Tag Archives: cats

The Smallpox People Project

Posted on July 18, 2013 by | 4 comments

The Whale and Dolphin People Project got me talking it over with the topcat around here.

http://thewhaleanddolphinpeopleproject.org/

Me:  So, Hydrox, what’s your thinking on this thing of trying to save dolphins and whales by making people of them?

Hydrox:  Does it concern you at all that if dolphins and whales began behaving like humans there wouldn’t be room in the oceans for any other species?

Me:  Hell Hydrox.  You know better than that.  They’d starve.

Hydrox:  Think about it a minute now.  Try the perspective of a domestic cat.  Back earlier than I can recall you cut my chorizos off so’s I wouldn’t be a part of what human beings think of as a cat-over population-problem.  Same with the rest of that litter.  When you protected all those chickens, both back in Y2K, and later here, killing coons, coyotes, skunks, you got an over-population problem.  Meanwhile you humans, during my own feline lifetime, have possibly doubled your population.  Does that tell you anything?

Me:  I think I see where you’re going with this.  What you aren’t taking into account is that we value human life.  We don’t believe in going around cutting the nuts off human beings and clipping the whatchallits of our females.  We rely on disease, war, hunger and other natural causes to keep our population down.

Hydrox:  Does it occur to you that the natural forces aren’t doing the job?  That the reason dolphins and whales need to be made into people so you can’t kill them legally might be going backward into the problem instead of approaching it head-on?  For instance, if you really want to save those whales protecting them from humans by calling them humans would be a lot less likely to actually save them than calling Bubonic, Ebola, Cholera and whatever other disease you can invent ‘people’ and protecting them.  Get rid of all those damned shots and pills and the whales will do fine just being whales. 

Me:  You’re saying …. hmm.  You’re saying make diseases PEOPLE?

Hydrox:  Actually I’m not.  If you change the wording around a bit you’ll see what I’m saying about what’s a disease.  Heck, if you could just find a disease that would kill off heart surgeons and fast food workers you could take care of a huge part of the problems of dolphins and whales through starvation and heart failures.  Whale and dolphin people my ass!  Tell those folks they’re human, convince them of it, and they’ll be beaching themselves into extinction!  Maybe that’s already what’s causing them to beach themselves to death.  Someone told them they’re people and they believed it. 

Me:  Seems to me we’ve got a failure here somewhere, to communicate.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Education, Government, Human Behavior, Science

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Have Spacesuit Will Travel – Robert A. Heinlein

Posted on July 18, 2013 by | 16 comments

Came across this book in a thrift store in Kerrville recently and couldn’t resist it because they were having a dime-a-book sale.  As nearly as I can recall it was maybe the 3rd, or 4th science fiction book I read when I discovered the genre in the Portales Junior High School Library around 1958 or ’59. 

I’d qualify it as ‘middling’, probably nowadays young adult, Horatio Algeresque, and a nice evening read if a man has three cats interrupting to punctuate things.  Those times were full of first in orbit Sputink Explorer Cape Canavaral fizzles and it’s clear Heinlein, along with almost everyone else in the US, suddenly realized what an ignorant, poorly educated society we were becoming already.  Spends a considerable while early in the book with a father discussing the shortcomings of the education the young main character was getting for himself and how he, the kid, was going to have to take responsibility for changing that.  Assuming the kid wants it changed for the eventual outcome of his goal to go to the moon.

But there’s also a lot of other social commentary about responsibility, goals, paternalism, and finding a place outside the ‘normal’ shortcomings and flaws of humankind.  Surprising lot of insight as to where science and engineering were going to go, though it naturally overlooked the prospect of the field being increasingly dominated by Asians.  Even though RAH saw the social and educational conditions in the US that led in that direction, in those days nobody’d noticed whatever it was in Asia that would bring it to fruition.

All in all I doubt it would appeal much to the readership of today.  But most would never find it anyway.

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in 2013, Adventure, America, Book Reviews, Books, Education

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Gloobal cooling terror

Posted on July 18, 2013 by | 4 comments

Good morning readers.

Thanks for coming by for a read this morning. Temps dropped unseasonably a couple of days ago and had enough intermittent rainfall to get the neighbor out burning all the trees he’d knocked down and piled up since the last one. 

