Tag Archives: psychology

Keeping the Sacrifices Hidden – Straw Men, Trojan Horses and Pick-Pockets

Posted on June 20, 2012 by | 19 comments

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

I’ve been pondering this strange dearth of political bumper-stickers, which seems to me to be unprecedented for a year of national elections.  Particularly contests over who’s to be king.  Maybe it’s just the fact it doesn’t matter anymore.  The scrapings of US production so far gone what’s left isn’t worth stealing. 

But maybe there’s another factor at work.

One of the big let-downs of the post WWII era for kings, king-makers, wannabe kings and king-makers, war profiteers, and economic shell-game artists, was the citizenry.  They were stupid, but not as stupid as they needed to be to satisfy the hopes and expectations of those who needed their [preferably active, but at leat tacit] consent to be gang raped.

By the end of the Vietnam War it became obvious that, aside from a few mindless flag-wavers and a re-definition of the word ‘patriot’, most of the citizenry wouldn’t support long-duration undeclared wars, for instance.  Even when the body-bags only contained volunteers.  Even when the sacrifices were disguised in exponential growth of national debt.

Frustrating, tricky business.  Constantly having to dream up Wars on Poverty, Wars on Drugs, Wars on Terrorism to keep them from  noticing their pocketbooks and jobs were going away.  Convincing them  the reason was undocumented workers, non-Christian religious fanatics, and the folks who couldn’t find jobs.

Maybe there’s just a growing realization within the population that it’s already been robbed of everything of value, that it allowed itself to be surrounded with cops, mercenaries, a huge prison system, sophisticated weaponry, and personal debt it can never repay.

And not a single name they could put on a bumper sticker who isn’t a part of what did it, will continue doing it.

Maybe they’re finally just saying, “To hell with it.  They can kill me, but they can’t eat me.”  At least not until someone discovers a way for politicians, bankers, multi-national chief executives, and dynastic wealthy to live longer by ‘donated’ body parts of the citizenry as a means of collecting personal debts or paying off national ones.

Old Jules

19 Comments

Posted in 2012, Government, Human Behavior, Liars, Military, Police, Politics

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Let Big Daddy Fix It

Posted on June 17, 2012 by | 6 comments

Good morning readers.  I appreciate your visit and read.  I hope you won’t consider this frivolous.

It’s Daddy Day, and there’s a growing body of shrill opinion being expressed on the Web concerning those out-of-control nuclear reactors in Japan and how Big Daddy United States needs to step up to the plate to fix it.  Even though Big Daddy has no more clue than anyone else how to go about doing it.

First off, those reactors haven’t reached their full potential yet, so it’s probably too soon to have the Lincoln Memorial try to jump a motorcycle across them. 

Even though PT Barnham’s loose in Washington and trying to perfect that method of solving historical difficulties, jumping a motorcycle across the problem is still considered extreme, untested, uncertain, at best.

Probably it would be better to try time-tested methods first.  Some of the ways Big Daddy US has solved other pesky difficulties.  Homeland Security and attempts to deal with illegal immigration might provide a model.

Or failing that, there’s always the old airbag fix:

Anyone strangled to death by an airbag isn’t going to be worrying about mutants, teeth falling out, that sort of thing.

Sending some crews of jailbirds out to pick the fallout up before it can do any damage offers some hope.  Got lots of jailbirds and not-all-that-much radiation yet.  If the radiation increases, hell it won’t do it faster than our number of prisons.

People who never learned to program a VCR, [including me] might find radiation detection instruments confusing, so sniffer dogs trained to detect it could answer the question of where it is and where it ain’t.

Naturally they’d have to be provided facilities.

And protection from reckless drivers.

Failing that, a little magic might help.

Or just an acknowledgement there’s a problem.

If everything else fails, this worked for grandaddy and there’s no reason to think it won’t work again.

The Japanese have never been all that receptive to allowing imports from the US, but I’ll bet they’d welcome a few shiploads of those signs.  And there’s potential for a new manufacturing industry here to replace what went to Asia.

It ain’t as though there’s nothing to do in a fallout shelter.

Big Daddy’s tour d’force is entertainment.  Still is.  Never been better.

You can’t argue with a history of success.  I say, “Let’s go for it!”  What are we waiting for?

Old Jules

6 Comments

Posted in 2012, Government, History, Human Behavior, Los Alamos, Politics, Science, Survival

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dragging the Past Around Like a Cotton Sack

Posted on June 16, 2012 by | 6 comments

Until you forgives it, I reckons. 

