Tag Archives: culture

“Don’t plug this in” mystery untangled

Posted on May 29, 2014 by | 5 comments
Seems to me that's asking for it. I did manage to resist the temptation, but it was difficult.

Seems to me that’s asking for it. I did manage to resist the temptation, but it was difficult.

Do not plug in this USB connector

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I had an appointment with the cardiologists over at the KC VA yesterday and they clarified that USB plugged device I got in the mail.  Future shock is what it is.  They’re sending me a thing to sleep in the vicinity of that will communicate each night with my nocturnal electrical emissions device [defibrillator].

They’re sending  it to me and all I have to do is plug this into it and around 2:00 am the shocker will download my days affairs of the heart to it.  And it will quickly upload it all to someplace in San Francisco where another machine will look it over, twiddle its thumbs, and decide whether there’s anything illegal my heart muscle’s been up to.

In the unlikely event my heart’s been sneaking around getting cheap thrills and got busted by the defibrillator whispering gossip about it to the Coleman Camp Stove piece, and it reporting it to the San Francisco Heart Police, they’ll send it to the KCVA cardiologist right after breakfast, next day.

Then, if he thinks it’s worth it, the cardiologist will contact me and explain what’s going on, or went on, while I slept.

So KC VA cardiologists don’t want to see me until something interesting happens and they find out about it from the heartthrob gossip columnists.  And the previous day the private cardiologist who put it there in my shoulder examined it and said essentially the same thing,

How about that?  Barring any new drama I don’t have to see anyone about my broken heart for a year.  And other than the physical therapy that will go on for another month-or-so, I’m draft-exempt insofar as medicos.  Sure, I’ll have to fill various prescriptions and be financially crippled for the remainder of my life because of this series of events beginning November 9, 2013.  But I’ll just be writing $10 checks to each of them every month unless they turn me over to their collection agencies.

If they send out their constables with summonses or their leg breakers trying to squeeze blood out of a broken heart shaped more like a turnip, power to them.  Get in line.  I’ve got no more sympathy for them than a multinational bank has for someone loses his job and gets behind on house payments.

Except the VA.  If you can’t pay whatever’s due them for co-pay they go directly to Social Security and get it deducted from your pension.  I’ve naturally got more than my fair share of sympathy for folks who can do that.

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 2014, Adventure, America

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Kansas City Star

Posted on May 29, 2014 by | 4 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

The KS Star gave Boy Scout merit badge hunters a gold star on Sunday.  Jeanne and I figured to visit the Union Cemetery, oldest one in KC, on Memorial Day just for the hell of it.  Then I saw the KC Star front page had Boy Scouts out decorating graves of veterans there.  And everyone using the words ‘Veteran’ and ‘Warrior’ interchangeably.

This isn't Union Cemetery, but you get the idea anyway.

This isn’t Union Cemetery, but you get the idea anyway.

As it happens a lot of  one-time Confederates are buried at the Union Cemetery.  Once a person gets into the spirit of putting flags on graves, might as well send the troop out with Confederate battle flags, too.  Most were one-time Confederates who died decades after the Great War of Secession, but there’s a monument over the mass grave of Confederate POWs who died in a prison camp near here.  That one got a forest of Confederate battle flags.

I say this with some authority, though we took a pass on the Memorial Day visit.  Went out there Sunday, Memorial Day Eve, instead.  Though most of the burying that’s ever going to be done there has already happened, 55,000 funerals seems plenty for most normal purposes.  And a surprising lot had flags sticking up from them courtesy of Boy Scouts.  Back in the heyday of Union Cemetery veterans had a lot bigger wars to get drafted into.

Likely as not somewhere out there the Boy Scouts put German flags on WWI Germans who fought in the Big one on the wrong side before migrating to the US.  Maybe even a few from WWII.

Because the only way past the post-WWII series of incomprehensible US military adventures in foreign lands with any hope of inspiring those Boy Scouts to enlist to buy a piece of one is to ignore the Wars and glorify the warriors.  Dead or alive.  Company clerks, regimental band trumpet players, helicopter mechanics.  All heroes, all warriors, all guilty of conspicuous courage without having to do a damned thing to demonstrate it to anyone.

If you’ve never done anything worth mentioning in your entire life and never will, visit your Army recruiter.  Gets you a flag on your grave after everyone’s forgotten everything else about you.

A lot of old US Veterans have to be getting a lot of secret laughs about this in the privacy of their home bathrooms before they hoist their trousers, pluck their galluses over their shoulders, and carefully place their cammy ball caps with VETERAN over the visor onto their gray pompadours.

