Tag Archives: miscellaneous

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?

10 Comments

Posted in America, Country Life

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What about the non-Jews killed by the Nazis?

Posted on March 27, 2012 by | 7 comments

Note from Jeanne: Here’s another example of a random question answered by Old Jules a while back on another website. If you have a question you’d like answered, please leave it in the comments. And of course, find more equally random questions and his answers at www.askoldjules.com.

Old Jules, why does everyone forget the other 10 million people who were killed by the Nazis?  It’s well known that around 17 to 21 million people were killed during the Holocaust. including Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsies, Disabled people, Peasants, ethnic Poles, Soviets, prisoners of war, etc…
But why is it that people only ever remember the “six million Jews” when talking about the Holocaust? Even my friend’s little brother is taking history in school and is being taught about Nazi Germany and even he said he is only being taught about the 6 million Jews,etc…
Isn’t it either ignorant or disrespectful to forget or outright ignore the fact that it wasn’t only Jews who were targeted?

Jews are no better, no worse than the rest of us. If those of us who are non-Jewish were Jews. we’d probably direct a lot of energy to turning the German holocaust to our own advantage, just as they’ve done and continue doing. [In fact, many ethnic groups use similar tactics to keep the memories of wrongs done to their ancestors in sharp focus, probably for the same reasons].

Israeli Zionists are more intelligent and better educated than most citizens of Europe and the US. They understand the populations are mostly shallow ignorant sheep, that their attitudes and viewpoints are easily manipulated by controlling the information fed to them by the media and textbooks. They’d be a lot less intelligent than they are if they failed to take advantage of the obvious.

It’s true a lot of other groups died during the holocaust and that 20th Century genocides killed far larger numbers of others in the USSR, Cambodia, Biafra, French Guiana, Armenia, the Ukraine and elsewhere. Mostly they go forgotten and unnoticed.

There appears to be a deliberate attempt to focus entirely on Jewish victims and the German holocaust and brush all the others aside. This could be the result of a number of possibilities.

This focus isn’t necessarily intended to suggest the only victims of genocide that matter are Jews, and it isn’t necessarily a cynical, opportunistic PR campaign by Israeli Zionists to twang the heartstrings of the world or the US and Europe with constant reminders of the German [Jewish] holocaust so’s to keep military and financial assistance going to them.

It might just be that Jews worldwide feel the pain of the Jewish genocide more than they feel the non-Jewish ones, and since they’re deeply connected within the media, governments, publishing and elsewhere, they naturally focus on their own painful remembrances unconsciously. Not because they don’t care about the others, exactly, but they care more about their own.

But it might also have something to do with keeping the eyes of the world directed away from Israel’s own massacres when they find genocide against others to be convenient.

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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?

10 Comments

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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A Filler for Bad Texas Weather

Posted on March 20, 2012 by | 12 comments

Good morning everyone, Jeanne here.  Jules and I discussed the possibility that the horrendous weather he’s been having down there in the hill country might inhibit his going online for a day or two, so I’m putting up a couple items that I was going to save for a future Ask Old Jules entry. As always, if you have a question yourself that  you’d like to see answered in a future post, you can put it in the comments on either site. 

Old Jules, my partner and I  have asked spirits/orbs/ghosts into our home so that we can take photos of them. We have some good orb pics. The thing that have really noticed is that within a minute of my partner sensing something in the room, I often smell an incredibly strong smell of rotten eggs/rotten flesh. This has happened about 3 times whilst asking for beings to be photographed. The other night after taking pics I suddenly smelt it in my bedroom, like it was following me (and I was undressing). My partner seems to sense beings,  but I don’t.  I smell them, but he can’t.
So my main question is whether this smell is of bad spirits/demons?

Sounds as though you might need to try the NOSE (Neotronics Olfactory Sensing Equipment; Neotronics). It’s likely to be the rage in the next generation of marketing ghost-chasing equipment to television watching ghost busters.

Paranormality’s grand
Electro-magnetically scanned;
Ghost-chasing adventures
And captitalist ventures
Finally go hand-in-hand.

Old Jules, what’s the best strategy to play blackjack online?

The best strategy is to not play online. Would you play blackjack at a casino where they took the cards into the backroom to shuffle them, where everything important happened outside your range of vision, where the whole thing, beginning to end, was done in a dark room illegally and you’d have no recourse in the unimaginable event you could prove you’d been cheated?

Online gambling from the US just about fits that description. The online casino strangers you play with provide the games because they have a vested interest in winning. If Lady Luck doesn’t offer up the profits there’s nothing at all to keep them from helping her along.

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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

8 Comments

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

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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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