Category Archives: Human Behavior

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

Re-blogged from July 12, 2014

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:

 

 

 

2018 Influenza epidemic seems somehow appropriate

1918 influenza pandemic

Over coffee this morning Johnny, across the hall, described the 2018 flue that is evidently stalking around scaring innocent people.   Johnny tells me it’s killing people like flies.   He said 1200 people died of it somewhere he couldn’t remember, either in a day or a week.   Or during the passage of some other length of time.

But the downside of not being able to believe anything the news media tells you is that you can’t believe anything the news media tells you.    And by extension, even though Johnny is my main source of news, he gets it off the television.   So I can’t trust the news he gives me.

But he did tell me some horror stories about entire families showing up at hospitals with this stuff and croaking right there under the noses of whole tribes of medicos.  Which, if true, might mean we actually are going to experience something more in tune with the 1918 pandemic than most of the later scares.   Cemeteries all over the US have lines of graves of people who were offed by that bull goose 1918 flu.

If you’re like me, you aren’t all that interested in coming down with the damned stuff.   Whether it’s just a little bitty pissant flu, or a great big Alpha-Male gorilla flu that expresses itself more forcefully.

Johnny also said they were telling people to avoid gatherings of people and think twice before sitting around a waiting room in a hospital or doctors office.

Well gee whiz.    I have appointments at the KC VA tomorrow over at Kansas City, MO.   I’ll bet there won’t be any people over there blowing flu virus around all over the rest of us, though.   I’ll bet everyone going over to that vet hospital will be suffering from broken legs and poor vision is the only reason they’re hanging around.

Yeah.     Bound to be no flu sneezers and coughers  over there in the halls, or in the cafeteria, or waiting rooms.

medical masks

Usually I don’t bother with those mask dispensers by the entryways and scattered here and there by the elevators and halls at VA medical centers.    But I’m thinking tomorrow I’ll just snag one of those as I come through the door, and step back outside to put it on.

Or better yet I’ll just trip over to the Leavenworth Emergency room a couple of blocks from here, snag a mask or two, and have it in my pocket tomorrow morning when I arrive.

Not that those things are going to filter out an influenza virus.    They won’t.   But they might confuse it enough so’s it goes and finds someone else to hex.

I’ve donealready had the required minimum of flu for this lifetime.

Thanks for the read.

Old Jules

How’s that empire thing working?

Maybe most of us don’t care for the idea of empires because we think of them as being something other countries have, but we don’t.    Despite what’s before our eyes ever time we look at a map or watch a news program.  And of course, empires haven’t been faring too well lately.

US expansion 1867 1914

Heck, the British Empire folded up more-or-less spontaneously during the decades after WWII.    Around the same time as the French were getting their deserving asses kicked out of Indo-China to them, Vietnam to us.   Indo-China, Algeria, and pretty much everything else they called their empire.

colonial empires 1910

But around a century ago everyone was still doing it.   Grabbing real estate outside their boundaries and making a fight to keep it.

Here’s a short video demonstrating how empires worked worldwide until around 1945:

https://youtu.be/1csr0dxalpI

That’s how it was done mostly, except when the imperial powers fought one another.   Which wasn’t something anyone liked to do if they could help it because it tended to get a lot of white people killed.

But I’ve digressed.   What I intended to talk about was a remark I made this morning during coffee with Johnny, across the hall.   In some context or other involving the government shut-down and Puerto Rico, I casually mentioned the American empire.

“American empire?   Haw haw haw!   What the hell are you talking about?”

“Heck Johnny, do you think we aren’t an empire.”

“Haw haw haw!   Where do you come up with this stuff?”

I tried a while longer, but the discussion just couldn’t move forward on that tack.   Johnny doesn’t believe the US is an empire and the concept is so foreign to him he refuses even to think about it.

I’m a bit awed by this entire concept.    Are there really people in the world who don’t think the US is an empire?  Well, yes, there are.

Same as there are people who think the moon landings were faked by NASA and that the world is flat.

People believe all sorts of things.

I wonder if there used to be people who didn’t think the British, the French, even the Romans weren’t an empire.

Damn I love this life for the surprises.   The constant surprises.