I’d been fooling around with one of the longtime experiments of the Burt Lancaster/Kate Hepburn in the Rainmaker movie, so naturally I accepted that I’d made it all happened without having to argue with logic, the Universe, or modern science about the matter.

But the overwhelmingly satisfying result of it all was the cats moving indoors.  They’re not big on rain, not big on gloobal warming.  Naturally a twist to gloobal cooling was to their liking.  Tabby slept purring occasionally with her nose in my armpit last night, which is a major step in the right direction, both in matters of laundryism, and matters of Tabby coming back into the tribe.

If the mud’s not too bad I’ll be tripping to town for groceries today and might actually squeeze in another laundry trip.  Heck, if it works and I load the tank with water before I come back I might have three cats arguing for the armpit position.  Have to grow another arm for the duration of the gloobal cooling crisis.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals

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These damned ego-warts

Posted on July 17, 2013 by | 35 comments

Hi readers. 

Although most of you probably figure I’m just a quiet, well-adjusted old hermit living out in the boondocks with all the ups and downs of life fairly settled quietly into my guts, I’ve revealed parts of my life here to suggest otherwise.  I’ve lived through enough emotional storms and shed enough skins to force me out of a lot of the usual hideyholes, to hold things up into the light and examine them.

But some things still come out in the dark of night.  Some things are still damned difficult to accept.  Pride, ego, and self-worth are powerful forces.

Around this time in 1992, I left a 25 year marriage and a 20 year career behind, along with dozens of long-time friends, pals, hunting partners, acquaintances, and both sides of a joint-family.  I began a new career in Santa Fe, a new life.  All secure in the knowledge the extended family and friends remaining behind were part of my life in which I’d been and remained, important.

All of which I eventually discovered was an illusion.  For 2.5 decades I’d believed I was a vital part of those interactions and relationships.  Kids, young adult nephews and neices  I’d coddled and bounced on my knee peeled out of my life like layers of an onion.  Most I never heard from again.

I was a long time realizing I’d merely been tolerated, been a piece of furniture in their lives.  Tolerated because of my proximity to my ex-wife.

Even for a confident human being such as myself, it was a tough pill to swallow.  I gradually rebuilt my life with a far deeper skepticism than I’d previously enjoyed concerning my own worth and my place in the lives of others.

Which resulted in my becoming a hermit.  Or at least, contributed to my becoming a hermit.  I no longer assume I’m important in the lives of other human beings and get my satisfaction in knowing I’m at least important to the cats.  Because cats, though sometimes dishonest, aren’t capable of the depth and duration of dishonesty humans indulge constantly.

For me, all of this distilled emerges as a statement I spent at least 25 years of a 70 year live being insignificant in the lives of others.  And a painful awareness that life is entirely too important and too short to be wasted in insignificance.  A determination in the direction of significance measured in teaspoons of reality, as opposed to 55-gallon drums of  dishonesty and self-delusion.

Teaspoons measured in contracts with cats not equipped to lie.  Teaspoons, I find, don’t spill away as much life in the discovery when they’re found to be just another ego-wart of pride and self-importance.

Old Jules

35 Comments

Posted in 2013, Relationships

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Learning to trust dishonesty

Posted on July 6, 2013 by | 12 comments

liberty

Me:  “Okay Tabby.  This has gone on long enough.   Time we had a heart-to-heart about whatever’s bothering you.”

 Tabby:  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Me:  “That’s obvious enough.  But the fact is, I’m holding all the cards.  We’re going to work this out, or you’re going to find yourself out of a job.”

Tabby:  “I knew it was going to come to that.  You’ve never liked me.”

Me:  “Well, it’s true I didn’t pick you to be part of the clan.  You’ve never been one I’d have deliberately selected.  But I’ve tried my best to be dishonest about it consistently and not show it.”

Tabby:  “The other cats have never liked me, never accepted me.”

Me:  “Yeah, you’ve bullied them and they’ve bullied you.  I’ve had to pull you off Niaid, and I’ve had to pull Hydrox off you.  I’ve tried not to show a preference.  I even used to have to pull you off Shiva, your own mother. 

“But I’ve also held you upside down, sweet talked you, petted you, treated you as affectionately as all the rest of them were treated anytime you’d allow it.  You quit allowing it.  I didn’t quit trying.”