Old Jules

 

 

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Posted in 2014, Adventure, America

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Curry fish for the Gods only

Posted on May 22, 2014 by | 9 comments

ironhorse wall menu

The pink haired, much pierced daughter of the Hong Kongish couple owning the Iron Horse [low sodium] Asian restaurant spent a year or more doing the menu-items on the walls and ceiling. Prices don’t change much and aren’t likely to, I’m thinking.

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

A person gets a hankering to eat someplace with storebought food occasionally, and if he does he can figure on getting a salt-load worthy of the Morton Girl.  Here in Olathe there’s a Chinese joint named the Iron Horse tries to breach the pattern, might even succeed except for the taste.  It’s not great, but they’ll swear there’s no added salt and no wossname monosodium glutamate.

But I gradually am coming to think I can’t afford to eat in food joints, and that they can’t make as good an Asian food as I can, and I know how much salt is in it.  Without having to listen and feel around for spots in front of my eyes or blind staggers.  Maybe if Chinese steel weren’t so lousy I’d be more prone to believe what’s said about the contents of food items.

Anyway, I was leading up to saying I made up the most toothsome stir-fry  curry dish without any salt at all last night, with steamed rice.  Gave Jeanne a taste before dumping it onto the rice.  A look of delight crossed her face briefly before she gasped, “Wow!” and ran for something to drink.

She’s of the opinion that all my years of loving habenero and other seasonings have left me bereft of taste buds.  Claimed she could feel that spoonful burning it’s way all the way down her goozle.

Being the best no-sodium Asian chef in Christiandom’s fairly nice, but I can’t find anyone else who can eat my creations.

Old Jules

 

 

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Posted in 2014, Adventure, America

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The Monastery: Mr. Vid and the Nun [Russian Orthodox in Norway]

Posted on May 21, 2014 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers.  More Nun stuff.

Worlds collide, tempers flare and dreams come true when Mr. Vig, an 82-year-old Danish recluse who has never known love, and Sister Amvrosija, a headstrong nun, join forces to transform Mr. Vig’s run-down castle into a Russian Orthodox monastery.

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The heel of the loaf

Posted on May 21, 2014 by | 17 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I mostly never forget to do my gratitude affirmation ritual as many times per day as I remember to do it.  Suffice to say, many times each day.  But I’m prone to forget my forgiveness rituals unless I catch myself being angry, or sense a seed of anger feeling around for a hold on my consciousness.

This morning I had to add forgiveness affirmations as an adjunct to the gratitudes, however.  Old memories climbing up into my head for a breath of air.

I was associated for a number of years with a family who didn’t throw away the heel of the loaf, as some families do and my own family would have never considered because it was too alien a concept.  In my childhood home you ate the heel if it arrived on pain of I can’t imagine what.

But this family I had to forgive this morning found a way around throwing the heel away, or throwing it away.  They’d each reach past it and get the next slice down, leaving the heel for someone else.  Me when I was around, because they all just passed it by.

When the loaf bag went empty except for two heels, someone would carefully place the two heels into a bag of left over heels, presumably in case anyone came along who’d prefer eating a dry heel to a piece of wasp nest fresh out of the loaf.

A lot of it got thrown away I’m sure, and a fair amount fed birds or went into stuffings.  Meatloafs got rice instead of dry breadcrumbs.

Something got me remembering that after all these years, and I felt my gorge rising.  Damned people leaving the heel for someone else.  And what it implies.

And had myself a specially scheduled on-the-spot ritual of forgiveness affirmations.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2014, America

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A love affair with Nuns-

Posted on May 20, 2014 by | 12 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

A while back I found myself thinking about the weird what? Metaphysical? Fantasy relationship? That US non-Catholics have with Nuns.  And have had during most of my life.  The television series, The Flying Nun [which I promise I never sat through a single episode of and therefore can’t testify as to how lousy it must have been] was only one example.

Of course there was Two Mules for Sister Sara.  A Clint Eastwood flick as I recall, with Shirley MacLaine as the nun.  Not a bad movie, and I do remember noting for future thought the male/female tensions throughout and wondering why.

The setting’s one not often used:  the French invasion and occupation of Mexico during the US Civil War.

Heaven Knows Mr. Allison, with Robert Mitchum as a WWII US Marine Corps corporal and Deborah Kerr, a nun.  Stranded together on an island in the South Pacific behind Japanese lines.  Mitchum, at least, comes out and tells it as it is.