The Coincidence Coordinators will rub our noses in the alternatives just for the hell of doing it.

I’d stopped into the Office Max store in Kerrville to pick up a cheap flash drive when I saw the little bastard.  He and what I figured must be a lady employ of his [now] were looking over the copying machines, taking notes, asking a clerk questions, frowning and muttering to one another.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, changed positions pretending to look at other merchandise on other counters to get a better view of him.  Shaking my head in disbelief.  He’d put on a bit of weight, hair’d gone gray, but it was Tony.  The very man I used to swear to myself if I ever caught him out somewhere I’d whip his ass until it thundered.

And here he was in Kerrville, Texas.

Shortly after I came into Grants, New Mexico, after I gave myself a Y2K, discovered I couldn’t find a job paying higher than minimum wage, I went to work for Tony.  He was managing the Rodeway Inn, needed a graveyard shift clerk.  I hired on.

During the interview he drifted to personal conversation.  “What kind of music do you like?”

“Old stuff, mostly.  Rock and Roll, pre-1980s CW.  Bluegrass.  Opera, classical.  I’ve got promiscuous tastes in music.”

“Any kind of music you especially don’t like?”

“Yeah.  I never cared for disco, and what passes for country music now drives me nuts.”

I had no idea.

After I’d trained for a week with one of the day shift clerks the place was all mine from 11:00 pm until 7:00 am.  The radio/stereo was locked in the office behind me, but I didn’t have access to it.  Tony’s apartment was back there, too, but the speakers to the radio were in the lobby.

11:00 pm every night I’d report to work, 11:10 pm every night, just so’s I’d know it was deliberate, the volume would go up almost so’s I couldn’t hear anything else allowing me to check in customers.  Modern all night country music station out of Albuquerque.

When they came down to check out early or to grab some breakfast the customers would often get nasty about it, ask me to turn down the racket.  All I could do was shrug.

I got this far writing the draft before I thought of the ‘Bypass Surgery’ post and song.  Thought it might tell some other tales about working in that motel, and about Tony.  But it turns out it might as well be this post played 78 rpm.

Spark and Tinder for the Next Country Music Wave

I suppose I ought to begin all over and tell you some other tales about old Tony, maybe sometime I will.  Because there are a lot of them, and many were codified in letters I wrote to Jeanne while I was working those long nights.  She’s pestered me plenty of times to post some of them here, though some weren’t about Tony. 

Good stories, though.  The night clerk at the other motel Tony managed across the street giving $25 bjs to the customers and Tony’s reaction when it got back to him.  How he got to banging the woman-prisoners from the State Women Prison who worked daytimes cleaning up, and how pissed he was when he discovered they were also screwing the customers.

How he’d rent the ‘suite’ room out a week at a time to the local crystal meth dealer, then spend his time up there rolling #100 bills, the motel register showing the room as vacant and closed for repairs.

But I ain’t going to waste my time telling you all that.  I’m just going to forgive old Tony for being among the lowest scum tyrants I’ve ever met this lifetime, then do my best to forget that entire episode of my life.

Actually, now I think about it, there are a couple that don’t involve Tony I might get around to telling.

Old Jules

6 Comments

Posted in 2000's, America, Grants, Human Behavior, Music, New Mexico, NM, Relationships, Solitude, Survival, Y2K

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Giving the Devil His Due

Posted on June 16, 2012 by | 5 comments

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

Before I leave Dennis Tolliver in the dust of history I’m going to share a couple of other anecdotes with you to round out your understanding of the sort of man was, might still be if he’s alive.

During the years I lived in Socorro I’d frequently stop in at Mel’s furniture store for coffee.  Often we’d stroll around the corner to Tolliver’s used car lot for the novelty.  Mel King

Mel and Dennis were close friends and both were trapped in self-images including a strong measure of outlaw-billybadass.  Nothing much was said about it, but it hovered in the background as scenery too solid not to be real.

One day we were huddled in the car lot office when a Navajo from the Alamo Rez came in with a small caliber pistol he offered as a down payment on a truck.  Dennis noted it was loaded with a round in the chamber, examined it and scowled.

Dennis:  This pissant thing?  What the hell do you think I’d want with it? 

He handed it back to the guy.

Navajo:  It’s a good pistol.

Dennis:  Good pistol my ASS.  Shoot me with this damned thing! 

He stood up and threw his arms out to make a better target.

