20th Century had its share, though.
The Yosarian syndrome. Bastards are trying to kill me! They’re trying to kill me every time I go up to drop bombs on them.
Support this current war because our soldiers got killed trying to invade them. Can’t let the troops down.
Posted in Government, Military, Politics
Tagged culture, Defense, Events, government, History, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, military, military industrial complex, patriotism, patriots, philosophy, psychology, sociology, support our troops, us airforce, US Army, us marine corps, us navy
If you are like me you probably sometimes wonder how we got where we are today. All of us so petty, venal, unimaginative, lazy, shallow, wasteful, ethnocentric, egocentric, polarized, gullible, compromised. How did we get here, I asks myself and the cats.
Who was responsible? Was it Chopstickson?
No, I sagely answers myself. It wasn’t. Chopstickson was just one of our elected leaders. The reason he was elected was that he was a mirror-image of the majority of US citizens. He was what we were and we were him. And Chopstickson was a lowlife scum.
Same as LBJ when he went for re-election when his term ended after having JFK shot. Same as JFK and his brothers were. Ad infinitum with all of them except Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, since then.
The reason elected chief executives and other elected politicians are scum is that the electorate elects itself into office to run this country, and the electorate is all the things we’ve come to be. All we have ever been.
As with all peasants, serfs, slaves, we love aristocrats and elect them, their families, their progeny to office to do what we’d like to do if we were aristocrats. Namely get richer. With representative democracy the main difference is we elect the ones most like ourselves.
Posted in Government, History, Politics
Tagged culture, democracy, economy, Events, History, Human Behavior, musings, patriotism, patriots, philosophy, politics, psychology, Reflections, representative democracy, society, sociology
When I joined the US Army in 1961 it had a lot of attractions for a young man of 17. First off, it didn’t involve going to work in a moly mine in Questa, New Mexico. Secondly, it was the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and I naturally hoped I’d get an opportunity to kill me some young Russians to defend this country. Thirdly, the recruiter promised they’d teach me some skills I’d find useful in civilian life.
Eventually I learned that moly mine mightn’t have been a bad idea. Never got to kill me any Russians, neither. Never defended this country worth nuthun. And thirdly, the only skill I learned that might have helped me as a civilian was how to kill a man by hitting him in the face with an entrenching tool. A lot of years have passed since then, but I’m still hoping to put that entrenching tool thing to use.
Fact is, that like the US troops who served in WWI, the Spanish American War, the Mexican War, and all the US Army who fought the Apache, the Comanche, the Cheyenne along with dozens of other tribes, we were not ‘defending’ this country. Until WWII a person would have to go back to the Civil War and include the soldiers fighting for the Confederacy to locate someone defending his country.
Well, I suppose you could say the Mexican soldiers who fought against the US in the Mexican War were defending their country. And the Apache was defending his, and so on.
But those serving in the US Army were doing something else, entirely.
Care to guess what it was?
Posted in 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, America, History, Human Behavior, Military, Native American, Native Americans
Tagged Bernal Diaz, conquest of mexico, culture, Defense, History, Human Behavior, Indian wars, Mexican War, patriotism, patriots, politics, Spanish American War, US Army, WW1
Hi readers. Thanks for coming around. I’m hoping you’re all getting your ducks in a row to put whatever lousy issues you’ve got to rest, come midnight. Beginning one minute afterward we’ve all got to start the serious business of trying to live with all that behind us. The Coincidence Coordinators have a lot in store for each of us and they don’t want any of it getting bogged down in tanglefootedness left over from yesteryear.
Some of you probably remember that bottle of Jack Daniels Black Label,
I wrote about it November 17, 2011,
“I finished off most of this bottle of Jack Daniels on December 31, 1999, while I was sitting around listening on the short wave radio to Y2K not happening, first in New Zealand, then Australia, then places further west until it got to me, where it happened well enough to make up for those other places it didn’t.
“But as you can see, there was some left in the bottle when Y2K got to me. I resolved to hold it back until something else happened. I’ve had it sitting over there on the microwave collecting dust for several years, threatening to celebrate various New Year and Thanksgivings and I-don’t-know-whatalls. I’d had it in the back of my mind lately I’d do my 70th birthday with it, then slid the clock backward and thought maybe my 69th here in a few days.”
Fact is, that bottle qualifies as an open container. I can’t travel with it in the RV. So this evening I’m going to put on some good music and sip that Jack Daniels to death celebrating all the Humpty Dumpties in my 2012.
