Tag Archives: humor

Turnbuckles – The Final Solution

Posted on August 11, 2013 by | 2 comments

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

carrier and box 1

A guy over in Rock Springs built this platform to fit into the hitch receiver out of scrap iron for me.  Another guy threw in the junk toolbox and bolted it into the platform.  Cost for the whole shooting match was too insignificant to believe.

And once I had it I could carry an el cheapo 2.5 ton floor jack to ease my concerns about future blowouts.  But carrying that floor jack home in there showed me the hitch receiver doesn’t have the moxie to keep the thing straight and level.  By the time I got home it was listing a few inches on the side the floor jack was riding.

carrier and box 2

I studied on it for a day trying to think of every possible solution.  I had a set of tiedown turnbuckles and clamps from a roof rack carrier I knew someday I’d find a use for.

carrier and box 3

Voila!

carrier and box 4a

Ran cables across the top of the bumper and attached them to the RV frame.  Pulled that mama back up level with the bumper slicker than greased owl-scat.

One of the nice things about this thing is that I can trailer it, along with other containers when I want to pull a trailer, leave the trailer behind and put this into the hitch receiver when I want to slum and go spartan.

And always have a floor jack along to do the heavy lifting.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Survival, Transportation, Trucks, White Trash Repairs

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Clean laundry and civil discourse – Satanist style

Posted on August 10, 2013 by | 4 comments

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

Going to a coin laundry with the RV’s an entirely different experience compared to the various times in my life when I considered hanging around watching clothes tumble something akin to hell.  Just knowing there’s a fridge out there with cold tea, milk, or ice water at a reasonable price helps.  A comfy place to stretch out, a selection of books half-read.  Lawn chair if I want to use it.

But before I decide which way I’m going to enjoy my laundrying I look the place over.  Sometimes it’s worth the hard chair to allow surreptitiously watching the people sharing the place. 

So this time I carried my stuff inside, tossed it into a washer near the front door, and casually allowed my eyes to look everyone over while I walked to the back for quarters.  Sauntered back to the machine.  Several lower-financial-drawer women, several younger couples, and a few old guys.  Mostly ignoring one another.

But I noticed a scrawny old guy wearing a Vietnam War Veteran cap watching me as I fed quarters into the machine.   So when I finished I took a chair as far from him as I could get but still see my machine.  Guy’s wearing Vietnam War Veteran caps aren’t part of my repertoire of wanna-get-acquainted.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye while I pretended to do the ‘bored-people scan’, opened my book, read a page, put it down.  Twigged to the fact nobody in the place would meet his eye, and he was trying to get eye contact.  I figured, “Oh jeeze, this guy’s been here enough so everyone wants to avoid the nuisance he makes of himself.”

But he was focusing more attention on me, working up to saying something, or coming over nearer where I was sitting.  I groaned and stood up, stretching, to go out to the RV, head off anything he was thinking.  Too late.

I turned to the door and he caught my eye.  “Hey!  You’re a lefty!”

“Um.  Yeah.”  Hell.  How’d he happen to notice that?  Whoopteedoo conversation starter.  He got up and headed to the door with me.

“It’s been a chore, hasn’t it?”  Two of us standing in the shade of the overhang.  Me fidgeting to break loose and sprint for the RV.

“What has?”

“Going through life left-handed.”

“Not when I could find a woman willing to sleep on the right side.”  Figured I might as well clarify my sexual preferences in case that was what was coming down the pike.

A few minutes later it came out he was a supply clerk in DaNang during the Vietnam fracas.  Tough gig.  Whoopteedoo.  “So what the hell’s the hat all about?”

“It’s because of my religion.  People around here don’t like me because of it, so I try to put my best foot forward.  Vietnam Vet buys me an edge.”

I shook my head, remembered getting cornered by the guy preaching Urantia outside the library in Grants, New Mexico.  Wanted to be my new best friend.  Real pain in the ass I never broke free of as long as I lived in Grants, always encountering him. 

I could either brush the guy off even though he was hungry for talk, or I could grit my teeth, be polite, and hear what he wanted to tell me.  Turned out he’s a Satanist.

