Evidently a bat got confused and got snagged in the buglight instead of coming into the cabin to fly around as they usually do.
Every m0rning the chickens feast under that light as soon as I turn them loose. But I think I’d best unplug it before I poke around with a stick trying to get that bat out of there.
Ah well. Maybe the chickens will eat it.
This cool morning had me putting on clothing instead of running around with nothing but shoes on to turn out the chickens and feed the cats. But it reminded me I’ve been almost a year without any gas for the cookstove and no way except the woodstove to knock the morning chill out of the cabin. I’m going to have to do something about that.
Then there’s this:
It’s coming nigh onto time to haul water again. Probably also ought to try to figure out what’s wrong with that well pump. It’s been since last December it quit, but I didn’t want to rush anything. If I need to pull that pump I didn’t want to do it in cold weather when it happened, but didn’t want to do it in hot weather the rest of the time.
Saw this in the parking lot of the Humane Society Thrift Store the other dayInside the guy was easy to identify, looked about like you'd figure
He was poking around in a box of old LP records. I tried to start a conversation with him about old music but he wasn’t having any of it.
This old XP’s going kerplunk. I picked up a replacement at the Thrift Store and if I can figure out where all these wires go I’ll have it in here in a jiffy as soon as I get around to it.
North by Northwest – Climbing the American ladder of success
The Alamo – “When I was a boy any girl would turn up a bunch of trees like that, cut a bunch down and one for a ridge pole and build herself a cabin alongside the other. Seems like all anyone would ever need.”
The Outlaw Josie Wales parleys with 10 Bears – “Dying ain’t so hard for people like you and me. It’s living that’s hard. Governments don’t live here. It’s people who live here. I’m saying people can live here together without butchering one another.”
The father of a man I used to know had been a Hungarian tank commander on the Eastern front during WWII. (He bore a striking resemblance to an aging Robert Shaw in his role as a German tank commander in Battle of the Bulge). He was there for the Axis invasion of the USSR, all the way to the suburbs of Moscow.
He was captured by the Soviets early in the war before they began shooting their officer prisoners, then exchanged and sent back to Hungary to recuperate. But later as the casualties mounted and the Eastern Front meat grinder demanded more meat, he was sent back.
One of the battles late in the war provided him a ticket to a German Hospital facility and an injury sufficient to keep him there until the surrender. Surrender, by incredible luck, he vowed, to US forces. He was held in a camp while prisoners from USSR-held countries were sent back for mass executions. His membership in the NAZI party in Hungary would have made his demise a certainty.
Disguised as a woman, this man escaped the camp and journeyed to South America. That’s where my amigo was born. Afterward the family moved to Canada. I became friends with his son during the ’70s at the University of Texas where he was several years ‘all-but-dissertation’ for his PHD in Linguistics. His father’s status as a ‘wanted’ war criminal in Hungary remained in force throughout the old man’s entire life.
I asked him once about the Eastern Front experience, knowing he was unrepentant. I’d been carrying a nagging curiosity about it for years.
“Those were heady times,” he smiled, “Kind of fun, actually. Going up against infantry and squadrons of Soviet cavalry in an armored vehicle. Sometimes you might kill a hundred men before breakfast.“
FOOD: There’s an all-you-can-eat pizza joint where you get all the salad you want, a drink and a selection of all kinds of pizza slices as many times as you go back for them and as many kinds as you want for $5.00. You wouldn’t believe how much salad and pizza a person can eat in an hour-or-so.
Only trouble is I always feel sort of bloated and sometimes have stomach cramps after I eat there. Maybe it’s something in the food.
Thrift Store 25 cent books acquired:
A Canticle for Leibowitz – Walter M. Miller: Good SF I read every 10 years or so.
Rebel – Bernard Cornwell – I like Cornwell fairly well but I haven’t read this one. Civil War historical fiction
Quick Silver – Clark Howard – Never heard of the author. Taking potluck on this one.
Double Jeopardy – Colin Forbes – Another potluck. Never heard of the author.
The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene – I might have read this one sometime. But the only Graham Greene I’ve ever not liked was Brighton Rock, required reading in some English course.
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco – Time I read this one again.
High Sorcery – Andre Norton – I might have read it 40 years ago. Usually liked Andre Norton.
Fuzz – Ed McBain – Potluck. Never heard of him. Looks like an extortion, cops and robbers yarn.
The Third Man – Graham Greene – Once more before I die.
