Tag Archives: lifestyle

Save Those Sash Weights – Wokkyjawed Repairs Part 2

Posted on April 3, 2012 by | 4 comments

Spring winds here lean toward drama, which offers a challenge for any temporary roof repairs.  I had a couple of garage sale tarps, the blue one frayed badly, the brown one a person could only see daylight through in a few places.

There was nothing obvious to do that would hold those tarps, nail-wise to keep them from ballooning in the wind.  The sash weights, hopefully, will do the job. 

The old water hose cows chewed through several years ago finally found a use, as well.  Trotline cord threaded through pieces of it will hopefully keep the friction down enough to keep it from wearing through the tarps until materials for a better repair can be found.

Old Jules

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Posted in Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, White Trash Repairs

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Wokkyjawed repairs

Posted on April 3, 2012 by | 4 comments

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

If you’ll take a close look at that ladder I climbed a dozen times, or more, you’ll see a person might wish to study on the design a few moments before he puts his weight on it.  Luckily, I’m the luckiest man in the world and even noticing what I’d done after the fact didn’t leave me with a broken ladder, broken head, worse for the wear in any way.

Seems to me I’ve observed at one time or another that plenty of ways of a man ruining his day present themselves on a job of this sort.  And almost no ways exist to come out of it feeling a lot better than he did going in.

The tree trunk was exerting a lot of social pressure on everything trying to hold it up.  At the base it was unstable, something awful.  I had my heart set on it not coming down and crushing my rooster containment center if I could help it. 

I tried to insure against the possibility by lifting the base of the trunk with a bar and slipping in a couple of chunks of historical tree. 

But even with all my precautions the trunk dropped a few feet when I finally made the last cut breaking it free of the building.

Tough day, everything else being equal.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Psychometry?

Old Jules, what do you know about psychometry? I would love to know how to get started.

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Posted in 2012, Country Life, Homesteading, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, White Trash Repairs

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While the Finest Minds in the US Dribbled Basketballs

Posted on April 1, 2012 by | 7 comments

Keeping in mind that this object didn’t exist in our reality until a few days ago:

http://spaceweather.com/

Just an afterthought, readers, to fill the gaps between the spectator sports, the Men Who Want to be King, and my own head-spinning attempts to establish clearly what’s not happening when.  

APRIL 1st ASTEROID FLYBY: Newly discovered near-Earth asteroid 2012 EG5 is flying past Earth today about halfway between Earth and the Moon. There’s no danger of a collision. At closest approach on April 1st, the Dreamliner-sized space rock will be about 230,000 km from Earth. This morning in Brisbane, Australia, amateur astronomer Dennis Simmons photographed the incoming asteroid.

http://www.accuweather.com/en/outdoor-articles/astronomy/asteroid-2012-eg5-to-pass-clos/63486

The asteroid 2012 EG5 will pass close to Earth on Sunday morning at 5:32 a.m. EDT. 

Asteroid 2012 EG5 is about 150 feet wide. While it will pass within 0.6 lunar distances (143,000 miles) of Earth, NASA reports that there is no danger of the asteroid striking the Earth.

Astronomers discovered the asteroid on March 13 while searching for large space rocks close to earth.

A second asteroid, 2012 FA57 was discovered by astronomers on March 28. Asteroid 2012 FA57 will pass by Earth on April 4. It will safely pass outside of the moons lunar distance.

The asteroid 2012 EG5 will be the third asteroid to pass close by Earth within a week.

Two smaller asteroids pass by Earth on Monday. The closest asteroid 2012 FS35 passed within 36,000 miles.

These [other two] space rocks were small enough that they would not survive a trip through Earth’s atmosphere.

If more people would watch TV election rhetoric or spend more time watching spectator sports this kind of thing wouldn’t happen.  NASA and all those people looking at the sky are beginning to present a serious threat of creating something catastrophic happening.

A bunch of jockstraps  chasing one another around a stadium are comparatively harmless compared to what these folks are doing.  An asteroid the size of an airliner falling on, say, Washington, D.C., might injure innocent human beings who just happened to be passing through on their way somewhere else.  Some degree of collateral damage seems inevitable, though maybe acceptable, overall.

In any case, that one passed a bit more than mid-way between the moon and earth.  It only has to miss an inch higher than the highest obstruction to be completely harmless.  Space is big and the odds are good any next ones will miss us at least an inch.