Old Jules

Statue of Liberty replica from a water tower

A lot of people these days worry about whether other people are going to bring about the collapse of civilization and the end of life as we know it if they don’t perform the proper ritual when various patriotic icons are displayed.    But the VA in Leavenworth is going the extra mile to recreate a national icon that will take the breath away from the most casual observer.

water tower 1

See those wossname, things, sticking out at the top of that water tower?

water tower 2

Yeah, those.    And here is what is happening:

water tower 3

That’s right!  Can you believe that?   The VA is creating a replica of the Statue of Liberty out of that water tower!

water tower 8

Is this a great country, or what?

Old Jules

Beat me daddy eight to the bar

I don’t know what to think.    Rebecka’s back.

[ If you don’t know what this entry is about see:  A little excitement here, Posted on January 17, 2018 by Old Jules]

This morning the maintenance man came to work on my central heat.    He knows everything that goes on around here, so I followed him to the basement to kibitz and find out the latest dirt for Eisenhower Ridge apartments.

Thought I’d prime the pump by  telling him about the deputies picking up Rebecka.   He didn’t let me finish.    “She’s back!”

I thought he meant from some earlier beating, so I told him about the deputies.   “Yeah, I know, but she’s back.”   He rolled his eyes.   “I just saw her over there before I came to your place.   My daughter was going to do something over there but when I saw Rebecka I sent her home.”   [Donny has a college age daughter who helps him on some of the maintenance jobs when she can].

Soooooo.    That’s what I get for expecting things of people.

 

What can I say?     I’ve got to quit having expectations.

Rebecka is back.

Old Jules

Heigh-ho the holly, this life is most jolly!

Lee, one of the lesser lost souls who lives in the house next door to this one, brought to mind a little Shakespeare I was surprised I could still quote to myself the other day.

Lee is a closet alcoholic, a heroin addict, as heavy a smoker as he can beg, or afford after he’s taken care of his other addictions, and not a bad guy if you can put up with him.    He’ll try not to steal from you if he can help it, manipulate you and play on your sympathy to trick you into giving him rides to feed the drug, booze or cigarette hungers, and ignore you, or scowl at you when he doesn’t need anything.

Because deep down, Lee is a white hater.    If there were black robes and hoods and a black KKK he’d be out burning crosses in the front lawns where white folks live.   But he can be fairly personable most of the time if he’s thinking he might cadge a ‘loan’ or a ride somewhere.

Anyway, the first few months I moved here, being one of the lucky few who own cars, I hauled Lee to the food pantries a few times, let him con me into taking him down to KC because ‘there was a guy down there who was going to pay him some money owed him’.   And one day I was dropping some of my better history library off in grocery bags on the porch of James, [another history buff the next house down] when he braced me.

“What you leaving groceries on James’s porch for?    I need groceries!”

Well, I wasn’t about to loan nor give any money to Lee, but I went to the grocery store and picked up $20 worth of food for him I knew he couldn’t resell.   Basics.

But I digressed.

The other day I was playing chess with a couple of buddies in a waiting room up at the hospital.    We meet over there because they’re smokers and they can’t smoke in that waiting room.

Coming down after a few games I ran into Lee in the hallway.    We gossiped about how cold it was and I thought he was coming to my car with me for a ride home.   But his other lost-soul-mate was parked next to my car.    So he got in a moment, then came back out and leaned over conspiratorial and cagy.

“Hey man!    Do you have a few bucks you can give me?”

“No.”

“Well,” he muttered.  “Next time you need someone to run around with you, find someone else.”

I was dumbfounded.  The only time Lee and I have ever done anything together we were taking him somewhere.     Between times he barely speaks to me unless he’s begging money and I’m refusing.

Which somehow brought to mind who?    William Shakespeare.    Who else?

 

Heigh Ho, The Holly

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh ho, sing heigh ho, unto the green holly;
most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remember’d not.
Heigh ho, sing heigh ho, unto the green holly:
most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

William Shakespeare

Sounds as though old Lee’s not going to give me the benefit of his company as a consequence of me not giving him some money.  If you want good friends it’s going to cost you.

Best offer I’ve had all year.

Old Jules

Those Christmas stockings

Christmas stocking

Hi readers.    Thanks for coming by.

