Tag Archives: lifestyle

Cautiously Optimistic Concerning Various Pessimisms

Posted on March 21, 2012 by | 5 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for you and me coming back for a read this morning.  You, because you’re managing to stay alive in this hostile reality we’ve selected to submerge ourselves in, and me, because I managed to put the chickens up and let them out without getting struck by lightning.  Which seemed a definite possibility while I did it.

 

I don’t mind getting struck by lightning so much, but it seems a bit of an anti-climax, everything else being equal.  I don’t care for the notion of leaving a lot of loose ends lying around for someone else to have to deal with.

For instance, I’d hate to get fried by lightining without telling you about the taurine Jeanne sent me and I’ve been taking.  My thought was that it might replace the blood-pressure meds I have to order from India.  I’m not evangelical about it, and I’m not going to do a complete switch without watching it closely a while longer.  But I’m cautiously optimistic.

Then there’s the Invader Cat.  It vanished around here for a few days and I was cautiously optimistic I’d seen the last of it, but it’s back this morning.  So I’m cautiously optimistic some other way about it, but not so much you’d notice.

The minor erosion mitigation measures I took recently performed well during this deluge and moved things forward a lot further and faster than I’d have dared cautiously optimistically predict.  Just saying, for any of you considering such projects.

Finally, for those relatively few readers who check in here because we used to correspond about the non-randomness phenomenon.  If you’ve got enough RAM on your computers, I’m cautiously optimistic you’ll find it was worth your while to track them every which way and compare the results with anything else you’ve ever tested.  It doesn’t nail things down on all the corners, but it goes a longish way in the right direction.

As for everything else, I think there’s reason to abandon caution and just say to hell with it and be optimistic.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules: Benefits of Reconstruction?

Old Jules, how did the North and South benefit from reconstruction?

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, Astronomy, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Texas

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New NSA Blog Traffic Acceleration Tool – Speed

Posted on March 19, 2012 by | 25 comments

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

In an effort to assist the efforts of blog writers to increase the traffic statistics for their blogs, the National Security Agency is developing a tool that should help.  This is really good stuff: 

‘Total Information Awareness’ surveillance program returns, bigger than ever

The proposal was to build computing systems that could suck up every electronic communication on the planet and filter them through a smart super-computer that would flag certain conversations, emails, transactions and other items of interest for further review. It was a program so monstrous in scope that after a brief legislative battle, [pot] Congress imposed strict regulations on the type of technology that could accomplish those ends, prohibiting it from ever being used against Americans.  [uppers]

According to Bamford, the NSA’s new data center in Utah will be the most all-encompassing spy machine ever conceived, capable of breaking almost any encryption, reading any email and recording any phone call anywhere in the world, even if it’s not made over the Internet. A network of ultra-sensitive satellites enhance the center’s intelligence-finding capabilities with the unique ability to sniff electronic communications from a massive [downers]  distance.  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/16/total-information-awareness-surveillance-program-returns-bigger-than-ever/

They haven’t made it clear yet exactly which buzz-words will [I like Muslims] will bring the [Tea Party] most [Occupy] traffic, so it will probably require some experimentation to [union] find which [strike] works best.  In fact, [demonstration] the whole effort might be time sensitive and fluid, requiring [guns] that a person keep track of current [organize] news events.   Which strikes me as discriminatory.

In any case, whatever the weaknesses of the system, it’s good to see the government working in our best interests.  No doubt after a bit of testing they’ll find ways to improve it and plug any holes allowing them to escape reading dangerous blogs.

We’re lucky to live in a country where the military, the cops, the security mercenary forces, and the intelligence community can be trusted to only use the scientific community to protect us from people who disagree with what we think.

Old Jules

 

  

25 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Current Issues, Politics, Science

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Dancing With Roosters

Posted on March 16, 2012 by | 8 comments

Good morning readers.  I’m obliged you made a swing by here.  I’m going to do my best to give you something to have read by the time you leave if the Coincidence Coordinators and the commie phone line will sit still for it.

I’ve about decided I’m going to have peace and harmony around here, and I don’t care who I have to kill to do it.  The roosters are driving me nuts with their sneaky non-harmonizing ways.

The Great Speckled Bird surprised me by surviving the winter, feeling better most ways than he has in a longish time.  But more crippled up than ever.  Not much use of the one leg anymore, one wing weak or useless.  So when he falls, the usual ritual is to lie on his back waving his legs around.  Struggling for a shift in reality to get into a position where the one foot can get a hold on something.

