Tag Archives: other

Christmas Eve for a Hermit and Cats in a Mountain Village

Posted on December 24, 2011 by | 20 comments

I wrote this several years ago in a previous lifetime before Social Security kicked in when I was trying to make a living playing blackjack.

Casino’s Shut Down for Christmas!

Went back down there for some more blackjack and didn’t get in more than a few hands before a pit boss announced they were shutting down the tables, the casino, and sending everyone home to spend time with their families.

Surprised me, but a worthy cause I wouldn’t have expected of them.

Fact is, all those gamblers who aren’t aware that blackjack’s a spiritual experience needed to be off somewhere else, anyway.  Which is to say, pretty much all of them except me.

So, I smiled to meself with a warm red glow that a casino would let the employees go home to be with their kinfolks instead of staying there making a lot of money for the mafia.  Swung over by Taco Bell on the way back out of Bernalillo and picked up three bean burritos and three crispy tacos to celebrate a victory for those employees over casino management.

Brung those tacos and burritos back up to the village and capped the hill looking down into Placitas…. looked as though something awful had happened here….. flashing emergency lights copcar style all down on the main road.  Sheriff with a flashlight was waving me to take a back road.  I rolled down my window, “Accident?”

“No.  Most of the roads are shut down.  People in groups in the middle of the roads singing carols.  You’ll have to take this road.  Be careful.”

Happened ‘this road’ was the very selfsame road I needed to take to trip my young arse home as fast as safety allowed to lock the front gates and turn off the outside lights before any carol singers could catch me unawares and make me listen to Christmas carols.

I don’t so much mind people singing carols.  I think it’s kind of cool, actually, especially if they were to go a step further and listen to the words they’re singing.

On the other hand, I honestly don’t want to listen to the words, the music, nuthun do do with Christmas carols.

I figure if I can go through an entire presidential term without knowing who’s president, and go through Thanksgiving to New Year without hearing a single Christmas carol (most especially ones involving Santy and reindeers), it will be okay to die.  I’ll know I’ve lived right, at least one period of my life.

Anyway readers, if you’re reading this blog you need to get your young arse off the computer and go spend some time with the family.

But if you don’t have somewhere else to be, don’t have someone else, why heck, amigos, rejoice.  Luxuriate in the beauty of being alone with yourself and any cats you might have.

If you don’t have any cats, nor any particular self you can bring yourself to rejoice about, heck.  As Sonny and Cher used to say back when everything was supposed to be pretty well straightened out by now,

You got me, babe.

Old Jules

20 Comments

Posted in 2000's, America, Country Life, Gambling, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM

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Wobblehead Extensions, Crowfoots and Mayan Ruins in Georgia

Posted on December 23, 2011 by | 22 comments

Good morning readers. I’m grateful you’re here reading this cold morning.

Every time we think we’ve got things figured out and can make pronouncements to one another without fear of someone making a counter-pronouncement back at us with any danger of validity this seems to happen.  Some smarty-pants academian digs around where he’s got no business being and spang finds something to cut us off at the knees.

In this instance it’s fairly solid physical evidence a Mayan city once thrived in the otherwise non-Mayan and feet-implanted-in-the-ground US state of Georgia.  The offending pointee-headed guy with the cheek to find it doesn’t even have the courtesy to be a US academian who can be bludgeoned by grant money and sneers from his peers to shut the hell up about it and not go around shaking and rattling previous pronouncements.

1,100-year-old Mayan ruins found in North Georgia http://tinyurl.com/d5gwjpq

When evidence began to turn up of Mayan connections to the Georgia site, South African archeologist Johannes Loubser brought teams to the site who took soil samples and analyzed pottery shards which dated the site and indicated that it had been inhabited for many decades approximately 1000 years ago. The people who settled there were known as Itza Maya, a word that carried over into the Cherokee language of the region.

The city that is being uncovered there is believed to have been called Yupaha, which Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto searched for unsuccessfully in 1540. So far, archeologists have unearthed “at least 154 stone masonry walls for agricultural terraces, plus evidence of a sophisticated irrigation system and ruins of several other stone structures.” Much more may still be hidden underground.

A good level-headed other good US scholar took a more level-headed approach to the finds:

UPDATE: Raw Story contacted another UGA Scientist, Dr. B. T. Thomas of the Department of Environmental Science, who indicated that, while it is unlikely that the Mayan people migrated en masse from Central America to settle in what is now the United States, he refused to characterize Thornton’s conclusions as “wrong,” stating that it is entirely possible that some Mayans and their descendants migrated north, bringing Mayan building and agricultural techniques to the Southeastern U.S. as they integrated with the existing indigenous people there.