“Whaaa?  A Satan worshiper?”

“No.  We don’t worship Satan.  That’s just something Christian preachers claim we do.”

At least I don’t have a dog in THAT fight.  “Well, hell.  Better than being an atheist, I reckons.”  I really didn’t want to hear this crap.  “Nice talking to you, but I need to take a nap.”

I left him standing in the shade, careful not to look back.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Communication, Education, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Senior Citizens, Spirituality

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Scientists are going to have to do something about this

Posted on August 7, 2013 by | 6 comments

Hi readers.  I don’t know whether you’ve heard about this yet, or not, so I’ll fill you in.

The creatures on Zeta Trianguli Australis, HR3384, HR1925, Beta Trianguli Australis, 85 Pegasi, and Rho¹ Cancri are all really pissed off about how this Vietnam war just goes on and on.  They’re all around 40 light years away, so the news on earth is a bit slow reaching them, but that ain’t their problem.   That’s the problem created by earth scientists with their dumbass speed limits on radio and light waves.

Fact is, they’ve got creatures taking to the streets rioting about that war.  Religious types setting themselves afire in protest.  National Guardsmen on Pegasi who support the war even fired laser rifles at a bunch of college kids.

But that ain’t the worst of it.  On Zeta Trianguli they’re all stirred up about President Richard Nixon and all the stuff he’s doing to get re-elected.  Heck, they want the President of the US impeached!

What’s so terrible about it all is that creatures on some nearer locations are getting exercised about the Iran hostage crisis, thinking Jimmy Carter needs to do something about it.  And down the road a little way they’re celebrating Ronald Reagan getting elected.

A bit closer in, those monster-looking creatures aren’t anywhere nearly so happy though, as the ones still dancing in the streets about Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down de-regulation policies and his proposals to sell off all the National Forests and BLM lands to real estate developers.  Busting up the Air Traffic Controller Union.

No, those closer garden-slug-things with 16 eyes already went through that and it’s old news.  For them it’s Bill Clinton using the CIA to bring hard drugs into a Federal airstrip in Arkansas, getting into all manner of real estate fraud scandals, and messing up the clothing of some White House clerk-typist.

There are insectoids fairly put out by that second Bush.  And even though they’re fairly up-to-date, the intelligent grapevines on Alpha Centauri are fairly hacked about the wossname, BLM oil spill and this guy in the White House now.

I think you can see how this thing amounts to a crisis, and how the only people who can deal with it are the same people who created it.  Scientists.  Getting laws passed about how fast light and radio waves can travel.

That’s going to have to be changed.  Get everyone singing from the same songbook.

But while we’re at it we probably ought to end the Vietnam War and get Tricky Dixon out of the White House.

Old Jules

6 Comments

Posted in Astronomy, History, Human Behavior, Science

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Old Sol’s Flipping Magnetic Field Crisis

Posted on August 7, 2013 by | 2 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by.

The Sun’s Magnetic Field is about to Flip

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/05aug_fieldflip/

http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2013/08/06/splash3.jpg

So here we are again, human beings screwing things up from hell to breakfast in the solar system.  Back a few decades ago before anyone had ever noticed the polarity of the sun reverses itself every eleven years [it’s assumed, because we donealready saw it happen three times already] nobody realized how badly human beings were messing things up.

This polarity reversal seems to correspond to Jupiter being at a particular place in its orbit, similar to the sun spot cycle doing it roughly then, also.  Pure coincidence.

The reality is that human beings are creating too much various stuff in their lifestyles and some laws are going to have to be passed to keep this sort of thing from happening.  Won’t be anytime at all before the academians calling themselves scientists will be lining up for grants to study it all and make recommendations about what laws need passing.

Because those solar reversals are just another sign that man needs to mend his ways.

I consulted Old Sol about it while we were praying him up this morning, but He seemed to have a cold, runny nose or some such thing.  Kept sort of sneezing I reckons, making funny noises.