But even so, he’s out there ranging with the hens, doing what roosters are supposed to do as often as he can see his way clear to do it and he can find a willing hen.

But meanwhile I keep my bachelor roosters penned most of the day.  Mainly because they’re of a mind that if I’m not looking it’s okay to open up a can of whoopass on TGSB.  They can knock him down and peck the bejesus out of him in less time than it takes to tell it.

But I’ve digressed.  I was going to tell you about dancing with roosters, which is the only way a person can establish harmonious society with them.  A rooster isn’t long on understanding the ways of a human being, but he does understand who’s the cock of the walk.  And if he doesn’t understand, or he forgets, he’s forever trying to reassure himself about whether he’s boss, or someone else is.

A rooster has two main dances.  One he does for the hens, which I’ll describe some other time, though it’s important to know how to do it so’s to keep him and the hens on their toes.  But the one used to communicate “I’m a contender,” and “You want some of this?  Come get it!” is an absolute necessity.

The last couple of days when the bachelor roosters and TGSB were out concurrently I’ve had to do a lot of dancing around stiff-legged, acting like I was pecking the ground watching them out of the corner of my eye and flapping my arms threateningly.  Reminding them if they want to mess with TGSB they’ve got to go through the bull-goose-looney to get there.

I think where I slipped up was when the warm weather started I quit wearing my red stocking cap they considered a comb, and forgot I’m a rooster too.  Got thinking they could each be a contender.

Old Jules

The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters

The Liar: The Great Speckled Bird, Part 2

News from the Middle of Nowhere

October Quietude, Dead Bugs and Old Roosters

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, Animals, Chickens, Communication, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Nature, Poultry, Relationships, Senior Citizens

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Fire Ants, Food Sanitation and the Old Cottage Try

Posted on March 15, 2012 by | 1 comment

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning. I’d thought that moth might survive a while because the cats were intimidated by it, but I was wrong.  Tabby made a meal of it before sunset.

The phone line’s being a communist this morning, so I don’t know whether I’ll be able to finish a post and get it up.  If I save frequently enough I can progress two steps forward and one back, losing the connection but only losing the unsaved part of the immortal prose.

The fire ants came out of hiding yesterday, so I’m back in business food-sanitation-wise.  It will be a considerable relief getting their help on the dishwashing around here.  Fire Ants, Dishwashing and Drought

Good news from Kay on the phone yesterday about the Invader Cat.  Seems it’s doing the Texas Two-Step.  A neighbor a couple of miles the other side of them asked recently if they ‘had’ a black cat, or had seen one.  Turns out the Invader Cat migrates over there a couple of days at a time, also, and has done for a considerable while.

That puts to rest any concerns I had about it joining the household.

I had a considerable bit of immortal prose I was going to do this morning, but the distraction of this dial-up is killing my muse.  I think I’m going to have to save it for sometime else.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules: Old Jules, I love one girl very much, but she is not responding, what should I do?

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Animals, Nature

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Betting on Future Sheep, or Locating the Moth Balls

Posted on March 14, 2012 by | 4 comments

While you earthlings are fretting over whether your next king is going to be friendly to your preferred nuances of greed, waste, envy, scorn and target identification, you might want to squeeze in a few minutes to find those moth balls.  The days for protecting your brass monkeys might not be completely over for the year, but keeping the emphasis on the right syllable is as important now as it ever was.

Even though those Pendleton blankets might seem anachronistic today, and knowing there are plenty of sheep still out there grazing, there’s going to be another October and November eventually.  Betting on the come, figuring you can just toss the holey blankets and buy something Chinese to replace them might problematic by then.

There’s a rumor going around the Chinese plan to devote the entire planetary wool production to their world-wide-near-monopoly on steel.  Chinese statisticians and accountants have discovered crescent wrenches and pliers made of wool will do the job as well as the ones made of steel they’re selling now.  And they’ll be worth as much as the dollars US consumers use to pay for them.

Save some of those moth balls for your toolbox.  Next year that might be where you’ll find your Pendleton blankets.

Old Jules

 

4 Comments

Posted in 1960's, 2012, Adventure, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Politics, YouTube

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The Great Escape

Posted on March 14, 2012 by | 4 comments

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

Some happenings on this planet are so unlikely as to probably have transpired somewhere else, not here.  The scene below is a US Forestry Service outdoor toilet located at a mountain picnic area near the road running from Silver City to Reserve, New Mexico.  From a distance it looks innocuous enough.