Tabby:  “That’s because I finally realized you’re a liar.  That you were being dishonest.  That you really don’t like me at all.”

Me:  “Yeah, but I’ve been consistently dishonest.  I’ve tried to hide the fact I don’t like you much during those times I didn’t and I worked hard at liking you.  If you want to stay around here and be a part of the ‘us’, Hydrox, Niaid, you and me, you’re going to have to trust me to keep on being dishonest.”

Tabby:  “I’m not sure I can do that.”

Me:  “If you can’t you stand a good shot at me starting to be honest.  I’m an old Jellicle cat man from ‘way back.  You’re a Tabby.  I learned to love your mom, even though she’s a Tabby.  I’ll keep working at it, and meanwhile I’ll keep being dishonest.  But don’t push it too far.  The clock’s running.”

12 Comments

Posted in 2013, Animals, Human Behavior, Relationships

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The illusion of progress

Posted on July 5, 2013 by | 12 comments

Escape route 2.51Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Old Sol’s having to fight his way through a lot of haze this morning.   The residue of patriotic zeal, most likely.  I’m not seeing it in the western sky, so I’m guessing someone between here and Harper managed to set the world on fire with a Chinese firework, or Chinese-manufactured US flag waving in the wrong dry grass.  But the Far Departments in this part of Texas know how to deal with such things and likely they’re used to them.

Incidently, for those interested, the Invader Cat turns out not to be defunct.  Re-emerged a couple of days ago l0oking sleek and fat, minus the damaged eye and skull on that side.  Treating himself as though he’s part of the program here.

Meanwhile, Tabby’s still refusing to enter the RV, though she’s being sociable enough, otherwise.  I picked up some more un-flavored Chinese sardines at Dollar Tree in Kerrville early in the week figuring to try luring her into accustoming herself to it.  If that doesn’t succeed, I’ll have to resort to starvation as the next instrument of persuasion.

It’s time I began feeding them all in there, anyway, if only to encourage the Invader Cat to go back where it is someone’s feeding him.

Went to the laundry in Kerrville while I was in town, which was novel and uplifting.  Nice way to get clothes clean, when you think about it.  Sat around in there watching the odor of unwashed clothing being replaced by a white tornado turned sideways.  Listened to people discuss how hot it is, how dry it is, and got a bit of reading done.

Went around to the various oil-change and lube people and found the ones with the best deals for oil changes and lubes at the moment have doors too low to allow the RV inside.  Even WalMart.  But there are a couple of the QuickLube, JiffyLube types of places I haven’t tried yet.

Before I left here I loaded up the RV with belongings to be taken to storage in Harper, which is the illusion of progress I mentioned at the beginning.  I’ll have a number more of those trips before I hit the road.

Swung by one of the side streets lured by a sign, “FRESH PEACHES” while I was in Harper and ended talking chickens to the lady selling them.  Nice coming across someone who likes chickens as much as I do.

There’s an old RV behind a house near Harper about the same vintage as this one, looks as though it hasn’t been moved in years.  I looked at it through binoculars to see whether the ladder was intact [the one on this one’s going to have to be replaced], then knocked a while at the door.  Finally left a note asking whether they’d be interested in selling the ladder.

If they get back in touch with me there’s another item or two I might also be able to buy off that one…. another piece of the illusion of progress.

But sometimes progress manages to be just marching in place.  I’m hearing from Rich and Jeanne that the hot and dry out west is severe enough to justify stalling until something breaks with the heat and moisture.  New Mexico and Arizona are either in the process of burning, or getting ready to burn.  I’m not crazy about putting the kinds of stresses on the tires and drive-train going across pavement hot enough to fry an egg on will provide.

Maybe in a few weeks it will be more inviting.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2013, America

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Picking your symbolism: The biggest food bird, or the biggest predator?

Posted on June 30, 2013 by | 9 comments

hero patriot2

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

Hydrox, Niaid and I were out in the RV a little while ago, two of we three scurrying for new places to hide every time a new dash of thunder rolled across the landscape, rain pelting the roof and some edifying lightning to season it all.

Finally the drama ended, but the rain continued a while and the cats decided the world wouldn’t end.  I sat there gazing across the meadow, opened a side window to let the odor of fresh rain inside.  Something big moved around the other RV ……. six wild turkeys grazing on apple cores I’d thrown out the window.  Occasionally letting out enough turkey noise to scare the bejesus out of the cats and have them scurrying for cover.