I was just reminded when I went outdoors to see if my car would start that the most appreciated Christmas gifts I’ve ever given anyone came in 2017.   Neck warmers.

I bought a dozen calf-length tube socks off EBay, and 20 pounds of rice.  Filled all those stockings with rice and tied off the ends.    These places we’re living tend to be cold partly because we each pay our own electric bills and we’re mostly on severely limited incomes.    But the houses are old, too, and just trying to get it ‘warm’ by most measures might well be doomed to failure.

But I’ve digressed.

For Christmas I made a big meatloaf and laid out a spread out in the lobby for a number of the old vets living around here who didn’t have anyone nor anywhere to go.    And for each of them, and several others, I made ‘Christmas stockings’.    Neck warmers.  Put those stockings into the microwave for 3.5 minutes and drape it around your shoulders and it will drive away your fears of the future for an hour or more.

But when I went outdoors, I was going to say before history broke in with all its matter-of-fact was, here came one of those old guys walking toward the office with his Christmas stocking between his Yukon cap and his coat collar.

“Managing to keep that neck from freezing and falling off?”   I couldn’t help grinning.

“It ain’t my neck I’m worried about!   It’s my brass monkey.”

Gave me a warm red glow without even having to put mine in the microwave.

Thanks for the visit.

Old Jules

A little excitement here

It being colder than a well-diggers brass bra the past several days, we’re forced to entertain ourselves by watching carefully out the windows, reading [I’ll talk some about that], and watching movies.     The other tenants read somewhat less and watch tv, I reckons.     So when we meet down in the little ‘lobby’ that used to be a sort of lobby mornings we’re all full of news.

Such as, yesterday the deputies came past on the way to the corner house apartments, pulled in and stayed a while.    I donned my arctic gear and went out onto the porch to see who was getting busted.

Turned out they were moving out the girl-friend of a guy we call Bird Whistle.   I don’t know his real name.    He’s a scowling crackhead, old vet white hater who works over in the main hospital pushing patients around sometimes.    Beats hell out of this woman enough to have the cops out there frequently.      I’ve never seen her when her face wasn’t so full of bruises a person can’t tell how she might have looked once.

Anyway, she was a prostitute in town when she came across Bird Whistle and he brought her down here to live with him.    A few months ago she totaled his car, so they’ve been begging rides for smokes and whiskey, making nuisances of themselves.  I’d never talked to her until the day she flagged me down and offered me a BJ if I’d take her to the liquor store.    [I refused—grapevine has it she gives them for five bucks to anyone in the market.     Not worth it.].

We’d all puzzled over how he stayed out of jail, beating her up that way, and held his job at the hospital only showing up half the time and taking off anytime he could get some crack..

But I’ve digressed.

Those deputies went inside a while, and came back out with Rebecka [the name she goes by is Rebecka], all of them toting bags and pillowcases stuffed with what was probably her belongings.    The deputies got back in the car, but she ran back in and returned in a few minutes with more loot from the apartment.    And the lot of them, her and deputies drove away.

Well, they were no sooner gone than the other residents down there scurried out like a bunch of cockroaches and hurried away in all directions, afoot, or in whatever vehicles they had that would start.

Johnny and I hashed this out this morning.    We figure Bird Whistle beat hell out of her one too many times, and as soon as he was gone, she called the cops asking to be taken to a family violence shelter.    And she must have remarked while she was waiting for the deputies that she was going to spill the beans about all the other crap going on down there.

So everyone must have thought it was a good time to take a powder for a while.   No cars and no lights down there last night.     So maybe Rebecka had a nice night somewhere without any crack and not getting billy-hell beaten out of her.

We’re all thinking Bird might be in jail, but that might be too much to hope for around here.    We’ve had bets going for a long time whether someone would get killed before anyone did anything to stop all that crap.

So now the only woman likely to get beaten up by her man is Sandy, the next building over.    An old Army nurse who has a boyfriend named Daniel Northern who knocks her around enough to bring the cops and get restraining orders for a while.   But somehow love always wins out and before you know it he’s back.

Love conquers all.

Thanks for the visit.

Old Jules

Baby it’s cold outside. And inside is nothing to brag about.