He didn’t go on to say what needs saying.  Namely that the South African guy needs to go home and  tend his own affairs.  There’s plenty of digging to be done in Africa and plenty of good US academians capable of handling any digging needs doing here.  And most especially the South African guy needs to be kept away from the copper artifacts found in Florida and Georgia in other mounds that bear a strong similarity to Aztec artifacts in Mexico.

We don’t need any guys running around in pickup trucks drinking beer and talking about Mayan calendars.  Things are already complicated enough.

Which brings me to crowfoots and wobblehead extensions.  I borrowed Little Red yesterday and went into Kerrville.  I spent a goodly while hanging around in the AutoZone store picking the brains of guys in bib overalls with grease under their fingernails.

Those wobblehead extensions offer a new lease on life for the hope of getting the starter off the Communist Toyota.  The crowfoots might be helpful getting the new one back on.  Not pictured here, but also new to  the anti-Japanese engineering arsenal is a mirror that swivels at the end of a telescoping handle for looking into places nobody ever intended them to be looked into.

Old Jules

22 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Country Life, Current Issues, History, Kerrville, Native American, Native Americans, Solitude, Survival, Texas

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You’re Métis? So which of your parents is an Indian?

Posted on December 22, 2011 by | 11 comments

âpihtawikosisân

In a previous post, I described what it is like as an Alberta Métis to come to Quebec and realise that ‘Métis’ does not mean the same thing here.  I’m not a shut-in…I realised that there were different definitions out there, I simply hadn’t lived where I was defined by them before.

In another post, I talked about Pan-Indianism, and also Pan-Métisism.  What this post and those previous two have in common, is that they are about identity.

The topic of Status was a much easier discussion, because I avoided delving into identity issues in order to give you the bare bones legislative context.  Trust me, there are much larger identity discussions yet to be had on ‘who is an Indian’.  More important, I’d argue, than just knowing the state of the categories right now…but you have to start from somewhere!

However, there is no real legislative context…

View original post 2,528 more words

11 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Human Behavior, Native American, Native Americans, Relationships

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Lovejoy the Tail Wagging Comet

Posted on December 22, 2011 by | 17 comments

Morning readers.  Thanks for coming by.  The traffic’s down on the blog so far I figure I can talk about Lovejoy a bit more without boring too many people back to sleep.  First, here’s what’s on Spaceweather dot com about it this morning:

THE AMAZING TAIL OF COMET LOVEJOY: Widespread reports of Comet Lovejoy‘s tail are being received from around the southern hemisphere. The ghostly plume emerges just before sunrise, jutting vertically upward into the eastern sky ahead of the sun.

“I observed the comet with my unaided eye for 55 minutes this morning,” says Colin Legg of Mandurah, Western Australia. “I also captured a timelapse sequence of the comet rising as twilight progressed.” Click on the image at the site to set the scene in motion.

“In the image you can see 2 tails,” notes Clegg. These are the dust and ion tails. The gaseous ion tail is blow almost directly away from the sun by the solar wind, while the heavier, brighter dust tail more closely follows the comet’s orbit.

The visibility of both tails could improve in the days ahead as the comet moves away from the sun and the background sky darkens accordingly. Early-rising sky watchers should be alert for this rare apparition. [finder chart]

http://spaceweather.com/

Edit 8:00AM:  I decided to try to embed that video by Colin Legg here so’s I can watch it without trying to remember how to get back to the site:

 

Comet Lovejoy (2011 W3) rising over Western Australia from Colin Legg on Vimeo.

Over the next while I’m figuring to attempt to duplicate the behavior of that tail inside a fish bowl full of circulating water orbiting a tube of permanent magnets stacked atop one another, then electromagnets if the permanent ones don’t do the trick.  I’ll have an anode on one side of the fishbowl, a cathode on the other injecting, first colloidal iron, then if necessary, other metals into the circulating water.

I’m harboring a lot of curiosity about what that tail’s saying.

But for those of you who don’t click the spaceweather site I’ll give you this thing some guy did with a pinhole camera and a beercan showing the anelemma of the sun over several months:

THE SUN IN A BEER CAN: “I have captured the sun in an empty beer can,” reports Jan Koeman of Kloetinge, the Netherlands. In June 2011, Koeman assembled a solargraph–a simple pinhole camera consisting of a beer can lined with photographic paper–and for the past six months he has used it to record the sun’s daily motion across the Dutch sky. Today he removed the photo-paper for inspection. 

