Tag Archives: senior citizens

Cathouse urgencies

Posted on October 9, 2011 by | 7 comments
 

Salvaged wheelbarrow, salvaged nightstand and salvaged material stapled over door opening

Salvaged microwave stripped of components with the back cut off makes a great means of keeping the cat food dry

Heavy rain and the cool snap last got me scrambling to give the cats a way to get out of the weather and keep the food dry.  Looks as though it will serve, but I’ve got to work on several more shelters.  They’re there, but need upgrading a bit. 

Cat houses and such

I’ll confess I’m behind the curve on a lot of things.  I should have re-wrapped that electrical tape around the busted phone line before the rain hit.  Internet’s back in tin-can telephone speeds this morning.

Artful Communications – White Trash Repairs 3

Old Jules

Gordon Lightfoot – Early Morning Rain (Live in Chicago – 1979)

 

6:30 PM:  GRADER DITCH HAULS!

Gale and Kay were working the Mesquite Show in Fredericksburg this weekend, so I borrowed Little Red today and went into town for necessaries.  But when I’m on the road I always shop the grader ditches and investigate any potentially useful items thrown or blown out of vehicles.  Today was great insofar as upgrading cathouses:

The top was missing on this, but otherwise it's in good shape

The cats will be fighting over which gets to sleep inside this

I find a lot of these lids in the ditches and this one almost fits.

 

Also found these rubber bungie cords near another bunch of trash in the ditch

Old Jules

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Posted in 2011, Country Life, Emergency Preparedness, Free, Homesteading, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Texas, Uncategorized, White Trash Repairs

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Upside Down Thrift Store Horse Trading

Posted on September 23, 2011 by | 9 comments

This 24/7 music to keep owls from killing my guineas at night  [ White Trash Repairs and Fixes – Owls and Rock ‘n Roll ] is hard on audio equipment.

A while back I was without music to confuse the owl-folk.  I’d spang worn out my Kerrville FreeCycle-donated 200 CD Sony player and was scouting around for whatever the Universe had in mind to replace it.  A couple of months had passed, to I figured the Universe was ripe.

Salvation Army Thrift Store in Kerrville was having a half-price off on electronics sale.  I nosed around among the 8 track tape players, the television sets, the wires with all kinds of connections pretending not to pay any mind to a Sony 300 CD player staring at me as though I was the abyss.  The door was open on it and it seemed a bit battered, but someone had taped, “WORKS” on it, along with a price of $65.  $32.50 with the half-price on electronics.

The guy I think must be the store manager was at the register, and we’ve done enough business over time for him to know my ways and for me to know his.   Between ringing up purchases he was watching me not lo0k at that CD player with a half-smile on his face.  I moseyed over to it scowling, making sure in the corner of my eye he was looking, and tried to mess with the door to get it closed.  Shook my head, then looked up and met his eye.

“If that thing has a door it doesn’t seem to close.”

“Bring it over here and we’ll talk about it.”

I put it on the counter and we both scowled at it.  “That’s a lot of money to have to risk for something might not work.  If I bought it could you write down something so I could bring it back if it doesn’t work?”

We both knew the answer to that one.  It’s sold as is.  “I can’t do that.  But I’d sure hate for someone to buy it and get stuck with it not working.  What do you think it’s worth risk-wise?”

He and I have been through this enough times before to know how we play the game.  “I couldn’t pay more than $20 for it.”

“No,” shaking his head, “I’d rather give it to you free than let you pay that much.”

“I’m not taking that out of here free.  I’m not begging.  I’m just trying to find a price we can agree on.  How about $15?”

“How about a buck?”

“$10?  I’m not sure I can go any lower than 10.  A man has to live with his conscience.”  I feigned away from the counter as though about to walk off.

“Noo, no, no!”  Him acting frantic.  “How about $5?  Could you go $5?”

“Sold.”

He carried it across the counter to the register and started figuring the tax.  “It’s half-price for electronics today.  But you probably don’t want to use that, do you?”

“Naw.  Just ring it up at the full price we agreed to.  I’m not looking for any bargain.”

Old Jules

Steve Goodman- The Auctioneer

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Posted in 2011, America, Country Life, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Senior Citizens, Thrift Stores

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Texas Thumb and Finger Signs

Posted on September 18, 2011 by | 23 comments

Driving rural roads in Texas requires a lot of savoir-faire, cunning, and savvy. One minor slip and a person can find himself blessed with a new image because he violated a highway protocol.

