Category Archives: America

Protect our freedom by invading someone

Posted on July 20, 2014 by | 2 comments

Hi readers.  It’s time you younger readers hoisted your overalls up by the straps and increase the amount of geography the US owns.  You can easily tell we don’t have enough land, that the US needs more geography, by the screaming everyone’s doing about aliens.  The ones who don’t have PHDs and Asian surnames, I mean.

In 1849 our troops protected our freedom by invading Mexico, and Mexico does have a lot of ground with nothing on it but Mexicans, so that’s a possibility.  Last time we protected our freedom by invading Mexico we got California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and maybe some other places.

But there are also some Indian reservations with nothing much but Indians on them.  The only way we’re ever going to protect our freedom from those Indians is to invade the reservations and put them up for real estate development.  There’s some good hunting and fishing country in some of those, along with potential for ski slopes and other tourism.  Gambling casinos.

But Canada’s also a place been threatening our freedom too long and it has plenty of real estate with nothing on it but Canadians.  If we ever expect to solidify our security with Alaska we need the Pacific Northwestern Canada real estate.  And for all practical purposes it’s empty.  Nobody much from the US lives there at the moment, which is one hell of a provocation.

The truth is though, we’re never going to feel safe invading Guatemala until we’ve got our freedoms protected in Mexico.  We need International Boundaries that connect to places connected to somewhere else where there’s more growth potential.

We acquired Puerto Rico protecting our freedom in the Spanish American War, but what the hell did we get for protecting our freedom during WWI?  Guam?  How’d we get Hawaii?  I’m trying to remember which freedom it was we were protecting when we got the US Virgin Islands, and US Samoa.

Fact is, the US has really dropped the ball.  US veterans of WWII hardly gained us any real estate at all to savor our freedoms in.  And we lost our freedom in Vietnam and North Korea.  And all the freedom our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan protected didn’t gain one inch of new territory with nothing on it except Arabs.

Sheeze.  It’s fairly clear we need to be protecting our freedoms closer to home.  Starting with those damned tribal lands nobody’s been able to build condominiums on.  Finish the job on the damned Indians before having a closer look at Canada and Mexico and the freedoms we need to protect involving them.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2014, America

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Steamed rice under curry chicken with bean sprouts, broccoli, green onion and cranberries.

Posted on July 19, 2014 by | Leave a comment
Low sodium, no MSG

Low sodium, no MSG

And of course it’s all no sodium/low sodium.  Stir fry it or steam it with the rice.

Once it’s all in the bowl steaming sprinkle coconut across the top and a splonge of fig preserves on the side to simulate chutney.  Chopped cilantro, ancho molido, minced garlic and minced ginger to taste.

Raw peanuts sprinkled into it and you’ll be ready to rock and roll.

Believe me when I say it’s easy to discover you’re going to have to put some leftovers into the freezer.  It’s containerized cargo for the digestive tract.

Don’t try this anywhere but home.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2014, America, Food

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Olathe Free Concert in the Park – Brody Buster opens for Paul Thorn

Posted on July 19, 2014 by | 4 comments
Brody Buster One Manning opening for Paul Thorn

Brody Buster One Manning opening for Paul Thorn

 

Paul Thorn Band

Paul Thorn Band

Hi readers.  When Jeanne’s oldest son, Kenneth, called around 6pm last night Hydrox and I were wondering whether to pester Shiva all evening.

Kenneth:  There’s a concert down at the Olathe Park tonight.  We were wondering whether you’d care to go.

Me:  Does the Pope crap in the woods?

And so it happened.  Kenneth, Andrew, Hailey [Kenneth’s daughter] and I drifted down and got a parking spot about a quarter-to-half mile from the park.  And with a rest stop or two and a bit of heavy breathing, I spang walked down there for a bit of toe tapping and grinning.

Brody Buster – Guy’s a bull-goose harmonica player.  Does a middling fine Creedence Clearwater Revival song or three as a stand-alone.

Paul Thorn Band – Reminds me in some ways of Leon Redbone.  Reminds me in some other ways of early Jesse Winchester.

