Category Archives: 2013

No point being utopian about this. Just lean back and expect it. Don’t waste anger and indignation on inevitability

Hi readers.  When I read this and sensed One Fly’s outraged sensibilities I had to pause and ask myself why I didn’t feel any of the same.  The answer came as a surprise to me.  I EXPECT this type of behavior from law enforcement personnel.  Here and everywhere else.  I’m not utopian enough to get pissed about it.

Old Jules

And You Think You Have Rights When It Comes To Those Who Have A License To Kill At Will

 
I stay so far away from these bastards as to not give them them a reason. This happened on 1/2/13 and why it has not been given any attention before I don’t know. An incidence such as this is beyond disgusting and certainly criminal on the part of these badges in Deming,NM. This has to be some of the worst outside of killing you these fuckers can do to people.What’s important to understand these hoods equipped with uniforms/guns and that license to kill at will can do shit like this all over the country if they choose. And many on the left think there is progress being made and changes for the better will happen. We are so screwed and few see it.Routine traffic stop results in nightmare 14-hour anal cavity search for man driver who ‘failed to halt at stop sign’Here is some of what this innocent man was subjected to. Yes there’s a lawsuit but damage done and the fact that “We the People” literally have no power if you are unfortunate to enter this world of depravity/uncaringness plus (how sick this is) lawlessness. JESUS H. CHRIST anyway WTF! You dirty bastards. This is a local link below.

1. Eckert’s abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.  
2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.
3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.  
4. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool.  No narcotics were found.
5. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a second time.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool.  No narcotics were found.
6. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a third time.  Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers.  Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool.  No narcotics were found.
7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.  
8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert’s anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines.  No narcotics were found. 

 

DST time change toasts another Timex

After two years the band will need replacement.  Odor, not wear will motivate you.  At three years the steel-appearing case begins to dissolve.  Underneath is a rough synthetic material which, when exposed to shirt sleeves, wears them out.

After two years the band will need replacement. Odor, not wear will motivate you. At three years the steel-appearing case begins to dissolve. Underneath is a rough synthetic material which, when exposed to shirt sleeves, wears them out.

Hi readers.

Several years ago, five years if memory serves, I bought this watch because my previous Timex Expedition refused to turn loose of the stem when I tried to set in the new DST time.  I forced it and the watch upchucked the entire stem.

I saw this one coming.  The case is far advanced toward dissolving entirely.  I never mess with the stem until time change because I like to get as many minutes and hours out of my watches as possible.

But Jeanne sent me an email yesterday telling me it’s time change time again.  So around 3 am pre-time change I woke, stepped outdoors to pee, and glanced at my watch.  Remembered I needed to change the time.

Yawn.  Began fighting to pull the stem out just enough to set the watch.  Stuck.  Got my pocket knife, pried it out, just a little.  Date window spun, hands of the watch thumb their noses at me.

Sheeze.  Found a small pair of needle nose pliars.  Carefully carefully carefully pull the stem.  Spang!  Whole damned stem-rod came out.

So it seems I’m going to be visiting the WalMart watch department.  Find me a new damned Timex Expedition.   They’re up to $28.95 on Amazon.  Probably save a bit a week from now when they have their DST replacement sale.

Old Jules

 

Why Snowden blew the whistle

Snowden made a grave sacrifice for you, me, us.  He was a person who knew all about computers, electric telephones, all kinds of technology things and what’s going on with FaceBook and Yahoo News and blogs.

He knew when you look down the isles in grocery stores and see people squinting at cans, plastic bags, bottles in one hand, talking on cell phones in the other, the NSA was listening.  Recording.  Storing.  Every word.  Every background noise.  Preserving it for the future.

Snowden worried about that because every moment a million calls between the same sorts of people as those in the grocery store isles are also being recorded, listened to, stored, preserved.  Along with the background noises.

And Snowden knew at a visceral level that anyone who’d want to listen to those calls, record them, store them, could only be profoundly insane.  And anyone working for the profoundly insane person who conceptualized it would also soon be insane after being exposed to the prospect, the concept and the reality.

Snowden also knew countless millions of happy faces and inspiring thoughts fly around the internet every moment.  Billions of inspiring platitudes.  Trillions of “I heart my [fill in blank]” messages and touching pictures of puppies, kittens, and baby whales. 

Snowden knew no nation could survive the onslaught of such chaos except by trying to ignore it.   Listening, recording, storing it to preserve it for the future is the most dangerous activity in the history of mankind, and not only because it’s being done by sociopaths, psychopaths and otherwise osterized brains.  Noone, Snowden knew, in his right mind would ever even consider such a thing.

