Tag Archives: Human Behavior

Minneconjou Lakota Texan – another busted stereotype

Posted on September 29, 2013 by | 2 comments

Long memories

A few old guys of the same species sitting around Kerrville, Texas wondering where the world went.  Each too different from the others to guess which parts they missed.  Old guy the others knew walked up and sat down.

Silver gray hair in a ponytail, 70ish, shorts and sandals with athletic stockings, heavyset.  We shook hands and I studied his features.  In Texas he looked definitely out-of-place, though he could have been Hispanic throwback gene pool.  But something in the features and skin pigment had me suspecting he was a Navajo or Apache.  A curiosity because Native Americans aren’t much drawn to Texas as a home.

Finally my puzzlement got the best of me.  “Where are you from?”

He grinned at the others, then at me.  “I’m Swedish.”

“Yeah, but what TRIBE Swedish?”

Minneconjou Lakota, it turned out.  Born in a US Public Health hospital on the Rez in Minnesota.  Mama a party woman, no idea who his pappa was.  Reared by his grandma, then sent off to Indian School.  Learned to be a welder and pipe-fitter.

By 1970-or-so he was up in Alaska on the North Slope a few years building the first Alaskan pipeline across the permafrost.  Had a few stories to tell about that, then all of us began picking his mind for all manner of details.  “How deep did they have to go setting the pilings holding up those pipe joints?”  “How were you housed?”  And so on.

Turned out all the oil from that field was shipped directly to Japan.  US refineries weren’t tuned to that sort of crude.  But the fields are still producing.

Guy has a tribal census number, but never went back to live on the Rez, but visited his grandma there until she died.  Brought tears to his eyes thinking about her.  Never used the free health-care/dental-care for life benefit available to him because of the tribal census number US Public Health Service offers.

“I worked hard all my life and settled here.  Paid my own way every step along.  Making a lifetime job of being an Indian didn’t appeal to me much.  When they quit shooting us they tried to offer that as the next best thing. 

“They’re still trying, got all those liberal white people to worship blanket Indians.  Better than getting shot, but not as good as kicking the whole damned mess.”  He shook his head.  “Damned white people and their congratulations for being victims will finish off all the ones left.”

Nice meeting him.  I hope I see him again before I head for the tall timber.  Being born into a trap doesn’t mean there’s no escaping it, I reckons.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Human Behavior, Native American, Native Americans, Texas

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comprehending Corner-of-the-eye creeping craziness

Posted on September 29, 2013 by | 18 comments

Hi readers.  There’s something weird going on in the US you probably aren’t aware of unless you happen to be someone who plinks with a .22 rifle or pistol.  Or maybe a firearm of some other caliber.

But it’s been going on two years now, still going on today.  Ammunition manufacturers in China, Mexico, Russia, Czechoslovakia the US and elsewhere are working three shifts turning it out and shipping it t0 retail outlets and online suppliers.  They’re nowhere near satisfying the demand.

WalMart stores, for instance, get a shipment in during the night and before the store’s been open an hour there’s no more .22 ammo and damned little of anything else.

For reasons nobody anywhere can explain US citizens are filling the closets and garages with ammunition, mostly .22 caliber.

This silent, subtle fact is lurking in the periphery of something a lot larger, and I’ve spent a lot of time discussing it with anyone who might have ideas as to why it’s happening.  Everyone has ideas, and everyone admits they’re as mystified as I am what it means.

Old Jules

18 Comments

Posted in 2013, America

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Denouements

Posted on September 29, 2013 by | 3 comments

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

Certain types of problems seem to follow us through life, probably so’s the Universe can teach us whatever lessons it is we’re supposed to be learning during this one.  Frequently we’re slow coming to an understanding as to what ours are.  Mine, I suspect, probably are a consequence of karma acquired during a previous lifetime involving motor vehicles.