 

jan 16 2018 zero

Hi readers.   Thanks for coming by for a read.

I think our ancestors would most likely consider us a passle of sissies.   These old houses have seen a lot of extended periods when the outside temps didn’t get up to freezing.    Bound to have.    And in those days they were relying on steam radiators, fireplaces,  and lots of blankets.

Well heck.    I think yesterday it got into the 20s F for the first time in over a week.   And if it’s going to get into the teens today there’s no sign of it.     The ‘central heat’ here, combined with my electric radiator heater are just about able to keep the indoor temp up to 61 degrees F.   That’s not the level of warmth I find inspires me to take a badly needed shower, to I tried using the Coleman 30,000 BTU tank-top heater to get things nearer a welcome taste of clean.

Nothing doing!    The carbon monoxide detector kicked in before it got up to 65 degrees F.

This wouldn’t have been a problem for my granddad living in his tarpaper shack out in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico.    He’d have been just trying to keep the 2.5 gallon galvanized bucket he kept by the door for drinking water and to dipper into a washbasin from freezing solid.     If he could manage that a bath could wait until spring.

But Walter E. Hudson  my old granddaddy, didn’t much like bathing anyway.   “Do it too often and you’ll wash off all that protection.”    I’m guessing the people who lived in this house probably subscribed to the same doctrine.

But I have it on good authority we’re looking at some serious global warming, coming soon.    So I’ll plan on a shower then.    And try to keep an adequate supply of clean underwear.

Thanks for the visit.

Old Jules

Celebrating MLK day by doing the laundry and trying to stay warm.

Hi readers.     Thanks for coming by for a read.

At 6 am the thermometer on my porch declared it was almost 20 degrees F.   And an hour later it dropped to around 10 degrees F.    So there you are.

I hope you are all having a merry little MLK day.    If you didn’t get all the presents you were wanting old MLK to bring, maybe the Valentine will give them to you, or the Easter Bunny.    Don’t give up hope.

So, it being a clear day full of sunshine I figured I’d go down to the laundromat to celebrate MLK.    Discovered sun or no sun, those sidewalks and parking lots are SLICK.  No, not slicker than greased owl droppings, but still slick enough to throw a man who was not sufficiently careful, or one who felt the need for a broken arm or hip.

But it was worth it.    I’m blessed with a load of clean laundry, all folded nicely, ready to go into the various hidey holes and drawer-like places here.    And while I was waiting for my dryer I stopped by Wendy’s for a Caesar salad.    Which I didn’t get one of because all their damned Romaine  lettuce was recalled.

So I had to settle for some other lousy salad that wasn’t worth the chewing it required.

But it was worth it anyway.    Because at the booth across from me I heard the most INTERESTING conversation!     It all began with a few remarks about MLK and the issue of whether racism in this country has improved since his time.   Mostly these folks figured it hasn’t.

But of course, they weren’t alive or adults to experience how it was when MLK was doing his work.   Everything seems to me to boil down to conjecture and personal experience.    Along with the manifestations of racism a person chooses to call by that title.

But I’ve digressed.    What struck me as most interesting was that the conversation drifted to something they were calling, ‘restitution’.     Evidently there’s either a plan in place, a program somewhere, or just a fond hope among a lot of people that we who are alive today are going to be compensated by someone sometime for bad things our ancestors experienced.

To me this sounds peachy, but somehow unlikely.    My personal ancestors, I know, experienced great hardships, deprivations, injustices and sometimes even rudeness.   I’ve always resented the fact nobody ever offered to pay me for all that stuff that happened to them.

But my impression listening to these people at Wendy’s was that they thought ‘restitution’ for things our ancestors suffered but we didn’t have to not only made sense, but was somewhere on an agenda and might happen.

Where do these ideas come from?     Is it because we’ve endured a system of inherited wealth and power all these generations after we ceased being aboriginals?   So if we can inherit wealth, we should also be compensated for the suffering dead people endured?

The world is a crazy place, and to me that definitely sounds like an idea not likely to come to pass, but stranger things have happened and still do.    After all, we do allow people to inherit power and wealth generation after generation.   Which probably would have sounded fairly crazy to aboriginals.

Thanks for the visit.

Old Jules