Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
Ring
Me: Wassat? The damned telephone? Where the hell is it? Ahh! Under that. Get off there, cat!
Ring.
Me: [scowling. Into the phone.] This better be good.
Telephone:Old Jules?
Me: Who’s asking?
Telephone: This is George Armstrong Custer MacGruder. I’m calling for the president.
Me: President of what?
Telephone: President of the United States.
Me: What? The black guy? Tell him I don’t vote.
Telephone:He knows you don’t vote.
Me:Then why the hell are you calling?
Telephone: He reads your blog. Hopes you’ll answer some questions.
Me: I don’t want some president nosing around in my affairs. I don’t stick my nose into his business. He needs take care of whatever it is he does up there.
Telephone: Nothing he’s tried so far is working. He’s casting around for ideas. desperate.
Me: That’s laudable, anyway. You’ve got the wrong number. I don’t have any ideas. Tell him to take up Zen. Learn to use the I Ching.
Telephone:I Ching?
Me: Yeah. The Book of Changes. Chinese. Divination. Confucius. All that. The John Richard Lynn translation of Wang Bi’s the best one I’ve found. Yarrow stick method. Damned coins will throw you off. Tell him to pay close attention to the changing lines. You still there?
Telephone:I’m taking notes. Sorry.
Me: Anything else you need? I’ve got things to do here.
Telephone: So you’re saying the President needs to consult an oracle?
Me: You said nothing else is working didn’t you?
Telephone:Can you think of any other advice you’d like to give the President?
Me: I don’t give advice. Except I advise you not to call me again. I get pissed off sometimes when people bother me.
Telephone:Could he send you an email?
Me:As long as he’s not trying to sell anything, persuade me to vote, or ask my advice.
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning. Someone sent me the pic above and I figured I might as well share it with you. My guess is that it’s some artists depiction of how Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, Keith and Chuck will look if they don’t OD or die in plane crash before they get old.
Inadvertently found myself on a Yahoo News page when I was trying to check my email this morning. At a glance it appears different things are happening all over the place.
17 people died of something or other in China, which was a shocker.
Wossname’s wife, or maybe ex-wife, is explaining to Egyptians what they ought to do about something, which they doubtless find fascinating and helpful. She’s still one hell of an unpleasant looking lady. Glad I was never married to her. I’ll add that to my gratitude affirmations today.
Various countries are waving guns around at one another out in the South China Sea, which came as a surprise. Article said they all want the same piece of geography and are working up to shooting at one another about it.
Shocked to see some people killed some other people in Mexico, must have been around the time some other people were killing some others in Syria. Maybe some other places too, but you get the idea.
Some guy’s divorcing his wife after five years, which is cause for concern to someone, doubtless.
Exciting news in politics: Various politicos don’t like other politicos and are probably telling the truth about them, while most likely lying about their ownselves.
A nice young man named Tom Timbo
Admired one king for his bimbo,
Next one for his wardom
Next one for boredom
But got all his ideas from Rush Limbo.
On the other hand, the sky was a looker this morning at daybreak. Jupiter, Venus and the moon put on a nice show.
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
Just playing catchup here. Posting a few items I’ve intended to mention for a while, but kept forgetting.
First, a while back I mentioned a kind of farm-fed Vietnamese frozen fish filets I got on one of those drama sales at HEB. Told you it was great fish, cheap, none of that on-the-brink fishy taste a person is liable to get buying fish.
Bought several packages since and what I said remains true. Striped Pangasius.
Secondly, if you’re troubled with awakening nights because of hand-grenades going off in your joints you might give this a try. I usually have to be troubled with it a dozen or so times before I remember to do it, but it might be months before it starts again. Usually when this Texas humidity goes ballistic.
I discovered sometime a long while back that when I eventually remember to do it, two grams of calcium pills per day for a week or two will cause it to stop. Mightn’t work for you, but it does for me. I just wish I could remember it sooner when the joints catch fire nights.
Thirdly, that taurine I told you about a while back I was taking to try to get off blood pressure medications didn’t succeed getting free of it. But the stuff’s so good in other ways I’m going to keep taking it when I can afford it.
Not much else going on here besides the sky full of humidity and hazy sunlight. I’m wondering whether there’s enough hot weather left to take the sheep shears to the long haired cats again. Wondering whether they’ll have time to grow a good coat back before the weather cools enough to make them wish they’d kept the fur.