Heck of an enjoyable evening.  Now that global warming went on coffee break it was comfy enough so all us people in shorts were wondering whether it was worth a walk back to the car for a jacket.

hailey july 2014

Hailey ended up wrapped in that blanket sticking the plastic light sticks out waving them around in the dark.  Me, I figured it was going to be better struggling back to the car in cool night rather than crawling back on all fours in regular old honest late-July heat.

Turned out both bands were sufficiently good to distract everyone from global warming or a hair cool for the choice of clothing.  Got them waving their arms around and clapping instead of talking about the polar bears dying off and Antarctica either melting or not melting.

An evening well spent.  Physical therapy performs wonders.  I never thought I’d be able to do something of that sort again.

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 2014, America, Music

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Back in the game

Posted on July 18, 2014 by | Leave a comment

hydrox june 2014

Hi readers.  Mr. Hydrox explained something for me I’d been wondering about a longish while.

Hydrox:  Meeeeeoooooww. Meeeeeoooooww. Meeeeeoooooww.

Me: Jeeze Hydrox.  Ain’t it a bit late for this crap?  Something bothering you?

Hydrox:  No.  I just got to thinking about things.  Missing Niaid.  All those Y2K chickens and that cabin.  Mehitabel.  Tabby and that mountain place we used to live.  All I’ve got now is this other cat here, Shiva.  You.  And that woman who lives here with Shiva.

Me:  Well you do have that.  You’ve got to live for the moment.

Hydrox: I’m not asking for any of that cheap tripe philosopy.  You asked why I was weeping aloud and I told you.

Me:  I’m glad you did, amigo.  I was afraid you were getting sick again.

Hydrox:  So where’s that woman who lives here?  I haven’t seen her for a couple of days?

Me:  She’s off somewhere else, Hydrox.  It’s just you, Shiva and me for the next couple of weeks.

 Hydrox:  So I can meoooow as much as I want and nobody’s going to be kept awake?

Me:  I’ll sleep right through it.  You know that.  And who cares what Shiva thinks?  She used to be a good cow cat, earned her keep.  Nowadays she’s worthless.  I don’t know why Jeanne keeps her around.

Hydrox:  Yeah, but I’m glad she’s here anyway.  This place almost echoes.  I’d go crazy if there weren’t at least one more cat around.

Me:  You’ve got it then, amigo.  I’ll keep feeding her so long as the food holds out.  Maybe Jeanne will pick up some more when she gets back.

Old Jules

 

 

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Posted in 2014, America, Animals

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Audie Murphy, Cuba and a meaner baby face than Baby Face Nelson

Posted on July 18, 2014 by | 6 comments

Hi readers.  Most of you are too young to remember who Audie Murphy was.  Who he was was a killer the likes of which most wars don’t have the violent potential to produce.  Baby Face Murphy lodged himself on a burning tank with a machine gun and proceeded to mow down close-up and personal more Germans than is possible.  Armed and dangerous Germans.

Well, hell.  That got him the Congressional Medal of Honor because nobody wanted to have him come home carrying any grudges against anyone back here.  Made him a movie star and he stayed one until his death sometime in the 70s.  Free basing cocaine I think it was, and caught fire.  But that might have been someone else.  Maybe Ricky Nelson.

The Gun Runners 1958NR82 minutes A down-on-his luck charter boat captain is ensnared in the deadly machinations of a wily American who is smuggling illegal arms to Cuban rebels. More Info  Starring: Audie Murphy, Eddie Albert Director: Don Siegel

Anyway, most of you probably don’t remember that Cuba used to be a place where a Carib dictator named Batista did what Carib dictators do.  Did it enough worse than Papa Doc Duvallier to cause the US public to cheer the revolutionary splinters operating in the jungles.  Including one carrying the name Fidel Castro

Anyway, streaming on Netflix is the full version of Audie Murphy and wossname, the guy who played Marcus Welby, and a lot of Goldiloxes all getting into a lot of trouble between Key West and Havana.

Poor Baby Face Murphy.  Life was easier for him when he was just shooting a machine gun from atop a burning tank.  Wasn’t as dangerous as free-basing cocaine, either.  Or whatever it was got him dead.