Snowden had to try to save the planet.

Old Jules

Why Napoleon’s troops shooting the nose off the Sphinx with artillery in 1799 was a good thing

Hi readers.

A lot of you probably think the world would have been just as good a place if Napoleon’s troops hadn’t shot the nose off the Sphinx practicing with artillery in 1799.  You might even think if they’d just stayed home in France and shot the noses off every Frenchman they could catch the world would be better off?

In the interest of science, Napoleon's troops couldn't know what would happen up there without shooting some artillery at it to find out.  Same as Hiroshima and Nagasaki later on.  Theories are worthless unless they're tested.

In the interest of science, Napoleon’s troops couldn’t know what would happen up there without shooting some artillery at it to find out. Same as Hiroshima and Nagasaki later on. Theories are worthless unless they’re tested.

Well, you’d be wrong.  Napoleon’s troops did just the right thing blowing off the nose of Sphinx.

Keep in mind, these were Frenchmen.  All they knew how to do at that point was try to take the heads off whatever got in the way.  But they saved the Sphinx.  If they'd left it alone until the British took over in 1802 the Sphinx would be in London.  Housed in a wonder-of-the-world-sized British Museum.  Same as everything else the British could haul off from every country they ever conquered.

Keep in mind, these were Frenchmen. All they knew how to do at that point was try to take the heads off whatever got in the way. But they saved the Sphinx. If they’d left it alone until the British took over in 1802 the Sphinx would be in London. Housed in a wonder-of-the-world-sized British Museum. Same as everything else the British could haul off from every country they ever conquered.

Once Napoleon’s troops finished nobody every had to do it again.  Anyone with half-an-eye could see what would happen if you shot the Sphinx in the nose with a piece of 1799 field artillery. 

And most importantly, Sphinx was flawed.  By 1802 when the British took Egypt they’d become selective, only stealing the most perfect artifacts.  Sphinx got to stay home in Egypt because of French artillery practice.

Which didn’t happen to the Rosetta Stone, which French troops found and got taken away from them by the British.

From the time Cleopatra offed herself with that adder, shortly thereafter, nobody knew how to read Egyptian hieroglyphs.  But thanks to those French troops, someone decided to steal the Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone is in the British Museum in London today.  It's been there since shortly after British officials stole it in 1802.  Most likely it will continue to reside in the British Museum until US troops have finished whatever they're doing in Europe.  When we finally bring the troops home from WWII the final act will be to drop the 8th Army into London, take over Heathrow Airport, and bring the Rosetta Stone and everything else in the British Museum to the United States where it rightfully belongs.

The Rosetta Stone is in the British Museum in London today. It’s been there since shortly after British officials stole it in 1802. Most likely it will continue to reside in the British Museum until US troops have finished whatever they’re doing in Europe. When we finally bring the troops home from WWII the final act will be to drop the 8th Army into London, take over Heathrow Airport, and bring the Rosetta Stone and everything else in the British Museum to the United States where it rightfully belongs.

Created 196 BC
Discovered 1799
Present location British Museum

The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts (with some minor differences among them), it provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone

When the contents of the British Museum finally are transported to the Smithsonian in Washington DC the British Empire will finally be a footnote of history, along with Napoleon, the Egyptians, and other backward peoples everywhere.

Old Jules

Decided to kick

At least if I can.

This morning my blood pressure was 107/76, pulse 71 when I was about to take the pill some sawbones prescribed for me back in 1993.  After I quit going to doctors getting those pills has been a considerable challenge.  I was about to renew my passport so’s I could step across into Mexico to buy them instead of ordering them from wossname, India.

But I’ve been taking Serrapeptase, that silkworm spit enzyme about a month now, and Nattosomethingorotherase about a week now.  Yesterday I noticed when I took my blood pressure for the first time in a longish while it was disgracefully low.  High 80s over mid 60s, pulse high 50s.

My bp hasn’t been that low since I was 40 and able to run several miles trying to rid myself of pent up frustrations over being a white male in a society where everything is run by females and minority ethnics and a regular white male doesn’t have a chance to make nothing of himself.

Anyway, I’m going to be checking my blood pressure regularly, and unless it goes up enough to convince me I need those pills India and Mexico pharmaceutical industries can starve if they’re depending on my business to keep them going.  I’m fairly patriotic that way.

Most doctors and other medicos are the fools of books and that guy who prescribed the stuff for me back in Nineteen-hundred-and-ninety-three probably never read the book saying silkworm spit is better.

