Tag Archives: philosophy

Denouements

Posted on September 29, 2013 by | 3 comments

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

Certain types of problems seem to follow us through life, probably so’s the Universe can teach us whatever lessons it is we’re supposed to be learning during this one.  Frequently we’re slow coming to an understanding as to what ours are.  Mine, I suspect, probably are a consequence of karma acquired during a previous lifetime involving motor vehicles.

Which I hadn’t realized until I began looking at all the posts here involving transportation during my stay here.  One piece of that saga was the Toyota 4 Runner that carried me to this piece of real estate in 2008.  And became a subplot microsaga:

 Got me a new truck!

 Confession Time

The New Truck Resurrection

The Communist Toyota 4-Runner

A long one.  And one I’m finally going to apply a razor to.  I’ve found a guy who’ll follow me back out here next time I go to Kerrville, and put that 4 Runner onto a car dolly, pull it out of my life.

I went out and put the wheel back on it, took it off blocks and pushed it up the hill with the Toyota RV far enough so’s we’ll be able to get it onto the dolly.  Gale and the guy up the hill came out and improved the road enough yesterday with some machinery so’s a regular person will be able to get in and out of the valley without blowing a tire.

It’s not easy for me to part with that 4 Runner.  Lots of life history events trapped in it, but it’s clear enough the time’s come for a denouement.  Turns out I’ll be doing something similar with the Toyota RV, because Jeanne’s son, Michael’s decided it’s not the best option for him.

I’m willing to believe, for the moment, that when the 4 Runner goes out of this valley I’ll have poured enough of the life-ingredients into it to have filled whatever hole it was the vehicle challenges demanded of me this lifetime and I can have some other kind for a while.

Gracias, Jack

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Posted in 2013, America, Texas, Transportation, Trucks

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The good news behind the bad news

Posted on September 22, 2013 by | 2 comments

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

The news is always so full of Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious fanatics terrorizing one another we sometimes overlook the larger issues.  This is one example.

Look at the Kenya army troops in this picture. 

  • First thing you notice is they’ve got a lot of meat on their bones.  Obviously, once they kicked out the British these people had food left lying around they could eat and fatten up.  Same as the Irish.
  • Second thing you see is the weather’s cold, but these guys are dressed for it.  Looks as though they’re wearing US Marine Corps sweaters.  But all of them are bundled up, which means they had the means to do it.
  • Third, they’ve got helmet-liners which don’t look like the old NAZI coal-scoop ones from WWII nor the ones US troops wear now.  That means they’re not indiscriminately blowing up civilians for the hell of it.
  • Then there’s the boots.  Those are good boots.  Those boots weren’t taken off some civilian corpse.
  • Look at the weaponry.  Any gun nut in the United States would kill to get one of those rifles.
  • Okay, yeah, the truck they’re in doesn’t have a spare tire.  But hell, y0u can’t have everything.

Here’s a better look at the boots and trowsers of the troops.

Notice they’re mostly wearing pre-Vietnam combat boots, though one’s wearing Vietnam era ones, and one’s wearing desert boots.  Obviously they have some style choices.  But they’ve all got US Army fatigue britches from back when US military clothing was made from US cotton and sewn into uniforms by US workers.

Now, here’s the parking lot in front of the mall those Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious fanatics attacked.

Notice the automobiles.  The lousiest car in that picture is better than any I’ve owned in more than a decade.

Seems obvious once they ran the British out of Kenya things got a lot better, all in all.  At least in that part of Africa you can’t tell it from the US. 

Sure, they have problems with Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious fanatics.  But who the hell doesn’t?

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, America

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Evil Empires, Reagan and the Slaviet Onion

Posted on September 21, 2013 by | 2 comments

Hi readers.

When our sainted once-king Ronald Reagan wasn’t parking small Volkswagens under his hair next to his scalp he was fond of saying the Soviet Union was an evil empire.  But Reagan meant this in a good way.  What Reagan intended to communicate was, compared to not being an empire, the Soviet Union was evil.

As the somewhat temporary monarch of his own empire extending from Guam to Hawaii to Alaska to the contiguous states of the continent to Puerto Rico, Reagan had noticed the condition of being part of an empire wasn’t an unmitigated blessing for all the non-aristocrats living inside it.