Guess he didn’t want to talk about it.  Probably something personal.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2013, Current Issues, Nature, Outdoors, Science

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Zen etc, Persig – The Phaedrus Chatauqua – Classical and Romantic Reality

Posted on August 7, 2013 by | 8 comments

Persig’s decided to do his Chatauqua on Phaedrus.  Begins by explaining how Phaedrus saw the world in a classical reality form, explains the difference between those two ways of approaching reality.

Hydrox:  So what’s the Classical reality way of viewing cat food?  Are we cats viewing the Romantic way, or the Classical way?

Me:  Romantic.  No question about it, no compromise, even.  The Classical’s the underlying form.  The components that make up the food, the nutritional value.  The process that went into canning it.  You cats couldn’t care less about that.  Taste and odor are the immediately apparent form, the Romantic.  They’re all you care about.

Hydrox:   I like to eat the insides out of things I catch.  Leave the head and sometimes tail and legs.  I like the underlying form best.

Me:  Actually not.  If you were opening that mouse and looking at the way the digestive tract works, the circulatory system, the nerves, lungs, then you’d be getting into Classical form.  You aren’t looking at underlying function even though it’s inside.  You’re after taste, odor and texture.  There are no goods, no bads in the Classical form. No feelings.  Those are all Romantic form.

Hydrox:  Okay.  But you’re saying this Phaedrus guy was only interested in underlying form?  Classical form?  Is that why he was crazy?

Me:  Not really, but we’ll get into that.  Crazy doesn’t seem to confine itself to one form or another.    And the reasons Phaedrus had his insanity are a lot deeper than that.   More in the manner of the way he broke the world down to analyse it than in the form itself.

Niaid:  Off the subject, but wasn’t the kid here in the story killed in a driveby shooting a few years ago?  A long time after this story.

Me:  Yeah, he was.  Before you cats were even born.  Before Persig wrote Lila, too.

Tabby:  So are we supposed to keep that in mind while we’re doing this?  That this kid’s going to end up dead in a driveby shooting?

Me:  Not if you can keep from it, though it’s not easy to keep it separate.  What happened to that kid later on didn’t have anything to do with Phaedrus, and the way you’ll be thinking about him is Romantic.  Feelings.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Book Reviews, Books

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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Posted on August 6, 2013 by | 7 comments

Hi Readers. Thanks for coming by.

Perzig’s first book jumped out at me a week-or-so ago out of a box I was packing.  Demanded I go through it yet another time this lifetime.  Which is never a job of work I take lightly.

Decided as I study on it I’d discuss it with the cats when I come to particularly studious parts.  If it seems appropriate I might share some of those discussions with you along the way.  For instance, last night he and his son, along with another couple have progressed to a camp site.  The son’s troubling him a fair amount, but Phaedrus, shadow figure of his past insanity is also peeking into the corners of his mind.

Hydrox:  What does he mean when he says, “Ghosts come back when a person hasn’t been properly buried?  Is he talking about, say, the ghost of all those chickens I keep seeing around here sometimes?”

Me:  Maybe he’s talking about that, partly.  Those chickens aren’t necessarily dead, so far as we know.  And I definitely think that’s a piece of what he’s talking about.  People lost to our lives, but without closure.  But there’s also Mehitabel.  She stayed on permanent mouse patrol all these years.  Never was properly buried.

Hydrox:  Mehitabel?  I’ve just about gotten so I don’t see her anymore.  Thanks goodness.

Niaid:  Wish you hadn’t brought her up.  Gives me the willies.

Me:  The longer we live the more ghosts we tend to accumulate, all those not-properly buried ones who passed through our lives.

Tabby:  Any chance we could bury Shiva?

Me:  You figure she’s gotten around to burying you?

Old Jules

7 Comments

Posted in Book Reviews, Books

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Being doomed ain’t all that bad

Posted on August 6, 2013 by | 13 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by.

A guy I usually stop and have a cup of coffee with when I’m in Kerrville was exchanging pontifications with me lately.  Seemed everything we could think of to talk about led to a similar ‘where’, and that where didn’t invite any street dances.  At least unless a person could rotate it on the axis enough to recognize all the ‘wheres’ are the same place as they always were.

