Author Archives: Old Jules

The Limerick Masters of Yesteryear – The Lost Artform

By the time I arrived at adulthood the state of the limerick as a masterpiece of the literary foil was in alarming decline.  Playboy Magazine attempted to inject new life into the medium during the 1960s and 1970s by paying $500 for limerick submissions accepted for publication.  The selection process was tough and they accepted only true masterpieces.

During those years I submitted no fewer than ten [10] limericks per month and never had one accepted.  Hundreds of limericks.  There was no place in Playboy for second-rate hacks.

While the artform requires a particular meter, the truly well-constructed one needs more.  Internal rhyming.  Puns.  Lilting beat to simulate waves on a beach.  A joy to the tongue and ear. 

To illustrate my point, here is perhaps the best limerick ever written, once published in Playboy:

The new cineramic emporium
Is not just a super-sensorium
But a highly effectual
Heterosexual
Mutual masterbatorium.

Every time I run those timeless words through my mind, I’m humbled.

I don’t know whether the image at the top of the page depicts a man who once wrote limericks and submitted them to Playboy.  He almost certainly could have.  Possibly should have.

He might have been a contender.

Old Jules

Philosophy by Limerick – The ‘Environmental Scientist’

http://spaceweather.com/

Build an arrogance fortress and man it.
Pretend you can save this old planet
You trivial beast
An infection of yeast
On the surface, too tiny to plan it.

Old Jules

The Pulse of US Concern Over Kings and Wannabe Kings

Hi readers.  Got a news flash here on the bumper-sticker issue that has all of you breathless and on the edge of your chairs.

Jeanne, the administrator for this blog, just returned to Kansas from a 10 day, 4300 mile motor trip to Washington and Oregon.  During the trip she was careful  to tally the political bumper stickers encountered on the highways both ways.  Finally finished tallying them up last night and faithfully reported the results to me:

The current King of the US:  3 each.  Two for this election, one for the last one.

The Wannabe King of the US:  1 each. 

Looks like a landslide victory for Long Live the King.  You can’t fight a popular movement.

Remember where you heard it first.

Welcome back, Jeanne.

Old Jules

The Fervent Hope of Climate Change Enthusiasts

Extent of surface melt over Greenland’s ice sheet on July 8 (left) and July 12 (right). Measurements from three satellites showed that on July 8, about 40 percent of the ice sheet had undergone thawing at or near the surface. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed by July 12. In the image, the areas classified as “probable melt” (light pink) correspond to those sites where at least one satellite detected surface melting. The areas classified as “melt” (dark pink) correspond to sites where two or three satellites detected surface melting. The satellites are measuring different physical properties at different scales and are passing over Greenland at different times. As a whole, they provide a picture of an extreme melt event about which scientists are very confident. Credit: Nicolo E. DiGirolamo, SSAI/NASA GSFC, and Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/greenland-melt.html

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

The people for whom climate change is central to their countless grant and research applications, and the people for whom NO climate change is central to their business models are probably both grinding their teeth in frustration.

Sooooo. All the academians, school kids being trained to believe they can do something to ‘save the planet’, other people who just enjoy the feel of shrill proclamations, jeremiads and threats of doom briefly danced in the streets.  Whoopteedoo!  Everybody’s going to die!

And the people with business models demanding they fervently deny climate change looked around for buildings high enough to jump from.

However, core sampling of the Greenland ice soon revealed this happens occasionally, last time maybe 150 years ago at a time when nobody claims human beings were causing climate change.

Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn.  Cry the people desparately wanting the ice caps to melt, sea levels to rise and all the coastal cities of the world to drown.

Ohboyohboyohboy! Applaud the folks with the business models requiring a continuation of the kinds of behaviors the other folks think cause man made climate change.

Changing horses in mid-stream isn’t easy, but sometimes it’s necessary.  Fact is, whether climate change is happening, is man made, is going to result in a disaster is just too large an object of comprehension to convincingly argue.  Suggesting academians and school kids can do anything to influence it one way or another is too patently absurd to convince anyone besides a grant review committee from the US Department of Environment.

Besides, there’s Genetic Engineered corn out there growing hair inside the mouths of test hamsters.  The same corn those school kids and academians are having for lunch.  http://aaemonline.org/gmopost.html

There’s a middling potential for glow-in-the-dark halibut, salmon and whales swimming up out of the north Pacific with butcher knives clinched in their teeth doing a mutant invasion of Alaska to California coastlines.  Time will argue a lot more convincingly and rapidly whether those happen, and if they do they’ll render questions about man made climate change more-or-less moot.

As for business models, there’s a lot of new potential for speculation and investment in new inventions.  An inside-the-mouth electric shaver, for instance, might represent the wave of the future.  Live flashlights made from mullets caught off the Oregon coast, not requiring batteries.  No need to stamp them, MADE IN JAPAN.  That will be obvious enough.

[Insert, “It’s an ill wind that blows no good”, “It’s time to look on the bright side of things,” and other appropriate quotes here.]

Old Jules

Philosophy by Limerick – Representative Democracy

An election where nobody came
‘Cause the candidates were the same
Would expose the collusion
Destroy the illusion
That YOU voting wrong was to blame.

