Tag Archives: psychology

El Cheapo Movie Day

Hi readers.

The cats and I watched the Royal Geographic Society 1953 production, the Conquest of Mount Everest.  Not too bad, though it was all stuff from the actual expedition instead of some story and acters to pretend they were Bill and Hillary.

Fact is I never realized before that Bill and Hillary were the first conquerers of Mount Everest.  Never knew the Royal Geographic Society sponsored them to hire about a hundred Mexicans fromn Nepal to tote all their equipment into those mountains, along with various white men to take care of matters inevitable involving intellect the Mexicans from Nepal weren’t equipped to deal with.

Anyway, it was informative, educational and interesting, partly because one of the Mexicans reached within 500 feet of the summit.

Afterward the cats and I watched Lassie.  The only thing I remember about the last time I saw Lassie was my sister, Frances, sitting beside me in the Kiva, or Yam Theater in Portales, yowling, “Poor Lassie.  Poooooor Lassie!”

Turned out it isn’t as bad a movie as you’re probably figuring it was. Edifying, educational and satisfying.

Then the cats and I watched Captain Scarface, a movie about a bunch of Rooskie spies trying to set off an atomic bomb in the hold of a ship to destroy the Panama Canal.

But that’s another story.

Old Jules

Joined at the hip

Good morning readers.

Hanging around an RV during a week-long ice storm is a good time for a person to boil down blessings and scrape them off the bottom of the pot.  I’d been doing a lot of reading nights before the water froze, but reading requires a level of involvement I was decreasingly able to maintain what with various uncertaintainties nagging for my attention.

So when I went in to Andrews to get my new tires put onto the ground I swung by an Alco store, which is the be all and end all in Andrews for certain types of purchases.  Bought a box of movie DVDs called Nifty Fifties for a few bucks.  50 movies from back when.

Nights if my attention span doesn’t feel up to reading I watch a movie.  Saw one a few nights ago with Sydney Portier and Eartha Kitt, him being an African firebrand leader named Obam, which was worth the price of admission.

But last night I saw Chained Forever, or something of the sort.  Two sisters joined at the hip, a Vaudeville singing act, trying to make lives of themselves in a world where the rules of behavior assume a lot about the rule-followers not being joined at the hip.

One of the sisters ‘falls in love’ with a marksmanship act guy who might have returned her affection had it not been for the party of the third part they’d have to drag along.  All manner of difficulties with laws, also, trying to get marriage licences for the party of the first part and the party of the second part while ignoring the party of the third part without any bigamy issues.

Fun movie, though daft.

Fact is, being joined at the hip just ain’t that uncommon.  Jack and Bobby Kennedy became joined at the hip at some point during the late 1950s and nobody even noticed.  George Bush Sr. and George Bush Jr. were joined at the hip similarly but it mostly just manifested itself in wars in Iraq and other matters.

Hillary Clinton, Janet Reno and Bill Clinton were all joined at the hip though nobody noticed until the Army, National Guard, FBI, and a million television cameras bunched up around Mount Pleasant outside Waco, Texas.  The joined-at-hip condition became more obvious afterward at Ruby Ridge, various real estate shennanigans, CIA importing cocaine into Arkansas airstrips for the trio, etc.

In fact, when you think of it a lot of modern life is dedicated to snooping out people who aren’t yet joined at the hip to something, or someone, and getting the knot tied to reduce the amount of trouble anyone’s likely to cause.  Sending them off to penal institutions for certain factions, joining the military for others, becoming rabid fans of this or that celebrity, music genre.

Time was joining at the hip was simpler.  People just got married.  But that was back before the age of enlightenment and marriages tended to last longer.  Now for any duration the joining at the hip has to cut a wider swath.

The way the Democrats and Republicans have blazed the trail for joined at the hip inclusiveness might well be the wave of the future.  Imagine.   Everyone finally agreeing at the bottom of things they’re just following the mandate of their hips, pulling the same direction despite themselves.

Old Jules

Hunkered down for the duration

Hunkered into a 1947 US military goose-down sleeping bag, checking the blood oxygen occasionally probably is about as good a way as any to reach Nirvana.

Hunkered into a 1947 US military goose-down sleeping bag, checking the blood oxygen occasionally probably is about as good a way as any to reach Nirvana.

Hi readers:

The coincidence coordinators decided last week that it’s still early times for figuring out what the Veterans Administration Medical Drama Department has in store.  Spang shut down their offices mid-week, filled up their voice mail boxes to overflowing before I developed the good sense to bow to the inevitable.

The cats appear to be indifferent to the challenges.  Whatever the hell it was caused me to decide I needed to sign up to see a VA medical person will have to get in line behind an ice-melt.  Evidently it had nothing at all to do with blood oxygen, anyway.

