Category Archives: Adventure

Strangers in Good Company – Octagenarian chick flick

http://youtu.be/hxrDtnB4VnU

Hi readers.  One hell of a fine movie streaming on Netflix.

Strangers in Good Company 1990PG 100 minutes, Eight elderly women are left stranded in the wilderness with only their wits, their memories and eventually some roasted frogs’ legs to sustain them. More Info, Starring: Alice Diabo, Constance Garneau, Director: Cynthia Scott
 
A nun, a lesbian, a grandmother or three, artist, birdwatcher, farm girl.  They talk about life, death, love, fear, war and death again as they struggle to catch fish, frogs, find sustenance in the wilderness long enough to survive.
 
*****, Five Stars is how I rate this movie, how tickled I am to have overcome my male prejudices against chick flicks and watched it.
 
Jack

Curtain Raiser

A lot more needs to be thought and said about WWI than is being thought and said, generally. Wesley’s taken it upon himself to think and say some of it: J

The Myth of an Endless War, Colltalers

There was a common denominator in most stories about the 100th anniversary this past Saturday of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, by a Serbian teenager, which sparked the beginning of World War I a month later, on July 28th, 1914: few can point exactly why it happened.
The war that’s only identified as the first now because it was followed shortly after by the second, turned Europe into cinder, killing over 8 million and wounding another 20 million, and changed forever the continent’s inner borders, while erasing entire empires from its map.
As it was not restricted to Europe, it’s ironic that such grim milestone happens just as pressure for a third military intervention in one of those countries it indirectly ‘bred,’ Iraq, is being rehashed by Pentagon and congressional hawks as the only response to recent events on the ground.
More of Iraq…

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Hyundai – Jeanne’s new ride

Hi readers.  Jeanne’s 1991 Oldsmobile’s headed for someone poorer and more desperate than she is.  Found herself a spanking new Hyundai with less than 100,000 miles on it and less than a decade old.  Ran it through all the mechanic pre-purchase checks and online automotive and title histories, and concluded it might be okay.

Maybe it will.  The Oldsmobile was doing some threatening and complaining it wasn’t getting enough treasure spent keeping it running.  So I hope the Hyundai measures up and lasts a while.

I’m thinking it’s named after a place I visited in Korea while I was on leave, travelling around site seeing.  Went somewhere, Taegue I think, saw a giant Buddha, rode a coal fired train around all over the countryside.  And came to Hyundai down the other side of the bay from Pusan.  Beautiful place.

Beautiful place all to hell, it was.  Trees blooming, a serene bay with all manner of Chinese junk looking boats and smaller boats with wiggletails used as oars.

People around Hyundai didn’t see much of GIs, same as up at Taegu.  I spent 30 days travelling around and a week-or-so at Hyundae.  A fond memory I hadn’t remembered until Jeanne decided on that car.

Hell of a deal.

Old Jules

Thank you for your service.

Hi readers.  Gotta smile.  Someone sent me this link to a Yahoo News article saying Executives running VA medical treatment facilities got themselves high-dollar bonuses the past few years.  And 65% of all VA employees got bonuses.

Ironically yesterday I also got another co-pay demand for the meager services I got from them in the form of prescriptions a while back.  Been paying $10 per month, and they ain’t happy about it.  Gonna take it spang out of my Social Security pension check.

I thought I had all that ironed out with them, but evidently I don’t.  At least I’ve gained the wisdom not to use their pharmacy again, to just use the Walgreen down the street and Medicare.  Co-pay isn’t such a killer.

The other up-side of all this is that people aren’t in any danger anymore of finding out I’m a veteran and saying, “Thank you for your service.”  The past couple of months have provided me with the reply I never could quite come up with before:

How about we go over to the VA Hospital and jerk each other off?”

Anyway, I’ve got the pharmacy co-pay worked down paying $10 per month so’s when they snag it out of my SS pension check it will only be $50 or less.  Provided they don’t hit me with a co-pay on this Merlin@Home transmitter to monitor my defibrillator they sent without me asking them to.  If there’s a co-pay on that I’m going to have to consider the VA benefits equivalent of going postal.

Not that I’m complaining.  Hell it ain’t as though I did anything to deserve all this special treatment they’ve been giving me at the VA, first back in Texas by stroking my bird for six weeks, then here by actually taking my blood pressure and giving me a prescription.  After all, they’re paying for my physical therapy.  I’m grateful for that.

Next time I’m over that way I’m going to tell them a big “Thank you for your service.”

And meanwhile laugh my ass off.

Old Jules

Pakistanis and Americans are alike about 2nd Amendment

Son of a Lion Trailer on YouTube:  http://youtu.be/hdRCmNn3joc

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

One of the coolest aspects of Netflix is the foreign film availability.  Even though the films are just movies, they tell a lot about what movie-makers worldwide thought audiences in their countries would willingly watch.  What, in fact, their national populations would pay money to see.  Their beliefs, their likes and dislikes.

So a Netflix watcher can discover, for instance, how similar a lot of Americans are to Pakistanis by watching  Son of a Lion.   It’s a 2007 movie in which the primary characters are involved in a family business of gun making, gunsmithing, and gun sales and have been for several generations.   Expected to go into the family business, the 11-year-old son of a strict Muslim father runs away from home, determined to get an education instead.  In the location in Pakistan where they live everyone is a 2nd Amendment devotee.  Nobody bothers with signs or bumper stickers because they just raise their AK 47 or 1911 Colt and loose a few rounds into the air when the mood strikes.

Starring:Niaz Khun Shinwari, Sher Alam Miskeen Ustad, Director:Benjamin Gilmour. 

It’s comforting knowing how much we have in common with Pakistanis for the most part.  The father in the story is mujahedeen and fought against the Russians in Afghanistan and is extremely concerned where, should he allow his son to take to school, it would be located.  “Those schools are magnets for American bombs!” 

Probably a lesson there somewhere.

Old Jules

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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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

City of Adventure

hydrox june 2014

He’s too old to cut the mustard anymore.

Hi readers.  Thanks for the visit.

Jeanne’s next door neighbor saw us on the back porch the other day:  “Hi.  Is that big, fluffy-looking black and white cat yours?”

Me:  “He came with me from Texas.”  No point giving my cat-ownership philosophy dissertation.

Neighbor grinning:  “We watch television late at night with the front door open.  He comes by every night and sticks his head inside, looks at us a moment, then leaves.  It’s eery when he meets your eye.”

Hydrox is evidently as determined to milk as much living out of this life as I am.  Even if it means spying on the neighbors.  They’re older than him, but barely.

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

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