Category Archives: Adventure

Concerning Zealotry

Posted on April 9, 2012 by | 4 comments

Originally posted on another blog site Tuesday, September 26, 2006

What’s wrong with zealotry?

Probably no human trait has caused more misery, bloodshed, pain and general deviltry in history than political or religious zealotry.

Political or religious zealotry.  The deadly twins.  They aren’t two separate traits.  Political, or religious zealotry are just one trait following two different paths to create ugly.

Think about it.  One of the reasons political and religious zealots tend to be found in the same human being lies in the fact that religious zealots have already graduated with honors from the school of blind faith.

Communism?  3/4 century of human misery caused by political zealotry.  Cambodia?  The Inquisition?  The Mormons having to flee to Utah?  The 3rd Reich?  Jim Jones?  Wossname Christian/Patriot bossman wanting to assassinate wossnamisimo prez of Venezuela?  The Kennedy bros. ordering the assassination of Prez Diem, was it, our ally, South Vietnam?  The Kennedy bros., themselves getting assassinated?

Political, or religious zealotry.

Today it isn’t getting better, as a person might have expected, because of the collapse of Communism world-wide.  It’s gotten a lot worse.  We’ve got Muslim zealots, Christian zealots, Prez step-two Bush Dynasty and ex-prez BlowJob wives all in the game of zealous one-upsmanship.  Zionist zealots wanting to snag every piece of real estate in the Middle East they can drum up an excuse to play for US support, which doesn’t take much.  Hispanic zealots in the US southwest wanting to take it away from the white zealots who took it away from them.  Environmentalist zealots trying to spike trees to injure the workmen cutting down trees while they listen to Joseph Rush Goebbels on the radio to help them remember what to think about rad-libs, Arabs, and whomever it is we’re bombing the bejesus out of this week.

This ain’t cutting it.  It’s not making your lives happier, and it’s sure as hell not making them better.

One of the things I like best about the teachings of the Buddha is the emphasis on moderation, the cautions against zealotry.

Religious moderates have never burned one another at the stake.  Political moderates have never dragged out the guillotine to punish the opposition.  They never built any gas chambers and ovens.  No political or religious moderate ever pulled the trigger on anyone, ever dropped a bomb on anyone except in self-defense.

Political, or religious zealotry.  Human traits worth hating, but they usually only hate one another.  Moderates never bother to hate anyone.

Moderates.  Nice, easy living sort of term.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in Adventure

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

What about the non-Jews killed by the Nazis?

Posted on March 27, 2012 by | 7 comments

Note from Jeanne: Here’s another example of a random question answered by Old Jules a while back on another website. If you have a question you’d like answered, please leave it in the comments. And of course, find more equally random questions and his answers at www.askoldjules.com.

Old Jules, why does everyone forget the other 10 million people who were killed by the Nazis?  It’s well known that around 17 to 21 million people were killed during the Holocaust. including Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsies, Disabled people, Peasants, ethnic Poles, Soviets, prisoners of war, etc…
But why is it that people only ever remember the “six million Jews” when talking about the Holocaust? Even my friend’s little brother is taking history in school and is being taught about Nazi Germany and even he said he is only being taught about the 6 million Jews,etc…
Isn’t it either ignorant or disrespectful to forget or outright ignore the fact that it wasn’t only Jews who were targeted?

Jews are no better, no worse than the rest of us. If those of us who are non-Jewish were Jews. we’d probably direct a lot of energy to turning the German holocaust to our own advantage, just as they’ve done and continue doing. [In fact, many ethnic groups use similar tactics to keep the memories of wrongs done to their ancestors in sharp focus, probably for the same reasons].

Israeli Zionists are more intelligent and better educated than most citizens of Europe and the US. They understand the populations are mostly shallow ignorant sheep, that their attitudes and viewpoints are easily manipulated by controlling the information fed to them by the media and textbooks. They’d be a lot less intelligent than they are if they failed to take advantage of the obvious.

It’s true a lot of other groups died during the holocaust and that 20th Century genocides killed far larger numbers of others in the USSR, Cambodia, Biafra, French Guiana, Armenia, the Ukraine and elsewhere. Mostly they go forgotten and unnoticed.

There appears to be a deliberate attempt to focus entirely on Jewish victims and the German holocaust and brush all the others aside. This could be the result of a number of possibilities.

This focus isn’t necessarily intended to suggest the only victims of genocide that matter are Jews, and it isn’t necessarily a cynical, opportunistic PR campaign by Israeli Zionists to twang the heartstrings of the world or the US and Europe with constant reminders of the German [Jewish] holocaust so’s to keep military and financial assistance going to them.