Hobbit and others – JRR Tolkien – Hell, for .25 why not one more time?
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco – I dunno if I can do this one again. I ain’t as young as I used to be.
The Blue Hammer – Ross Macdonald – I read all these 30 years ago, loved them but ran spang out. Nice finding this one.
The Forge of God – Greg Bear – Never heard of him. Appears to be SF.
Flashman at the Charge – George Mcdonald Frazer – Sheeze. I love finding these. I must have read the entire Flashman series a dozen times over the decades. They never grow old.
Protesting people being uncivil to senior citizens
I’m back from town and today I began my Occupy 40 Miles per Hours Protest of people saying and doing ugly things to senior citizens. A long line of sympathetic protestors formed behind me, sometimes dozens joined me in the protest. Many even honked their horns and flashed their lights on and off.
I doubt most of them knew what we were protesting, but they joined me anyway, slowing down and enjoying themselves on those hilly, curving roads.
I could tell which ones I was justified in my protesting of them because they yelled at me and shot me the bird as they finally went around me.
An uplifting, community-like experience all in all.
I don’t get to town all that often, so I naturally like to put on the dog, spiff myself up a bit. Sometimes that includes shaving, but I’ve found the average electric just doesn’t do the job. Add to that the fact the disposables and the replaceable blade razors leave a person with a dangerous piece of throwaway I’ve not yet figured out any use for.
Still, I like to look nice when I go to town, so I use the tool I also use to remove a lot of clogged hair from the two longhaired cats I share the place with. The shorthairs consider it a blessing to be exempt.
Starting out here’s how it appears:
After. You can see there’s a difference if you look closely.
Add a John B Stetson, a cleanest shirt and bluejeans, galluses, a pair of deadman’s boots from some thrift store and I’ll have the hearts of the town ladies all a-flutter with the fantods.
Gotta get moving, dress up and walk up the hill to see if Little Red’s available for the borrowing. Later this day maybe I’ll tell you what exciting happened there.
I’ve been reading a lot of blogs about the ‘Occupy [fill in blank] phenomenon. The hints of panic from the powerful, the ambiguous hopes of the demonstrators, the near-certainty what’s happening is both the beginnings of a time of public expression about dissatisfaction, and a manifestion of unsatisfied expectations.
Seeing all that brings insistently to mind how intrusive the illusions of a utopian ideal penetrate and embed themselves in the tiny fragment of humanity where chaos took a break long enough for non-chaos to become the expectation. Mainly in Europe, Japan, the US, Australia and Canada post-WWII.
For the remainder of the world chaos never went to sleep and never expected it to slumber. Africa, the Middle East, much of South America, Cambodia, Vietnam, the former USSR and other Eastern Block countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan have all experienced so much chaos within living memory there’s probably no danger of them occupying Wall Street.
It might be worth noting it’s an illusion being protested. Copshops and politicians have never ceased being corrupt in the US, Europe, Japan, anywhere. The super-wealthy were never not-greedy, never unwilling to sell their countries and their souls to become wealthier. Religious zealots have never ceased being willing to slaughter disbelievers, rob them, enslave them, though they’ve briefly been restrained somewhat inside defined boundaries since WWII.
The protests are against the entire history of human behavior.
It might also be worth shaking the head in horror and awe that this comes as a surprise to anyone. Where have these people been for the past half-century while populations were slaughtering themselves and one another all over the planet except where they lived? How could they have come to live inside some bubble of belief that the venal aren’t venal, the greedy aren’t greedy and the corrupt aren’t corrupt?
The bubble is probably an artifact of improved communications, television, public education turning a blind eye to anything outside the sphere being brainwashed into the malleable brain tissue of those vulnerable to it.
Suddenly the bubble bursts. Chaos yawns, stretches and begins to reawaken.
Being on top was such fun!
The products were cheap, and the gun
Assured they’d keep coming
Velocities numbing
Til ammo we’d spang out of run.
Those multi-national boys
Didn’t make you buy all of those toys.
You bought them not thinking
From China, though shrinking
Your dollars without so much noise.
It’s jobs that you want, and you’re right
But you’ve got to be part of the fight.
Throw out all your plastic
incumbents and spastic
Buying and crying and spite.
The CEOs bankers and pols
Helped you do it but aren’t Commie moles
It’s true they’re just like you
Their coppers will strike you
While your coppers strike at the doles.