Reagan was wise enough to know that he couldn’t do much about the ills of being non-aristocrats in an empire, but he wanted to do something good anyway, or something someone might call good in the history books.  And since he couldn’t do it for the non-aristocrats, hell, at least he could be a popular cult-figure doer-of-good-deeds for the aristocrats.

He decided if those aristocrats could be turned absolutely loose to acquire wealth and power beyond their wildest dreams they might be satisfied and allow some of the good to trickle down into the pockets and households of the peasantry who were mowing their lawns, flipping their hamburgers and doing tune-ups on their Rolls Royces.

The result was profound.  The nature of his empire went through a lot of subtle changes and the texture of the evil was distilled in some unexpected subtle directions.  In no time at all US jobs, businesses and small industry were swirling down the toilet headed for China and other countries where the labor was less expensive.  His aristocrats discovered the multi-national grass was a heluva lot greener than the stuff under the purple mountains majesties on the fruited plains.

So in a sense it can be said Reagan destroyed his own evil empire in favor of a much larger one owned by banks and multi-national corporations.  And somehow in the process he managed to make the rednecks and semi-literates lower their voices in reverence when they spoke his name.

Today he’s still remembered that way, but more within the legions of Oliver North clones serving his multi-national aristocrats.

Finding something that rhymes with empire that isn’t evil is a tough gig.

Old Jules

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Posted in America, Communication, Government, History

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Feminism and evolution – Mama Nature’s answer to modern medicine

Posted on September 20, 2013 by | 2 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

For a while Mama Nature had to scratch her head about improvements in human survivability caused by hand washing, soap, and rudimentary understanding of disease.  Suddenly instead of weak and flawed specimens of humanity dying before reaching the age of reproduction, far larger numbers were surviving until they’d reproduced.  And Mama Nature knew the only outcome possible would be eventual de-evolution.  Possibly having to replace humans as the dominate species.

The culling programs Mama Nature’s always done on every species were falling apart.  Something was going to have to be done to point things back into the direction Mama Nature intended.

Bringing a species into a position of absolute dominance is one hell of a lot of work and takes a lot of patience on the part of Mama Nature.  Lizards, barn owls, duckbill platypuses and other candidates all lacked opposing thumbs.

So Mama Nature finally decided to try another alternative.  She invented feminism, which led inevitably to a lot of aborting instead of having to kill off youngsters by disease, hunger and filth.  Henceforth a foetus would have to convince the mother it was worth the price of admission before it was allowed to be born.

Concurrently in China Mama Nature tried a different method.  She just gave the parents incentives to kill off all their girl-babies.  This certainly had the salubrious outcome of reducing the number of female offspring living to reproduce, but Mama Nature considered it a bit broad-brush.  It threw the baby out with the bathwater insofar as improving the species.

Mama Nature’s experiment hasn’t been going long enough to establish whether it’s a 100% success, but it is certainly telling her a lot about human beings.  For instance, infants fathered by weakling beta males picked up in bars tended to be unconvincing for survival in the eyes of feminists.  And those fathered in best-she-could-do wedlock by weakling betas also didn’t offer up convincing arguments for survival.  Same with drunken beach orgies, impromptu filmings of porn flics, the whole range of sexual activities indulged without regard for genetic factors.

It’s going to take a while for the results of Mama Nature’s feminist experiment to reveal themselves, but whatever they might be, she’ll come out the other end with a better understanding of how to deal with human beings and modern medicine.

There’s still a possibility humanity won’t have to be replaced with barn owls.

Old Jules

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Posted in America, Animals, Nature

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Representive democracy, selective breeding and the US Constitution

Posted on September 19, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

The wise men who framed the US Constitution knew all about how power, wealth and decadence caused every generation of aristocracy, every generation of human being born to power and wealth was weaker, lazier, stupider, more arrogant and shiftless than the previous one. 

They knew, those men writing the Constitution, the time would come when the White House and both houses of the US Congress would be filled with the descendants of black slaves.  Because they recognized the only alpha-males left in some future time would be those same black descendants of slavery.  That was obvious to them.  They knew representative democracy was the only way they could assure that when blacks outnumbered whites they’d be able to bloodlessly emerge as the dominant power.