Which I hadn’t realized until I began looking at all the posts here involving transportation during my stay here.  One piece of that saga was the Toyota 4 Runner that carried me to this piece of real estate in 2008.  And became a subplot microsaga:

 Got me a new truck!

 Confession Time

The New Truck Resurrection

The Communist Toyota 4-Runner

A long one.  And one I’m finally going to apply a razor to.  I’ve found a guy who’ll follow me back out here next time I go to Kerrville, and put that 4 Runner onto a car dolly, pull it out of my life.

I went out and put the wheel back on it, took it off blocks and pushed it up the hill with the Toyota RV far enough so’s we’ll be able to get it onto the dolly.  Gale and the guy up the hill came out and improved the road enough yesterday with some machinery so’s a regular person will be able to get in and out of the valley without blowing a tire.

It’s not easy for me to part with that 4 Runner.  Lots of life history events trapped in it, but it’s clear enough the time’s come for a denouement.  Turns out I’ll be doing something similar with the Toyota RV, because Jeanne’s son, Michael’s decided it’s not the best option for him.

I’m willing to believe, for the moment, that when the 4 Runner goes out of this valley I’ll have poured enough of the life-ingredients into it to have filled whatever hole it was the vehicle challenges demanded of me this lifetime and I can have some other kind for a while.

Gracias, Jack

3 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Texas, Transportation, Trucks

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Scaring the high-tech scarable

Posted on September 24, 2013 by | 6 comments
Three wooden toothpicks under the hatband forward of the feather leaning backward scares the hell out of them

Three wooden toothpicks under the hatband forward of the feather leaning backward scares the hell out of them

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

During those upsy-downsey times when I was trying to squeeze out a living playing blackjack I picked my casino carefully.  Only casinos offering the surrender option allows the player to throw out the blackjack books and stack the table and the odds in his own favor.  It’s a cause for black looks and hatred from the other players, but deep suspicion on the part of casino security and pit bosses.

Surrender doesn’t exist in a lot of gambling joints.  It allows players, once they see both their cards and one of the dealer cards, to take back half his bet and bow out of the hand.  I’d spent a lot of time on the computer figuring out how to turn this into a slight, but significant bending back the fingers of the house advantage.

One day I was doing fairly well on third base at the Santa Ana Star Casino.  I was wearing the high roller, and I always kept a few toothpicks in the hatband ahead of the feather for easy access during moments of contemplation.

My splitting 10s and not splitting aces at times, not at other times, doubling down sometimes, surrendering others, was working despite the fact it defied the traditions, superstitions and religions of blackjack.

I’d been there an hour or two when the pit boss came over standing beside me, watching.  At one point he bent across the partition during a hand, close to my head.  I thought he was smelling my high roller.  But a few minutes later two security men came and stood with him, watching.

A couple of hands later two more security folks came and stood behind me watching the play.  I didn’t change my strategy, kept getting as much money on the table as I could when the advantage was my way, surrendering when it wasn’t.

When the dealer finished the shoe the pit boss leaned over to me and said, “Would you mind taking your hat off please?”

I reached up and pulled it off, thinking he was admiring my high roller.  He bent over and squinted, along with the four security guards.  I handed him the hat and he showed it around, feather side up.  They all squinted.  Then one of the guards carefully took one of the toothpicks out of the band.

“They’re just toothpicks!”  He handed it around so they all could confirm it.

He handed my high roller back to me and shrugged to the security men.  “You can go.”  Then he turned back to me.  “Why do you keep toothpicks in your hatband?”

By this time I’d caught onto their suspicions and concerns.  I was barely able to restrain myself, keep my humor dry.  “Mojo.”

“What?”

“Mojo.  Three toothpicks brings me paired 10s and more blackjacks.”

Sneering, he shrugged and walked away.  Surrendered and never knew it.

Old Jules

6 Comments

Posted in 2000's, America, Gambling

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Time to switch hats

Posted on September 23, 2013 by | 9 comments

hatrack

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by.

