Monthly Archives: September 2014

A matter of perspective – Photoshopped beheading isn’t necessarily permanent

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

People tell one another, or are told, and naturally come to believe there’s something barbaric about beheading as a form of execution.  Which is merely an example of cultural brainwashing, as opposed to the reality of barbarism.  I’m trying to recall how many British nobility I could actually name who exited the vehicle by that method.  A fair lot.

And as long as the French used the death penalty, up well into the 20th Century, the guillotine was the tool of choice because headsman skills with an axe were iffy, at best.  But the while French have never been precisely non-barbaric, barbarism isn’t one of the traits everyone else likes least about them.

Anyway, so these folks in the Middle East who aren’t Israeli citizens are possibly beheading some people they want to kill instead of shooting them or blowing their arms and legs off with artillery.  That probably isn’t a defining behavior separating barbarians from non-barbarians.  As nearly as I can tell everyone in the Middle East, including Americans visiting there, US military, Israeli, Muslim, you name it, is either barbaric, or is closely related to barbarians by blood.

So, Steven Sotloff.  Maybe the what?  Islamists?  Killed this Israeli with a dual-citizenship that included the United States and stood a middling good chance of also being a Mossad agent.  Sotloff.  Maybe.

If Sotloff’s dead, and if he’s dead from being beheaded, and if it was Islamists who beheaded him, well, heck.  They thought he was an Israeli!  A Mossad agent!  What would any non-Israeli in that part of the world do if they caught a Mossad agent?  They’d be crazy not to.

But you can’t trust anything that comes out of that part of the world.  A growing body of opinion among conspiracy theorists has both of those recent orange jumpsuited beheadings as photoshopped phonies.  Among those believing that, a lot also believe the studio where the beheading video drama was created is in Israel.  And that if anyone is dead as a result, the cadavers are in Israel.

 If, in fact, these individuals are dead, then it is up to the Israeli government to return their bodies. If, as is much more likely the case, at least one or these videos is a hoax, a hoax with dead victims, a hoax with live victims, but certainly a hoax, no doubt about that, some authority inside Israel, preferably one not directly involved in the hoax itself, should investigate, should such an authority exist at some point in the future, which we find unlikely.

We have had so many hoaxes all out of Israel, all from the same people, all sent through the same scammers in the US, that getting to the bottom of this one took less than five minutes. Think “Rita Katz.”

This is the third outing for the designer orange silk “jump suits” thus far. Last year they were the rage in Tel Aviv shops, today they are all about beheadings. There is one problem, not that Alex Jones and InfoWars reporting the Foley beheading was a phony, a position the US State Department is now reconsidering as well, warned us off the story.

The problem is “Site Intelligence,” better known to insiders as “bin Laden Studios,” the Israeli video fakery group that kept turning out bin Laden videos, short fat bin Ladens, old ones, young ones, then, eventually, only audio tapes, as though bin Laden, confirmed to have died in 2001 after denying, according to the CIA, all involvement in 9/11, had magically come back to life.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/09/02/make-israel-stop-beheading-journalists/

So, the burning question is, is a fake beheading still barbaric?  Is it only barbaric if Muslims fake the video, or is it also barbaric if Israeli photoshoppers trump it up for reasons almost certainly manipulative at a level nearing barbarianhood?

Nevermind all those 40,000 people with destroyed homes in Gaza, the be-leggings and be-armings of children, women, old folks, even [gasp] regular non-Hamas men killed and maimed of late.

I’m only interested in barbarism of a particular nature.  I want it clean and well lighted, performed by Arab-looking people.

Old Jules

Masa harina as a no sodium pizza crust

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I probably mentioned sometime that I’ve been having dreams about pizza.  The odor and the taste creep into my brain unexpectedly and sometimes I have to threaten myself with a pistol to keep from picking up the phone and ordering a large pepperoni or anchovies delivered.  Aside from me being dead when Jeanne arrived home from work after I sneaked around and did it, she’d never know.

One slice of pizza of any sort anywhere exceeds my 2-gram limit for each day.

Well, I’m wanting to avoid having to shoot myself in the hand or ear to keep from phoning in for a combination pizza.  So I’ve been working on developing a non-sodium, or low sodium substitute.

The filling, I’ve got whipped.  I told you before about my onion ice cubes and my tomato ice cubes.  I used two of each, and might have added one more.  When they were melted I used a lot of minced garlic, turmeric, oregano, cilantro, and ancho pepper.  Mixed them all together and poured them over a couple of slices of zero-sodium bread that’s awful, otherwise unfit for human consumption.

Okay, that stuff is the filling, and it is damned tasty.Roll out a quarter pound of ground beef into silver-dollar sized pieces and season the hell out of them to simulate pepperoni.  Space them around on the surface of the rest of the filling.