It might just be that Jews worldwide feel the pain of the Jewish genocide more than they feel the non-Jewish ones, and since they’re deeply connected within the media, governments, publishing and elsewhere, they naturally focus on their own painful remembrances unconsciously. Not because they don’t care about the others, exactly, but they care more about their own.

But it might also have something to do with keeping the eyes of the world directed away from Israel’s own massacres when they find genocide against others to be convenient.

7 Comments

Posted in Adventure

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

Old Sol’s Just A Leedle Bit Pissed

Posted on March 24, 2012 by | 4 comments

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

SOLAR STORM HEATS UP EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE: A flurry of solar activity in early March dumped enough heat in Earth’s upper atmosphere to power every residence in New York City for two years. The heat has since dissipated, but there’s more to come as the solar cycle intensifies. [full story] [video] http://spaceweather.com/

As I was trying to roust and prod Old Sol up this morning he was whining and complaining something awful.  “Nobody appreciates me.  I’ve just about got a gut full of you people!”  Him barely peeking between the trees on the ridgeline.

“What are you talking about?  That’s crazy.  Everyone appreciates what you do.  Come on now.  Rise and shine!  You’ve got a lot of appointments today.  Things to do and people to see.”  Me, cajoling, persuading, being diplomatic.

“Horse hockey! You see all those diagonal lines I’ve got across me?  All those squiggles and curlycues?  Do you have any idea how much trouble it is for me to do that?  You’re looking at a lot of parallel bands of magnetic fields.  Can you imagine how I do those diagonals?”

“Honestly, I can’t begin to imagine.  Let’s talk more about it after you’re further over the horizon.  I’ll have my people call your people.”  Heehee, him about two-thirds showing, still moving.

“What about all those bumper-stickers you were talking about?  Proud to be an American?  Proud to be a Texan.  Proud to be a Native Texan?  You ever see one saying, ‘Proud of my Solar System’?   ‘Proud of Old Sol’?  Even ‘Proud of my Galaxy’?”

Me, trying to break this off gently.  He’s well up in the air now, no way he can reverse things.  “You’re right.  People don’t pay any mind to your artistic efforts.  They don’t understand them, mostly.  In a lot of ways what you do is  kitch.  Have you considered trying something a bit more subtle?  Something that says something about the human condition?”

He looked behind him and finally realized I’d suckered him.  “We’re going to talk about this again tomorrow.  This isn’t over yet by a long shot.”

“Well, hell.  Have a good day then.”

Old Jules

 Today on Ask Old Jules:  Feelings About Time?

Old Jules, how do you feel about time passing by?

4 Comments

Posted in Adventure

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

Cautiously Optimistic Concerning Various Pessimisms

Posted on March 21, 2012 by | 5 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for you and me coming back for a read this morning.  You, because you’re managing to stay alive in this hostile reality we’ve selected to submerge ourselves in, and me, because I managed to put the chickens up and let them out without getting struck by lightning.  Which seemed a definite possibility while I did it.

 

I don’t mind getting struck by lightning so much, but it seems a bit of an anti-climax, everything else being equal.  I don’t care for the notion of leaving a lot of loose ends lying around for someone else to have to deal with.

For instance, I’d hate to get fried by lightining without telling you about the taurine Jeanne sent me and I’ve been taking.  My thought was that it might replace the blood-pressure meds I have to order from India.  I’m not evangelical about it, and I’m not going to do a complete switch without watching it closely a while longer.  But I’m cautiously optimistic.

Then there’s the Invader Cat.  It vanished around here for a few days and I was cautiously optimistic I’d seen the last of it, but it’s back this morning.  So I’m cautiously optimistic some other way about it, but not so much you’d notice.

The minor erosion mitigation measures I took recently performed well during this deluge and moved things forward a lot further and faster than I’d have dared cautiously optimistically predict.  Just saying, for any of you considering such projects.

Finally, for those relatively few readers who check in here because we used to correspond about the non-randomness phenomenon.  If you’ve got enough RAM on your computers, I’m cautiously optimistic you’ll find it was worth your while to track them every which way and compare the results with anything else you’ve ever tested.  It doesn’t nail things down on all the corners, but it goes a longish way in the right direction.

As for everything else, I think there’s reason to abandon caution and just say to hell with it and be optimistic.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules: Benefits of Reconstruction?

Old Jules, how did the North and South benefit from reconstruction?

5 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Astronomy, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Texas

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

A Filler for Bad Texas Weather

Posted on March 20, 2012 by | 12 comments

Good morning everyone, Jeanne here.  Jules and I discussed the possibility that the horrendous weather he’s been having down there in the hill country might inhibit his going online for a day or two, so I’m putting up a couple items that I was going to save for a future Ask Old Jules entry. As always, if you have a question yourself that  you’d like to see answered in a future post, you can put it in the comments on either site. 

