Category Archives: 2013

Denouements

Posted on September 29, 2013 by | 3 comments

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

Certain types of problems seem to follow us through life, probably so’s the Universe can teach us whatever lessons it is we’re supposed to be learning during this one.  Frequently we’re slow coming to an understanding as to what ours are.  Mine, I suspect, probably are a consequence of karma acquired during a previous lifetime involving motor vehicles.

Which I hadn’t realized until I began looking at all the posts here involving transportation during my stay here.  One piece of that saga was the Toyota 4 Runner that carried me to this piece of real estate in 2008.  And became a subplot microsaga:

 Got me a new truck!

 Confession Time

The New Truck Resurrection

The Communist Toyota 4-Runner

A long one.  And one I’m finally going to apply a razor to.  I’ve found a guy who’ll follow me back out here next time I go to Kerrville, and put that 4 Runner onto a car dolly, pull it out of my life.

I went out and put the wheel back on it, took it off blocks and pushed it up the hill with the Toyota RV far enough so’s we’ll be able to get it onto the dolly.  Gale and the guy up the hill came out and improved the road enough yesterday with some machinery so’s a regular person will be able to get in and out of the valley without blowing a tire.

It’s not easy for me to part with that 4 Runner.  Lots of life history events trapped in it, but it’s clear enough the time’s come for a denouement.  Turns out I’ll be doing something similar with the Toyota RV, because Jeanne’s son, Michael’s decided it’s not the best option for him.

I’m willing to believe, for the moment, that when the 4 Runner goes out of this valley I’ll have poured enough of the life-ingredients into it to have filled whatever hole it was the vehicle challenges demanded of me this lifetime and I can have some other kind for a while.

Gracias, Jack

3 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Texas, Transportation, Trucks

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Being the luckiest man on the planet has a down side

Posted on September 27, 2013 by | 15 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

Those who read here, I assume, predominantly wish they could be me.  Most likely you think living the life I’m blessed with is all smooth sailing.  Figure all I have to do is remember to be grateful for the flat tires and 47 different ways to cook potatoes, 98 raman recipes, and clean the burrs out of the cat hair.

Sometimes I even think that’s true.  But the fact is, even the flood of blessings I enjoy in life become a trap.  Complacency slips in through the cracks and sometimes I forget to look for all the reasons those rough spots are actually a gift the Universe gives me, sometimes only as a reminder.

As an example, there’s a dragon lady in the courthouse in Timewarpsville who’s in charge anytime someone wants to try licensing or registering a trailer or motor vehicle.  I’ve found, if a person wants to get it done in fewer than three 100 mile round-trips he’d best find a time when she’s out to lunch and the other lady’s the one doing the business.

In the name of just doing her job that dragon lady can find more tees that need a 50 mile drive to cross and eyes that need dotting next trip any the average person who hasn’t experienced being Adolph Hitler could imagine.

But that’s okay.  That’s actually the Universe reminding me again I’m the luckiest man because, you see, I don’t have to be her.  Hells bells, I rarely even have to deal with her.  Don’t have to live in the same town, don’t have to have her for a relative, barely have to acknowledge such people are alive on this sphere and are part of the human species.

Sometimes I forget.  But that’s just the downside of being me.  Complacency.

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Human Behavior

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Time to switch hats

Posted on September 23, 2013 by | 9 comments

hatrack

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by.

I just want to remind those who might have forgotten it’s time to put aside that old sweat-stained straw and don your felt, or cloth hats.  Admittedly a lot of people don’t notice these days because they’re wearing ball caps sideways or backward, or just aren’t sensitive to delicate style issues.

Tilley

But the people who matter will notice.

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in 2013

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

“The men who write upon these walls,” mystery solved

Posted on September 22, 2013 by | 8 comments
The part about rolling it in little balls had scientists tearing their hair out. Putting periscopes under the partitions trying to catch someone doing it.

The part about rolling it in little balls had scientists tearing their hair out. Putting periscopes under the partitions trying to catch someone doing it.

If they'd looked at the floor they could have solved it decades earlier.

If they’d looked at the floor they could have solved it decades earlier.

Hi readers.  Scientists have finally solved one of the most puzzling mysteries of the 20th Century.  The poem beginning, “The men who write upon these walls,” found on the stall partitions in Mens’ rooms was a phenomenon more pervasive than the “Kilroy was here” riddle of the WWII era.

Now they can finally settle down to studying why the magnetic poles of earth wander around from hell to breakfast.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2013, Human Behavior, Nature, Science

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Fanaticism might be giving religion a bad reputation

Posted on September 22, 2013 by | 3 comments

Hi readers.  Here’s something to think about.