Dennis:  Shoot me anywhere you want to with it!  If I have to go to the hospital I’ll give you the damned truck free!

The guy looked at the pistol, looked at Dennis, seemed to be considering it.  Then he just shook his head, stuffed the pistol under his belt and left.

Dennis:  Bastard was trying to set me up.  If I’d taken that pistol from him I’d have had cops all over this place.  A convicted felon in possession of a firearm!  If that bastard was real he’d have shot me and tried for the free truck.

I was more closely acquainted with a guy who’d grown up with Dennis, who enlisted in the army with him, served with him in Vietnam.  A man who had no use at all for Dennis Tolliver.  One day he explained his reason.

Several years before Dennis did his armed robbery trick in Grants the two of them found themselves in possession of some dynamite and blasting caps.  They were drunk, and went out on the Interstate blowing up traffic barrels, abandoned automobiles, whatever presented itself.

Eventually a police car came over the horizon behind them, lights and siren providing the drama.  Dennis floorboarded the truck, but the cop was on the tailgate in no time.

Dennis:  Light that stick of dynamite and throw it out on him.

The cap was taped around the dynamite stick with electrical tape.  The guy telling me the story said he lit it and tried to throw it out, but it slipped and rolled under the seat of the truck, him fumbling around under there for it.

Dennis, calmly:  You really need to get that out of here or that cop’s going to have us.

Finally the guy found it, tossed it out the window soon enough so’s it exploded outside the truck, blew out all the windows and the truck rolled into the ditch.  Dennis came out unscathed, but my bud got all his hair burned off, ended up in the hospital, then jail. 

Pissed him off royally, because he was charged and convicted for the whole mess, while Dennis walked.  Dennis even testified against him.

“Worthless bastard!” was all he had to say about Dennis.

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 1990's, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Police, Relationships, Trucks

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Giving God More Marching Orders

Posted on June 15, 2012 by | 8 comments

It was flags and God Bless America signs I noticed mostly in Kerrville last trip in.  Had me wondering whether something was going on I’d missed. 

Here’s a country where they’re still planting grass in the suburban yards so they can mow it at $3.50+ per gallon for the mowers, giant television sets, shiny new doolies, SUVs, RVs and golf courses demanding more blessings because the ones already provided don’t fill the cup.

But maybe I’m reading it wrong.  Maybe God Bless America’s a parenthetical statement:

(Help me God, because the onliest people I’ve got to choose from are all going to provide me with more undeclared wars, ship more jobs overseas, bail out more banks, automobile companies, allow my savings to be ravaged, and treat my Social Security as though it were welfare beggings.)

I dunno.  Seems to me this nation’s enjoyed considerable blessings for the duration of the lives of everyone living in it.  Even those living on the streets, on the Reservations, just about everywhere, compared to a great majority of the less-deserving who didn’t manage to get born here.

If there’s a diety out there looking for advice maybe a “Thankee!” would get a better hearing than, “Gimme more!”

Maybe it’s time to belly up to the bar and recognize that life’s a tough place to live and sometimes people have to live it without giant television sets and new SUVs.  Judging by the people the US public have selected to look out for their interests it would take a diety a lot more forgiving than the one a majority of believers believe in to heap more blessings on those demanding them.

Thowing good money after bad isn’t one of the traits attributed to the usual diety.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Communication, Government, Human Behavior, Politics, Senior Citizens, Social Security, Texas

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Illusion of Survival

Posted on June 14, 2012 by | 4 comments

Several years ago during that pesky time when the publishing house had accepted Desert Emergency Survival Basics for publication, but I hadn’t yet seen the contract they were proposing, the editor was asking for re-writes and a number of changes in the final draft. We discussed it on the phone a number of times and I was pecking away at it, but holding back until I’d seen what they were bringing to the table. 

But before I got too far along I got a call from him because of a news event.  A family in Oregon, or Washington had taken a back road in the National Forest, gotten snowed in, and died because they didn’t apply some of the basics suggested in the Survival Book.

Him:  The scope of the book is broader than the name suggests.  It shouldn’t require a lot of work to make it a general survival manual.

Me: A lot of work’s already gone into it.  And I’ve already re-written it the way you suggest earlier.  You’ve got it in front of you.  Before I do any more work on it you and I need to talk about money.  Every time I’ve asked about what you’re offering as an advance you’ve hedged.  Said you needed to discuss it with the boss.

Him:  We don’t usually offer much in the way of advances.  We’re not that big, even though we offer a lot of titles.