The cats are laughing their asses off at me about the whole thing.

Old Jules

Big Spring Buggaboo Karma on the Half-shell

Hi readers.

1967, I’m going to say, though it might have been 1968, my somewhat newlywed wife and I headed from Houston to my home town of Portales, NM, for reasons I no longer fathom.  Driving a 10 year-old Fairlane 500.  Crossed the easy Texas parts without incident, but around midnight pulled over 12 miles outside Big Spring, TX to piss and kiss, most likely.

Shut down the engine and when I went to start it again the battery was dead.  Soooo, we bundled up and tried to sleep, but pre-dawn I was on the shoulder of the road trying to flag down someone with booster cables.  Watching the light emerge and a mesa-like hill across the highway a few miles.

Nice guy in a pickup stopped and boosted us off.  When I thanked him he commented he just couldn’t leave anyone stranded 12 miles outside Big Spring, Texas.  Fixed that hill to the west and the distance in my mind forever.

So last week when I was headed here, saw the sign south of Big Spring, BIG SPRING 13 miles and remembered, began watching for that hill.  There it was, just as obvious as that morning so long ago.

BOOM WHACK CLUNKCLUNKCLUNKBANGCLUNK!

Blew out the inside rear tire on the driver side.

But no way I was  pulling over and shutting down my engine.  So I drove on into Big Spring, eased west toward Andrews.  Didn’t blow the second tire until 15 miles from here.

Some things in this life a person doesn’t need to learn twice.  Even if he’s me.  That place 12 miles south of Big Springs is one of them.

Jack

Buffalo Bill’s Defunct – The Communist Toyota 4-Runner

That old 4-Runner had a quarter-million miles on it when my lady-friend sold it to me about a decade ago.  Until then it lived on the Zuni Rez.  Somewhere around there are pics of the 1998 Lost Adams Diggings Search, Amy met Gale, Dana and me on Fox Mountain driving it.  One more bug on the windshield of life.

That old 4-Runner had a quarter-million miles on it when my lady-friend sold it to me about a decade ago. Until then it lived on the Zuni Rez. Somewhere around there are pics of the 1998 Lost Adams Diggings Search, Amy met Gale, Dana and me on Fox Mountain driving it. One more bug on the windshield of life.

Toyota RV out by the same car dolly later in the day.  At 71 a person can’t be sentimental.

Buffalo Bill ‘s
defunct
who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

by E. E. Cummings

Second best is fairly uppidy

A person can sit right at home indoors and use these.  Doesn't have go to into the woods, nothing.

A person can sit right at home indoors and use these. Doesn’t have go to into the woods, nothing.

A couple of days ago when I opened the package Jeanne sent I thought at first it was the best birthday present I ever got my entire life.  But as I thought on it I remembered the Victorinox Swiss Army Lensatic Compass my ex-wife gave me on my 45th birthday.  [Pictured under ‘Compass’ section of the Survival Book link above]

Okay.  There can only be one absolute no-questions-asked-no-prisoners-taken best birthday present a person ever got.  The compass ain’t giving up its position of prominence.

She sent a box of the metal 'Zebras' too.  They get lost worse than one sock of a pair.  I like the ones you see in the background, black, which I've had a longish while, but they're a bit thickset and rounded on the edges.  Plus they break.

She sent a box of the metal ‘Zebras’ too. They get lost worse than one sock of a pair. I like the ones you see in the background, black, which I’ve had a longish while, but they’re a bit thickset and rounded on the edges. Plus they break.

But how about them damned spoons?  Out there the other side of three-score-and-ten spoons step in and declare themselves.

Old Jules

Pension Pioneers – Living the Social Security adventure

Some of you might find this brand spanking new Facebook group interesting, amusing, edifying, or boring as hell with no mitigating and no otherwise redeeming qualities.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/416502788479344/

Jack Purcell

DST time change toasts another Timex

After two years the band will need replacement.  Odor, not wear will motivate you.  At three years the steel-appearing case begins to dissolve.  Underneath is a rough synthetic material which, when exposed to shirt sleeves, wears them out.

After two years the band will need replacement. Odor, not wear will motivate you. At three years the steel-appearing case begins to dissolve. Underneath is a rough synthetic material which, when exposed to shirt sleeves, wears them out.

Hi readers.

Several years ago, five years if memory serves, I bought this watch because my previous Timex Expedition refused to turn loose of the stem when I tried to set in the new DST time.  I forced it and the watch upchucked the entire stem.

I saw this one coming.  The case is far advanced toward dissolving entirely.  I never mess with the stem until time change because I like to get as many minutes and hours out of my watches as possible.