Old Jules

Note:  10:10 am – 110/71 pulse 63.  Still no Prinivil blood pressure pill taken – Normally I’d have taken it at 05:00 am.  JP

Note @1600 – 4:00pm – BP 111/71, pulse 70.

Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear? The Catch 22 Timewarp Conspiracy

This might be the most important text you’ve ever read.

It’s certainly more important than Dick and Jane and their dog named Spot whatever they might be up to these days in Centerville, Ohio.  And anything else you might have read since then probably wasn’t all that important.  Instruction manuals written by English-as-a-second-language tech writers in Malaisia, labels on boxes of muffin-mix, even novels by Stephen King aren’t as important as this.

If you are like me you have to think hard to remember characters and dialogues in books you haven’t read in half-century.  But I’ve been waiting that long for Joseph Hellers prophetic novel, Catch 22, to get caught up with by events.

Yossarian to the mental ward physician:  “Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?

Pages later, to Orr:  “Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?”

Yossarian to Major Major Major Major, pages later:   “Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?”

To Milo Minderbinder, a chapter or so later:  “Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?”

Today all the spy-vs-spies in the world are asking themselves the same question.  Armed cruise missile operators are whispering those words into their microphones, “Give me the coordinates!”

low volume static, hissing, grumbling.

Moscow airport?  Am I allowed to target the Moscow International Airport?”

low volume static, hissing, grumbling.

“Well of course you need deniability.  It has to look like an accident.  Rogue drone kind of thing.”

low volume static, hissing, grumbling.

“World War III?  Hell, we haven’t even finished WWII yet.  Snowden was WWII.  We’re all caught in a time warp.

low volume static, hissing, grumbling.

“Yeah, we need to watch for anyone named Yossarian.  And Joseph Heller, if he’s still alive, needs to answer a few questions.  If we see someone trying to corner the Egyptian cotton market we’ll know where to look.”

Old Jules

Shooting 50,000 unsolicited words at the Universe

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

Jeanne tells me November’s going to have several thousand people grinding out first drafts of immortal prose again.  Poor old Universe will be ducking and dodging new characters, events, plots, subplots, trying to keep track of what’s really happening, and what someone dredged up from the imagination and stuffed into 50,000 words packed into the month of November.

I’ve wondered about this phenomenon for a longish time, several years, and honestly can’t quite figure it.  Probably tens of thousands of November novels written in past years nobody but the authors ever laid an eye to all the way through.  Pages, electrons on the screen, characters floating around in the ether wondering what the hell happened, why their pent-up events just ground to a halt.

All I can figure is those people doing that are trying to shoot down the Universe and know it’s going to take a lot of ammunition.

If a person were looking for a worthy project that would be less likely to damage the Universe he might consider taking the JRR Tolkein Lord of Rings trilogy and working it up into a second draft, which wossname, Tolkein failed to do.  At least not the part about say, cutting about 2/3 of the extraneous immortal prose, working it around so it’s tight, a pleasure on the tongue of the Universe, rather than just something out of some fast food joint.

Maybe someone everyone does what he says will think of this sometime and tell them they ought to do that instead of picking out targets of opportunity trying to shoot down the Universe.

Old Jules

No heaven on earth. No utopias. Just more people

Finding stereotypes capable of holding up under close scrutiny is necessary for humans, but generally goes unrefined.

Finding stereotypes capable of holding up under close scrutiny is necessary for humans, but generally goes unrefined.

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

I spent a while bouncing around RV full timers forum-type discussion board-type places lately.  Curious about whether any stereotype applies.  What I found was not a single good, solid stereotype a person could hammer down to perfection, but rather a number of herds of them.

Not much of this sort of thing out there among the modern nomad population.  Whether they're van dwellers or motor homesters, clean lines, shiny paintjobs and glitter are major attractions.  If it ain't eye candy it belongs in a different universe.

Not much of this sort of thing out there among the modern nomad population. Whether they’re van dwellers or motor homesters, clean lines, shiny paintjobs and glitter are major attractions. If it ain’t eye candy it belongs in a different universe.

Fields of peas pretty much running with other peas, cornfields sticking with their corny neighbors, and everyone seemingly well fed.  A few farmers within each stereotype weeding and watering.

I was especially interested in Slab City and what the people who stay there winters have to say to one another.  I thought because it’s as near anarchy as a person gets in the US, it might tell some worthy things about us as a place viewing itself as a free people, thinkers, individualists.

There’s some of that on the surface.  Everyone saying to one another, you have to take whatever comes in Slab City.  Everyone celebrating and patting themselves on the backs for their rugged individualism.