Problem was we kept switching around looking at things too collectively.  Individually he and the other old codgers who hang around there talking with him, including me, aren’t doing too badly.  Some of us have health issues, and all of us are a lot nearer death [by appearances] than we were ten years, or ten minutes ago.  Same as everyone else, though an argument might be made we’re nearer than them.

Nearer, by appearances, only.  Those people driving by out there on the pavement all are operating under the illusion they’re going to live as long as us, which one-hell-of-a-lot of them won’t.  They’ll get terminal illness, car smashups, all manner of unexpected ways to exit the vehicle while some of us old guys are still stopping by visiting one another.

And by far the greatest likelihood is that we ain’t all, including the ones driving by, ain’t going to all die the same week, the same day, even the same decade.  Which is the difference between individual, and collective doomsday.

But when you come right down to it, what-the-hell is the difference?  If we all pick the same day to die we’ll each still have had our day in the sun.  Same as we would have otherwise. 

Thinking about this during the times I’m not in the company of other people it seems to me there’s a lot more emphasis put on the collective side of things than contributes to uppidyness at an individual level.  If I happened to care a lot whether and when I die, I can see how the prospect of all sorts of risk-taking might seem something to be avoided.  Might be able to influence one-way-or-another [though not nearly as much as I might imagine] whether I kicked sooner, or later.

But looking around me and seeing all manner of cumulonimbus signs of doom coming up on the horizon and concluding it’s worse than just my own personal demise, that it’s something humanity ought to avoid, just doesn’t make any sense at all.  It requires the assumption that there’s something better after I’m dead, about lots of human beings running around watching television, driving to the grocery store, playing games on the computer, and having romances.

Fact is if they all die the same week as I do the great bulk of them will have been spared a lot of pain and worry, and looking around me I’m not certain the happiness and satisfaction they might have experienced is enough to offset it for most of them.  At least not enough to be worth interrupting the happiness and satisfaction of now on an individual level to devote thought to it.

One of the things comes up in those conversations is what a shame it was we waited so long to figure out we could have been living right back then, instead of waiting around to do it.  We’d have gotten a lot more living done, on the one hand.  And on the other, if doomsday had come along and interfered, we’d have still gotten something for our money.

Old Jules

13 Comments

Posted in 2013, Adventure, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Spirituality

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The basic idea’s sound enough

Posted on August 6, 2013 by | 5 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by.

shaker drywasher

Most of you probably won’t find this of interest, but possibly Eddie and Keith might.  Keith saw earlier efforts directed to a similar end back during the early 1990s, and I described something similar to Eddie last December.

The idea here’s to have a portable enough contraption to be light and easy to manage through some walking distance, fast enough in the assembly, unstable enough to allow a lot of shaking.  The whirlygig on the weedwhopper needs to be out of balance enough to provide the vibration.  But the bearing will be side loaded, so it might self destruct before enough use to justify it.

The next frame will be an aluminum golf-caddy on wheels, which is capable of being as unstable as the chair frames.  That would also allow it to be rolled instead of carried where it’s to be used.

There’s going to have to be a grizzly up ahead of the platform/table, which might cause too much weight for this method to allow enough shaking of the table/riffles to do the job.  Might also need a counter-balance at the bottom to keep an angle on the table, which will also need to be tested.

I don’t know how much adjusting will be needed on the table to keep things moving, but slowly enough so’s it doesn’t move too fast.  Also don’t know how much classifying would be needed ahead of the thing, how large the material could be for it to work.

You can see the two front legs on the frame are off the ground.  That’s so it can be rocked forward, both to provide instability, and to allow adjustment of the table angle.  Naturally it has to have a bottom surface on the riffle/table.

But the whole thing as the huge advantage, provided it works, of not throwing up a mile-high cloud of dust.  I doubt it will move as much material as a store-bought portable drywasher, but it lacks a lot of the disadvantages, and it is an inexpensive alternative.

Might be worth trying, anyway.

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 2013, Prospecting, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, White Trash Repairs

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A jackass has feelings

Posted on August 5, 2013 by | 4 comments

Hi readers.  A jackass really does have feelings.  And those feelings can land him in a pile of confusion, same is they can human beings.