Now roll out the real crust using half-cup of masa harina pressed out thicker than tortillas, but not much thicker.  About a quarter-cup plus a tablespoon of water mixed with the masa.

Position that filling onto the crust and shove the entire shebang into the oven at 450 F for as long as it takes for the odor to remind you something’s in the oven.  Probably 20-30 minutes.

This is just the beginning, and you might need to make modifications based on personal tastes and the way your oven behaves itself.  But there’s no need to kill yourself out of desperation for a damned pizza just because it would kill you to eat one.

Make the damned thing from scratch and cheat the undertaker.

Old Jules

 

More collages from last summer~

Jeanne is trying to pack 200 years of living into her three-score-and-ten [plus or minus]. Working two jobs is certainly practical [as well as necessary to meet expenses] but stuffing art projects into the cracks between jobs might be seen as somewhat extreme by some. People, for instance, who have no jobs and just do what they want, such as me. Or people who work only 40-50 hours a week at some job. During my stay here I’ve watched her scurrying from the day job to eat before running off to a night job, coming home around 9:30-10:00 pm, and always with a quick answer to the question, “How you feeling?” Tired, she’ll inevitably answer. Anyway, here’s what she squeezed into her days this summer. J

Jeanne Kasten Studio

Here are a few more postcards I made this last summer. The first one was made from a 78 record cover:June 2, 2014 (6)
I’ve seen other people use old stamps on photos of other people. So I combined stamp faces with an old pattern envelope. I had lots of fun with this one, and now I’m collecting face stamps for future variations!
July 8, 2014 (2)

I combined pieces from two magazines for this one. I’m not sure why Elsie was asking questions about husbands, but that line really was part of the Borden ad.

July 9, 2014 (7) - Copy

Here’s one I’m particularly pleased with. I added a couple of “stamps” that weren’t originally on the packages, as well as the other oddities.

June 7, 2014 (3)

And one more, which started out as an ad for State Farm Insurance. I got to use up some of my sticker collection for this one.

June 7 2014b
It’s hard to find the time to spread out all my…

View original post 31 more words

Veterans Administration: How many guns do you own?

All over the US VA Hospitals/Medical Centers are under investigation for incompetence, waste, negligence, malfeasance and misfeasance, brutality and being a cruel farce.  Turns out the San Antonio VA Medical Center is under investigation for precisely the same [failure to treat patients in a timely manner] reasons I entered a private hospital in Kerrville, Texas in January after several weeks of non-treatment and non-diagnosis at the VA Odessa and Big Spring VA Medical facilities during November and December, 2013

All over the US VA Hospitals/Medical Centers are under investigation for incompetence, waste, negligence, malfeasance and misfeasance, brutality and being a cruel farce. Turns out the San Antonio VA Medical Center is under investigation for precisely the same [failure to treat patients in a timely manner] reasons I entered a private hospital in Kerrville, Texas in January after several weeks of non-treatment and non-diagnosis at the VA Odessa and Big Spring VA Medical facilities during November and December, 2013

Hi readers.  I’d made mental notes to mention this, either on the blog, or to some other veterans, anyway.  Ask them whether they’d encountered the same phenomenon.

I first encountered it at the Odessa, Texas, VA medical facility when I was parking my RV at Eddie Brewer’s in Andrews while trying to get the VA to check out my medical problems.  Which they never did while I visiting them at that facility, but they did take a urine sample, did some blood work.  And asked one hell of a lot of questions.

Those people spent at least an hour asking me whether I’d done any recreational drugs, which I admitted I had.  Whether I’d had much recreational sex, which I again admitted I had.  Whether I’d ever considered suicide, which I’m not certain how I answered.  And the entire pantheon of other questions I didn’t consider any of their business.

Including, “How many guns do you own?”

I’ll have to confess I don’t always tell the truth when I’m asked such questions as those, but particularly when questions are asked about my ownership of firearms.  I’ve indulged in falsehoods.  And I’d done so on so many different occasions and in so many different ways I honestly can’t recall whether I own any guns, or don’t.

Anyway, when Odessa and Big Spring Veterans Administration Medical Facilities convinced me around Christmas of 2013 they had no intention of trying to know more than I told them about my physical problems, I went back to Kerrville, Texas.  Checked into the local hospital emeergency room, which most of you readers will recall from this blog.

And when a week inside that one didn’t clear up my confusion about what was wrong with me, I got into the RV and drove far enough north for Jeanne’s sons to bring me to KC.  Where I spent another week or so in the hospital and actually learned a lot about my condition.

Enough, I hoped, to give the VA another try insofar as treatment.  VA Kansas City, it was.