Even though they’ve created homelands for various religious fanatics, they still create a lot of problems.  For instance, the Shinto religion in Japan could be said to have been responsible for the WWII war in the Pacific, the Rape of Nanking and Shanghai, the slaughter of thousands of Filipinos, the Bataan Death March and other inconveniences.

Similarly, creating a homeland for Protestant religious fanatics in Northern Ireland has filled the news with trouble almost from the beginning.  Then there’s the Zionists and Israel, along with the Muslims in Palestine. 

For that matter, the State of the Vatican for Catholic religious fanatics has been the source of all manner of difficulties in the Americas and elsewhere over the centuries.

The reality is that it isn’t just in the homelands.  Religious fanaticism spreads all over history for the past 2000 years and refuses to stay within any boundaries.  Admittedly the symbiosis between ruling aristocracies and one-or-another religion, and instilling fanaticism into the peasants has done a good job keeping them in line, arousing them to go out chopping up the people the aristocrats point them at.

But most people would admit it’s gotten out of hand in some instances.

Maybe it’s time to sit down with religious fanatics of all varieties and have a prayer meeting.  Try to find out what it is makes them so violent and difficult to get along with.  Find out why they keep discommoding regular people by burning them at the stake, blowing them up, chopping them to pieces and other inconveniences.  Maybe there’s something we could do to keep them happier.

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2013, America

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

The good news behind the bad news

Posted on September 22, 2013 by | 2 comments

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

The news is always so full of Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious fanatics terrorizing one another we sometimes overlook the larger issues.  This is one example.

Look at the Kenya army troops in this picture. 

  • First thing you notice is they’ve got a lot of meat on their bones.  Obviously, once they kicked out the British these people had food left lying around they could eat and fatten up.  Same as the Irish.
  • Second thing you see is the weather’s cold, but these guys are dressed for it.  Looks as though they’re wearing US Marine Corps sweaters.  But all of them are bundled up, which means they had the means to do it.
  • Third, they’ve got helmet-liners which don’t look like the old NAZI coal-scoop ones from WWII nor the ones US troops wear now.  That means they’re not indiscriminately blowing up civilians for the hell of it.
  • Then there’s the boots.  Those are good boots.  Those boots weren’t taken off some civilian corpse.
  • Look at the weaponry.  Any gun nut in the United States would kill to get one of those rifles.
  • Okay, yeah, the truck they’re in doesn’t have a spare tire.  But hell, y0u can’t have everything.

Here’s a better look at the boots and trowsers of the troops.

Notice they’re mostly wearing pre-Vietnam combat boots, though one’s wearing Vietnam era ones, and one’s wearing desert boots.  Obviously they have some style choices.  But they’ve all got US Army fatigue britches from back when US military clothing was made from US cotton and sewn into uniforms by US workers.

Now, here’s the parking lot in front of the mall those Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious fanatics attacked.

Notice the automobiles.  The lousiest car in that picture is better than any I’ve owned in more than a decade.

Seems obvious once they ran the British out of Kenya things got a lot better, all in all.  At least in that part of Africa you can’t tell it from the US. 

Sure, they have problems with Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious fanatics.  But who the hell doesn’t?

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2013, America

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Finding something that rhymes with it

Posted on September 21, 2013 by | 3 comments

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

Boswell told the story of how he and Johnson were in a group with a lot of aristocrats when a woman sitting near Johnson passed noisy gas.  She immediately began rubbing her own leg against a table leg to create the illusion the noise was a friction sound vibration resulting from the two legs in two-part harmony.

“We heard you the first time, Lady.  You don’t have to find something that rhymes with it,” Johnson pointed out.

Which sums up a lot of the problems we human beings have trying to solve what we believe are our major issues on any day.  We fudge on our rhymes.  On big issues we’re especially bad about boxing ourselves into lousy rhymes.

For instance, after Roosky peasantry had been beaten and starved by their aristocrats a few hundred years they wanted to find something that rhymed with the French Revolution.  They talked about it endlessly, batted it around, finally created a poem with rhyme and rhythm of their own.

But it took Joe Stalin to write the last stanza.  The one about Napoleon.

For some reason that particular poem always ends with Napoleon.  Evidently no way of avoiding it.

Today in the US and a lot of the world the folks in power are trying to find something that rhymes with Edward II and the Dispensers.  The folks who aren’t in power are trying to find something that rhymes with the American Revolution.  And both agree there’s a sidebar hope of finding something that rhymes with the crusades.

You don’t hear much out of Washington DC about Edward II and the Dispensers these days, but you see a lot of attempts to find things that rhyme with it.  But nobody’s doing much thinking about the final stanza of that one, either.

For the ones trying to find the US Constitution behind trees and under rocks, the final stanza to the American Revolution was probably the Civil War.