But in fact there’s an undercurrent a lot less worthy of self-praise among them.  An undercurrent of bullying and intimidation hidden in the “gotta take it as it comes” platitudes.

Turns out “take it as it comes” means, “take me as I come” and don’t even think about me taking you as you come.  If you try I’ll probably slit your tires.  Or shoot your cats.

It manifests itself subtly in the matter of cats.  Seems over the past few years women visiting the slabs have had their cats killed by dogs, or shot by dog lovers.  Always women.  How about them apples?

For folks who don’t have much interest nor love for cats and don’t have any desire at all in going on crusades, sacrificing the soothing rewards of rugged individualist wildass self-image community, it just flows down like Jack Daniels Black Label.  Everything bad hiding inside “taking it as it comes” harmony.

I’m figuring it would be a place I’d have to go to war if I landed there.  Can’t see myself sitting still for having my tires cut, knowing someone else who got his tires cut, me having a firm idea who did it.  And most especially knowing who some cat-shooting human was, or cat-killing dog-running-loose owner.

Sometimes wars can happen without anyone having to go looking for, drive so damned far out of the way.  I hope I don’t have anymore wars left ahead of me this lifetime, but if I do I ain’t going to drive 1000 miles to find them.

Old Jules

They still want to do the Dirty Bop – And they all want to play Hamlet

I’m trying to remember my partner in disgrace.  Might have been Patsy Bohannan, maybe.  Around that time I recall we sat on opposite ends of a seesaw in the park surrounded by other kids, her singing, “Why do fools fall in love”, had me squirming something awful.  But she was a preacher’s daughter.  Not a good candidate for the Dirty Bop.

So it might have been Linda Kiker or a girl with a really bad reputation named Nancy Koch.  Seems I ought to remember, but at the time the disgrace was so overwhelming and the likely consequences so widespread, identity got swept into the grader-ditch of history.

Anyway, it was one of those Junior High School events at the Portales Memorial Building.  I’d never heard of the Dirty Bop, presumably the female side of the equation also had never heard of it.  The only time either of us had ever danced the bop was probably sneaking around practicing behind locked doors at home.

But great minds think alike, I expect, and there’s always becoming absorbed in the event, showing off, whatever.  We danced the Dirty Bop.  A Portales First, most likely.

Got our asses kicked spang out of the Memorial Building for our trouble, got to have a long prayer meeting with Mr. Livingston.  A man in authority who had a lot of familiarity with my backside with the paddle he kept in his office.

Anyway, it all worked out for the good in the end.  I eventually became me.  Likely, whomever the girl was eventually became her.  And I don’t recall ever encountering her later in any waterfront bar or strip joint somewhere.

But I guess the Dirty Bop is still around after all these years.

High school requires signed dance contract that bans twerking

http://news.yahoo.com/video/high-school-requires-signed-dance-210216483.html

Annapolis High School in Maryland is now requiring that students and parents sign a dance contract which aims to cut down on provocative dancing at the school’s next homecoming. As reported by WMAR ABC 10 News, the contract outlines the school’s policies and expected student behavior very specifically. Junior Lexi Pline said, “The first day we get it, it’s usually just kind of funny to read it because of the way, like the way they describe everything. It’s kind of hilarious.” The contract states that “sexually explicit dancing will not be tolerated,” and defines explicit dancing as “grinding,” “making out,” and “buttocks touching a partner or in the air.” The last point apparently intended to stop twerking at school functions.

Just goes to show, as Carl Perkins or someone once said, “You can’t stop Rock and Roll“.   Or maybe it was Bill Haley and the Comets.  I heard a while back he died as a street person in Alabama or somewhere.  Still dancing.  Nobody ever explained the consequences of dancing the Dirty Bop to him.

Old Jules

Afterthought:  Actually I think it was Carl Perkins talking about that British group, the Beetles or whatever, when they first showed up on the radar,  “They aren’t Elvis, but they aren’t all that bad.”

Giant oarfifh found on beach in California – Cecil the Feafick Fea Ferpent

This ominous portent from California last week:  Giant oarfish washed up on the beach.  Second one since I-don't-know-when.

This ominous portent from California last week: Giant oarfish washed up on the beach. Second one since I-don’t-know-when.

Beware the feafhoref and tremble in your homef when ferpentf of the deep emerge with their mouthf miffing.”  Josephus Minimus

I was fairly certain this was written down somewhere.  Maybe the Bible, or Nostradamas, or Mother Shipley, or some other trustworthy source.  Turned out it was Josephus Minimus.  Or would be Josephus Minimus once I post this.

Old Jules