I just want to remind those who might have forgotten it’s time to put aside that old sweat-stained straw and don your felt, or cloth hats.  Admittedly a lot of people don’t notice these days because they’re wearing ball caps sideways or backward, or just aren’t sensitive to delicate style issues.

Tilley

But the people who matter will notice.

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in 2013

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

“The men who write upon these walls,” mystery solved

Posted on September 22, 2013 by | 8 comments
The part about rolling it in little balls had scientists tearing their hair out. Putting periscopes under the partitions trying to catch someone doing it.

The part about rolling it in little balls had scientists tearing their hair out. Putting periscopes under the partitions trying to catch someone doing it.

If they'd looked at the floor they could have solved it decades earlier.

If they’d looked at the floor they could have solved it decades earlier.

Hi readers.  Scientists have finally solved one of the most puzzling mysteries of the 20th Century.  The poem beginning, “The men who write upon these walls,” found on the stall partitions in Mens’ rooms was a phenomenon more pervasive than the “Kilroy was here” riddle of the WWII era.

Now they can finally settle down to studying why the magnetic poles of earth wander around from hell to breakfast.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2013, Human Behavior, Nature, Science

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Fanaticism might be giving religion a bad reputation

Posted on September 22, 2013 by | 3 comments

Hi readers.  Here’s something to think about.

Even though they’ve created homelands for various religious fanatics, they still create a lot of problems.  For instance, the Shinto religion in Japan could be said to have been responsible for the WWII war in the Pacific, the Rape of Nanking and Shanghai, the slaughter of thousands of Filipinos, the Bataan Death March and other inconveniences.

Similarly, creating a homeland for Protestant religious fanatics in Northern Ireland has filled the news with trouble almost from the beginning.  Then there’s the Zionists and Israel, along with the Muslims in Palestine. 

For that matter, the State of the Vatican for Catholic religious fanatics has been the source of all manner of difficulties in the Americas and elsewhere over the centuries.

The reality is that it isn’t just in the homelands.  Religious fanaticism spreads all over history for the past 2000 years and refuses to stay within any boundaries.  Admittedly the symbiosis between ruling aristocracies and one-or-another religion, and instilling fanaticism into the peasants has done a good job keeping them in line, arousing them to go out chopping up the people the aristocrats point them at.

But most people would admit it’s gotten out of hand in some instances.

Maybe it’s time to sit down with religious fanatics of all varieties and have a prayer meeting.  Try to find out what it is makes them so violent and difficult to get along with.  Find out why they keep discommoding regular people by burning them at the stake, blowing them up, chopping them to pieces and other inconveniences.  Maybe there’s something we could do to keep them happier.

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2013, America

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

The good news behind the bad news

Posted on September 22, 2013 by | 2 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for comng by for a read this morning.

The news is always so full of Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious fanatics terrorizing one another we sometimes overlook the larger issues.  This is one example.

Look at the Kenya army troops in this picture. 

  • First thing you notice is they’ve got a lot of meat on their bones.  Obviously, once they kicked out the British these people had food left lying around they could eat and fatten up.  Same as the Irish.
  • Second thing you see is the weather’s cold, but these guys are dressed for it.  Looks as though they’re wearing US Marine Corps sweaters.  But all of them are bundled up, which means they had the means to do it.
  • Third, they’ve got helmet-liners which don’t look like the old NAZI coal-scoop ones from WWII nor the ones US troops wear now.  That means they’re not indiscriminately blowing up civilians for the hell of it.
  • Then there’s the boots.  Those are good boots.  Those boots weren’t taken off some civilian corpse.
  • Look at the weaponry.  Any gun nut in the United States would kill to get one of those rifles.
  • Okay, yeah, the truck they’re in doesn’t have a spare tire.  But hell, y0u can’t have everything.

Here’s a better look at the boots and trowsers of the troops.