I’d imagine that’s what the guy who was sitting on the john inside thought when something important happened.  In the bottom pic the unlikely is somewhat conveyed, though it doesn’t show how thoroughly the saturation of bullet holes targeting the piece of space he occupied.

The Great Escape

Call yourself a cop

I’ll call myself a robber

Corner me in an outhouse

Call in your backups

Talk to me through bullhorns

“Come out with your hands up

We know you’re in there

Watching flies strafe dust particles

In sunlight shafts

Savoring the odor and the old news

“Come out or we’ll come in after you”

Tension builds. No answer.

Anti-climax gun and badge hero makes a perfect icon

Of an eyeball peeking through a knot hole.

But I’m not scared.

I’ve escaped down through the hole

Into the real world

Old Jules Copyright©2003 NineLives Press

Most things in this life just aren’t worth worrying about.  The Universe has enough surprises and cards on the bottom of the deck to make the focus of the worry obsolete, or absolescent.

Old Jules

 

4 Comments

Posted in 2000's, Adventure, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Survival, YouTube

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The Social Security Entitlement Adventure

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | 20 comments

Good morning readers. I’m obliged you came by for a read.

I got an email yesterday from an old acquaintance who’s carrying a serious chip on his shoulder about somebody calling the Social Security pension he lives on an ‘entitlement’. He raged on about how he paid into it fifty years, and his employers matched everything he paid. So, he says, it’s not an entitlement.

Sheeze. I wonder what else a person would call it. He’s entitled to it. What the hell is it but an entitlement?

But I think he’s concerned that because ‘entitlement’ has become a buzzword for something else he doesn’t like.  Namely a whole range of government payouts to bank owners, automobile companies, multi-national corporations, all manner of people bleeding the US budget dry with bailouts and payoffs.  I think he figures they might quit paying him his pension because they called it an entitlement.  Putting him down with scum bankers and CEOs and Chairmans of Boards and politicians.

Seems to me he’s just not thinking right.  He’s gotten old up there in Al Capone country and no longer seeing the opportunity it would represent if they took away his retirement check he needs to live.

Truth is, we lived fairly tame lives, we retirees.  Generally we did what was needed and more-or-less stayed within the boundaries of the laws and ethics while we did it.

In a lot of ways we screwed ourselves out of the adventure we were entitled to.  The adventure of sticking up banks and shooting it out with the cops and whatnot.

Those bankers and CEOs and politicans got to have all the fun, though they didn’t do it in a way that would take them out in a blaze of gunfire.  But we spent our lives in an environment with them in their houses on the hill, and down on the street corners and alleyways people were shooting it out with one another and the cops.

We just plodded along working our asses off not getting to drive limosines nor scoot around in the shadows mugging anyone.  But now maybe they’re finally going to give us our shot at having some fun finally.

Seems to me it’s about time.

Old Jules

20 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Social Security, Survival

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Battlestar Gallinica, the US Space Program, and Fluid Reality

Posted on March 12, 2012 by | 10 comments

White Trash Repairs: Throwing Down the Gauntlet

In some ways we’re a lot like the US Government out here.  Particularly when it’s manifested in the ‘May-your-flock-increase’ syndrome. 

It couldn’t have been more than three, maybe four years ago I was building Battlestar Gallinica, letting those silky hens crank out chicks and doing it on autopilot.  Never stopping to consider that I already had a flock of chickens more numerous than my needs.  Never stopping to wonder just how big a flock of chickens needed to be. 

Oblivious to the fact that forces of history were at work, driving up the future cost of chicken feed, unravelling the warp and weave of whatever blanket I must have thought was wrapped around the coming years.

I suppose my habits of thinking were just too pleasurable to allow seemingly obvious factors to slow me down.  Somewhat like the US Super-Power habit of thinking and all the militarism of the Cold War when the Rooskies packed up their tents, went home and the Berlin Wall went down.

The obvious thing to do was let things settle a bit to make sure it wasn’t an illusion, then bring all that military and equipment home, mothball it, and reduce, downsize, try to let the nightmare of the 20th Century fade into history where it belonged.

But I had a growing flock to keep me occupied, and the US Super-Power had a huge military lying around needed something to occupy it.  The only alternative the US Government had was to indulge in an endless series of military adventures to justify continuing bankrupting itself keeping on keeping on.

