Category Archives: 2014

Library Mail Art – Received June 8th- June 14th

The latest on Jeanne’s library mail art project:

Library Mail Art 2014

Another great week for mail here at Lackman Library!

“Moment Book” a pencil drawing by Jaromir Svozilik from Oslo, Norway:

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From Andre Pace in Phoenix, Arizona, a letter, a card about his book and two more cards with poetry on the backs!

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From Peter Mueller in Bremen, Germany, an entire book with a stamped image on every page:

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From Dorian Ribas Marinho in Brazil, three signed prints:

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And a card and decorated envelope from Eni Ilis, also in Brazil:

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We’re so pleased and excited about these submissions! I also made three that I will contribute myself, so here they are. The first one is from a sewing pattern, an old Classics Illustrated comic, and a children’s dictionary:
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This second one is a collage I did from a summer reading program log that my mother kept for me in 1963 for the Johnson County Library. In those days, Lackman library didn’t yet…

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Sure I’m poor, but I came by it honest.

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

The 20-30 people down at my physical therapy are surprisingly homogenous and I’m not saying anything about sexual preferences.  We’re all white, all but three are men, and all but two are above the age of 60.  The nurses, also are all white, but their ages cover a spread from around 30 to a cautious guess of 60.

So when I asked one of the nurses, “Where do you keep all your ethnics?” while she was taking g my blood pressure it seemed an obvious question.  An expression of surprise crossed her face and she flinched, or sort of jumped, then her eyes scanned the room and the people on all the machines. 

What do you mean?”   Seemed more of an accusation than question.

Hey, we all look alike in here.  Everyone here seems to be old, male, white and other than me, well-to-do.  All except me are fairly unpleasing to the eye.  Don’t people with skin pigment get cardiac problems?”  I was just wising off.  I already knew Olathe’s an affluent community and area.   But watching her facial reactions kept me at it.

 Anyway, the old guy at the NUSTEP machine next to me felt the need to set me straight when she went on to other matters.  “We’re not all well to do!”  He ground his teeth a bit.  “I used to be but I lost it all in 401Ks.”  His face was reddening and the blood vessels on his bald scalp were becoming visible.

Sure I’m poor.  But I got that way through honest hard work, good credit, bad marriages, and trusting the 401K people.  Not like these people who got born into it and didn’t get out because of shiftless laziness and rotten attitude.”  I finished my time about then and just grinned.  Couldn’t think of anything to say.

Damn I love that Physical Therapy at Olathe Hospital.  I’m going to be sorry when it runs out.

Old Jules

 

Something’s happening here but don’t let it fool you.

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University is pissed. He was part of the International Entrepreneurial Academians for Climate Change report in 2007 that stuck all the participants up on pederastals by being awarded a Nobel.

Then, damned the climate did change  but differently than they all said it would. Newspapers calling it a “Global Warming pause“, and similarly dangerous misinterpretations of Mann’s and his brothers in academic reputation-sharers predictions.  And Mann doesn’t want anyone thinking he and his buds who have high stakes in selling man-made climate change are off the mark, just because they were somewhat wrong.

Scientific American, April 2014, Mann penned an article, “False Hope” trying to explain why the fact the debatable temperatures didn’t rise as much as expected doesn’t mean “Ohhhh shit the sky is NOT falling.”

Mann says it’s still falling, but falling in slower motion so’s a person standing underneath it is liable to think it’s surprisingly cool this spring, amazingly cold this past winter.   And has actually been something of a Communist for the past 10 years for reasons Mann can’t explain scientifically.  Or, I should say, support with scientific observation and evidence.

Which doesn’t stand in the way of his filling his Scientific American piece with conjectures, speculations and possible excuses the planet might have for failing to dance to the tango Mann and the Nobel Club hummed in 2007.

 Not to suggest Mann and the other partisans for sky is fallingism are wrong.  They might be right.  They surely might be right.  Even though their reasons for being right might be based on all manner of false premises.

Fact is, they bet on a horse and even though it ain’t running ahead of the others at the moment, it still might win, place or show.  Because it doesn’t have a damned thing to do with what Mann thinks, or his academic entrepreneurial associates think.  Or you think, or I think.

That planet and the weather is run by bigger minds than mine, yours, or Distinguished Professor Mann’s.  It’s run by the Coincidence Coordinators.  They love it when people are awarded Nobel Peace Prizes for shit that if it goes differently than they conjectured will have their reputations destroyed.