Old Jules, my partner and I  have asked spirits/orbs/ghosts into our home so that we can take photos of them. We have some good orb pics. The thing that have really noticed is that within a minute of my partner sensing something in the room, I often smell an incredibly strong smell of rotten eggs/rotten flesh. This has happened about 3 times whilst asking for beings to be photographed. The other night after taking pics I suddenly smelt it in my bedroom, like it was following me (and I was undressing). My partner seems to sense beings,  but I don’t.  I smell them, but he can’t.
So my main question is whether this smell is of bad spirits/demons?

Sounds as though you might need to try the NOSE (Neotronics Olfactory Sensing Equipment; Neotronics). It’s likely to be the rage in the next generation of marketing ghost-chasing equipment to television watching ghost busters.

Paranormality’s grand
Electro-magnetically scanned;
Ghost-chasing adventures
And captitalist ventures
Finally go hand-in-hand.

Old Jules, what’s the best strategy to play blackjack online?

The best strategy is to not play online. Would you play blackjack at a casino where they took the cards into the backroom to shuffle them, where everything important happened outside your range of vision, where the whole thing, beginning to end, was done in a dark room illegally and you’d have no recourse in the unimaginable event you could prove you’d been cheated?

Online gambling from the US just about fits that description. The online casino strangers you play with provide the games because they have a vested interest in winning. If Lady Luck doesn’t offer up the profits there’s nothing at all to keep them from helping her along.

12 Comments

Posted in Adventure

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

Dancing With Roosters

Posted on March 16, 2012 by | 8 comments

Good morning readers.  I’m obliged you made a swing by here.  I’m going to do my best to give you something to have read by the time you leave if the Coincidence Coordinators and the commie phone line will sit still for it.

I’ve about decided I’m going to have peace and harmony around here, and I don’t care who I have to kill to do it.  The roosters are driving me nuts with their sneaky non-harmonizing ways.

The Great Speckled Bird surprised me by surviving the winter, feeling better most ways than he has in a longish time.  But more crippled up than ever.  Not much use of the one leg anymore, one wing weak or useless.  So when he falls, the usual ritual is to lie on his back waving his legs around.  Struggling for a shift in reality to get into a position where the one foot can get a hold on something.

But even so, he’s out there ranging with the hens, doing what roosters are supposed to do as often as he can see his way clear to do it and he can find a willing hen.

But meanwhile I keep my bachelor roosters penned most of the day.  Mainly because they’re of a mind that if I’m not looking it’s okay to open up a can of whoopass on TGSB.  They can knock him down and peck the bejesus out of him in less time than it takes to tell it.

But I’ve digressed.  I was going to tell you about dancing with roosters, which is the only way a person can establish harmonious society with them.  A rooster isn’t long on understanding the ways of a human being, but he does understand who’s the cock of the walk.  And if he doesn’t understand, or he forgets, he’s forever trying to reassure himself about whether he’s boss, or someone else is.

A rooster has two main dances.  One he does for the hens, which I’ll describe some other time, though it’s important to know how to do it so’s to keep him and the hens on their toes.  But the one used to communicate “I’m a contender,” and “You want some of this?  Come get it!” is an absolute necessity.

The last couple of days when the bachelor roosters and TGSB were out concurrently I’ve had to do a lot of dancing around stiff-legged, acting like I was pecking the ground watching them out of the corner of my eye and flapping my arms threateningly.  Reminding them if they want to mess with TGSB they’ve got to go through the bull-goose-looney to get there.

I think where I slipped up was when the warm weather started I quit wearing my red stocking cap they considered a comb, and forgot I’m a rooster too.  Got thinking they could each be a contender.

Old Jules

The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters

The Liar: The Great Speckled Bird, Part 2

News from the Middle of Nowhere

October Quietude, Dead Bugs and Old Roosters

8 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Animals, Chickens, Communication, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Nature, Poultry, Relationships, Senior Citizens

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

Fire Ants, Food Sanitation and the Old Cottage Try

Posted on March 15, 2012 by | 1 comment

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning. I’d thought that moth might survive a while because the cats were intimidated by it, but I was wrong.  Tabby made a meal of it before sunset.

The phone line’s being a communist this morning, so I don’t know whether I’ll be able to finish a post and get it up.  If I save frequently enough I can progress two steps forward and one back, losing the connection but only losing the unsaved part of the immortal prose.

The fire ants came out of hiding yesterday, so I’m back in business food-sanitation-wise.  It will be a considerable relief getting their help on the dishwashing around here.  Fire Ants, Dishwashing and Drought

Good news from Kay on the phone yesterday about the Invader Cat.  Seems it’s doing the Texas Two-Step.  A neighbor a couple of miles the other side of them asked recently if they ‘had’ a black cat, or had seen one.  Turns out the Invader Cat migrates over there a couple of days at a time, also, and has done for a considerable while.