The Great Speckled Bird went off maybe in July to wherever chickens go when they die, and later in the year I Humpty Dumptied my contracts with the hens and other roosters. [Sip anticipated]
I terminated my contract with Shiva The Cow Cat. [Sip anticipated]
There’s this:
But we didn’t reach a consensus, the felines etc. on the matter of roof repairs and leaks. Shiva the cow-cat argues, “What the hell! Here’s a perfect spot for both those indoor cats in a thunderstorm. What’s the big deal? If they don’t like it throw them outdoors with Tabby and me.
“I’m sick and tired of all the age discrimination around here in favor of geriatric cats.” [Sip anticipated]
And of course, the Humpty Dumpty trees. [Sip anticipated]
http://www.sorel.com/Men%27s-ThermoPlus-Extreme-Boot-Liner/NU1490,default,pd.html
I’ve used my Sorel boot liners several years as thermal house shoes when it’s cold, and they’ve begun to fray. Looked up the price of replacing them and discovered it’s $45, so I went to work on the seams and edges with super glue.
No Humpty Dumpty for them. But I’ll sip to them anyway if there’s any left.
As for Shiva, she’s doing well up there, happy. Jeanne and I have a ritual of talking on the phone, speaker phone on on her end. Shiva sits on her shoulder, purrs, slobbers, and rubs her face against the phone.
I’ll sip to a happy ending, a new adventure, and the three remaining felines with active contracts.
And wish things equally good for you. [Final sip]
Old Jules
Posted in 2012, Adventure, Animals, Chickens, Free-ranging-chickens, History, Human Behavior, Music, Senior Citizens
Tagged animals, cats, Chickens, culture, History, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, personal, philosophy, senior citizens, society, sociology
The End Of The World by Archibald MacLeish
Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly to top blew off:
And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing — nothing at all.
Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read. I’m the more profoundly enlightened, severely evolved creature who used to be Old Jules before the Mayan calendar ended.
As for the Mayan calendar, I think we have to assume the ancient Mayans were referring to Greenwich time, midnight. I can’t see any way around it. It all had to begin somewhere and I think the ancient Mayans were sufficiently wise to begin it in a place where everyone in the future would be able to agree when it happened.
For the cats and me, that was Big Lake, Texas. A city park there with dozens of RV connections and three free overnight connections, according to information online. But when the Mayan calendar ended I happened to be walking on the pavement near a dim sign I’ll paraphrase as saying, “Welcome to Big Lake overnight RV connections. $15 per night, enjoy, stay as long as you wish and come back often.”
As the Coincidence Coordinators would have it, I’d been there a couple of hours, trying out a new harness and leash I’d bought in the Walmart store in Midland, Texas, on each of the cats. I’d noticed I was the target of repeated scrutiny by a Big Lake City Police officer driving slowly by, me smiling and half-waving as he went by. Him not smiling, not waving.
Then, cats all battened back down into the RV, I took a longer walk and found myself more informed about the Post Mayan calendar calendar and surviving the coming times with the least possible bullshit for all concerned.
So the cats and I celebrated the birth of the new era by topping off the gas tank and heading off down the road where the glow of headlights might shine on someplace free to sleep off the emerging shock of sudden evolution.
Ended up in a Rest Area somewhere between Ozona and Snora around 10:00 pm the Day the World Ended.
I’ve some retrospectives about the people and places of the previous several days, but I’m shooting this off just to suggest if you’re ever looking for a place to spend a hassle-free night parked free with cats purring on your chest, stay out of Big Lake, Texas.
But I’ve digressed. About that photo at the top:
Very few white men have ever witnessed what honest-to-goodness, eat-it-down-to-the-rocks over-grazing looks like unless they’ve visited the Navajo Reservation in the four-corners area of New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Arizona.
Or Texas.
The New Old Jules
Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Native American, Native Americans, Nature, Police, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Texas, Transportation, Trucks, Y2K
Tagged animals, cats, culture, environment, History, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, Nature, philosophy, poems, poetry, psychology, sociology, survival
“This image shows a ghostly ring extending seven light-years across around the corpse of a massive star. The collapsed star, called a magnetar, is located at the exact center of this image. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope imaged the mysterious ring around magnetar SGR 1900+14 in infrared light. The magnetar itself is not visible in this image, as it has not been detected at infrared wavelengths (it has been seen in X-ray light).”
Good morning readers. I’m aware most of you won’t have any interest in this and my sense is that the folks who once did read here and did have an interest no longer visit the blog. I’m just posting it in case someone ever happens to be chasing disbelief down the same corridors I’ve been following the past several years and type the right words into a web search.