Watching those turkeys got me thinking about how they were runners-up to become the National Bird, once.  This is no BS.

Time was when most of the people in this country were acutely aware they had relatives, distant cousins somewhere, still laboring for nothing, starving to death, fighting wars and living under the iron heel of aristocrats.  Aristocrats who had histories as far back as anyone could remember of using the biggest predatory bird anyone could think of as a symbol of what aggressive sons-of-bitches they were.

Eagles.  Imperial eagles.  Regal Eagles.  Birds that didn’t do a damned thing but come down out of the sky and kill anything they could catch.  Birds nobody anywhere ever ate.

So a lot of people in this new land thought they’d donealready had everything they wanted to do with eagles and starving, and having heavy heels on their necks by a bunch of damned aristocrats.  They figured if they were going to pick a bird to symbolize the way of life they wanted, a the biggest bird people could make a meal of would be a good symbol.

A symbol of common people with full bellies for a change.  A symbol of people being able to go out into the woods and get a wild meal without some aristocrat telling them that deer, or turkey, or rabbit belonged to them, the aristorcrat, and common people would do better to starve than get caught eating one.

Well, friends and neighbors, we donealready had an aristocracy putting itself together, deciding whether we wanted to be represented by the biggest predatory bird with a complete history of aggression, repression and exploitation.  They knew whether they wanted to be represented by a turkey, or a Regal Eagle.

You can look around you and see which one they picked.  And you can consider the 50 tons of laws they’ve made since they adopted that eagle for their symbol, the several tons they’ll pass this year, and know why they picked it.  50 tons of laws telling you what you can’t do, a few tons more this year.

But you have the satisfaction of knowing you have a proud bird for a national symbol.  Not some damned turkey you could make a meal of in a pinch if there weren’t a law against it.

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Free, History, Military, Police, Politics, Survival, US Army

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Lookee here what I’ve got! Lookee here what I did!

Posted on June 27, 2013 by | 6 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

Tabby:  “Lookee here what I’ve got!  Lookee here what I did!”

Me:  “Well, Tabby, whatever the hell it is you’ve got, evidently at least it ain’t rabies.  Which is more than I can say for most of the human species.  As for what you did, I admire the time you spent preparing a hole to do it in.  I’m awed by the cable you laid precisely into that hole.  And I’m impressed by the patience you demonstrated and the trouble you took covering it, afterward.”  More than I can say for the human species.

——————

Humane Society Thrift Store cashier [to the old guy ahead of me wearing a ball cap declaring he was once a US Marine]:    “You were a marine?”

Old guy, standing a bit straighter:  “Yes.”

She:  “Well.  Thank you.  Thank you for ‘being there’.

Old guy:  “Um.”  To himself:  “Well, shit.  Why do you think I’m wearing the cap?  Never done anything else in my life anyone was likely to thank me for.  But I did shoot at some people nobody remembers once a long time ago.  Never figured out exactly why.  But if someone thinks that’s worth thanking me  for, I’ll try to believe them.”

————————

Restaurant in town, two oldsters talking across a table.

Oldster #1:  “Look what they’re doing!  Voting themselves pay raises, benefits.  Giving everything away to the niggers and Mescins!”

Oldster #2:  “Sons of bitches.  They multiply like rabbits.  Now they’re getting to be voting age, controlling the government.  Half of them can’t even speak English.”

Oldster #1:  “Yeah, bastard Communists!  They don’t believe in democracy!”

—————————————

Seems to me the great majority of the oldsters I come across, watch, listen to as they interact and try to maneuver around in life, are lost.  Are fools.  No better, no worse than me.  Fools, knowing they spent their lives chasing the illusion that the more shit they could acquire, the wiser they’d be thought to be by someone, somewhere.

Some aren’t well off, sure as hell nobody cares what they think about anything because they didn’t pass the test.  But then there are the others, walking around in golf shirts, loafers, trying to demonstrate by their cars, their bumper stickers, their personal bearing, that they passed the test.  That they know shit someone should want to hear.

Nobody wants to hear it.  Not the oldsters without anything, because they aren’t taking anymore tests.  Not the youngsters because there’s nothing they see to admire in those richer-than-18-inches-up-a-bull’s-ass oldsters.  Nothing they want to emulate except having more shit sooner than the oldsters got it.