That’s right. Greeting oncoming motorists in rural Texas is important business.  You never risk the full finger howdy unless you know the guy you’re giving it to well enough to anticipate exactly what he’s up to.

Once you’re committed to the full finger howdy there’s no getting out of it.  If he responds by staring ahead, looking off into the pasture through his passenger window, he wins.  He’s communicated to you that he’s enough more important than you he can practice the one-upsmanship of ignoring you.  He’s disdained your greeting, while awarding himself the uplifting feeling of having insulted you without danger of being insulted in return.

The most common way rural Texans avoid overstretching their trust in their fellow motorists is to hold out for a sign from the oncoming driver that he’s going to indulge in a greeting.  This is awkward because it ends up being a game of chicken, each driver trying to out-wait the other to insure not being a loser, while avoiding being thought a snob.

Carefully executed, the tentative hat tip can be a good maneuver, both defensively, and offensively.  Defensively, the user can quickly change from a full finger howdy in progress to snatching the hat and wiping his forehead on his sleeve in the blink of an eye.  Offensively, he can perform this maneuver AFTER the other driver has committed, thereby, winning.

At highway speeds and in traffic usually there’s no time to complete the more complex rituals involving headgear.  Instead, the game gets played from the top of the steering wheel.

The index finger acknowledge can have a number of different meanings.  It might mean, “I don’t know who you are, but I don’t want to risk being rude.”  It might mean, “Yeah, I see you but I’m not enthusiastic about it.”  Or it might mean, “I don’t have time to play,” or, “I’m not from around here.”

The fast three finger hi means, “You almost got me.”  Slower, it means, “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you around but I haven’t formed an opinion of you yet.”

The full-hand steering wheel howdy is usually reserved for dirt roads or slow traffic and close acquaintances.  It expresses, “I’m willing to stop and talk if you want to, but I’m not married to the idea.”

The spread hand steering wheel howdy usually means, “That hay you’re hauling is on fire.”  However, sometimes it might mean, “That trash bag you threw out is caught on your antenna and waving around beside your Confederate battle flag.”

Thumb up canted right means, “Yeah, them boys won last night.”  Or, “Yeah, I heard they dropped the DWI charges.”  Or, “Yeah, I heard you won the lottery.”

Thumb up canted left means, “Just because I’m acknowledging you doesn’t mean I’m your new best friend.”

Then, of course, there’s always this.  Usually stopped, or molasses-slow traffic.  It can mean a lot of things, but one way or another it always means the same thing.  The guy needs a shave and haircut.

Old Jules

Dinah Shore – Dear Hearts And Gentle People – 1949

———————————-

8AM afterthoughts:

http://selousscouts.blogspot.com/ featured a compact camping setup this morning worth the watch called swissbox home board.  It’s expensive, but a person with a few tools and a bit of imagination could probably produce something similar for the inside of a van or camper, or use outdoors as depicted in the video.  Customized for personal preferences and needs.

Along similar lines http://www.clickclackgorilla.com/ featured RelaxShacks, http://relaxshacks.blogspot.com/ which offers a lot of ideas for other approaches to somewhat the same problem.

Way leads on to way and RelaxShacks led to TinyHouseTalk http://www.tinyhousetalk.com/category/tiny-houses/  .  Lots of good ideas and info there.

————————-

This morning I saw the first deliberate aggression I’ve ever beheld on the part of a doe.  When I went out to turn the chickens loose and feed them she came in close and didn’t agree to be run off even a little way while she waited for me to throw out chicken feed to the hens.  I waved a stick at her and she picked out an Australorp layer about 30 yards away, ran at her, kicked her rolling, and appeared intending to do more if I hadn’t come running and yelling to the rescue.

This might be the beginning of a change in policy regarding these starving critters.  I’ve tolerated them storming the place, robbing chicken feed, being a pesky nuisance constantly, even doing minor damage, but I’m not going to tolerate attacks on the hens or cats.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2011, America, Communication, Human Behavior, Relationships, Texas

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Roof and Chimney Leaks — White Trash Repairs

Posted on September 16, 2011 by | 27 comments

Edited in Preface:  Someone’s told me this post is a bit grim, which floored me.  That is NOT what this is all about.  I might well be the happiest man on the planet, the most joyful and grateful for the roof over his head, for the animalcules, for every moment of this life I’m blessed with.  I am sure as hell not complaining about the way I live in this post, not poking around looking for sympathy from anyone.  There’s not one of you I’d trade lives with.

