Author Archives: Old Jules

The National Synthetic Grief Olympics [NSGO] Deadline

Posted on September 9, 2013 | Leave a comment

Here we are with 9/11 coming up again. Spang caught me by surprise. Maybe the post from last year will keep the wolves away from the door. Old Jules

So Far From Heaven

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

This is just a reminder.  If you, or your community, plan to enter the NSGO this year, time is running out.   For the orchestrated [team] events the competition is going to be stiff and the weather’s likely to be hot. 

Parades might be out of the question unless your community is prepared to haul off horseflesh collapsed on the streets and fried to the pavement.  Evening candlelight services conducted a few hours after sundown might be a better option.  That will allow the darkness to hide the furtive yawns while the names are being read from the podiums and so on.  It will also take a lot of the pressure off those who’d prefer to go home and watch television after they’ve carefully shown their faces and pronounced themselves present and grief-stricken. 

Slipping away to the car in darkness will maintain the illusion…

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Andrew JacksonCare – Brute force over asking the Supreme Court

Posted on September 9, 2013 | Leave a comment

Hi readers.

Probably a good case can be made for Andrew Jackson being the lousiest president the US ever suffered. It might even be said his decision to use brute force against South Carolina in 1837, instead of asking the Supreme Court whether a State is allowed to nullify its agreement to be part of the Union, was the cause of the Civil War.

Certainly President Thomas Jefferson believed States had the right to secede. President James Madison waffled some on the subject, but might also have believed it. Daniel Webster still believed it in 1890.

The reason the answer wasn’t obvious was in the document preceding the US Constitution, the Articles of Confederation. Those 13 entities agreed to a permanent union. But the Articles of Confederation were nullified by the new US Constitution. And the new Constitution didn’t say a damned word about it being permanent.

So when the Tariffs of Abomination were passed by a majority of states, putting several into one hell of a pinch, South Carolina first protested, screamed, begged, stamped its feet, and finally declared itself no longer part of the Union.

That would have been a good time to settle the question. President Andrew Jackson could have asked the US Supreme Court to decide whether a State had the right to withdraw. But Andrew Jackson didn’t give a tinkers damn what was legal nor what was Constitutional. Andrew Jackson was a point-of-the-gun man, proved it when he moved the tribes across the continent at the point of a gun after agreeing they’d be okay if they’d put down their guns.

So President Andrew Jackson, instead of asking the Courts whether South Carolina had to stay in the Union, asked the same states who’d passed the Tariffs of Abomination whether they’d pay to send 100,000 troops to South Carolina to keep them quiet and hungry.

Andrew JacksonCare. Soon to be followed by Abraham LincolnCare.

Or, “How to get your face onto a piece of US currency“.

Old Jules

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When the US Civil War was still hot off the presses – Horace Greeley 1866

Posted on September 9, 2013 | 8 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by.

Exciting stuff. A couple of blocks away from where Jeanne lives there’s an auction house in Olathe, KS. Every Saturday evening when the auction ends they put all the stuff that didn’t sell out in the parking lot for anyone who wants it, then haul what’s left to the dump.

Jeanne goes over there when she can catch it at the opportune time and finds all sorts of goodies. It’s where she found Lighthorse Henry Lee’s Memoire which caused me multiple organisms when she sent it to me. Maybe the last time in human history it will be read, and my pleasure being the one to do it.

Now a new crisis as arisen. Saturday night she found Volume 2 of Greeley’s history of the Civil War published in 1866. 700 plus pages of razor-edged northern perspective of the Civil War.

Hot diggidy damn. Multiple organisms again, just knowing that when I get settled down where I can have her sending me reading material sometime somewhere I’m damned likely to become the last person in human history to read Horace Greeley’s hot-off-the-presses Civil War.

Life is good. Even life that hasn’t happened yet and will have to wait a while.

Old Jules

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Abraham Lincolncare – A realistic way to remember US Presidents

Posted on September 9, 2013 | 2 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

I keep hearing about something called WossnameCare, which I don’t know what is and honestly don’t want to know.  Anything that names itself after a US president tends to arouse suspicion for me.  Strikes me as an attempt by someone who sees himself as the most powerful person in the world to inject his name into history books, along with a particular slant.  The fact an enormous lot of US citizens are opposed to is suggests it would be worthy of a lot of careful study before anyone formed an opinion.

But it also brings to mind something I believe is a flaw in the way we remember US presidents of the past, figuring out whether they did anything good, and remembering them for that.  The entire world and the citizenry of the US would probably be better served if we all remembered US presidents for the absolutely awful, terrible, long-range disasterous things they did and decisions they made.  An object lesson to anyone holding that office as a warning he’ll be remembered by history for his follies.

A few examples, in case I’m not expressing myself clearly.

Franklin Rooseveltcare might be a good place to begin.  Roosevelt gave us the Manhattan Project and the nuclear bomb.  Franklin Roosevelt can be said to be responsible for the Cold War Mutual Assured Destruction, that whole nest of horrors, as well as all that damned radiation contamination the Japanese are dumping into the sky and the Pacific Ocean.