Same as they love putting aces-high full houses across the table from one-in-a-lifetime straight flushes. 

People believe in God on a lot less evidence than the Coincidence Coordinators provide them through direct evidence everyday of their lives to encourage believing in them.  But God is more of an abstraction, whereas the Coincidence Coordinators are the real item, a part of our everyday lives.

Here’s hoping for the sake of Distinguished Professor Mann and his fellow non-believers in God and the Coincidence Coordinators, both equally, that the sky goes ahead and falls in time to save their reputations.

Old Jules

Thank you for your service – Cold War Conscription era sleeze

Hi readers.  Someone posted a sign telling us veterans thank you for your service in one of the places I go, and in the Dollar Tree they asked again if I’d like to contribute to help the dependents of US active service military.  Fact is the romance and drama of thanking GIs for their service has been happening so long it’s probably okay to give it a break.

I got transferred once and hadn’t gotten paid yet, no money until payday.  Red Cross loaned me the money to last until the end of the month or my pay records caught up.  At loan-shark interest rates.  I was getting paid $68 per month at that time.

Maybe if they paid the all volunteer military less money they would be able to take care of their dependents without begging by proxy at the cash registers of the stores in the US.  Paying the bejesus out of them evidently hasn’t done the trick.

Seems to me it’s a sickness resulting from the supporting wars where you’re own kids aren’t being forced to go off to serve.  The out-of-balance “let’s you and him fight” paid for with a “Thank you” and nobody in my family had anything to do with the war and I support it so long as they don’t.  I’ll shower you with thankyous and give a buck down at the Dollar Tree for your kids.

All American Boy – Bobby Bare

Working for the Yankee Dollar

Hank Locklin, My Little Geisha Girl

Fraulein – Bobby Helms – 1957

Kitty Wells – I’ll Always Be Your Fraulein

COWBOY COPAS: “FILIPINO BABY”, 1945

Jean Shepard & Ferlin Husky – A Dear John Letter

Jean Shepard & Ferlin Husky – Forgive Me, John

Kenny Rogers & The First Edition – Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town

Ballad of the Green Berets – [HD] – – – SSGT Barry SADLER

Johnny Burnette…..God, Country, And My Baby

Merle Travis – Re-Enlistment Blues

Elvis Presley – G.I.Blues

I’m thinking of writing a CW song about GIs sitting around waiting rooms in VA hospitals wearing their VETERAN caps and wondering whether they made the secret lists.

Old Jules

 

Rally Round the Flag Boys, by Max Shulman

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

1959, 1960, I was reading everything Max Shulman wrote because of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.  In that one he introduced Maynard G. Cribbs of later fame, and gave most people their first look at Beat, Beatniks, and much of the como se llama life outside anything most had considered.  Although Dobie Gillis had a TV series in his name, the Maynard Cribbs character lived longer in another vapid TV series about an Island somewhere.

So when I encountered Rally Round the Flag Boys in a box of books at a garage sale recently I happily paid out a quarter for an unexpected delight far in excess of my memories of the book from 50 years ago.

In a 278 page yarn filled with laughs and poignant human insights Shulman peels away the 21st Century fantasies of how America ‘was’, “Thank you veterans, for your service“, and any lingering thoughts you might have about romance, marriage and the American dream when  the citizenry saw career military men as “too lazy to steal“.

A wonderful, hilarious book before during and after its own time.  Story of a small Yankee town in Connecticut where the US Army needs to place a Nike Missile Site.  A brutally honest story of the wealthy people running the town and why they oppose a sanitary landfill because of the cost, oppose sex education in their public schools because of the danger of KNOWING, oppose anything that stands in the way of development of real estate into more neighborhoods for NYC commuters.  Neighborhoods located in quarries, bogs, swamps, with names like Powderhorn Hill and Patriot Valley.

What a fun book.  I’m finished with it and will happily mail it to you if you’d care to read it.  Contact me by email.

Old Jules

Afterthought note:  This book teeters on the brink of upcoming events, but barely pre-dates them.  No Berlin Wall until 1961, no Cuban Missile Crisis until 19 what?62?, no Vietnam War until 1965, no Kennedys assassinated yet, no Martin Luther King, no Watergate.   No Fidel Castro.   Cuba was still clean sandy beaches for US tourists.  And the book is the “How I view the world” of those US citizens back before things got nasty.  J.