Of course, they didn’t know about Hispanics and other prolific minorities, but they had the general idea.  It was a tough, courageous decision because all of them were white.  But they knew there’d come a time when their own progeny were a herd of worthless, stupid, lazy followers and worshipers of anything resembling an alpha male, no matter what ethnicity.

History proved them wise.  Football was the first hint the dream of the forefathers was coming true, followed by rap music and population explosions in ethnic ghettos.  The long-awaited takeover of the US government was moving right along in accordance with the plan of the founding fathers.  And concurrently with similar emergence of alpha-types from minorities in other cultural fields.

It’s on the doorstep now.  Finally ethnic minorities will soon be in a position to assume the reins of power, wealth, prosperity and government.

Patriots and believers in representative democracy should be preparing for the victory parades and celebrations.  The sooner a full slate of ethnic minority candidates is offered up in a general election the more rapidly the aspirations of the founding fathers will be fulfilled.

Finally our great nation will once again be run by alpha males and females, same as music and sports.  Rejoice!  Up the [r]evolution!

We white males can finally get back to getting our hands dirty doing the grunt work, stoop-labor and heavy lifting we degenerate betas are best suited for, aside from toadying to alphas.  And white females can try to find open minded alpha ethnics to procreate with without being criticized.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, America, Government, History, Human Behavior

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SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING: This blog might be hazardous to your mental health

Posted on September 19, 2013 by | 11 comments

Hi readers.  I probably should have warned you about this sooner.   Hopefully I’m not too late.

I write this blog because I enjoy doing it.  I write it because to me writing it reduces the pressures of having to exist in a world where swarm behaviors dominate my species.  This blog is my teflon coating to help me partially escape participation in the swarm.  I write this blog to help me unravel the world around me as I observe it and attempt to draw meaningful conclusions.

For me it’s a piece of my own determination to be a better human being tomorrow than I am today.  It’s a part of an ongoing program to continuously persuade myself such a thing is possible.

Sometimes I write what I believe are facts.  Sometimes analogies.  Sometimes absurdities that only contain what I believe bear similarities to facts without actually attempting to capture them.

Swarm behavior can’t be examined, analysed, understood from inside the swarm.  Sometimes my thinking is trapped inside the swarm and I attempt to examine it, but frequently I’m able to achieve escape velocity and observe from some distance away.  Even I usually don’t know which is which, whether I’m making valid observations from outside, or flawed ones from inside.

In any case, I suggest nobody take this blog seriously.  If you see words, phrases, paragraphs here you find disagreeable, there’s no call to be offended.  I can’t threaten your swarm, and if you’re outside your swarm you probably can’t beckon me to the position you are viewing it from.

But the main thing is, enjoy the blog if you can, because there’s nothing I might say of enough importance to justify a moment of displeasure.  It’s an easy blog not to read. 

Protect whatever mental health you believe you are carrying around with you, either by smiling when you read here, or by going somewhere else to read something more smileable.  This blog is not an important issue.

As far as I’m aware the blog does not cause cancer, does not carry any communicable disease in its words.  I don’t believe there are any environment consequences, no threats caused by second-hand blog when it’s shared.  I’ve tried to be responsible and avoid that

I appreciate you either way.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, America, Communication

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Amber waves of marijuana and shale oil deposits – Protecting the Mexicans from people like us

Posted on September 18, 2013 by | 8 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by.

Those damned Mexicans.  They refuse to protect themselves.  This time 150 years ago they had a damned Austrian monarch running the country and French soldiers keeping him in power.  A little before that the US Army had to go down there and whip the bejesus out of them because they wouldn’t give us New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California.

Heck, a century ago they refused to protect themselves again and we had to send General Blackjack Pershing to beat some sense into their heads.  Bastards had the cheek to kill 19 US Navy men when a US ship drove into Vera Cruz and started shelling the town.

Now they’ve got all that marijauna growing down there nobody can make any money from until it gets across the border.  Nobody making a penny off it except Mexicans until it gets up here where someone can use it.  Bad enough, you say?  Well, I agree.  But it isn’t all.

