers interpret them as the uploaders think they should.  I believe this has happened with a number of the Kennedy assassination YouTube videos.  For instance, I don’t believe LBJ’s mistress knew whether LBJ engineered the killing of JFK.  But I believe it’s clear from what she describes that LBJ knew about the plans to kill Kennedy before it happened.

LBJ’s Mistress Blows Whistle On JFK Assassination .http://youtu.be/79lOKs0Kr_Y

Again, I don’t think this means LBJ told anyone to kill Kennedy.  He might just have tacitly approved of them doing it and agreed to keep his mouth shut.

By one of those strange coincidences of history, Richard Nixon, a man who hated Kennedy as much as anyone alive at the time, happened to have been in Dallas for a couple of days when Kennedy came to town.

November 21, 1963 – Richard M. Nixon in Dallas, Texas .
http://youtu.be/UkeCQWk9ID8

Nixon evidently believed there was a middling good chance LBJ had Kennedy shot, as he joked years later.

NIXON jokes about LBJ killing JFK .
http://youtu.be/OJIb73SPzkE

E. Howard Hunt, one of the guys who went to prison for the Watergate affair, admitted on his death bed he’d been involved in the Kennedy killing and named others.

E. Howard Hunt Outs Lyndon Johnson in JFK Assassination Plot
http://youtu.be/bD4611qW6R8

This one’s hokey and unreliable, but I think at least it can be said RFK probably believed LBJ had John Kennedy killed.

RFK to Johnson: “Why did you kill you have my brother killed
http://youtu.be/zzWNDPx4Pm0

The conversation you hear on tape isn’t about LBJ, JFK, though.  It’s about Hoover investigating RFK and whether RJK is trying to violently overthrow LBJ and the US Government by force.

Lyndon Johnson Admits To Walter Cronkite That He Killed Kennedy .
http://youtu.be/xd1wuXrVPjo

This Walter Cronkite interview with LBJ years later is probably the strongest testimony that LBJ didn’t actually give the orders for the killing.  But that he thoroughly believed there was a conspiracy involved involving several others.

As I’ve said, I don’t think it matters who was behind the Kennedy killing.  Nor why they did it.  But I don’t blame LBJ for being pissed Connally got shot with JFK.  Connally was still alive, knew a lot about LBJ and was able to talk.  LBJ needed to be able to assure Connelly it was an accident, him getting hit.

John Connally’s first interview after 11/22/63
http://youtu.be/cP04_lGjkO0

Collateral damages, no harm intended.  “Sorry old buddy.  Someone screwed up.”

And 50 years later, who the hell cares?  Human beings make lousy conspirators.  People eventually talk.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1960's, America, Government, History, Texas

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John F. Kennedy and Barbie go to Boston – 1962 – The rest of the story

Posted on September 2, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I promised the other day that I’d relate one more precious memory of John and Jackie Kennedy’s Boston adventure. 

A better way – Getting new royalty when the President croaks

So here it is.

All those men lined up along Boylston Street, including Julio, Tonyand I were still mesmerized by the thoughts of whether Jackie Kennedy would be an inspired bed partner.  The street between the police cordons was vacant for a moment, when suddenly the sound of a bell clanging brought our attention back.

Hell bent down empty Boylston came a vehicle pulling an open trailer.  A guy was on the back of the trailer ringing a huge bell mounted there, big bell.  Church bell sized, rather than locomotive sized.  On the side of the trailer was a huge sign, “KRUSHCHEV SAYS, ‘WE WILL BURY YOU!”

They zipped past us, hung a hard left around Boston Plaza, and swung in behind the emptying motorcade in front of the Plaza Hotel.  Still ringing that damned bell.  [Likely the granddaddy of the patriots of today, I’m thinking by hindsight.]

Friends and readers, this whole thing was not in keeping with the high standards Boston wanted in their welcoming Ken and Barbie to town.  Every cop on Boylston forgot about that yellow tape and ran across Boston Plaza, pulling their billy clubs out as they ran.  Wasn’t any time at all before that trailer was surrounded by Boston’s finest and all an observer could see was the backs of cops and a forest of billy clubs rising and falling.

They weren’t aiming for that bell, either.  Didn’t hear it clang one single time after the first club rose and fell.

But you’ve got to admit the guy had imagination and class.  A freaking liberty bell!  You surely don’t see that anymore.  All these teapartying occupiers just go around telling one another inane BS about what they think about guns and abortion and Wall Street.

If that guy with the liberty bell lived through the next five minutes after the cops got him, he might be still alive.  He could teach these modern jerks a thing or two about how to deliver messages to the Kens and Barbies.

Having some Secret Service or Homeland Security thug put a rifle bullet through your face before the cops arrived with mace and 20,000 volt non-lethal zappers to finish you off ought not deter anyone from a little display of class and imagination.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1960's, America, Government, Human Behavior, Politics

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Hey! How about them Rooskies?

Posted on September 2, 2013 by | 4 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

This guy in the White House is evidently really really really determined to do a humanitarian air strike against the next-door-neighbor to Israel.  He wants to do it so badly he’s even planning to ASK THE US CONGRESS to approve him doing it.  How’s that for adding a new side of presidential behavior?

But now this Rambo/Charles Atlas/Arnold Schwartzneigger guy running Russia’s saying he has an itchy trigger finger, too.  Says he ain’t going to put up with any one-upsmanship from the US guy in the White House when it comes to bombing the bejesus out of unlikely places.

So the burning question is this:

Can we still kill more Russians than they can kill of us? 

Now that they’re just a pissant rat hole more in Asia than Europe run by gangs of thugs that aren’t even all from the same families the way they are in the US, I’m betting they can’t nuke more than thirty, forty US cities.  And I’m betting too, that we can destroy several hundred Rooskie cities if it comes to it. 

Our Popeye is one hell of a lot tougher than their Bluto nowadays.

If those damned Rooskies don’t want us humanitarian bombing the bejesus out of Israel’s next-door-neighbors, maybe it’s time to cut them down a few notches, saturate them with some H-bombs for their trouble.

We can afford to lose a few dozen cities to protect our right to humanitarian bomb backwoods places like Syria.  Israeli lobbyists will work three shifts telling these straight facts to the US Congress next week.

I’m betting that, too.  But I won’t get any takers.  Nobody bets against a sure thing.

Old Jules

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Posted in Military, Politics

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