“This is what a photo with an exposure time of nearly 6 months looks like,” says Koeman. The highest arcs were traced by the summer sun of June 2011. The lowest arc was made just today, Dec. 21st, on the eve of the 2011 winter solstice. Occasional gaps are caused by clouds.

Curiously, Koeman had more than one empty beer can to work with on that hot summer day in June when he began his project, so there are multiple views to enjoy. Click here for more solargraphs.

Got me thinking maybe all that weirdness we’ve been seeing across the face of Old Sol lately might be the result of a combination of a hangover and spending several months jail-time inside a beer can.

Old Jules

 

 

17 Comments

Posted in 2011, Astronomy

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The New Truck Resurrection

Posted on December 21, 2011 by | 27 comments

Got me a new truck!

Now that Gale and Kay have finished up their last craft shows for the year and the marathon of preparing for the next ones is over for a couple of months I talked to Gale about this again.  The critical path to me getting transportation appears to involve dragging this one in where a real mechanic can work on it, or dragging  The Communist Toyota 4-Runner in for that purpose.  I’m completely stumped with moving forward repairing either of them.  Time to bring in the heavy artillery.

It’s been a year now, and I’ve been hoarding and pinching pennies and dollars all of 2011 to be certain I’d have the money to get one or the other a license tag, safety inspection sticker, and when I eventually decided I didn’t have the skill to fix either of them, a real mechanic.  I’m more-or-less there now, or close to it.

It’s a toss-up and gives me a case of the fantods choosing one as the better bet, but I’ve settled on the New Truck over the Toyota.  It has the potential capability of pulling some sort of dwelling on wheels, which the Toyota doesn’t.  [Unrequited Love – I Coveted This, Fiddle-Footed Naggings and Songs of the Highway, Cat houses and such, Thursday morning meanderings]

So Gale and I agreed sometime during the week after Christmas we’ll figure out how to get that New Truck on a trailer and haul it to a place where people know what the hell they’re talking about, truck-wise.

Makes my hard pound louder just thinking of having transportation again. 

Old Jules

27 Comments

Posted in 2011, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas, Transportation, Trucks

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Mysterious “white web” found growing on nuclear waste

Posted on December 19, 2011 by | 22 comments

I’ll leave it to you to decide what’s strange about it. Cob-webs around here are the norm. Maybe it has something to do with the nuclear waste part of things. Old Jules

22 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, America, Current Issues, Nature

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Got A Holiday Greeting From The Time Department

Posted on December 19, 2011 by | 10 comments

Hawaii Konate, the people who keep me posted on what time it wasn’t over the past while, what time they think it probably isn’t now, and what time they’re middling sure it won’t be in the future sent me a nice greeting by email.

The card arrived in my hotmail email box at 3:25 AM someone’s time, maybe mine, maybe theirs, maybe hotmail’s.   I’m not sure whether that picture is of something at the Hawaii site, or whether it’s wherever they speak the language at the top of the circular they send out:  BUREAU INTERNATIONAL DES POIDS ET MESURES, ORGANISATION INTERGOUVERNEMENTALE DE LA CONVENTION DU METRE. [Muddy muddy muddy etcetera]

But even if I knew what time it wasn’t in that city where the place on the card isn’t, I still wouldn’t know what that thing is they sent me a picture of wishing me a Merry Christmas.

I generally don’t like people telling me what kind of Christmas to have, but especially I don’t like them telling me how to have a whole year.    But in this instance, they did let themselves be nailed down on the thorny issue 0f 2012.  2012, unless they’re being cunningly sarcastic, isn’t a time that won’t happen.

The card didn’t come with one of the circulars they send out telling what time it hasn’t been all over the place, what time they don’t think it is now, and what time they don’t think it will be in the future.  That would be unsettling if they hadn’t gone ahead and mentioned 2012 in the card.

So maybe there was no authoritarian motive behind telling me what kinds of Christmas and 2012 to have.  Maybe they were being subtly reassuring.

I suppose it’s probably best not to try to second-guess them.

Old Jules

10 Comments

Posted in 2011, Communication, Current Issues, Science

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Sunday morning thoughts December 18, 2011

Posted on December 18, 2011 by | 40 comments

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

I’m going to start this morning by telling you something you ought to know already, but mightn’t:

Sometimes I take myself a lot more seriously than is justified by my history of being ‘right’ compared to my history of being ‘wrong’.  People who’ve known me forever are acutely aware of this.  The terms, ‘alarmist‘ and ‘melodramatic‘ have occasionally been used with brutal accuracy by people in a position to arrive at informed judgements.