SGR 1900+14, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila. After a long period of low emissions (significant bursts only in 1979 and 1993) it became active in May–August 1998, and a burst detected on August 27, 1998 was of sufficient power to force NEAR Shoemaker to shut down to prevent damage and to saturate instruments on BeppoSAX, WIND and RXTE. On May 29, 2008, NASA’s Spitzer telescope discovered a ring of matter around this magnetar. It is thought that this ring formed in the 1998 burst.[15] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar
SGR 1900+14’s not the magnetar I’ve been testing against. I just used this one on the post today to illustrate it’s actually possible for something 20,000 light years away to exert a subtle influence on affairs in this solar system. That, and the fact the image is particularly impressive as it bounces off the human mind.
The one I’ve been testing things against is
1E 1048.1−5937, located 9,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina. The original star, from which the magnetar formed, had a mass 30 to 40 times that of the Sun.
The Spin-down Rate and X-Ray Flux of 1E 1048.1-5937 http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-4357/475/2/L127/fulltext/5676.text.html
If I live long enough to do it, I’ll be testing the other 20 magnetars to try to discern whether they’re involved in what’s going on here in the solar system.
I’d been trying almost all this year, and on-and-off for several years to isolate a source and a mechanism inside the solar system. About a year ago I began to suspect the magnetic fields within the solar system were behaving as something akin to lenses for whatever the mechanism was, changing focal lengths in relation to earth as they followed their orbits. Those changing focal lengths bore a direct relationship to specific, repetitive, securely recorded events on the surface of the earth.
The most obvious source would seem to be Old Sol, but exhaustive testing never provided any indicators that was where it was originating. But recently someone who knew I was interested in such matters sent me an email forward concerning a particular magnetar. Before recieving it I’d never been aware they existed.
But I’d been having a rough time making myself continue chasing the solar system down every path imaginable, coming up with intriguing, argumentative, persuasive results along with the arrogant statement, “Screw you, bud! You still ain’t looking in the right place for the source.”
So I pulled up the coordinates for the nearest magnetar and began running through the routines, testing it against the lenses of the planetary magnetic fields.
Voila, thinks I.
The problem with a project of this sort is that a person’s constantly having to discard everything he believes he already knows in favor of possibly learning something he doesn’t know yet. As the song says, “You push the little key in and the music goes round and round and it comes out here.”
Old Jules
Posted in 2012, Adventure, Astronomy, Human Behavior, Science
Tagged Astronomy, Education, History, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, magnetar, physics, psychology, science, technology
Thanks, Mr. President
For all the things you’ve done
The battles that you’ve won
The way you deal with U.S. Steel
And our problems by the ton
We thank you so much
Before they decompose in the grader ditch.
Honest! It just fell!
The ugly?
A touch of class
That gall bladder used to be right THERE.
Mexican Standoff in Chinese
Tanked in China
A sobering night for Ted Kennedy, but Mary Jo couldn’t swim. He bounced back, though not so high as previously expected. She didn’t.
Tanked in Martha’s Vineyard
The song has ended but the malady lingers on
Tanked elsewhere.
When Cuba still seemed nearby
The Last Roundup
Who ARE these guys?
Party animals
Hi! I’m king.
El Guapo meets Godzilla
Last one on’s a rotten egg
The Presidential War’s over! This helicopter’s destination is Panama, Grenada, El Salvadore, Kuwait, Iraq, last stop in Afghanistan! Show your tickets.
Old Jules
Posted in 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, 2012, Adventure, History, Politics
Tagged Breznev, Dukakis, Events, Fidel Castro, Gerald Ford, Harry Truman, History, Human Behavior, humor, hungary 1956, joseph stalin, Lyndon Johnson, MacArthur, marilyn monroe, politics, psychology, society, sociology, ted kennedy
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
1919 American Legion Post – Now Kimble County Historical Society Museum
I’ve poked a little fun at Junction, Texas. Partly because they were there, I was there, and it’s an easy target, standing still gazing into the headlights. But the stark reality is the people of Junction aren’t significantly different from you, me, and all the people living around us. They’re trying to scratch out a living in a country that’s caving in around them, trying to hang on to what hasn’t caved in yet.
Trying to find something that works by throwing grappling hooks into things that worked in the past. And when they see it’s not working, blaming the failures on people who are trying to reconstruct different things from somewhere else in the past.
That $3.50 per gallon gasoline sign is a disaster in rural Texas where the nearest somewhat large town’s a $20-$30 round trip. Same as everywhere else in the western US. It means the price of having groceries delivered to stores in town will skyrocket over time, and driving to the larger stores in larger towns will skyrocket alongside what’s happening locally.
Aside from some agriculture, nobody in Junction, Texas, is manufacturing anything anyone wants to buy locally, anyone would want to buy elsewhere in the US, or overseas. Same as where you are, only in Junction it’s more obvious.
But their toasters, microwave ovens, automobile parts, refrigerators and computers are manufactured in Asia, same as yours. There’s nobody in town can repair most of them when they fail without obtaining parts manufactured in Asia.