Considering the potential, The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine is a surprisingly sorry example of the phenomenon.  Heck, they picked a time when the Inquisition was rolling along full steam, picked a passle of nuns in a convent, but they just never managed to get the male juices flowing the way Clint’s and Robert’s US Marine and Civil War veteran juices flowed when placed in close proximity with those sexy ladies.

But then, of course, there’s the expected decline you’d probably expect that comes from being in a different century.  Nude Nuns with Big Guns was probably inevitable.  If we didn’t know it we should have.

After all, we’re living in a world where Rap music has been around 35 years.  People who listen to Rap are listening to the same music their dads and granddads listened to, and liking it.

Nude Nuns with Big Guns can’t hold a candle to that piece of trivia.

Wonder how old Sally Field is faring these days.  I’d surely like to see her step into the 21st Century with a leading role in Nude Nuns with Big Guns.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2014, Adventure, America

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Return of the neighborhood church

Posted on May 20, 2014 by | 11 comments
Olathe Community Theater Association - one block east, currently the eastern extremity of my attempts to walk somewhere. Easternmost bastion of artsy fartsyism from where I live and breathe.

Olathe Community Theater Association today. But for half-cenury it was a neighborhood Presbyterian Church serving an area of seemingly small town neighborhoods.

 

temple2

Rebirth of the neighborhood church.

temple3 lao buddhist assn

Eastern Churches have always had a slightly different twist visually.

Eastern Churches have always had a slightly different twist visually.

temple6 lao buddhist assn

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a  read.

Heck, I don’t know what else to day.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2014, America

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A covey, a flock of old eagles

Posted on May 16, 2014 by | 8 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Some beat poet, maybe Ginsberg, maybe Ferlinghetti said he’s caged the world away from himself.  “I’m an old eagle smoking this fine Italian cigar.”

Down at physical therapy we’re a flock or covey of old eagles who’ve forsworn too late those fine cigars running in place as we’ve done all our lives without noticing, caged the world away from ourselves.  But still able to gaze out the window for an eagle-view of the parking lots roads and city around us.

33 degrees F last week one day and it snowed in western Kansas.  Today it’s bundling up in jackets time all the old eagles will be walking walking walking to Missouri in sweatsuits and warmups.

Because we’re probably mostly man-made climate change deniers.  We’re able to adapt the way modern women have adapted to the wants and needs of modern men by having bigger breasts than their peasant and aboriginal ancestors.

And we men have been able to adapt by having smaller brains, a lot smaller brains, than our Heidelberg Man ancestors 250 – 650 thousand years ago.  Brains as big  or bigger then Daniel Webster, Albert wossname, Einstein, and Mangus Colorado.  Brains so big that during their 400,000 years of  time hanging around they didn’t need Heidelberg Man-made climate change, nor breast enhancements, nor Mexican food.

Maybe we old eagles can figure out why by walking, walking walking to Missouri today.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2014, Adventure, America

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Netflix, Mahjong, computer chess and good books

Posted on May 11, 2014 by | 12 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by.

For the past while my physical prowess has been challenged enough to force me to find alternatives to just reading and meditating, while Jeanne’s pointed out my brain might be failing me from lack of oxygen.  So, she introduced me to Mahjong online to exercise my brain cells.  Which she has no confidence will help.

http://www.freegames.ws/games/boardgames/mahjong/freemahjong.htm

But I’ve been enjoying it.  Online Mahjong makes for a middling good way to pass some time so long as you make it clear you’re not going to put up with any BS from it.  Just hitting the reset button when it tries to throw near-impossible tiles onto that right side and top will keep it towing the line.

Similarly, computerized chess will throw a lot of BS at you, but there’s no easy way of escaping it.  Conceding the games early, immediately after it takes your queen, does cut down of the time wasted, but even that finds a traction point eventually.

And all work and no play leads me to movies.  A place I haven’t been in decades.  Jeanne’s son, Andrew, subscribes to Netflix and allows me to use unlimited streaming video [cheeze I love that phrase] access to their movies.

Watched out movies I haven’t seen except as a kid or teenager, watched movies I loved as a young adult, movies filmed in times a lot different from these. And sated myself out.  Huk, starring George Mongomery during the early 1950s is an example.  Movie about a ‘native’ Filipino uprising after WWII against the US plantation owners.  If we allow the moviemakers to tell us whom to root for we’ll be cheering for the plantation owners every time a little brown brother gets himself shot.