Stopping a train just ain’t easy
The methods are bloody and sleazy
But changing direction
Requires a correction
More solid than whiney and breezy.
3 am I wake
Find you atop me
Kneading
I savor
The soft purr
Of you
The gentle scratch
Of nail on flesh
Tiny pleasure pain
I hold
I hold
I hold
Until I can wait
No more
Lift you
Lovingly aside
And rise
You follow watching
My grimaced
Downward
Push
Muscle pressure
Pain
Release
Your tail
Lashes S and Z
In empty air
Green eyes fixed
I search absently
For a synonym
For piss hard
And ponder how
Like the useless
Appendix
This serves no function.
No. No.
It reminds
Remembers
Other uses
Other times.
There’s something mildly annoying and intrusive about having ourselves tagged and numbered by some damned academian somewhere as a particular personality type. But when my good friend, Rich, sent me this link along with the question, “Does this remind you of anyone you know?” I clicked it.
“INTJs are strong individualists who seek new angles or novel ways of looking at things. They enjoy coming to new understandings. They tend to be insightful and mentally quick; however, this mental quickness may not always be outwardly apparent to others since they keep a great deal to themselves. They are very determined people who trust their vision of the possibilities, regardless of what others think. They may even be considered the most independent of all of the sixteen personality types. INTJs are at their best in quietly and firmly developing their ideas, theories, and principles.” —Sandra Krebs Hirsch[15]
If I were the kind of person who allowed himself to get pissed off about things other people do and say this would really piss me off. In the first place, I don’t even believe in psychologists and psychology. What the hell do they know about anything?
Secondly, wrapping people up into a nice little package and putting a colorful bow on it, sending it out as though it were a gift for anyone who wants to claim he knows something about people and the way they think is an invitation for more of that sort of insufferable thinking-behavior disguised as learning.
Thirdly, the way institutional science is forever confusing itself with engineering without ever pondering the consequences, next thing you know there’ll be all manner of psychologists getting themselves government grants to devise ways to profile their homespun stereotypes so’s some branch of government with an opinion about a particular type can identify them for their own purposes.
For instance, every day you can read about physicists at CERN and other labs patting themselves on the back and saying, “Oh yeah, we’re creating baby black holes. They just vanish. No danger of one of them getting away and gulping up the planet earth.” As though they know what the hell a microscopic black hole is doing, or likely to do in orbit. Heck, maybe it was just in a slower orbit and got left behind until the next time earth comes around Old Sol to pass through and grow a little every pass.
Think about it. Those Manhattan Project guys developing the atomic bomb consisted of a significant portion of whom thought testing that device might set fire to the atmosphere. They got out-voted, not because anyone knew it wouldn’t, but because most believed it was a low probability.
How’s that for some exercise in risk-taking judgement? “Hey, let’s put it to a vote. How many think there’s a big chance if we detonate this thing it will destroy all life on the planet by setting fire to the atmosphere?”
40 PhD physicists raise their hands.
“Okay, how many don’t think there’s a very big chance it will?
60 PhD physicists raise their hands.
“Cool! Let’s run with it!”
And the majority turned out to be right. Whoopee! Now, generations of scientists later all over the world consortium of pointee-heads in laboratories and behind desks at universities can hold that up as an example of how to measure risks they’re taking without ever getting outside their closed circles of wisdom and knowledge.
But I’ve digressed. Back to these grant-prostitutes calling themselves psychologists.
You and everyone else can be assured there are graduate students somewhere creating a box to hold all your personality traits, figuring out the buttons to push to produce a particular behavior from you. What words, images, sounds will inspire you to buy a particular type of product, vote a particular way, choose a direction for your life. The grad students just do the work, but some hotshot pointee-headed prof will give a paper about it when the National Association of Prostitute Psychologists meets next spring and position himself for more grant money.
But you can be equally assured that cop shops and the ilk have hired them out to help them see what else is in the box they have you in. Yeah, you’re all these things, so you’re also probably a serial killer, terrorist, baby-raper, or someone who just doesn’t have any damned use for authority figures.
You’ll be damned lucky if they don’t outlaw you sometime because some hired-hand grad student working for a grant-hack prof put the wrong thing in your box.
Here’s an example. A gentle, harmless personality box. But just listen to what else is in there to light up the eyes of the cop shops. But I suppose old John Denver’s probably not concerned about it.
Old Jules
The John Denver Show (BBC), 1973 – Poems, Prayers and Promises
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/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
So Far From Heaven 