And here’s the untanglement of the entire reason for this post, other than taking another opportunity to whine about what a weakling unhealthy specimen I’ve become.

Damned KC VA Medical people sat my ass down early in the process and asked me all those same questions I’d been asked in Odessa.  And again wanted to know how many guns I own.  And again I can’t recall how I answered them, except I’m fairly certain I denied owning any.

And maybe I was telling the truth, maybe not.  I honestly don’t know and don’t plan on finding out anytime soon.  What the hell do I care whether I own any guns?  It ain’t as though I’m going on any shooting rampage or need to stick up a convenience store.  If I ever discover I need to own a gun I’ll try to muster the energy to dig around in my belongings somewhere.

But hells bells, with bullets so expensive I couldn’t afford to buy a magazine-full so’s to be able to stick up a liquer store anyway.  I might as well point my finger from inside my jacket pocket at them and swear in a loud voice, “This is a screwup!  Don’t be a hero!”

The VA didn’t ask me whether I had any ammo for the hypothetical firearms I don’t have any of.

Old Jules

Russian One-Upsmanship on Good American Ingenuity

Hi readers.  If you’re like me you’ve been admiring Rokon motorcycles from the 1970s onward, but never got around to purchasing one.  Damn it all.  Made more sense than any trail bike ever manufactured.  Good old American ingenuity.

So what happened?  The Rooskies did Rokon one better.  Built it out of ceramic frame members instead of steel, made it so light Barbie can lift it over her head and trek up a mountain with it.

Tarus 2M (Military Russian Motorcycle)-floats, packs, portable and gets you wherever you need to go

Meanwhile Rokon’s just kept glitzing it up, driving the cost up and not really adding anything essential.  $795 would buy the first Rokon I ever saw for sale.  Today they probably might as well only be sold to the defense industry and celebrities.

Tim Ralston’s Rokon Field Test

The Fantastic Foreign Flip-Flop Flim-Flam

My stock of foreign flipflops was left in Texas, readers. I’ve been reduced to buying and wearing cloth tennis shoes for $7.95 from Walmart. And it turns out they hold up better than a pair of $20 flipflops and don’t stink any worse any sooner. Worth knowing. Jack

So Far From Heaven

There’s a grave crisis looming, readers.  Time was when good American foots were protected by good American-made flip-flops.  They never failed.  Those old timey flip-flops lasted until they’d absorbed so much foot odor a hog would turn up its nose at them.  Normal landfills rejected them, demanded they be treated as hazardous waste.

But that’s all changed.  You see how those straps come out?  See how the layers of soles separate, sneakily intended to render the entire thing useless?  That’s the Asian plan for taking over the flip-flop world.

They think there’s nothing a good American can do about it, but they’re wrong.   If you can remember to pick up some Gorilla Glue you can make those babies run until they stink, just like the good American ones did.  In the top pic you can see those had been glued, but not sufficiently and the soles peeled open elsewhere.

I…

View original post 70 more words

The Logical Ultimate Extreme – Those damned plastic dunes on Titan

Thanks to the orbital eccentricities of Saturn and its moon Titan, the equatorial dunes – made of sandlike plastic – appear to be going the wrong way. NASA Cassini radar

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Most of you have probably spent a lot of time pondering those drifting dunes of plastic the NASA Cassini craft discovered on Saturn’s moon, Titan.  http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/05/plastic-wrong-way-dunes-arise-saturn-moon-titan.  And most of you have probably concluded, rightly, that it’s spillover from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch finally having reached Saturn.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch Continues to Grow http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/giant-garbage-patch-pacific-20140817

It’s obvious that all those plastics partially digested by Mother Earth in the stomach of her ocean have been belched into outer space moving hastily enough to reach Titan and create drifting dunes.  Before Cassini arrived.

Which means NASA will be spending a lot of time in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch placing hopeful spacecraft in the way of earth belches.  The NASA budget cuts and ending most government funded space ventures makes earth belches the only practical means of sending anything of US origins into outer space.

But of course there’s another alternative explanation for those dunes of drifting plastic on Titan.  It’s the one the government doesn’t want you to know about because it confirms the existence of the Dreaded Green Men.  A whole civilization of them beginning, climbing to the top of their food chain, inventing plastics, and creating ocean garbage patches of their own.

Yeah, you read that right.  The reason those damned Titanians came to earth and crashed at Corona, New Mexico in 1947 was that they were looking for some empty space in the solar system where they could dump their damned plastics.

Hell, who do you think came up with the idea of selling water in bottles for a dollar each?  That idea didn’t originate on a planet 2/3 covered with water.  The entrepreneurs and engineers on earth reverse-engineered the whole concept from the Roswell UFO crash.  Along with memory metal frames for eyeglasses.

 

Old Jules