The New Military Empireum
Just doesn’t exactly inspireum!
The wars presidential
Globular, non-essential
Don’t excite all that much to admireum.
Hairy-assed Truman began it
But maybe Joe Stalin helped plan it,
The Kennedy brothers
LBJ and the others
Threw darts at a map of the planet.
Kohreaah Bay of Pigs Vietnam,
Salvadore, Grenada and Iran
Let’s you and him fight
And do it up right
With rifles we sell you and bombs.
M16s for the Christians [our guys]
AK 47s you buys
From Rooskies and China
Moscow, Carolina
Both working three shifts get the prize.
Whoopteedo! I’m a Vet’ran you see,
Patriotic flag waver, that’s me.
Say, “Thank you!” I helped
Keep it going! But yelped
Nobody’s acknowledging me.
Say “Thank you!” Admire what I did.
The rest of my life I just slid
Along on past glories
Dreaming up good war stories
Of Commies and Muslims I rid.
I din’t get none of the riches
From selling the arms to the bitches
But I got me some poozle
And plenty of boozle
But now I’m just one of the snitches.
Contracted a dose of the clap
Saved your freedoms while you took a nap.
This bumper sign’s all that is left
Of those freedoms not taken by theft
But by always believing their crap.
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
I was walking around in the Dollar Tree Store [Everything’s a dollar or less] when the manager came on the intercom:
“Dollar Tree shoppers! Don’t forget to pick up an item of school supplies for military dependents starting school in the fall. Pencils, pens, tablets, erasers, any item related to school. Dollar Tree will make sure it reaches the dependents of active military personnel.”
My hand stopped midway to a jar of Kosher dills. “Eh? My hearing’s really going to hell. For a minute I thought she said something about donating school supplies to military kids. Sheeze!”
But when she finished ringing up my purchases the cashier smiled and met my eye. “Would you like to buy some pencils or a tablet for military dependents starting school?”
I went snake-eyes. “You think I’m stupid for shopping here, don’t you?” I slid my hat back exposing my forehead. “Do I have a sign saying STUPUD tattooed up there?”
She tried to say something but I butted in. “Got a program so’s I can buy schools supplies for kids of crack whores? Kids of people in prison? Likely they really need it.”
The lady blushed. “They make us ask. I didn’t do it.”
“Here!” I pulled a dollar bag of flour out of one of the sacks. “Give them that if you can find one who knows how to cook something. Otherwise give them shopping carts and point them to your dumpster.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No problem. I give food to beggars. Not something they can sell or trade for drugs and whiskey.”
Soooo. Evidently the military folks aren’t even giving their families money for school supplies these days. Shouldn’t be long before their kids are darting out of alleyways surrounding people waiting at bus stops or traffic lights. “You wanta buy watch? Ring? Skivvy pictures?
Learned it from mom and dad who learned it overseas. Nice scam.
Back when they had the draft, conscripting people for $100 per month, wives and kids moving in with relatives, nobody thought of that one. Now they’re all volunteers for undeclared presidential wars, helping bankrupt the federal budget with their salaries and benefits, they’re panhandling. Trying to mooch off hamburger flippers and other minimum-wage-earners scrimping by shopping at Dollar Tree.
Neighbor: “Did you hear what the Governor of Texas did about Obamacare?
Me: “I don’t know who’s Governor of Texas. Don’t care what he did about anything. Don’t know nothing about Obama, Obamacare, nothing.”
Neighbor: “Well you’d better find out!”
Me: “I don’t go to doctors. Haven’t been to one in 20, 25 years. If I can get out of here before the election I might be able to go through the next presidential term without knowing who’s president.”
Neighbor shakes head frowning, shrugs. The Universe pauses in anticipation of the next topic of conversation.
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
If I hadn’t carefully avoided ever typing the words, “I’m dismantling Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle here,” I’d find it easier to understand how a casual acquaintance could call this blog BS. Anyone who’s certain Heisenberg’s correct usually has a conviction at a religious-level and genuflects muttering Hail Marys and Amens to the concept enough times per day to keep it fresh. If I’d ever come right out and flatly stated it’s a fig-newton of the imagination I’d expect to be damned from hell to breakfast.
But I haven’t.
So I’m forced to conclude there must be something else I’ve posted here during the past year that a person considering himself prudent, reasonable, intelligent, could disagree with. If I had time I’d scroll back over the entries and try to figure out what it could be. Seems to me everything I’ve ever posted here is so patently obvious as to be absolutely outside the scope of rational argument.