Hi diddle diddle – Google driverless cars

If you live in one of the states darkened in blue you might have already seen a Google-driven car as you gnashed your teeth over traffic jams.  They've logged over 700,000 miles on public roads as of April, 2014.

If you live in one of the states darkened in blue you might have already seen a Google-driven car as you gnashed your teeth over traffic jams. They’ve logged over 700,000 miles on public roads as of April, 2014.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Probably I was the last person on the planet to find out this is happening.  And I should have guessed it, anyway.  There’s a particular place in New Mexico where a police car sits around with a dummy in uniform at the wheel to discourage speeding.  The inevitable next step was to replace the drivers of cars going past, standing their cars on their noses when they saw the police cruiser.

Admittedly the Google Driverless car doesn't have the snazzy appearance, the pizzazz of the average cracker boxes and 1948 Dodge-looking cars running around the roads in 2014.  But I think if I had a car and a few bucks to spare I'd paint it white, install a fake antenna array on the top, darken the windows, and go around ramming into things just to blow the foam off the top of a long life.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car

Admittedly the Google Driverless car doesn’t have the snazzy appearance, the pizzazz of the average cracker boxes and 1948 Dodge-looking cars running around the roads in 2014. But I think if I had a car and a few bucks to spare I’d paint it white, install a fake antenna array on the top, darken the windows, and go around ramming into things just to blow the foam off the top of a long life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car

Things do have a way of making the full circle.  Half the drivers today are being directed by the voices of their friendly GPS devices while they text their wives, mistresses, husbands, boyfriends, parents, kids, and people they’re trying to buy something from on Craigslist.  A nice Google package would relieve them of the burden of having to be distracted by red lights and road rage.  In fact, the model that’s not equipped with steering wheel or pedals would go a step further to allow them to spend every waking minute texting and talking on the cell.

Put a mannequin in the driver seat and give it a cell phone to talk on and this thing will be lobbying for the right to vote and get mechanical insurance.  With an inflatable girl-friend sitting in the passenger seat we wouldn’t need Americans anymore.

Old Jules

Might as well face it: China isn’t a credible threat

Hi readers:

Despite the fact the US military budget needs a second potential front we can fight wars on to justify being the war material overkill superpower we insist we are, China’s just not going to fill the bill.  Yeah, as Yahoo News reports, they’ve got a lot of military spending going on.  Whoopteedoo.

Fact is, China doesn’t win wars.  Maybe has never won a war in the entirety of Chinese history.  Didn’t win against the Japanese in WWII.  Didn’t win the Chinese Revolution thoroughly enough to take the Nationalists out of the picture.

Didn’t win the Korean War enough to make it all North Korea.  Didn’t even win in 1978-1979 against war-weary Vietnam.

Yeah, Washington and the threat-hungry news services would give a testicle if China could get out there and run someone off a piece of real estate they wanted.  But the Chinese have had their asses whipped so many times and in so many places they’re just hoping if they have to fight someone bigger than Tibet they can bluster enough to scare them off.

China ain’t going anywhere.  Might as well try to stir up some trouble with Mexico if we’re going to have a credible threat to justify a military budget capable of taking over all the banana republics and oil sheikdoms everywhere when the mood strikes us.  Even the Muslims are falling down on the job these days.

Old Jules

Busted

Hi readers.  The cardiac physical therapy nurses gave me a little counselling today after they caught me cheating on their machines.  I haven’t been sticking with the piddling little times and settings they give me on a piece of paper each session.

So I was boosting my walking speeds up as much as I thought I could get by with, staying longer, and when I saw them approaching I’d quickly adjust the settings.  Same with the como se llama arm exercizing machine and the walking while sitting down one.

But today I saw them getting cagey, trying to use their animal cunning to outsmart me.  Spang caught me trying to spend 15 minutes making circular movements with my arms instead of 10, and at heavier loads and higher speeds.

They’ve got that thing attached to me all the time, shows I-don’t-know-what, and sometimes it twigs them to tell me to pause.  If it isn’t ratting me out I figure nobody else has any business being my governor.

Well heck.  Those little bitty pissant things they put on the paper for me to do just ain’t where I want to be.  Seems to me I ought to have some say in it.  But that isn’t going to happen.  “You shouldn’t even be walking around!”  She scowled at me.  Scowled!  “You are amazing with what you were doing before you even started coming to these sessions.  But you’re going to have to go slow or you’re going to be dead.”