Just saying.

Old Jules 

 

 

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Posted in 2012, America, Astronomy, Science, Solitude, Survival

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If You Can’t Trust an Oak, Who Can You Trust?

Posted on April 1, 2012 by | 4 comments

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

The analogy between Robert E. Lee, Gettysburg and that oak is still nagging at me, but I doubt I’ll belabor this post with the troubling similarities between the two this morning.  Though I might.

Gale came down the morning after the Gettysburg event and we performed an after-action analysis of the damages, the implications, and ultimately the other oaks surrounding the cabin showing some level of potential for similarly Gettysburg-like thinking.  We concluded there’ll be several other trees coming down because they’re already losing bark, or obviously dead.  Others I’ll prune the larger branches on the cabin-side so’s the weight left will cause them to fall away from anything they can damage.  Hopefully.

Fact is, the leverage a few MPH of wind in the upper growth exerts a huge mechanical advantage and a person might be prone to over-confidence about the salubriousness of fooling with the weight and balance.

Somewhat the way Pickett trusted the judgement and wisdom of old Robert Lee until the pricetag of trusting was already paid.  Lee locked his mind in one direction and managed to blind himself to the obvious, and he said what Pickett wanted to hear. 

But I said I wouldn’t go there this morning, and I’m not going to go there just because old Pickett spent the rest of his life blaming Lee for allowing him to do exactly what he wanted most.

Even Meade, the Union commander, trusted Lee so much he was ready to abandon the superior ground, pull back his larger force, more guns, rather than mistrust Robert E. Lee, his opposing commander.  Meade’s officers voted to hold position, or there’d have been no Gettysburg.

But I said I wouldn’t go there this morning, and I’m not going to go there

A while back I was trusting the invader cat to be a pregnant female because it was pacing around meowing something awful.  Trusting it other times to be a female in heat for the same reason.  But I discovered around the same time I made the discovery about the oak, that the invader cat has a pair of jingle-bollocks.  I don’t know why the hell it’s meowing.  But I trust a pair of jingle-bollocks more-or-less completely when it comes to it.

A lot more than I’m ever going to trust an oak again.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  1940′s and 1950′s in the USA?

Old Jules, what were some of the social, political, and religious aspects of the 1940’s and 1950’s?

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Posted in History, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas

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Jeb Stuarts, Jeb Stuart MacGruders and the Fallen

Posted on March 30, 2012 by | 6 comments

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

I’m five years older than old Bob Lee was when he had his little problem at Gettysburg.  I’ve fingered a lot earlier than when I was 65 that I could have avoided what happened to him if it had been me, instead of him dealing with a particular horse soldier.  Jeb Stuart, or Jeb Stuart MacGruder, I think it was.

Bobby Lee should have had the good sense to follow the advice of Longstreet and not become an invader, I always figured.  Should have stayed the hell down in Virginia, fought in defense of his home soil.

Lee was plenty old enough to know the great majority of the leadership on both sides was composed of the spiritual kinfolk of Stuart, Lincoln, Custer, Fetterman, Hooker, and other dandies too absorbed in what the newspapers were saying about them to keep their eyes on the ball.

Bobby Lee didn’t think that way, but he got the smell of blood in his nose anyway.  The men following his orders and getting shot to hell would have been just as happy defending Vicksburg, but they trusted his wisdom, they had the smell of blood in their noses, too. 

Same as these today.

But while I was thinking about that last night the damn tree fell on the storage building, so I don’t know where I was going with it.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Escape from Reality?

Old Jules, why is escaping reality ultimately harmful?

 

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Posted in Senior Citizens, Solitude, YouTube

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Pardon Me, Roy, . . .

Posted on March 29, 2012 by | 4 comments

Roy Rogers had a new pair of boots made for him by the best bootmaker in California.  But it was raining when he got back to the ranch and they got muddy on the way to the porch, so he took them off and left them there on the steps.  Later, when he came out to clean them he found they’d been ripped to shreds by a bobcat. 

Roy took his good dog Bullet, hopped on Trigger and went after that cat with a rifle.  In a while he rode back to the ranchhouse with a bobcat draped across his saddle.  Dale Evans came out on the porch, sang:

“Pardon me, Roy,

Is that the cat-that-chewja new shoes?” 

To the tune of the song below.

 

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:   Plan for Life?

Old Jules, what’s your plan for life?