For instance, I’ve frequently implied, but probably never come out and actually said I consider cops to be lowlife scum no better than the people they’re sworn to chase and catch. Motivated by greed, lust for power, and cowardly, weak-kneed, vacuous need to find something inside themselves to rhyme with an ambiguous concept of self-worth. Admittedly, it’s probably an over-generalization. No doubt there are exceptions.
Exceptions that prove the rule.
Same with politicians, rabid rabbit-frightened patriots, flag wavers, lawyers, CEOs of multi-national corporations, Texans, people with “WHOOPTEEDOO! I’M A VETERAN” bumper stickers and mostly the rest of us. Whomever we might be.
What’s not to like, what’s to disagree with in any of that?
But, of course, I’m a man with a weakness for brutal, honest self-examination, so I’m going to have to think more on all this. Possibly scan over some past posts in an effort to find some slip I’ve made in my posts someone might be able to construe as BS.
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
Most of you who read here frequently know I’m a man who prefers insanity and what a lot of you might consider hardship to compromise of a lot of things you’d assign no value to. The world I live in is a place with a rigid value structure teetering on the edge of an abyss I do my best to keep it from falling into.
Yesterday I was tending my own affairs when the newish neighbor up the hill drove down and offered me a Shiner Boch beer. Which I considered a tasty gesture. I bought a case of beer sometime last summer and was down to almost my last one in the fridge. That Shiner pulled me a beer into the future.
A while back I’d offered, neighborly, if the neighbor ever needed anyone to lift the other end of something I’d be pleased to lift it. I don’t mind being a help when someone needs something I can do. Glad to do it, in fact.
So, as I sat there sipping that Shiner Boch he explained to me he’d fired a likely young man he had up there working for him. Said he’d like me to come work up there helping him a while. Offered me an hourly wage to do it.
Given my financial situation I was sorely tempted and tentatively accepted, fully aware of the dangers inherent in changing the nature of my relationship with a neighbor from helpful, casual acquaintance to one of employer/bought-and-paid-for-employee. And asking myself how the hell I could charge a wage to do something I’d have done anyway for nothing if he’d asked.
You’ll probably consider it foolish, maybe melodramatic when I tell you the entire damned issue kept me awake a lot longer last night than it had any business doing.
The man has a lot of machinery up there, all of it different by one nuance or another, from anything I’ve operated before. Never operated a track machine, which I’d like to learn to do. Never operated any machine that wasn’t gasoline fueled. So if I have an opportunity to learn I’d consider the learning a potential value to me sometime.
If he managed doing it, there’d be a lot more value for me than any damned wage he’d be likely to pay. If he tried, but didn’t succeed, no big deal.
It’s not a quid pro quo that way. Just two folks, each one needing a helping hand, extending one each to the other.
No camels putting their noses under the tent. Nobody bought and paid for.
As a person who’s seen and experienced the entire range of potentials for neighbors wanting to shoot or beat the bejesus out of one another, this seems to me a decent way of disarming it all. If a person’s driving off a few miles to work for someone and everything begins as a clear exchange of dollar value for labor it’s safe. Someone decides to lean harder than someone else is willing to be leaned on, they easily go their separate ways. No harm done.
But two people essentially handcuffed to one another by proximity don’t need to be throwing that sort of temptations out to human frailties.
So, here in a little while I’m going to wander up there and see what he wants me to do in exchange for fixing that damned old Communist F350.
The people who get on the telephone and pester other people to tell them what’s important and what isn’t have made a disturbing discovery. Whereas the US public used to think global climate change was the daddy longlegs to fret about, they’ve switched horses. Now they’re worrying about whether they’re going to have enough water to drink, along with a few other things.
Considering how well informed, literate, intelligent and prone the US public is to worry about what celebrity is fooling around on a spouse, or what dress some celebrity wore to some function, this represents a surprisingly practical and unlikely issue for the citizenry to choose for concern.
Not to say it’s timely. Timely might have been better defined as back before the fish in all those major rivers downstream from cities discharging treated sewage into them developed worrisome ulcers on their skins. And became scary to eat in other ways.
Timely would have been back when there weren’t houses over all the major aquifers built to demand future water until the mortgages were paid off in four decades. Timely would certainly have included a population asking itself,
“Am I going to be able to eat [or even smoke] the grass I’m irrigating by robbing water from an aquifer with a 100,000 year recharge cycle? Any chance this golf course would grow grain crops as a better use of non-renewable and as-yet uncontaminated water?”