Keep in mind I’m the guy who dumped a second career within a couple of years of being able to draw a hefty retirement check because I believed so thoroughly Y2K was going to happen, leading eventually to my current situation.  Keep in mind I also spent a lot of years climbing and unclimbing mountains searching for a lost gold mine I believed I’d find.

And keep in mind I don’t regret any of it.

So with all that in mind, I think those of you who read my ‘indefinite detention’ posts of the past few days would be well advised to examine other opinions, even though I still believe I’m generally right.  My believing it shouldn’t carry any weight for you.

Here’s another viewpoint offering up a mitigated set of possibilities regarding the same situation and the activities leading to it:

Addicting Info – The Knowledge You Crave http://tinyurl.com/cjs4xav

The NDAA Is A Horrible Bill, And Why Obama Is Going To Sign It
December 17, 2011 By Wendy Gittleson

If you’ve formed any opinions based on anything I’ve said here I think you owe it to yourself to read it.   Wendy Gittleson is certainly a lot more qualified to have an opinion than I am, most likely.  Even though I don’t necessarily agree.

Old Jules

40 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Communication, Current Issues, Politics

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I’d Sure Like to Have Me One of Them Drones

Posted on December 17, 2011 by | 17 comments

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

I’ve been studying on that picture of the pretty little airplane those whatchallit, Iraning people found in the sky and captured.  I’m fairly impressed and would sure like to have me one, even though I haven’t figured out exactly how it works.

 

That airplane doesn’t have much in the way of control surfaces and weight-and-balance might be tricky.  Not as much rudder on it as a person might wish.

I’m wondering if a person might lure one down with an orange jump suit, Helicopters and Orange Jump Suits.  If those things are flying around some silly-assed place like whatchallit, Irang, where there’s nothing to see but a bunch of Persians, seems to me they’re bound to be flying around here where there’s really good stuff.

Anyway, they can’t be that hard to catch.  A man with a CB radio might be able to snag one, I’m thinking, if the orange jump suit didn’t do the trick.

I’ll have to study on it after I’ve got it to decide whether it’s best to put a harness underneath of the hang-glider variety, or mount a saddle on top.  I don’t like the idea of riding it bareback the way Slim Pickens rode that bomb.  Until a person got the feel for it, that thing might just buck some.

Besides, I’m used to more rudder than that and I’ve never flown anything without a tail section.  Likely I’d want to fly it around treetop level a while so I didn’t have too far to fall at first.

If I’m good maybe old Santy will bring me one.

Old Jules

 

17 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Flying

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Indefinite Detention, Rip Van Winkleism, and Respecting the Future

Posted on December 16, 2011 by | 19 comments

Yesterday I was talking on the phone with my friend, Rich, in North Carolina.  We were discussing this ‘indefinite detention’ thing going on in Congress and the fact it’s a lead-pipe cinch it’s going to happen.   The US Government is defacto eliminating habeas corpus.

The conversation kept drifting back to the question, “How in the world did we get here?  How did it come to this?”

The answer always came back the same.  “We followed the yellow brick road.”  We did it.  He did it.  I did it.  We all did it.  We saluted, marched in step, ignored the unpleasant obvious, and allowed ourselves to be cogs in a giant wheel.   We closed our eyes and Rip Van Winkled our way into this.

We abdicated.  When we saw our energy needs exceeding our capabilities to produce energy we took the comfortable route of ‘protecting’ sources someone else owned and kept the thermostats where they were.   We wanted government services we couldn’t afford, so we signed the chits to let our descendants pay for it.  When we saw the elected officials rubber-stamping the desires of multi-national corporations to move our production and manufacturing to countries where someone else could do it, we tacitly helped fill the void with government jobs.   We watched them add layer after layer of new cop functions at every level.  We watched them militarize the police throughout the country.  We cheered as they imposed increasingly draconian measures of ‘protection’ of us against the microscopic threat our lives would be touched by terrorism.

We marched in step because it was the easy way and trusted someone else would pay the price.

We’re there now.  There’s no going back.  There’s not a damned thing you, I, anyone can do about it.  It’s time to salute the future.  Congress and the president wouldn’t have done this if they didn’t plan to use it.

Sometime during the next few years you’re going to have some choices to make.  You can watch them haul off people you don’t like for indefinite detention.  You are going to watch that, whether you like it or not.  But since you don’t like those people anyway it will be easier to accept.

So long as it’s someone else.

We’re there and we’ve gotten what we paid for.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me to be a strange place to find ourselves.  Hog-tied, handcuffed, at the absolute mercy of the whims of people we were crazy ever to trust and really never did.

Old Jules

19 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Politics

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