What I’ve learned is there are one hell of a lot of independently made low-budget movies out there capable of providing a type of entertainment I don’t believe movies and television have ever before quite managed.  Maybe the funniest I’ve seen yet was an independent titled, “A Fork in the Road“.    I’d never have had the pleasure of it if I’d not been blessed by a failing vehicle.

Another hilarious one was “Unidentified“.  And a number of Russian ones, Pakistani, Chinese and Korean made movies have offered themselves up for my admiration and piddling around waiting to die or whatever it is I’m doing.

As for good reading material, I’m getting more of it than I can absorb.  Jeanne’s library jobs are fine that way.  Catching up on Terry Pratchett novels, a nice history, Quantrill at Lawrence, The Untold Story, by Paul R. Peterson, One Summer, America 1927, by Bill Bryson,  Prescriptions for Herbal Healing, by Phyllis A Balch, CNC, and Trials of the Diaspora – A History of Anti-Semitism in England, by Anthony Julius.

To name the ones I’m in the process of reading right now.

Saw Harry and Tonto with Art Carney a couple of weeks ago on Netflix.  Reminded me of how differently I viewed it when I saw it sometime in the early 1980s.  And I resonated far too much with it, Hydrox and myself, to watch it through without dropping a few tears.

Hydrox is hanging in there day by day, for those interested.  Who will outlive whom is up for grabs.

Old Jules

 

 

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Posted in 2014, Adventure, America, Animals

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If they wanted good health care they should have dodged the draft and gone to Canada

Posted on May 10, 2014 by | 11 comments

All over the US VA Hospitals/Medical Centers are under investigation for incompetence, waste, negligence, malfeasance and misfeasance, brutality and being a cruel farce. Turns out the San Antonio VA Medical Center is under investigation for precisely the same [failure to treat patients in a timely manner] reasons I entered a private hospital in Kerrville, Texas in January after several weeks of non-treatment and non-diagnosis at the VA Odessa and Big Spring VA Medical facilities during November and December, 2013

All over the US VA Hospitals/Medical Centers are under investigation for incompetence, waste, negligence, malfeasance and misfeasance, brutality and being a cruel farce. Turns out the San Antonio VA Medical Center is under investigation for precisely the same [failure to treat patients in a timely manner] reasons I entered a private hospital in Kerrville, Texas in January after several weeks of non-treatment and non-diagnosis at the VA Odessa and Big Spring VA Medical facilities during November and December, 2013

Current VA Hospital investigation news videos:

https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=A0LEVw85nG5TSFYAZTdXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTB0a3VnZmkwBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkA1NNRTQ4NV8x?p=VA+hospital+investigation

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I’ve said before I don’t believe the US government owes veterans good health care for the remainder of our lives as an ethical matter.  Merely a legal one.

We don’t particularly deserve it any more than Native Americans deserve cradle to grave health, dental and eye care because they happen to be descendants of aboriginals.  Merely something required by law.  Same as the VA.  They’re no more deserving than veterans, Wall Street bankers, CEOs of Multi-National Corporations, Congressmen and US Senators, or people living down in the war zones of slums getting their asses shot off in driveby shootings and their kids getting HIV from dirty needles.

Fact is, the US used to have wars people could understand and they needed to be able to draft young men to fight in them.  Forcing the Confederate States to come back into the Union and offer up their sons to fight in Cuba and Puerto Rico [Spanish American War],  the various Indian Wars acquiring Arizona, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, Washington and Oregon, and WWI [the BIG Mystery], along with WWII and various Asian Police Action debacles required incentives and salesmanship.

Out of the need for incentives for young guys to be discommoded in foreign lands for the benefit of big business and old men who liked parades grew the VA hospitals.  And when military conscription went away at the end of the Vietnam War and the US began using a force volunteers, the need for the huge infrastructure gradually aged along with draft era vets.

Today we’d probably be better off moving the entire Indian Health Care System [run by the US Public Health Service] into those VA facilities so they wouldn’t be getting any better care than Veterans.  That would take up the slack for a while, until this whole health care issue in the US gets sorted out.

It ain’t that anyone deserves any better health care than anyone else, no matter how much money they make, don’t make, or what they’ve done with their lives.  It’s whether whatever health care anyone gets is what it claimed to be out where these claims are made when people are deciding what they want to do about their health issues.

Today the VA appears to be a cruel farce.  I’m glad I’m eligible to make use of it, but a nice disclaimer on the front above the door might be appropriate:

ABANDON HOPE ALL WHO ENTER HERE

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 2014, Adventure, History

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