But Jeanne sent me an email yesterday telling me it’s time change time again.  So around 3 am pre-time change I woke, stepped outdoors to pee, and glanced at my watch.  Remembered I needed to change the time.

Yawn.  Began fighting to pull the stem out just enough to set the watch.  Stuck.  Got my pocket knife, pried it out, just a little.  Date window spun, hands of the watch thumb their noses at me.

Sheeze.  Found a small pair of needle nose pliars.  Carefully carefully carefully pull the stem.  Spang!  Whole damned stem-rod came out.

So it seems I’m going to be visiting the WalMart watch department.  Find me a new damned Timex Expedition.   They’re up to $28.95 on Amazon.  Probably save a bit a week from now when they have their DST replacement sale.

Old Jules

 

Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear? The Catch 22 Timewarp Conspiracy

This might be the most important text you’ve ever read.

It’s certainly more important than Dick and Jane and their dog named Spot whatever they might be up to these days in Centerville, Ohio.  And anything else you might have read since then probably wasn’t all that important.  Instruction manuals written by English-as-a-second-language tech writers in Malaisia, labels on boxes of muffin-mix, even novels by Stephen King aren’t as important as this.

If you are like me you have to think hard to remember characters and dialogues in books you haven’t read in half-century.  But I’ve been waiting that long for Joseph Hellers prophetic novel, Catch 22, to get caught up with by events.

Yossarian to the mental ward physician:  “Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?

Pages later, to Orr:  “Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?”

Yossarian to Major Major Major Major, pages later:   “Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?”

To Milo Minderbinder, a chapter or so later:  “Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?”

Today all the spy-vs-spies in the world are asking themselves the same question.  Armed cruise missile operators are whispering those words into their microphones, “Give me the coordinates!”

low volume static, hissing, grumbling.

Moscow airport?  Am I allowed to target the Moscow International Airport?”

low volume static, hissing, grumbling.

“Well of course you need deniability.  It has to look like an accident.  Rogue drone kind of thing.”

low volume static, hissing, grumbling.

“World War III?  Hell, we haven’t even finished WWII yet.  Snowden was WWII.  We’re all caught in a time warp.

low volume static, hissing, grumbling.

“Yeah, we need to watch for anyone named Yossarian.  And Joseph Heller, if he’s still alive, needs to answer a few questions.  If we see someone trying to corner the Egyptian cotton market we’ll know where to look.”

Old Jules

It’s an ill wind that blows no good

sriracha hot chili sauce

Hi readers. 

I’ve always loved Sriracha Chili Sauce, hate knowing they’ve come on hard times.  I’d guess the people in that California town would live to be 110 each if they’d gut it out, breathing that stuff three months out of the year.

City: Odor from Sriracha chili plant a nuisance

As many as 40 trucks a day pull up to unload red hot chili peppers by the millions. Each plump, vine-ripened jalapeno pepper from central California then goes inside on a conveyor belt where it is washed, mixed with garlic and a few other ingredients and roasted. The pungent smell of peppers and garlic fumes is sent through a carbon-based filtration system that dissipates them before they leave the building, but not nearly enough say residents.

“Whenever the wind blows that chili and garlic and whatever else is in it, it’s very, very, very strong,” Sanchez said. “It makes you cough.”

I’d love to be downwind of it when it’s in operation if it weren’t for the fact it’s in California, and if I went to California next thing I knew I’d be having to get along with Californians.  For me it’s a bit late in the day to take on that job of work.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering what the good is I referred to in the title to the post.  Here it is:

His recipe for Sriracha is so simple that the Vietnamese immigrant has never bothered to conceal it: chili pepper, garlic, salt, sugar and vinegar.

“You could make it yourself at home,” he told a visitor during a tour of the plant on Tuesday. But, he added with a twinkle in his eye, not nearly as well as he can.

The secret, he said, is in getting the freshest peppers possible and processing them immediately.

The result is a sauce so fiercely hot it makes Tabasco and Picante seem mild, though to those with fireproof palates and iron stomachs it is strangely addicting. Thirty-three years after Tran turned out his first bucketful, Sriracha’s little plastic squeeze bottles with their distinctive green caps are ubiquitous in restaurants and home pantries around the world.

Now if those Californios shut him down at least a person has the basics to cook the stuff himself.  Fill the RV up with the odor as many months of the year as he wants to. 

The government hasn’t learned the potential joys of this yet, so they haven’t made it illegal.  I can close all the windows on the RV,  zonk up on it, me and the cats.  Lie back against the cushions and try to learn to play the harmonica.  Or listen to any of about a million songs my bud Rich provided for me to play on an hmmm MP3?  A tiny thing that plays songs – holds a few hundred at a time.  One of the few inventions since lawsuit to really add to the joy of life for the average human being.

Old Jules