———————-

Back before civilization kicked in, tribes and villages supposedly thought oldsters were wise, looked to them for guidance, gave them a role in things.  But all that went away when things got complex.  Politicians, aristocrats, academians and priests were assigned the roles oldsters had when things were simpler.

Probably not because politicians, aristocrats, academians and priests were better equipped with wisdom.  But because the oldsters had demonstrated they weren’t.

No smarter, no wiser than they are today.  Maybe it’s time to find some other cadre of fools to replace the politicians, aristocrats, adademians and priests, who’ve had their chance and come up wanting.

How about rappers?  Ganstas?  How about celebrities?  TeeVee stars and rock-and-rollers?  Bikers?

They might not be any good, but they ain’t going to be any worse.

And what they get mightn’t be rabies.

6 Comments

Posted in 2013, Senior Citizens

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The Party Never Ends

Posted on June 24, 2013 by | 17 comments

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

First, I want to thank Bob for the link he provided about Gate Guard jobs, a particular blog entry that swivelled my thinking on the issue entirely.  The issues of wear and tear on the RV because of the dust on the sites, bearings and other wear surfaces, particularly.  Along with everything clogging, electrical connections not making contact, and the bad roads getting to town for groceries all conspired to convince me it’s not the job for this RV, these cats, and this old guy who wants to die before the party of the first part, but after the parties of the second part.

Second, today I’ll be taking it to town for the first time since I got the tags transferred.  Need to pick up something called a ‘deep cycle’ battery to run the various coach functions.  The one that’s on it is dead meat, which I knew when I bought it and used it to argue the guy down a bit on the price I paid.  But it’s got to be replaced.

I’ll also be going by a coin laundry for the first time since I’ve been in Texas to get some clothes back into non-pioneer conditions.

Afterward I’ll go behind all the malls and big stores for packing boxes so’s I can get my belongings out of here and into the storage place.  Everything I can’t carry along right now, winter clothing, that sort of thing.

Thirdly, groceries.  Getting food of types I haven’t been equipped to utilize in a goodly while.  Because everything on that RV WORKS.

Lastly:  I might put the thing through one of those oil change places, get it lubricated, everything checked out for fluid levels, new oil.  Instead of doing it my ownself, which ain’t all that much cheaper and is just one more time-sink.

Life’s a good adventure.  It allows the illusion of forward movement, even standing still, leaning forward, preparing to stagger into the future.

Old Jules

17 Comments

Posted in 2013, Adventure, America, Transportation, Trucks

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Getting nasty old Brother Coon safely into the past

Posted on June 21, 2013 by | 13 comments

tabby asleep outdoors3

Although I don’t believe I’ve come right out and said so, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the felines since June 9th when old Brother Coon made his debut.  Even though I’m not inclined to think he was sick, it’s not easy to reconcile with my past experience with wild animals.  If it weren’t for the single episode a year or two ago when Hydrox and I stood off a somewhat aggressive coon [described somewhere on this blog] I’d be more concerned.

But even so, I don’t trust this last one.  In 70 years of being around wild critters this qualifies as the first time I’ve ever been attacked by one, even though I’ve been in close woods-proximity to a lot of them including bears and cougars.  Always was able to stand off the bears without any increase in heartbeat rates and the cougars never had much interest in me.

But when I consider how big I must have looked to old Brother Coon I can’t help thinking this incident might involve something wrong with his thinker.

And as I’ve describe on some other recent posts, Tabby’s been acting uncharacteristally stand-offish, paranoid, etc.  Usually I wouldn’t be much bothered by that, because Tabby’s a cat with a long history of behavioral changes, more-or-less when the wind changes.

She seems healthy enough even though she barely comes to the porch for food and definitely doesn’t want any attention, affection, etc.  This morning she only spent a few minutes up here eating dry cat food then headed off across the meadow to sit staring back.  I took some canned food out there and she devoured it, but didn’t encourage me to scratch her behind the ears or stroke her.

I gave her what she wanted without any arguments.

Today’s June 21 and the Great Coon Incident happened June 9.  I’ll return to being insistent with Tabby when two weeks have passed, assuming she’s not foaming at the mouth or wobbling on her hind legs.

Old Jules

13 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Outdoors

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