Category Archives: 2013

Good morning readers.

Hanging around an RV during a week-long ice storm is a good time for a person to boil down blessings and scrape them off the bottom of the pot.  I’d been doing a lot of reading nights before the water froze, but reading requires a level of involvement I was decreasingly able to maintain what with various uncertaintainties nagging for my attention.

So when I went in to Andrews to get my new tires put onto the ground I swung by an Alco store, which is the be all and end all in Andrews for certain types of purchases.  Bought a box of movie DVDs called Nifty Fifties for a few bucks.  50 movies from back when.

Nights if my attention span doesn’t feel up to reading I watch a movie.  Saw one a few nights ago with Sydney Portier and Eartha Kitt, him being an African firebrand leader named Obam, which was worth the price of admission.

But last night I saw Chained Forever, or something of the sort.  Two sisters joined at the hip, a Vaudeville singing act, trying to make lives of themselves in a world where the rules of behavior assume a lot about the rule-followers not being joined at the hip.

One of the sisters ‘falls in love’ with a marksmanship act guy who might have returned her affection had it not been for the party of the third part they’d have to drag along.  All manner of difficulties with laws, also, trying to get marriage licences for the party of the first part and the party of the second part while ignoring the party of the third part without any bigamy issues.

Fun movie, though daft.

Fact is, being joined at the hip just ain’t that uncommon.  Jack and Bobby Kennedy became joined at the hip at some point during the late 1950s and nobody even noticed.  George Bush Sr. and George Bush Jr. were joined at the hip similarly but it mostly just manifested itself in wars in Iraq and other matters.

Hillary Clinton, Janet Reno and Bill Clinton were all joined at the hip though nobody noticed until the Army, National Guard, FBI, and a million television cameras bunched up around Mount Pleasant outside Waco, Texas.  The joined-at-hip condition became more obvious afterward at Ruby Ridge, various real estate shennanigans, CIA importing cocaine into Arkansas airstrips for the trio, etc.

In fact, when you think of it a lot of modern life is dedicated to snooping out people who aren’t yet joined at the hip to something, or someone, and getting the knot tied to reduce the amount of trouble anyone’s likely to cause.  Sending them off to penal institutions for certain factions, joining the military for others, becoming rabid fans of this or that celebrity, music genre.

Time was joining at the hip was simpler.  People just got married.  But that was back before the age of enlightenment and marriages tended to last longer.  Now for any duration the joining at the hip has to cut a wider swath.

The way the Democrats and Republicans have blazed the trail for joined at the hip inclusiveness might well be the wave of the future.  Imagine.   Everyone finally agreeing at the bottom of things they’re just following the mandate of their hips, pulling the same direction despite themselves.

Old Jules