Old Jules

Philosophy by Limerick – The Talk Radio Host

The trailer-parks listens and smiles
Echo his simplistic beguiles.
While those up on Wall Street
Applauded his drumbeat
Koch Brothers just sponsored his wiles.

Old Jules

Philosophy by Limerick – The Wall Street Banker

He wasn’t quite sated, inert.
401s left him wanting dessert.
The bailouts were tasty
But SS still wasty
His rhinestone mines couldn’t subvert.

Old Jules

Calamari Gumbo Over Saffron Rice

Hi readers.  Grocery stores always make my mouth water, but I actually got started thinking about calamari at the tire store.  Wandered over to the Chici Pizza Buffet, Senior Special $5, while I waited for them to mount and balance my new tire.  Thought an uncomfortable amount of pizza might rid my mind of calamari.

Went to the AutoZone for brake pads, found a pair for $10 and change, mind still in orbit around calamari.  Bent down for a look under the car to check out the oil leak as a precaution.  Going up the hill the lower clearance because of the donut sized spare caused a rock to puncture the oil pan, so I was keeping an eye on it.

That oil pan leak’s going to be a blessing until I can lift the car and whittle a wooden plug to stick in the hole.  Keeps me from having to change the oil.  I’ll just add oil, top it off as it goes down.  Voila.  Automatic oil change constant.

Anyway, went to the HEB and bought a few essentials, actually went by the fish department to have a look at the calamari, thinking actually seeing it might help rid my mind of it.  But it didn’t.

Meanwhile, I was over on the isle for bread and tortillas and a guy with a hand-carry basket walked up pretending he didn’t know his wife as she studied a shelf, took a big chuck roast out of his hand carry basket and stuck it in her backpack.  Looked me right in the eye.  Snake eyes.

His wife, kid in her shopping cart, edged to get around me.

“Hey man!  Let me show you something!  You like to barbeque?”

He gave me a what-the-hell look while I reached inside her backpack and took out the roast.  “See this crap?”  I held the roast out to him.  “Shoplifting meat is a felony in Texas.  They’ll barbeque her if they catch her.”

Asshole!”  He mumbled and turned back toward the meat section.

You going to stick around and take care of the kid, hotshot?”  I stayed on his heels.  “While she’s doing time you going to change the diapers?”

He ignored me, kept walking.

Screw it.

I cashed out and headed home.  Still thinking about calamari.  Calamari over saffron rice.  When I arrived I checked the freezer, but there wasn’t any calamari in there.  Must have used the last of it sometime before Y2K.  And I’ve been trying to cut down on my saffron intake.  Since around Y2K, as I recall.  Coincidence Coordinator thing.

Old Jules

Philosophy by Limerick – The Genius MBA

Made his money the hard way, inherited.
Went to Yale where he struggled and merited
Every cent that he earned
With his MBA, spurned
Do-nothings with slogans he parroted.

Old Jules

Spang Blew It!

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

Having a running vehicle I can just brush the cats off of, scare the chickens out from underneath and drive somewhere is surprisingly uplifting.  Not having to borrow Little Red wouldn’t seem to the disinterested observer to be that big a deal, but it is.

Got me feeling uppidy in ways I’m going to need to treat with circumspection and discipline so’s I don’t run myself dry buying gasoline for trips I wouldn’t have made in a borrowed machine.  But damn it feels good anyway.

Those trips to TimeWarpVille [Junction, Texas] trying to get something they’d accept at the courthouse as valid to transfer the title, trips to Kerrville trying to chase down the guy who sold it to me would have been frustrating teeth-grinding to me most of my life.  But they were pure joy, driving along looking at the country, looking at whatever, ignoring the 100+ F. wind blowing through the windows in favor of the freedom it represented.

So yesterday I thought of a reason to drive into Harper.  The day before I’d noticed a piece of the right front tire peeled back on the side, probably something on the driveway flipped up and cut it.  So I was being careful, occupying 30-35 MPH when it blew.  Got her stopped without ruining the rim.

Sweated blood and bullets getting the car up on the jack.  Crumpled a piece of the underbody before I found the secret, unlikely place the top of the jack has to go to lift it.  Discovered the spare is a wheelbarrow tire, which was under-inflated, but left part of an inch of inflated tire between the rim and the ground.  Inched that money-maker home at 2.5 miles per hour.

Gave me time to shoot gratitude affirmations for it all out to the Universe and Old Sol.  Because that blowout’s a major blessing.

When I pulled the tire off the brake disk rotor was exposed to me, badly eaten because there was nothing much like a pad.  Bare metal just grinding pleasant rings into the rotor.  A lot of people would probably replace that rotor, but I think I’ll try just buying pads.  No reason to get extreme, over-react, do anything dramatic. 

But if that tire hadn’t blown I’d never have noticed I had problem needed immediate attention, not to put off until the next Social Security pension check arrives to provide me a something for nothing entitlement [as these Texans are fond of calling it].

So today I’m going into Kerrville and buy me a spanking new tire, buy a set of brake pads, and even let the guys who sell me the tire put the new one on the ground.

Christmas.  It just don’t get much better than this.

Old Jules