The shale oil deposits Old Sol gave us because we’re his Chosen People don’t necessarily stop at the Rio Grande.  There’s a better-than-even chance some of it’s down there where nobody can make any money off it except Mexicans.

We’ve been patient and we’ve tried hard, but those shiftless, indolent people down there keep having stuff we need to be making money from and they refuse to protect themselves from us.   There doesn’t seem to be any way we’re going to be able to avoid having to invade them to protect them from us.

People like that don’t have any respect for human life the way we do and it gets downright boring and tiresome forever having to invade them.  Time to put a stop to it.

Time to make them Chosen People with us, annex them.  Time to make Mexico a US territory so we can protect them.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2013, America

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The moving finger writes and then moves on: NM Floodplain Managers Association

Posted on August 27, 2013 by | 4 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by.

Fairly weird.  I was websearching for Mike Czosnek, a guy I used to do some Lost Adams Diggings searching with, and came across something that rocked me back on my heels. 

New Mexico Floodplain Managers Association http://www.nmfma.org/content.aspx?page_id=0&club_id=920799

An egg I laid, nurtured, hatched, and promptly forgot as soon as my career ended in 1999.

When I assumed the job of State Floodplain Manager for the State of New Mexico in 1992 the state had a law on the books to allow localities to adopt ordinances regulating building in designated floodplain areas, and for the residents of those to buy federally sponsored flood insurance to cover their damages when the creek did what it would inevitably do.

Someone had screwed up when the law was passed and left in language that could be construed [by me] requiring that the locally designated floodplain managers be trained and registered or licensed by the State Floodplain Manager or Administrator.  All that happened 15 years before my arrival, and had lain dormant and unnoticed.  Nobody in New Mexico had a clue what they’d agreed to, what they were supposed to be doing. 

The reason I was hired for the job was that FEMA was losing patience.  I was mandated by my grant to audit the local programs, report to FEMA what they weren’t doing according to their federal agreement, and hassle them to death until they did it.

Lousy, lousy, lousy job I had for a while travelling around the state being ignored and tolerated barely.  Then I happened to study the statute and came up with the idea.  Started hassling the hell out of local governments about not having registered or licensed [by me] floodplain managers whom I could lay some heavy crap on if they didn’t do their jobs.

“How do they become licensed?”

“They have to go through training.  Take a test.  I do the training at the [non-existent Floodplain Managers Association meetings.  Your people will have to join.”

The cage took a lot of rattling, but 1993, 1994, I put together an organizational meeting in Las Vegas, New Mexico.  Almost every participating community in New Mexico was represented.  Did some rudimentary training, had them adopt a constitution and by-laws, create officers [of which I refused to be one].

NM Floodplain Managers Association made my life a lot easier, reduced the amount of heckling and hassling I had to take from FEMA.  And became my primary training tool for the local communities.  Gradually got them training one another.

And my old buddy Mike Czosnek is still out there, treasurer of the damned thing.  Might have to stop in and see him when I get out that way.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 1990's, America, Emergency Preparedness, Government, New Mexico, NM

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Should’a done its

Posted on August 27, 2013 by | 4 comments

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

The last post about creeping cowardice was going to have some of this as a part of it, but became too lengthy so I saved it with the thought I’ve got a while to live yet and might still work it in somewhere.

I believe one of the ways a person might attain valid perspectives about himself and his life events is through hindsight.  Might be the only way.  If a person can look back and seriously say to himself, “I should have done it,” probably he should have done it.

I can’t say that about those two mine shafts because I know even now I’d have done them if I could, and I recognize for whatever reason, I couldn’t.  No ‘should have done it’ hidden in there.

But around 2002, 2003, there’s a should have done it I still occasionally experience a flash of regret about.  Just until my insistence about not to regret anything in my life kicks in to trump it.

There’s an airstrip, or was an airstrip parallel to the old highway running between Belen, Los Lunas, and Isleta Pueblo I used to always swing into when I was in the area.  A number of old airplanes to walk around and look at, wonder about, kick the tires of.  The airstrip was gradually becoming inactive.