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 2014, America

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Maybe to some it was a terrible tragedy. To others likely it was a blessing

Posted on July 18, 2014 by | 4 comments

Hi readers.  Wil pointed out in a comment that the guy in the White House mightn’t have known yet whether a plane went down when he made his might be a terrible tragedy statement.  I’ve been re-thinking the post and I hope Wil is wrong.

Maybe Wossname, the guy in the White House was demonstrating an uncharacteristic, Zen-like wisdom.  Maybe he was trying to exert some of the world leadership thing presidents are occasionally accused of, albeit wrongly accused.

Fact is, that airplane actually mightn’t be a terrible tragedy because someone the CIA or such had on a list of suspects of being terrorists.  In which case everyone else on the airplane was just part of the price of fighting terrorism.  Maybe the prez didn’t want to stick his foot in his mouth and be forever harangued about it until all the authorities went over the passenger list carefully.

It’s an ill wind that blows no good, any way you cut it.  While it’s tempting to think Wossname wanted to make certain someone he’d personally like to see dead was on the plane, or that someone he had to make a public display NOT being glad as hell, the crash was certainly a secret blessing to some peoople.

People can accurately be described as a pain in the ass to other people.  All of us.  If one of the passengers was the guy next door to someone and had a dog that barked all night, he neighbor would consider the prez a fool, or a liar if Wossname proclaimed it a terrible tragedy.  And so on 295 times.  Plus or minus the airline crew.  Lots of people collecting flight insurance, losing troublesome mothers-in-law, competing people on the career trail, it all reduces the equation when attempting to determine whether there was a whiff of good in the ill wind.

And Wossname!, the guy in the White House, might have recognized this!

Maybe.

In any case, we might as well be ecstatic because now we can make up our own minds whether anyone on the airplane needed killing more than the rest of the people aboard needed to keep living.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2014, America

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Spoof on WWII – A Man Called Sarge – Heluva funny movie

Posted on July 17, 2014 by | Leave a comment

Hi Readers.

This one’s worth the laughs.

You watched this on 7/17/14

A Man Called Sarge

1990PG-131hr 28m

You rated this movie: 4

This parody of WW II movies finds the overly zealous Sgt. Duke Roscoe leading his band of oddballs on a mission to blow up a vital German fuel dump.
Meanwhile, if you agree with me that we’ve been taking a lot of our presidents, particularly Franklin Delano Roosevelt, too seriously, you might enjoy this for a change.
Streaming on Netflix:  FDR: American Badass 2012R93 minutes, After contracting polio from a werewolf bite, FDR and a team of historic figures seek victory in World War II by defeating an army of Nazi werewolves. More Info

Starring: Barry Bostwick, Lin Shaye Director: Garrett Brawith

 

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Posted in 2014, America, Movies

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Wossname, the White House Guy, says that passenger plane crash killing 295 might be a tragedy

Posted on July 17, 2014 by | 3 comments

Hi readers.  I’m thinking terrible tragedies only involve killing 300 or more unsuspecting travelers.  But wossname’s come right out and strongly implied the 295 killed in the Ukraine “might be a terrible tragedy“.

I really hate to see anyone messing around with the English language this way.  If the word “might” can be placed in a sentence ahead of “be a terrible tragedy” the terms of engagement need to be defined for the purposes of clarity.

Hells bells readers.  You know me.  I’m not pickypickypicky about this sort of thing.  If one policician, or 295 regular normal people, or some specified number of a particular ethnic group is what’s required to make a terrible tragedy it’s no affair of mine.  But planners need to know what the hell is needed.  Who the hell wants to know about non-terrible tragedies?  Which will almost certainly happen now, thanks to this ambiguity created by the wossname, President of the US.

What the hell is the matter with these people?

Old Jules

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Posted in 2014, America

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All these free kids flooding into the country and they want to send them BACK?

Posted on July 12, 2014 by | 2 comments

Sheeze readers, can you believe this?  Hundreds, maybe thousands of kids at loose-ends coming across our border.  Nobody for us to answer to, no matter what we do to them.  And whatever it is beats starving to death in some pesthole where they don’t even speak English.