So they fantasize about seceding. Pretending they could go back to the independence of the past. Pretending that would bring back ways to make an honest living. Celebrating their tough, Comanche fighting, Confederate ancestors, pretending they have something in common with them.
While on the other hand, they try to imagine they have something in common with people a decade ago who died when an airplane crashed into a building a quarter-mile high. Grasping for some abstraction of solidarity with the people there, some anchor that pretending they remember those people might provide to help them deal with a world collapsing around them.
In a real sense, they do have something in common with those 9/11 dead, beyond them all being human beings. The people who jumped out of those towers weren’t manufacturing anything anyone would want, either. If they were living today they’d be paying big bucks for gasoline, groceries, toasters, manufactured somewhere else, too.
But there’s nothing else meaningful those unfortunate people in New York could have to say to people in Junction, Texas. If asked, I suppose they might suggest, “Build higher buildings.”
The road from Main Street to the graveyard is easier to follow in Junction, but nothing else is less complicated than anywhere else.
Old Jules
Posted in 2012, America, Current Issues, Government, History, Politics, Texas
Tagged 9/11, Confederates, culture, economy, government, History, Human Behavior, humor, junction texas, Life, lifestyle, philosophy, politics, psychology, society, sociology
A robe that’s so wooly it scratches
Hi readers. I don’t recall when I first discovered the joys of hanging out in cemeteries. I don’t remember ever not doing it. Somewhere back there I discovered that old cemeteries, tombstones and the ways individuals choose to remember their dead tells a lot about the communities, the local histories and priorities.
Vandalism’s a problem in a lot of the older graveyards, has been for a considerable while. But up-keep of some of the older graves where the families have died or moved away also reveals itself.
A visitor’s left to mull over how those folks standing beside the hull of someone they cared for enough to construct this managed to forget so completely. A few generations, a few wars, depressions, and something went away. Every cemetery in the US, probably in the world, has a lot of graves of 1918 flu victims. Frequently they’re all grouped together, but this one’s not arranged in that way.
The Junction cemetary has 50-100 graves of Confederate Civil War veterans, mostly marked by government-provided stones, each with a Confederate Battle Flag, Confederate flag, or Texas Confederate flag.
A dozen-or-so Texas Rangers are also buried here. Most were also Confederate veterans.
I’m wondering whether this one mightn’t have been a relative of Sherrod Hunter, commander of the troops that occupied Tucson. The world was a smaller place back then.
Not necessarily in that order
Sometimes the survivors had the stones marked with the life experiences of the dead they considered most important, sometimes the nicest things they could think of so say about them.
Sometimes just the way the dead wished to be remembered.
But Junction people have another, more visible way of remembering their dead. This one’s nearer the center of town. Almost certainly a lot of those antlers were contributed by people now residing in the cemetery. Thrilling moments of their lives, or mundane moments in hard times, bringing home meat for the table.
Old Jules
Posted in 2012, Adventure, History, Texas
Tagged cemeteries, cemetery, culture, History, junction texas, Life, lifestyle, psychology, Relationships, society, sociology
Hi readers. Thanks for coming by.
TimeWarpVille: “We Will Never Forget!”
Every year in TimeWarpVille on Christmas day a posse of local horsemen armed with modern weaponry meets at this spot, where they display their determination to never forget Isaac Koontz.
After passing around all the new firearms they got for Christmas they somberly climb these stairs to the now-somewhat-neglected shrine.
We’ve maybe forgotten something?
Surrounding the shrine, they kneel and remove their hats, whispering among themselves what a fine lad Isaac must have been, though none have a distinct recollection of him.
After five carefully timed minutes they descend the staircase, mount up and the elected leader shouts, “Forwarrrrrd, HO!” Waving a Texas flag, he motions forward. “Let’s KILL us some INDIANS boys!”
They ride to the top of the hill behind the monument searching for Comanche spying on the highway and the monument.
Finding no hostiles there they gaze respectfully down at the monument, pass around their hip flasks, swallow solemnly, and descend the hill. Usually no shots are fired.
As they load their horses into their stock trailers they ask how Aunt Tillie’s doing, order one another to have a merry Christmas and happy new year, gun their engines and return to their families, better men for having remembered something they didn’t experience and someone they never knew.
Their lives more secure in the knowledge the Comanche haven’t killed anyone around TimeWarpVille in recent centuries thanks to their vigilance.
Old Jules
Posted in 2012, History, Human Behavior, Texas, The Lone Psychiatrist
Tagged culture, History, Human Behavior, humor, junction texas, philosophy, psychology, society, sociology
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/
So Far From Heaven 