Screw them.

Old Jules

 

Koreans fighting alongside Japanese in the first tank battle of WWII era

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=my+way+movie+

Hi readers:  I first saw this film on Netflix and it made a big impression on me.  Unfortunately it’s been a while.  I was in the hospital when I watched it first, so some of the details are vague to me now.  But it’s probably the first movie ever to be filmed about Khalkhin Gol.

Khalkhin-Gol: The forgotten battle that shaped WW2

In August 1939, just weeks before Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland, the Soviet Union and Japan fought a massive tank battle on the Mongolian border – the largest the world had ever seen.

Under the then unknown Georgy Zhukov, the Soviets won a crushing victory at the batte of Khalkhin-Gol (known in Japan as the Nomonhan Incident). Defeat persuaded the Japanese to expand into the Pacific, where they saw the United States as a weaker opponent than the Soviet Union. If the Japanese had not lost at Khalkhin Gol, they may never have attacked Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese decision to expand southwards also meant that the Soviet Eastern flank was secured for the duration of the war. Instead of having to fight on two fronts, the Soviets could mass their troops – under the newly promoted General Zhukov – against the threat of Nazi Germany in the West.

In terms of its strategic impact, the battle of Khalkhin Gol was one of the most decisive battles of the Second World War, but no-one has ever heard of it. Why?

http://historyofrussia.org/khalkhin-gol-battle-nomonhan/

The Korean movie industry scored a big one with My Way.  The theme or setting is two kids, one Japanese, the other Korean competing as runners in pre-WWII Japan.  But when the Japanese Kwantung Army rubs up against the Soviet Army in Manchuria both are sent there in time for the earliest tank battle of WWII era.  [Western thought about when WWII began places the battle pre-WWII]

So when the USSR kicks the ass of Japan in the battle, the two are captured and sent to a Soviet POW camp.  Eventually they’re allowed to volunteer for slave labor on the front where the USSR is fighting German troops.  And they’re captured, allowed to fight for the Germans next, because Japan, of course, was an ally to Germany.

As D Day approaches they find themselves on the beaches of Normandy constructing shore defenses.

One hell of a movie.

I see by the clips on YouTube a lot of people agree with me.  Some even say it’s the best movie they’ve ever seen.  Maybe you’ll find it absorbing.

Thank you for your service, all you young Soviets, Japanese and Koreans.

Old Jules

 

 

 

 

 

Korean kids are higher quality stupid than US kids

Hi readers.  I saw the entire movie, Attack the Gas Station 2, on Netflix and found it fascinating.  It ain’t the same Korea I spent 14 months in back in 1963-’64.  Hell, it ain’t even a 3rd world country anymore.

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When this photo was taken near Camp Howze, Korea [Pong Il Chon], I can say with authority there was a rice paddy somewhere nearby where people toiled from daybreak to dark. Somewhere nearby men were carrying a-frames loaded with firewood several times their own weight. Probably somewhere in Korea there was affluence staying well hidden, but the ‘average’ Korean made a few dollars per month and most would never expect to be able to afford a bicycle anytime during their lives.

But several things impressed me about the Korean film.  First, it’s the best photography I’ve seen in any of the foreign films I’ve watched on Netflix lately.  Secondly, the characters are wealthy in the middle-class way US citizens,  even the poor ones, are wealthy by standards of the 1960s.

Secondly, the kids are easily as stupid as US kids, but it’s a higher quality stupidity.  I suppose it hasn’t had time to mature, to become as decadent as US kids manifest constantly in public.  Stupidity of Korean kids has the quality of an over-ripe apple that hasn’t yet begun to rot.

And thirdly, the amazing wealth.  Look at that gas station, the cars and the people driving them.  The motorcycles those kids are riding and the clothes they’re wearing.  Observe the body-fat.  Those people might well be Americans in  the better neighborhoods.

By comparison, consider another Netflix foreign film, this one from Russia.  The Suit.  Some Russian youngsters fall in love with a Gucci suit in a store window and the adventures they go through to acquire it.  And what happens once they have it in their possession.

The Suit is a damned eye-opening good movie, well done and fun to watch, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Attack the Gas Station 2.  The Russian kids are smarter, incidently, and not so wealthy.

Anyone who tells you different is wrong.

Old Jules