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Posted in Music, YouTube

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Dressing Hoes, Handles and Whips

Posted on March 28, 2012 by | 10 comments

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

Different world.  This is one of the first adult jokes I ever remember hearing:

First morning on her new job in a hardware store a man approached her.  “I need a flat bastard.”

“Cad!”  She slapped him and he rushed out.

The manager was aghast, but she explained the customer swore at her, so he just shook his head and went back to his business as another man approached her.

“I need a flat bastard.”

“Cad!”  She slapped him and he ran from the store.

This time, the manager questioned her and she explained the offending language.

“Ahh.  It’s okay.  They were asking for bastard files.  See,” pointing to a bin of files, “Those are called bastard files.”

She apologized, and he went back to work.  Another customer approached her.  “I need a file.”

“How about one of these flat bastards?” Glowing with new-found knowledge.

“No, I think I’ll take this little round son-of-a-bitch.”

Trying to dress my tools, all the little bastards I could find around here were Chinese s-o-bs.  Worthless.  I ended up using that grinding wheel as a whetstone, which was slow, but worked.  But the stone soaked up a lot of oil while I used it. 

While I was dressing those blades and working linseed oil into the handles I found myself wondering whether anyone does that anymore.  As a kid I was taught that nobody would respect a person who didn’t take care of his tools.  But I suspect there aren’t enough people doing any hoe work anymore to cause them to bother with it.

And of course, the tools aren’t made to last, anyway.  Aren’t even made to do the job they’re shaped for.

I’m going to keep my eye out at auctions and thrift stores for some broken tools with metal D-handles, I reckons.  That shovel has a lot of life left in it if I can find a handle that was made when the folks making it thought someone would use it eventually.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Open Range Ranching?

Old Jules, what can you tell me about open range ranching in the 1800s?

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Posted in America, Country Life

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When Bad Things Happen to Good Megafauna

Posted on March 26, 2012 by | 10 comments

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

Old Sol and I continued our conversation from the previous morning yesterday.

“So.  You’re saying you think I need more diversity in my art?”

“I’m sure as hell not saying you need more ego.  You’ve got more than enough of that, what with your astrophysicists, Hopi Witch Doctors and Mayan-bean-counter buddies.”

“That was a hurtful thing to say.  What are you so irritated about this morning?”

“I’m not irritated.  Sometimes your bluster’s a bit tedious though.  You’re forever trying to take credit for everything that happens, whether you had anything to do with it or not.  But the most cataclysmic event, for instance, that’s happened since man has been around, you had nothing to do with.”

“Um.  You’re referring to the megafauna?”

“Yeah.  Millions of rhino, mammoth, hippos, sabre-tooth tigers all killed in the space of a few days.  Lots of them frozen fast enough to keep them from decaying much.  Carcasses stacked up like cord wood over half the planet.  If you’re able to do that, big fella, I say go for it.”

“I never said I did.  That wasn’t me.  We stars are mostly uniformists, gradualists, except for a few rare renegade exceptions.  We don’t go in for drama.”

“Okay.  I’ll buy that.  I envy you, though, getting to see all those giant beasties wiped out.”

“Yeah.  It was a sight to behold.  Just out of curiosity, what do you think happened?”

“It’s obvious what happened.  All a person has to do is discount everything he believes he knows already that would keep it from happening.  Then allow himself  to look at whatever options are left on the plate.  There aren’t many.”

“I’m about out of time.  But you’re admitting the reason nobody looks at the obvious isn’t my fault?”

“No.  I guess it isn’t.  They’re all lap-dancing to their own agendas.  Sometimes you end up as part of the agenda, is all.  I reckons.”

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Adopting an Illusion?

Old Jules, if you act like something for long enough, will you become like the illusion?  If you acted as a good moral, rule-abiding citizen, could you eventually adopt those beliefs and habits?

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Posted in Animals, Astronomy, History, Human Behavior, Liars, Nature, Science, Solitude

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Old Sol’s Just A Leedle Bit Pissed

Posted on March 24, 2012 by | 4 comments

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

SOLAR STORM HEATS UP EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE: A flurry of solar activity in early March dumped enough heat in Earth’s upper atmosphere to power every residence in New York City for two years. The heat has since dissipated, but there’s more to come as the solar cycle intensifies. [full story] [video] http://spaceweather.com/

As I was trying to roust and prod Old Sol up this morning he was whining and complaining something awful.  “Nobody appreciates me.  I’ve just about got a gut full of you people!”  Him barely peeking between the trees on the ridgeline.