Notice they’re mostly wearing pre-Vietnam combat boots, though one’s wearing Vietnam era ones, and one’s wearing desert boots.  Obviously they have some style choices.  But they’ve all got US Army fatigue britches from back when US military clothing was made from US cotton and sewn into uniforms by US workers.

Now, here’s the parking lot in front of the mall those Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious fanatics attacked.

Notice the automobiles.  The lousiest car in that picture is better than any I’ve owned in more than a decade.

Seems obvious once they ran the British out of Kenya things got a lot better, all in all.  At least in that part of Africa you can’t tell it from the US. 

Sure, they have problems with Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious fanatics.  But who the hell doesn’t?

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2013, America

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Evil Empires, Reagan and the Slaviet Onion

Posted on September 21, 2013 by | 2 comments

Hi readers.

When our sainted once-king Ronald Reagan wasn’t parking small Volkswagens under his hair next to his scalp he was fond of saying the Soviet Union was an evil empire.  But Reagan meant this in a good way.  What Reagan intended to communicate was, compared to not being an empire, the Soviet Union was evil.

As the somewhat temporary monarch of his own empire extending from Guam to Hawaii to Alaska to the contiguous states of the continent to Puerto Rico, Reagan had noticed the condition of being part of an empire wasn’t an unmitigated blessing for all the non-aristocrats living inside it.

Reagan was wise enough to know that he couldn’t do much about the ills of being non-aristocrats in an empire, but he wanted to do something good anyway, or something someone might call good in the history books.  And since he couldn’t do it for the non-aristocrats, hell, at least he could be a popular cult-figure doer-of-good-deeds for the aristocrats.

He decided if those aristocrats could be turned absolutely loose to acquire wealth and power beyond their wildest dreams they might be satisfied and allow some of the good to trickle down into the pockets and households of the peasantry who were mowing their lawns, flipping their hamburgers and doing tune-ups on their Rolls Royces.

The result was profound.  The nature of his empire went through a lot of subtle changes and the texture of the evil was distilled in some unexpected subtle directions.  In no time at all US jobs, businesses and small industry were swirling down the toilet headed for China and other countries where the labor was less expensive.  His aristocrats discovered the multi-national grass was a heluva lot greener than the stuff under the purple mountains majesties on the fruited plains.

So in a sense it can be said Reagan destroyed his own evil empire in favor of a much larger one owned by banks and multi-national corporations.  And somehow in the process he managed to make the rednecks and semi-literates lower their voices in reverence when they spoke his name.

Today he’s still remembered that way, but more within the legions of Oliver North clones serving his multi-national aristocrats.

Finding something that rhymes with empire that isn’t evil is a tough gig.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in America, Communication, Government, History

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The First Church of Infanticide as a Chinese import

Posted on September 20, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by.

Even though the Biblical story of Abraham explicitly gives Jewish, Christian and Muslim parents the right to kill their children when God, or Old Sol instructs them to do it, many are surprisingly reluctant.  Christians, Jews and Muslims have all exercised a lot of circumspection on the issue.  No lawsuits have been filed contesting the right of government to forbid them to kill their kids when mandated by God, or Old Sol to do it.

Which probably happens a lot more frequently than anyone would imagine. 

However, a new faction of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim panorama has evolved in China applying the Abraham Mandate, but bypassing or rejecting everything related to Biblical Doctrine unrelated to the story of Abraham.  Initial surveys of parents inside the US suggest the new Church will be enthusiastically welcomed.

Chinese exporters and US importers agree the new denomination of Judeo-Christianity should prove a real moneymaker.  CDs and flash drives containing the voices of God, Old Sol, and even various pagan deities ordering parents to sacrifice their children are already being prepared to be sold in houses of worship.

The advantage to this new religion/financial opportunity is that all profits are tax-exempt, all prophets are welcome, and cottage industries in local communities turning out their own CDs and flash drives can easily be incorporated into local economies.

Old Jules

Leave a comment

Posted in 2013, America

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,