But the telephone pesterers didn’t go a step further and ask the well-informed pestered what, precisely, they’re each doing to better the situation. Maybe the next p0ll will do that. The answers will involve writing letters to politicians and signing petitions, almost certainly. Not flushing the commode once a day and keeping the showers short.
Sure as hell not letting the lawn die and the golf clubs rust.
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
A while back I was talking on the phone with my bud, Rich, in North Carolina. He’d just returned from a visit to the Georgia Guidestones and was telling me about them, and the general history of the area where they’re located. One anecdote involved the local hero of the American Revolutionary War.
Seems there was a woman settler in the area famous enough for her contribution to be recognized as a hero and locally a focus of veneration. She got a bunch of British soldiers drunk and murdered them while they slept.
I don’t doubt a few more dead enemy soldiers was a boon at the time, but I found myself wondering how the woman felt about it after the dust settled, say three, four decades later. It ain’t as though your average British soldier was a lot different than the people he was fighting against at the time. Just grunts, following orders, doing what they were told to do, same as soldiers everywhere. Probably it’s possible to assemble a set of reasonings to appreciate the impact the event had on the outcome of the Revolution, but it’s less easy to bring up any admiration for the lady who did it.
In fact, I’d guess her neighbors and husband were careful not to offend her during her time around them later. A person who’d do what she did is nobody to be trifled with.
But thinking about all that led me to consider the whole issue of the way we humans celebrate history. Fairly bizarre, when you consider it carefully. The British celebrate a guy who attempted to blow up Parliament, but was thwarted, for instance. Lots of fireworks, but I wonder if they’re cheering the attempt to do it, or the failure of the effort?
For that matter, I wonder if they do much celebrating out on the Rez, shooting off fireworks and cheering the ethnic memory of, say, Custer’s Last Stand. Or the slaughter of Fetterman’s troops during the Red Cloud uprising. If they don’t, are they being sufficiently true to their own tribal histories?, I speculates.
Or, at least as grotesque, are the black citizens of the projects all over the US going to be cheering for the institution of slavery that brought their ancestors to this geography so’s to allow them to be here, not Africa? Whatever the shortcomings of life in modern US ghettos, probably the average modern resident of their ancestral homelands would gladly change places. Can I hear a few “Amens!” for the institution of slavery in this land concurrent with [gulp, sigh] remembering our noble founding fathers? Their unselfish efforts and sacrifices along the avenue toward ‘freeing themselves’ from British oppression and tyranny?
Is anyone in Georgia going to be singing, Marching Through Georgiatomorrow? Cheering Sherman’s scorched earth burning of Atlanta, and churning across the state burning and looting the citizenry, civilian and military, all the way to Savannah?
Fact is, it all comes out of the same cauldron. Sip a spoonful of it and you have to either like the overall taste, or focus on the flavor of the meat while ignoring the onions and garlic. Here, and everywhere else.
For instance, the Japanese probably have enjoyed their post-WWII / pre-tsunami affluence, freedoms, non-involvement in military adventures. They’d never have gotten any of that without Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Okinawa, the Bataan Death March, the Rape of Nanking, Midway, Tarawa, et al. The destruction of the Japanese Empire.
But I’m betting they don’t have a day of celebration for it.
Probably somewhere in Georgia there’s a community of UK citizens visiting, or living out their lives. Or folks who came here from the UK and became US Citizens. Maybe tomorrow would be a good day for them to visit the Georgia Guidestones, wave a US flag around to acknowledge that history’s a different place for them now, than it used to be. In any case, maybe they ought to be conscious of how much they drink and where they do their drinking. Georgia still has woman patriots.
History’s not an overly hospitable environment without some selectivity and flexibility. Going out tomorrow and killing a few Brits, Japanese, Yankees, whites, Mexicans, Spaniards, Germans, Vietnamese, Apache, Navajo, Lakota, maybe a few Russians for good measure would help everyone remember, better, what patriotism’s all about. Or get’em drunk and cut their throats.
At least it wouldn’t be as boring as a parade. An honest tribute to our ancestors, whomever they might have been, would help us make the same mistakes they did. Which we will.
Old Jules
Who needs fireworks anyway, when you can have the real thing?
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
So Far From Heaven 