But at one end there was an old Cessna 140 tied down.  I’d always go over and walk around, check it out.  Sometimes sit inside it.  Watch the tires gradually lose their air and grass get taller around it.

I asked the guys running a motorcycle shop that used to be an airplane related business about it.  The 140 belonged to a man who lived in the neighborhood adjacent to the air park.  He’d been experiencing advancing dementia … quit flying the plane a couple of years back.  One of them heard he was in a nursing home, and that his wife had died.  The house and plane were in an ambiguous ownership state as a result of complicated family matters.

When I heard that I began to realize that old plane needed to be taken around the patch a few times before it rotted to the ground.  Or before it found its way into Trade-A-Plane and got sold to someone in Alabama to fly off or be hauled off.

I did a lot of planning about that plane.  The battery was going to be dead, and maybe the fuel would have gone bad, but probably not.  Avgas tends to last a long time in a tied down airplane.  But there’s probably water condensed inside the tank if it wasn’t left full.  Water under the gas that would be drained off before the engine started.

I borrowed an air bottle and brought the tire pressure up on one of the trips, checked the oil, got inside and tested the controls.  Everything hunky dory.  Just needed to draw the water off the fuel tanks.  Fuel guages showed one full, one 3/4 tank.  The 3/4 tank would be the one most likely to have water in the fuel tank.

I never made a conscious decision not to take that old bird around the patch, do a few touch and goes.  My bud in Belen,  Deano, died and other matters kept me from going into that area without a special trip.  I suppose it just slipped my mind.

Which didn’t keep it from creeping back into my consciousness for years afterward, including now.  I can tell you today, I should have done it.  The way I know I should have is that I can’t think of a single reason why I shouldn’t have.

I’d be remembering that as my last pilot in command this lifetime, if I’d done it.  And instead of a sense of loss when it sneaks into my head, I’d be remembering those touch and goes in a Cessna 140.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2000's, Adventure, New Mexico, NM, Senior Citizens, Transportation

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Advancing age and creeping cowardice

Posted on August 26, 2013 by | 12 comments

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

I’ve been noticing something in myself over the years that I suspect is fairly widespread, but doesn’t get discussed much.  I have an idea it’s a sensitive subject with older men.  I first noticed it in myself with an unexpected, irrational difficulty breathing and something akin to panic in situations I wouldn’t have been bothered by in the past.

I’ve done a little spelunking, gone into more abandoned mines than I could count and always got a thrill, a surge of enjoyment doing it.  But late in the 1990s Mel and I were looking over a couple of mine shafts from the 1800s, one at the ruins of Golden, New Mexico and another near Magdalena.  The first was the vertical shaft at Golden.

We carried all the right equipment up there, went prepared to go down the shaft 100 feet without any particular risk.  Mel was troubled by claustrophobia he’d acquired going into some tunnels in Vietnam, so I was elected to go down that shaft to collect some samples.

But as I lowered myself down that shaft I hadn’t descended thirty feet before all I wanted was to get the hell out of there.  I couldn’t breathe.  The prospect of going deeper into that hole quickly became a non-option.  I stayed on a ledge of rock trying to calm myself and get control enough to go deeper, but after a while it was obvious this was no longer a pleasure trip.

Mel taunted and heckled me about it the entire remainder of the jaunt, and I thought about it constantly, trying to understand what had happened.  Completely unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

There’s another vertical shaft near Magdalena we’d both fallen in love with and I definitely was determined to go down it.  I was sure I’d be able to if I worked and thought about what had happened at Golden enough.  But a couple of months later the attempt resulted in an identical failure.

It was easy not to think about it during the years afterward, and I didn’t.  But a while back I found I experienced something too similar to be much different when I was working on the Toyota RV, crawling around under it.  Same thing, near panic, difficulty breathing, an irrational need just to get the hell out from under there.

I’ve talked about this with some other old guys lately and have been surprised by their admissions they’ve experienced exactly the same thing, mainly in tight spaces.  When I described it they knew exactly what I was talking about, and they’d also never experienced anything akin to it when they were younger.

I don’t know what’s going on with all this, but seems to me if anyone has any guts anymore it ought to be old men.  This doesn’t bode well at all.

Old Jules

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Posted in Adventure

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