“What are you talking about?  That’s crazy.  Everyone appreciates what you do.  Come on now.  Rise and shine!  You’ve got a lot of appointments today.  Things to do and people to see.”  Me, cajoling, persuading, being diplomatic.

“Horse hockey! You see all those diagonal lines I’ve got across me?  All those squiggles and curlycues?  Do you have any idea how much trouble it is for me to do that?  You’re looking at a lot of parallel bands of magnetic fields.  Can you imagine how I do those diagonals?”

“Honestly, I can’t begin to imagine.  Let’s talk more about it after you’re further over the horizon.  I’ll have my people call your people.”  Heehee, him about two-thirds showing, still moving.

“What about all those bumper-stickers you were talking about?  Proud to be an American?  Proud to be a Texan.  Proud to be a Native Texan?  You ever see one saying, ‘Proud of my Solar System’?   ‘Proud of Old Sol’?  Even ‘Proud of my Galaxy’?”

Me, trying to break this off gently.  He’s well up in the air now, no way he can reverse things.  “You’re right.  People don’t pay any mind to your artistic efforts.  They don’t understand them, mostly.  In a lot of ways what you do is  kitch.  Have you considered trying something a bit more subtle?  Something that says something about the human condition?”

He looked behind him and finally realized I’d suckered him.  “We’re going to talk about this again tomorrow.  This isn’t over yet by a long shot.”

“Well, hell.  Have a good day then.”

Old Jules

 Today on Ask Old Jules:  Feelings About Time?

Old Jules, how do you feel about time passing by?

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Posted in Adventure

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Commitment to Dogs That Won’t Hunt

Posted on March 23, 2012 by | 20 comments

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

Searching around in my mind as I drove to Kerrville yesterday I was trying to find something, almost anything, the word ‘we’ could be applied to that included all of humanity.  Not an easy task, despite most of the lofty notions humans have about themselves.

Intelligence and thinking came to mind, but didn’t survive even long-range scrutiny.  Whatever else we might be, human beings are only intelligent when compared to one another within a miniscule range of options.  Probably the least intelligent human being able to function is somewhat smarter than the next-best up for consideration in the animal kingdom.  And a few notches up on the yardstick, the smartest human being isn’t much more intelligent.  But there’s enough difference top-to-bottom to demolish the word ‘we’ when it comes to defining anything all humans have in common.

As for thinking, there’s just not a hell of a lot of it going on.  The overwhelming majority of humans are riding along on shock waves created by thinkings of an underwhelming few individuals.  Of the several billion humans on this planet there’s not more than a shot-glass full who could figure out how to manufacture a lead pencil.  Or, for that matter, a shot-glass.  Or build a fire without materials provided by some autopilot composite of individuals not-thinking somewhere else.

Pride held up a lot better, but as I turned it over examining all the nuances I found it was handcuffed to something else.  Commitment.  This species couldn’t have survived this long without it any more than a tribe of beavers could survive without the non-thinking commitment to building community dams.

And pride is the glue holding it together.  A necessary virtue to keep things moving, even though the commitments most frequently to dogs that don’t hunt, haven’t hunted for centuries, but nobody’s devoted enough thought to the matter to notice.

When I was a kid the adults used to say if a snapping turtle ever got a bite on you it wouldn’t turn loose until it thundered.  One of the places in this reality where the word ‘we’ can be applied to humanity is our commonality to that imaginary snapping turtle.  Commitments come along, sometimes the result of someone thinking something, sometimes just out of the blue, and ‘we’ lock our pride into it and don’t turn loose until it thunders.

When I began this post I intended it to examine human commitments to failed ideals and myths.  I planned to reflect on our often failing repeated attempts to commit ourselves to individuals, to political parties, to geographic boundaries.

But I’m going to have to save that for some future post. 

I was watching bumper stickers as I drove along considering all this.  Proud to be an American.  Proud to be a Texan.  Proud to be a Native Texan.

Presumably those declarations are a source of pride because of the effort and personal hardship involved in achieving them.  If pride had anything to do with personal achievement.  Or thinking.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Views on Atheism?

Old Jules, what is your view on my religion? I’m an atheist.

 

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Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Communication, Current Issues, Education, History, Human Behavior, Solitude, Survival

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