Whereas, I had silky hens brightening my day every time I turned around, hatching out chicks to watch survive and mature, beginning and ending on this piece of land.

What I needed was some heavy thinking in my agenda, taking into account that nothing lasts forever and that a flock of chickens is as much a responsibility in my reality as the health, jobs, production and manufacturing, and generally peaceful well-being of the country was to the people in it when the Cold War ended.

So here I am with a lot of chickens dear to me I’ve got to figure out how to deal with, Battlestar Gallinica sitting out there idle, and a half-built woodshed that’s nothing more than a reminder of my own unclear vision of reality.

And here’s the country I live in, sacrificed everything, a leading edge Space Program, a thriving economy of employed people, industry, innovation, hope, in favor of bankrupting itself for cheap and easy coincident with the pride of remaining the strongest military power on earth.

Battlestar Gallinica can be manufactured a lot more easily and cheaply in China if it’s needed.  So long as we can keep those boys and girls wearing Nazi helmets and cammy occupying foreign soil somewhere, we’re still good.

Maybe it still isn’t too late to take a second look at the ‘may your flock increase’ habit of thinking.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:   Roots of the Civil War?

Old Jules, what were the true roots of the Civil war?

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Posted in America, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens

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One Toke Over the Line Sweet Jesus

Posted on March 11, 2012 by | 25 comments

 

Hi readers.  Some of you evidently come to this blog for the humor, but my brand of humor frequently falls flat for a lot of other readers.  So for those of you unable to appreciate my dry, subtle, sometimes off-target attempts at humor I offer perhaps the funniest scene ever to appear on television.

Note the squeeze-box player attempting to keep a straight face while introducing the song.  Afterward, the followup by famous wit Lawrence Welk caps the entire performance as he expresses his appreciation for “modern gospel music” performances by young people.

Unlike so many young performers of the time, these already had perfect teeth.

 

Meanwhile, the songwriters, Brewer and Shipley, were awarded a position on President Nixon’s ‘Enemy List’ and enjoyed honorable mention by Vice President Spiro Agnew before he went down in flames.

Old Jules

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Posted in 1970's, America, Communication, Human Behavior, Music, YouTube

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Old Sol’s Opinions about the DST Time Change

Posted on March 11, 2012 by | 16 comments

http://spaceweather.com/

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

Those of us stuck with the responsibility for bringing Old Sol up mornings and helping him down evenings try to stay tuned to his moods and political opinions.  Especially the DST time changes, of which he just about has a bellyfull. 

Here’s what he had to say about this one.  You’ll have to listen closely because he recorded it 78 rpm and there’s a lot of static.  If you have trouble picking the message out of the background noise, the general summary of his thoughts is that he’s damned sick of it.

WEEKEND SOLAR FLARE: Sunspot AR1429 is still erupting this weekend. On Saturday, March 10th, it produced a powerful M8-class flare that almost crossed the threshold into X-territory. During the flare, New Mexico amateur astronomer Thomas Ashcraft recorded a series of radio bursts at 21 and 28 MHz:

The roaring sounds you just heard are caused by shock waves plowing through the sun’s atmosphere in the aftermath of the explosion. “There is incredible complexity in the waveforms,” notes Ashcraft. “This is a recording of one of the most turbulent events in all of Nature!”

In addition, the explosion propelled yet another CME toward Earth. According to a forecast track prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the cloud will hit our planet’s magnetosphere on March 12th at 1803 UT (+/- 7 hr), possibly sparking a new round of geomagnetic storms.

After passing Earth, the CME will also hit the Mars Science Lab (MSL) spacecraft on March 13th followed by Mars itself on March 14th. Mars rover Curiosity onboard MSL might get some interesting readings as the cloud passes by.

Meanwhile, those of you who prefer the emotional side of things have probably been looking forward to the disgusting kissee-kissee going on between Jupiter and Venus.

http://spaceweather.com/

All I can tell you is it’s an illusion.  Jupiter and Venus don’t have enough in common to allow a lasting, meaningful relationship.  This is just cheap, physical attraction causing this.  Cheerleader Venus shamelessly wrapping herself around the arm of grotesque jockstrap Jupiter for the duration of a shared climax.

No candlelight dinners and moonlight walks for Jupiter and Venus.  They’ll each drift their own ways and be off flirting with someone else in just about the amount of time it takes to calculate it.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Learning from Nature?

Old Jules, what have you learned from nature?

 

 

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Posted in 2012, Astronomy

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