That puts to rest any concerns I had about it joining the household.

I had a considerable bit of immortal prose I was going to do this morning, but the distraction of this dial-up is killing my muse.  I think I’m going to have to save it for sometime else.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules: Old Jules, I love one girl very much, but she is not responding, what should I do?

1 Comment

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Animals, Nature

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Betting on Future Sheep, or Locating the Moth Balls

Posted on March 14, 2012 by | 4 comments

While you earthlings are fretting over whether your next king is going to be friendly to your preferred nuances of greed, waste, envy, scorn and target identification, you might want to squeeze in a few minutes to find those moth balls.  The days for protecting your brass monkeys might not be completely over for the year, but keeping the emphasis on the right syllable is as important now as it ever was.

Even though those Pendleton blankets might seem anachronistic today, and knowing there are plenty of sheep still out there grazing, there’s going to be another October and November eventually.  Betting on the come, figuring you can just toss the holey blankets and buy something Chinese to replace them might problematic by then.

There’s a rumor going around the Chinese plan to devote the entire planetary wool production to their world-wide-near-monopoly on steel.  Chinese statisticians and accountants have discovered crescent wrenches and pliers made of wool will do the job as well as the ones made of steel they’re selling now.  And they’ll be worth as much as the dollars US consumers use to pay for them.

Save some of those moth balls for your toolbox.  Next year that might be where you’ll find your Pendleton blankets.

Old Jules

 

4 Comments

Posted in 1960's, 2012, Adventure, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Politics, YouTube

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

The Great Escape

Posted on March 14, 2012 by | 4 comments

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

Some happenings on this planet are so unlikely as to probably have transpired somewhere else, not here.  The scene below is a US Forestry Service outdoor toilet located at a mountain picnic area near the road running from Silver City to Reserve, New Mexico.  From a distance it looks innocuous enough.

I’d imagine that’s what the guy who was sitting on the john inside thought when something important happened.  In the bottom pic the unlikely is somewhat conveyed, though it doesn’t show how thoroughly the saturation of bullet holes targeting the piece of space he occupied.

The Great Escape

Call yourself a cop

I’ll call myself a robber

Corner me in an outhouse

Call in your backups

Talk to me through bullhorns

“Come out with your hands up

We know you’re in there

Watching flies strafe dust particles

In sunlight shafts

Savoring the odor and the old news

“Come out or we’ll come in after you”

Tension builds. No answer.

Anti-climax gun and badge hero makes a perfect icon

Of an eyeball peeking through a knot hole.

But I’m not scared.

I’ve escaped down through the hole

Into the real world

Old Jules Copyright©2003 NineLives Press

Most things in this life just aren’t worth worrying about.  The Universe has enough surprises and cards on the bottom of the deck to make the focus of the worry obsolete, or absolescent.

Old Jules

 

4 Comments

Posted in 2000's, Adventure, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Survival, YouTube

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

The Social Security Entitlement Adventure

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | 20 comments

Good morning readers. I’m obliged you came by for a read.

I got an email yesterday from an old acquaintance who’s carrying a serious chip on his shoulder about somebody calling the Social Security pension he lives on an ‘entitlement’. He raged on about how he paid into it fifty years, and his employers matched everything he paid. So, he says, it’s not an entitlement.

Sheeze. I wonder what else a person would call it. He’s entitled to it. What the hell is it but an entitlement?

But I think he’s concerned that because ‘entitlement’ has become a buzzword for something else he doesn’t like.  Namely a whole range of government payouts to bank owners, automobile companies, multi-national corporations, all manner of people bleeding the US budget dry with bailouts and payoffs.  I think he figures they might quit paying him his pension because they called it an entitlement.  Putting him down with scum bankers and CEOs and Chairmans of Boards and politicians.

Seems to me he’s just not thinking right.  He’s gotten old up there in Al Capone country and no longer seeing the opportunity it would represent if they took away his retirement check he needs to live.

Truth is, we lived fairly tame lives, we retirees.  Generally we did what was needed and more-or-less stayed within the boundaries of the laws and ethics while we did it.

In a lot of ways we screwed ourselves out of the adventure we were entitled to.  The adventure of sticking up banks and shooting it out with the cops and whatnot.

Those bankers and CEOs and politicans got to have all the fun, though they didn’t do it in a way that would take them out in a blaze of gunfire.  But we spent our lives in an environment with them in their houses on the hill, and down on the street corners and alleyways people were shooting it out with one another and the cops.

We just plodded along working our asses off not getting to drive limosines nor scoot around in the shadows mugging anyone.  But now maybe they’re finally going to give us our shot at having some fun finally.

Seems to me it’s about time.

Old Jules

20 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Social Security, Survival

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