Harry Trumancare.  The endless serious of undeclared presidential wars he began.

Lyndon Johnsoncare.  The Vietnam War legacy and more importantly, the welfare state.

Richard Nixoncare.  A Chinese toaster in every kitchen and a dead US toaster-making industry.

Ronald Reagancare.  Generations of an endless War on Drugs, a prison industry and the US becoming the country with more prisoners held in prisons than any other country in the world.

Bill Clintoncare.  The careful planting and nurturing of the US police state.

Father and Son Bushcare.  Endless wars and military adventures in the Middle East.

US presidents are in office because they are attracted to the thought of being the most powerful person in the world.  US presidents want their names in history books.  Naturally most of them are functionally illiterate and haven’t spent a lot of time reading history books.  They just have to ride along on gut feel and what they think previous presidents are praised for doing, remembered for doing.

And if US presidents are remembered for the ways they’ve managed to convert the United States to the country it has become, is still becoming, they might well take a deeper look at what they are about.  Give a few thoughts to consequences.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, America, Government, Politics

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The swallows return to Capistrano

Posted on September 7, 2013 | 2 comments

Banjo Duel

Bobby squeals like a pig

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Posted in Adventure

Bobby’s over there squealing like a pig in the White House

Posted on September 7, 2013 | 24 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.  Apologies in advance to those of you who never saw or read Deliverance.

One of the problems that comes from ten generations of intermarried first cousins running the country is they all begin to think it’s about Dueling Banjos.  They start believing it’s perfectly natural Bobby’s over there squealing like a pig.  Nobody wants to rock the canoe.

But at the moment the reason Bobby’s over there in the White House squealing like a pig is that Saudi Arabia and their cousins in Israel are pressuring the hell out of him to bomb their other cousins in Syria.  Same as they’re doing over there in Congress where they understand all about squealing like pigs for the White House, Israel, Saudi Arabia, anyone with the money to buy a quickie.

It’s all become a habit.  Nobody 75 years ago would have dreamed there’d come a time when the President of the US could believe he could bomb the bejesus out of anyone he wanted to anytime he wanted to without anyone raising an eyebrow.  Nobody would have believed US Presidents could take the country into a series of endless wars without consulting Congress.  Nobody would have believed any president could believe he could do it and get by with it.

But that all changed with a lot of other things.  And now we’ve got a guy in the White House hysterical because he wants to give a war and nobody’s willing to come.  Standing on one leg, then the other saying he’s going to get permission from Congress, then saying he doesn’t have to.  Saying he’s the only one needs to pick the tune for all of us.

And all those hydrocephalic banjo players over in Congress listening to Israel lobbyists handing them nice stuff under the table, Saudi Arabian lobbyists giving them free trips to Tahiti and porn stars in their hotel rooms to help them remember where their loyalty belongs.

Meanwhile, the world’s died laughing and decided they’ve had enough of US Presidents and their big-headed advisors telling them who needs the bejesus bombed out of them.  Which puts Bobby into a hell of a fix.

Bobby knows if he doesn’t do what Israel and Saudi Arabia tell him to do, he’s got a Vice President who will.  He knows he can be LBJed same as Kennedy was.  LBJed and J. Edgar Hoovered by one of the packs of goons and snipers he’s helped put into place on all the rooftops.  He never figured he’d be the one in the crosshairs he helped create.

It’s no wonder he’s squealing like a pig.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, America, Government, History, Military, Police, Politics

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Clearing up all this BS about the prez

Posted on September 5, 2013 | 3 comments

Hi readers.   Thanks for coming by.

I used to see I don’t know, bumper stickers, signs, something stirring up doubts about whether the prez was born in the US.  Haven’t seen them for a while.

But I went over to Yahoo News to see who was puffing out his chest most about Syria this morning and came across something I think will clear things up.  Saw a pic of the father of the prez, or his brother.  Obvious and indisputable.

It was under the headline, Real Estate Mogul to give $200 Million to U. of Michigan.  http://news.yahoo.com/real-estate-mogul-200m-u-michigan-204130688–finance.html

Says the guy’s name is Stephen Ross and he’s a NY real estate salesman, owner of the Dolphins.  That would be some ball club or hockey team, I figures.  Reading a little further it’s obvious it is a ball club of some kind.

Anyway the guy looks just like the prez, the way all that passle of Kennedys looked alike, and all those Bushes.

It’s been a long time since anyone’s been able to say with any certainty who the biological father of anyone was, though the mothers tend to be a sure thing.  But with those Kennedys, those Bushes, and with this guy now there shouldn’t be any doubt anymore.

Hope this eases the minds of any of you who worry about that sort of thing.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, Human Behavior

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J. D. Salinger needs a good horse-whipping

Posted on September 4, 2013 | 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 | 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 | 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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