Heck, we could send them to butler and house-keeper schools so’s when they grow up they’d have rent-free jobs they can’t quit in the homes of rich people.  Make slaves of them.  Hell nobody would notice or care.  Auction them off to Oriental pedophiles to pay the National Debt.

These kids are the future and we’re squandering it, haggling over how long it should take to send them back.  Sending them back is crazy.  Nobody has ever been more helpless than them.  We can do anything to them that makes us feel good.  Put them to work doing phone sales, teach them martial arts and how to shoot and give them to important people for a lifetime of free bodyguarding.

Hang signs over their shoulders advertising pizza joints or wearing statue of liberty suits waving people into tax joints.  Free.  Everyone could have one to wash the laundry, cook and do the dishes.  Curl up under the kitchen table when the work was all done.

Mostly these days a lot of people can afford to hire someone for menial tasks, but they still have to get up to get beers or change the batteries on the TV remotes.  Still have to carry out the trash.  Life still sucks for them.

And as always, God heard their pleas.  Sent all those starving, displaced kids up from Godawful places south of Mexico.

God has always taken a favorable view to slavery.  Time was He demanded His Chosen People of the time make slaves of all the neighbors they couldn’t kill.  And now we are his Chosen People.  He’s offering a free gift of thousands of slaves for us to do anything with we want to.  And they can’t do anything back.

Hell, they’d probably thank us.

Send them back?  What the hell is wrong with those people in Washington?  Right now they’re having to PAY illegal aliens to mow the grass.  If they relax they can have one for a slave and use him/her for a sex toy when all the work’s done.

And they’re helpless to keep it from happening.  Perfecto!  If we’re going to be God’s Chosen People we’re going to have to start acting the way God’s Chosen People acted when they were still getting their instructions.  And the way the ones who think they are, but aren’t anymore, are still behaving, though they’ve toned it down some.

But they don’t have any starving, helpless kids flooding across the border begging to be exploited seven ways from Sunday upside down and backward.  God’s pretty much cut them off for the last couple of thousand years.

Old Jules

In case you missed how we became God’s Chosen People and posts in that vein:

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Posted in America, Human Behavior

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Prosthetic flagpole after-market extensions for that permanent half-mast look – Half-mast inflation

Posted on July 12, 2014 by | 3 comments

the forbidden door

Hi readers.  Jeanne and I pulled into the parking lot of the Olathe Community Center prepared to do serious battle with exercise machines.  But my focus was distracted by the half-mast status of the flag.

“Why’s the flag at half-mast?”  Me, trying to think of how many living ex-presidents might have kicked.

“I dunno.  I guess someone died or got killed somewhere.”  She didn’t pause from gathering her water bottle and unbuckling her seat belt.  “Maybe someone in Iraq or somewhere.”  She shrugged.  “Half-mast inflation.”

They seem to do that a lot in Kansas.  Running the flag up to half-staff as frequently as possible on the safe assumption somebody died.  But I suppose that’s everywhere.  When I was in Texas and only got to town every couple of weeks I noticed they held off dyings of important Americans to coordinate their half-staff flag-flyings with me being in town.

But it probably began a lot earlier.  Hell, it got in style when Elvis Presley died, I think.  Damned flags all over the country celebrating the day the music died.  Bye, bye Miss American Pie.

There are only, what?  365 days sometimes, and either 364 or 366 other years, and so damned many important people.  Finding some days when the flag flies from the top of the pole is going to leave someone who ought to have a half-pole lying dead with a full masted flag.  Not properly recognized.

The obvious solution is to retrofit extensions on all the damned flagpoles across our great nation so’s the default position is half-staff and there’s no option of insulting any deserving half-staffers.

Considering how many important people we lose every year to drug overdoses, suicides and downsizing there aren’t a lot of options.  Although they’ve got a Commemorative US Postage Stamp of Jimi Hendrix, I noticed.

But even having a postage stamp with your picture on it becomes inflationary.  Next thing you know they’ll be naming cars after the Killed In Actions [KIA] and changing street names every time a two-bit politician or a button pushing drone-jockey in Afghanistan falls off a bar stool and offs himself.

Old Jules

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Posted in America, Government

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