Me:  Then you and I probably don’t have much to talk about.  You know and I know I’m never going to see a penny beyond the advance.  I have a fair idea what’s contained in your standard contract.  I’m not going to lift another finger on this book until I see an advance, and if it’s not enough to pay for my time already, hearing you’re going to be flexible about changing the contract details.

Him:  I’ll talk to the boss.  But that book needs to be published.  That family might have survived if they’d read it.

Me:  I’ve got some survival issues of my own here.  Hypothetical people who might die won’t pay my rent.  I’ve already done the work.  But if you’re proposing to print that book and give it away so neither of us makes anything on it what you’re saying might make sense.  Appeal to my better nature.

Him:  I can’t do that.  We’re in business.

Ultimately they sent me the standard contract and offered a token advance.  The willingness to alter the details of the contract didn’t include changes that would have allowed me to eventually get paid for my labor by eliminating provisions for them to squirm out of paying.

I’ve thought about that a lot over the years and eventually concluded the entire concept of survival and survival books qualifies as a cruel hoax.  An ironic illusion.  Because human beings are going to experience death inevitably as a means of exiting the vehicle.  Some are going to die getting lost in the woods.  If they survive getting lost it’s almost certainly going to be luck, instinct, or common sense.

As an example, somewhere earlier on this blog I described a snowstorm Keith and I got caught in on Santa Rita mesa, and how the GPS seemed to be lying about where the truck was.  How we believed the GPS instead of what we knew to be true, and more-or-less quickly found the truck.

That same snowstorm, not too far away, a kid was lost.  The news was full of it, Search and Rescue eventually was ready to give him up for dead.  But the kid, clothed in a light jacket, used his brain, sheltered under a rock ledge, and made it out after five unlikely days.

Which isn’t at all the same as saying the kid survived.  He won’t.  Neither will anyone else.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in Adventure, America, Books, Communication, Creative Writing, Emergency Preparedness, Hack Writing, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Survival, Writing

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Harmless Lunatics, Constraints and Contracts

Posted on June 14, 2012 by | 4 comments

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

Back during the last century I used to know a guy in Socorro, New Mexico named Dennis Tolliver, who’d dropped in from some other century and could never quite get the hang of things.   He ran a successful business, worked hard, was considered trustworthy in most ways, even though his business involved selling used automobiles.

In that part of the country everything’s located far enough from everything else to argue compellingly that a person needs a vehicle.  Among the people who went to Dennis to fill their vehicle needs were those who’d proven themselves unworthy of credit.  But Dennis didn’t mind.  He’d sell anyone a car and if need be, he’d carry the note himself.

But even though Dennis was a local legend, even though everyone who bought a car from him knew precisely what to expect, people sometimes wouldn’t make their payments.  They knew Dennis didn’t mind.  He didn’t worry when they fell behind three months.  He’d spot them stopped for a red light, walk up and throw them out onto the pavement, and drive the car back to his lot to sell it again.

A few years before I became acquainted with him Dennis got himself a felony record for armed robbery and resisting arrest.  He was on his way through Grants, New Mexico one Sunday morning and decided he wanted some booze.  Stopped into a grocery store, went through the “NOT SOLD ON SUNDAY” ribbon blocking off the alcoholic beverages section, and took his bottle up to the register.

Clerk:  I’m sorry.  I can’t sell that to you.  I’d lose my job.

Dennis:  Why?

Clerk:  It’s against the law.  They’d fire me.

Dennis:  Hold that thought.

Dennis left the bottle on the counter, went out to his car and brought a Government 1911 Colt .45 out from under the seat.  Went back inside, showed it to the clerk and racked a round into the chamber.

Dennis:  Okay.  The price on that bottle is $7.95.  Here’s $20.  I’m taking it.  You do whatever you need to do.

Dennis settled into his car and took a few swigs while he watched through the store window as the clerk called the cops.  He was on the tarmac opening a can of whupass on the first one that showed up when two more arrived and he was hauled off to the slammer.

As nearly as I could tell the felony record never bothered Dennis, never influenced his behavior in any way.  The police were prone to leave him alone, which was appropriate, because Dennis was a fundamentally honest man.  He lived by his own contracts and promises, and he gave others the benefit of a doubt when it came to living by theirs.

But I’ve digressed.  I was actually going to write a bit about my own lunacies, my contracts with my cats, with my chickens, and the vice grips of necessity and options a person can find himself examining.  Even if he’s a lunatic, a hermit, and lives close to the bone.