For instance, human beings don’t have a hell of a lot of use for jackasses anymore.  Jennies, either.  But some human beings still have a use for mules, and a jackass is the only way you can get a mule.

But a jackass is picky about the women he runs around with.  He doesn’t care anything about getting excited over some short-eared mare twice his size.  Unlike a Jennie, who’ll get excited about anything with four hooves when she’s in the mood.

So when a human being wants a mule he has to find a jackass colt just born, barely got its eyes open, and put it on a brood mare.  Brood mare doesn’t care what animal she nurses, so she brings up that jackass colt same as if it were a horse.

And the human being who wants a mule out of the deal keeps that young jackass running in his horse herd.  Never lets it see anything but horses.  Young jack grows up thinking it’s a horse.  Time comes he starts thinking about females, he couldn’t care less about any longeared jennie.  He wants a horse mare.

So the human being picks a mare with nice markings, good bloodlines, and at the right time arranges a love affair between that jackass and that mare, joins them in holy matrimony for the duration of the romance.

Ends up with a mule out of the deal.  And a confused jackass thinks it’s a horse.

Nobody comes out of it any worse for the wear so far as anyone knows.  Except maybe Italians.  If you think back on what you read about Roman history, Romulus and Remus had something similar happen to them.  And western civilization hasn’t fully recovered yet.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2013, Animals, History, Human Behavior, Relationships

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Those silly little Japanese

Posted on August 5, 2013 by | 4 comments

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

My friend Rich was telling me on the phone yesterday the “Hey! Looky over there!” technique for dealing with nuclear meltdowns is coming apart at the seams:

fukashima nuke

http://www.scpr.org/news/2013/07/22/38294/fukushima-nuclear-plant-leaking-radioactive-water/

“We are very sorry for causing concerns. We have made efforts not to cause any leak to the outside, but we might have failed to do so,” he said.
    
Ono said the radioactive elements detected in water samples are believed to largely come from initial leaks that have remained since earlier in the crisis. He said the leak has stayed near the plant inside the bay, and officials believe very little has spread further into the Pacific Ocean.
    
Marine biologists have warned that the radioactive water may be leaking continuously into the sea from the underground, citing high radioactivity in fish samples taken near the plant.
    
Most fish and seafood from along the Fukushima coast are barred from domestic markets and exports.”

Other articles are finally describing the levels of radioactivity in the steam one of the plants has been producing since the day one.  Luckily for Japan the prevailing winds will mostly take that cesium and whatnot into US and Canadian waters and over Alaska, Washington, and Oregon.  And the radioactive fish migrations down the California and Mexican coasts.

Got me thinking about the US love affair with Japan that’s been sneaking off to cheap motels and consumating itself in the back seats of limosines for the past half-century following their enthusiastic surrender.

Which got me thinking about love affairs in general, and how they tend to end.     [So Long, and Thanks for all the Valentines https://sofarfromheaven.com/romance/]  That’s the source for the ‘little Japanese’ thing.

A few years ago there was a big flap about whether one of the US presidents ought to apologize to Japan for dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasakaki.  The logic being that Japan wasn’t quite ready to surrender yet, and that dropping those bombs forced them to quit fighting prematurely.  I don’t know whether one of the US Chief Executives apologized, or didn’t. 

But that’s the sort of thing happens all the time in love affairs when they begin going stale.  Next thing you know something else will come along to stale things some more.  Such as the Japanese sending cesium into the sky so’s the wind can take it to Seattle and Portland.

Japan, of course, could send us a lot of valentines or roses to make things better, maybe.  Or maybe they could just admit what they’re doing and apologize.  They could actually say, “Hey!  Lookee over here!  We shore could use a little help, advice and friendly ideas.  From anyone who has some.  We loves you Americans and everything else being equal, like you better not glowing in the dark.”

Or maybe it’s just time to lay aside that romance and tell the Japanese, “So long and thanks for all the valentines.”

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 1940's, 2013, America, Current Issues, Government, Human Behavior, Nature, Relationships

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