I can’t recall the final stanza of the Crusades, but I suspect a piece of it had to do with the massacre and looting of the Templars [and Edward II and the Dispensers].

When human beings passed gas back in the time of Johnson, or Edward II, or the French Revolution I’m betting it smelled and sounded pretty similar to when they do it today.  We aren’t much better at rhyming today than we were then.

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2013, Education, Government, Human Behavior, Science

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Tokyo uppercrust fashion challenges of the future

Posted on September 20, 2013 by | 5 comments

Blue, or yellow? Which goes best with white? Which does the discriminating Tokyo party-goer find contributes to the alpha image?

Keeping up with the latest footware fads is becoming a challenge in Japan.  As the Nipponese citizenry leans increasingly to the clothing styles depicted in the photograph weighty fashion decisions will be required.

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 2013

Tagged , , , , ,

The First Church of Infanticide as a Chinese import

Posted on September 20, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by.

Even though the Biblical story of Abraham explicitly gives Jewish, Christian and Muslim parents the right to kill their children when God, or Old Sol instructs them to do it, many are surprisingly reluctant.  Christians, Jews and Muslims have all exercised a lot of circumspection on the issue.  No lawsuits have been filed contesting the right of government to forbid them to kill their kids when mandated by God, or Old Sol to do it.

Which probably happens a lot more frequently than anyone would imagine. 

However, a new faction of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim panorama has evolved in China applying the Abraham Mandate, but bypassing or rejecting everything related to Biblical Doctrine unrelated to the story of Abraham.  Initial surveys of parents inside the US suggest the new Church will be enthusiastically welcomed.

Chinese exporters and US importers agree the new denomination of Judeo-Christianity should prove a real moneymaker.  CDs and flash drives containing the voices of God, Old Sol, and even various pagan deities ordering parents to sacrifice their children are already being prepared to be sold in houses of worship.

The advantage to this new religion/financial opportunity is that all profits are tax-exempt, all prophets are welcome, and cottage industries in local communities turning out their own CDs and flash drives can easily be incorporated into local economies.

Old Jules

Leave a comment

Posted in 2013, America

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

5.9 magnitude earthquake strikes Fukushima Prefecture, near crippled nuclear plant

Posted on September 20, 2013 by | Leave a comment

An earthquake has evidently corrected the old abnormalities the Japanese were finding at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that was spewing and dumping radioactivity from hell to breakfast.  After the earthquake no new abnormalities were found.  Goes to show Mama Nature takes care of her own.   If humans can’t get those nukes with old abnormalities to quit being abnormal, she can toss in an earthquake or two, settle things right down so’s there are no new abnormalities.  Old Jules

http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/5-9-magnitude-earthquake-strikes-fukushima-prefecture-near-crippled-nuclear-plant/

September 20, 2013 – TOKYO (Kyodo) – A magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck Fukushima in the northeast early Friday morning, the Japan Meteorological Agency said, but no abnormalities were observed at the region’s nuclear power plants including the crippled Fukushima Daiichi, according to their operators. The focus of the 2:25 a.m. quake was around 17 kilometers underground in Fukushima Prefecture’s southern coastal region, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. No tsunami warning was issued. Seismic intensity ranged from 1 to upper 5 on the scale of 7 in the Japanese measurement system from northeastern to central Japan. The highest reading of upper 5 was recorded in Iwaki city in Fukushima Prefecture, while lower 5 was logged in other parts of Fukushima and Ibaraki prefectures. Tokyo and Narita city registered intensity 3. A Japan Meteorological Agency official told a news conference that the quake was an aftershock of the magnitude 9 quake that devastated northeastern Japan in 2011 and warned that a temblor measuring up to 4 in intensity could occur within a week.
Iwaki firefighters said a 62-year-old woman suffered light shoulder injuries at her home in the city when she got out of bed in surprise following the quake. A 32-year-old woman in Iwaki also sustained minor foot injuries from a shattered mirror, they added. No new abnormalities were observed in measurement data from the nuclear reactors and other equipment at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station or from radioactivity monitoring posts there. Readings were also normal at the nearby Fukushima Daini plant, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co. The Daiichi plant was crippled by the massive quake and tsunami in 2011. Japan Atomic Power Co. said no abnormalities were confirmed at the Tokai No. 2 nuclear power plant in Ibaraki Prefecture. A few sections of highways in the region were closed to traffic, according to highway operators. A quake measuring upper 5 on the Japanese scale hit Ishinomaki in northeastern Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture on Aug. 4. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the Fukushima Daiichi on Thursday and urged TEPCO to scrap the remaining two reactors in addition to four other units the utility is taking steps to decommission. – Mainichi

 

Leave a comment

Posted in 2013