At least I never had to be Dennis, or someone else.

But I guess I’ll just have to leave you with Dennis to think about and I’ll mull my own business over in private.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2012, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Relationships

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Smoke We Called Living

Posted on June 10, 2012 by | 12 comments

A few days ago Wayne, the guy everyone’s looking at in this pic sent it to me.  Brought back memories of a time when I had a dozen suits in the closet and more ties than would fit on a rack across the closet door.  That photo must be from 1975, 1976.  Leading edge watch I was wearing must have cost a bundle.

I’m the one with the chin.  The meataxe is the one without one.  Ken was his name.  If my memory serves me rightly he died sometime in the late 1980s, early ’90s and left a lot more people glad he did than wished he didn’t.  By that time he’d been far enough out of my life long enough so’s I didn’t give much of a damn one way or another.  Ken never amounted to much this lifetime, but he narrowly missed a few good bets, geography and time being a key factor.  He’d have fit right in a number of places when goose-stepping was more popular as a pastime.

Old Wayne’s stuck with that career all these decades, fought his way up the ladder to success, winding down now.  When we re-established contact a few months ago I’d thought for a long time he was probably dead, too.  But he’s a couple of months away from hanging up his gun, instead.  Retiring.  Cleaning out his desk, I reckons.

I’m hoping before I head off into the sunset, but after he finishes getting all that behind him, we’ll get out on a river bank somewhere and watch the bobbers on a trotline, scramble up some catfish and eggs for breakfast.   Him winding down, me just listening and watching.

For a human being, getting success behind ain’t always easy.  Tough drug  to kick most times, but a man has to do it.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Communication, Country Life, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Honoring the Oceans in the Hen House

Posted on June 9, 2012 by | 2 comments

Me:  Why so quiet there Ms. Australorp?  Thinking of giving up on those chalk eggs?

Her:  No.  I’m just feeling a little reflective and sad.  I spent yesterday honoring the oceans.

Me:  You WHAT?  You spent yesterday wearing down those chalk eggs, same as every other day for the past couple of weeks. Honoring the oceans?  I need to pull those eggs out from under you.  A few days out chasing grasshoppers will help you regain perspective.

Her:  No.  Really.  I was thinking about all that radioactivity in the North Pacific.  Thinking about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  All those poor turtles and plankton.

Me:  Thinking of signing some petitions?  Thinking of voting for someone who knows what to do about that garbage in the ocean vortices?  Those two roosters caged over there know as much about what to do about it all as any human being.

Her:  I know.  Still, I feel sad about it.  I think an empty, meaningless gesture or two might help me feel better.  Maybe a rally and a few petitions after these eggs hatch.

Me:  Rest your mind on that one, babe.  I’m pulling those eggs.  The golf ball, too.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Chickens, Communication, Country Life, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Nature, Solitude, Survival

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pavement on the Road to Hell

Posted on June 8, 2012 by | 12 comments

So.  The  guy who drove this for the summer camp for kids provided more info.

1]  That FalVay living under there is dead.  Probably the big AC inside was Freon 12, which caused it to be useless maybe a decade ago.

2]  They traded up to a bigger bus.

3]  On ‘short’ trips it gets 4-5 miles to a gallon.

4]  It’s got a 2-speed rear-end.  ‘Overdrive’ of the old style.

5]  Engine’s good, sound, ran better on leaded gasoline, but it’s okay.

I concludes:

The car-dealer got this thing free and called it a trade-in.  He’s got nothing in it except an inspection sticker and some touch-up paint.  It’s been sitting on that lot most of a month with a price-tag of $1998,

But I’m guessing after it sits there a while longer a person would want to be careful not to offer him $500 unless he wanted to find himself living in it.

But with gas prices being what they are a few hundred miles to New Mexico could pass itself off as a black hole for money.

Gonna just have to watch and listen on this one.

Meanwhile, couscous turns out to be high priced enough to fight its way out of my diet.

There are some llama-critters down where I turn off the highway I stop and talk to when they’re close to the fence.  Those animals have the prettiest faces, particularly eyes, of any creature on the planet.  If I could afford to get married again, there’s one of them congenial enough I think I might ask.  Never talks back, always just walks over and stares lovingly, admiringly at me while I talk to her. 

It’s been a good many years since I’ve run across a woman did that.  Longer still since one managed to keep it up over the long haul.  Turns out I sort of miss it.

Got a feeling, though, this llama has staying power.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Country Life, Senior Citizens, Transportation, Trucks

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,