Please allow your mind to read what follows with a smile.  I love this crap.  This post is me laughing at myself, laughing at whatever life might throw at me, telling life, “Do your damnedest!  I’ll keep coming.”

“Science,”  Hydrox the jellicle cat insists, “You observe, you formulate a premise, you test the premise and revise it, then you test again.  Just make damned certain it’s right this time.”  Hydrox is one of the two felines indoors during cool, and especially during inclement weather.   “If science isn’t cutting it try some engineering.”

He takes a jaundiced view of hiding under something to get away from thunder only to get drenched by a lousy roof repair experiment.   Hydrox is attuned Level 3 Reiki.

“Reiki Masters,” he assures me, ” At least cat Reiki Masters, don’t appreciate being interrupted from doing high-minded things by getting sloshed because of criminal negligence on the part of a human being.”

Back when I was attuning him several people thought this mightn’t be a good thing.  It’s been a mixed blessing.

That chimney pipe was leaking badly back when it still rained.  But this repair job hasn’t had the test of a good rainfall yet.

Edit:  This larger diameter stovepipe came from Habitat for Humanity Thrift Store [toward the bottom here:   Curiouser and curiouser ] for a couple of bucks.  If the current fix doesn’t work I’ll cut the down-end with the angle cutter to match the slope of the roof, cut the top shorter than the chimney vent and sleeve the chimney with it.  I thinks it will block of a lot, if not all the pesky intrusion of rain into the chimney pipe.

As you can see, I’ve smeared tar all over the the joints in the sheet metal roof, in addition to the customized chimney.  That didn’t work too well, I’ll confess.  Got some other things to try though.  The light brown or tan you see is the foam you get at the hardware store that is touted as being able to plug large leaks by expanding into them to fill in the space.  No joy on that.

The chimney problem’s crucial.  Water hitting the side of it goes inside, runs down to the elbow in the bedroom but doesn’t slow down much:

[The gray hat’s a XXXXXX John B Stetson I picked up at a silent auction a few years ago for $10.  Man who owned but never wore it died and left it to me, though we never met.]

Naturally there’s a backup plan to keep water from coming down on the bed in the unlikely event it rains:

This has worked pretty well in the light rain arena.  Hasn’t been tested in a bull goose honest-to-goodness wind blowing rain sideways daddy-long-legs storm.

But we didn’t reach a consensus, the felines etc. on the matter of roof repairs and leaks.  Shiva the cow-cat argues, “What the hell!  Here’s a perfect spot for both those indoor cats in a thunderstorm.  What’s the big deal?  If they don’t like it throw them outdoors with Tabby and me.

“I’m sick and tired of all the age discrimination around here in favor of geriatric cats.”

Meanwhile:

Old Jules

Bob Dylan– Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, Country Life, Homesteading, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Thrift Stores, White Trash Repairs

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Intelligent Common Sense vs. Knee-jerk Common Sense

Posted on September 9, 2011 by | 18 comments

I agree.

The question is what brand of common sense we choose to adopt.  One trait we humans all share is the unquestionable fact that we have common sense.  We’re able to spot the lack of it in others whenever it’s out of sync with our own, which frequently happens.

Among other things, it seems to me common sense ought to be manifested in personal and public choices about what’s worth getting excited about, being afraid of, and what is not.

For instance, I read somewhere recently that in the entire history of terrorism, beginning in Russia in the 19th Century, fewer than 10,000 people have died.

Common sense would seem to argue terrorism’s not a large enough issue in the world to lend much weight to private and public decision-making.

The war on drugs has been waged since the Reagan Administration.  Countless millions of dollars have been expended in the effort.  Today, forbidden drugs are as available on the streets of America, perhaps more available, than they were when Reagan declared war.

Common sense would seem to argue it was time to look at other alternatives about five years after it all began, rather than spending more on it, building more prisons, hiring more cops, judges, prosecutors.

We’ve known since the early 1970s that foreign energy dependence was a threat to the well-being of this nation.  Petroleum and other hydrocarbons were going away.  From Nixon onward, US presidents pledged and waved the bloody flag pretending an effort to free the US from foreign energy dependence by development of alternative energy sources.

Common sense would seem to argue we’re more dependent on foreign energy today, 40 years later, than we were when our elected chiefs first made public acknowledgement of the threat to national security and well-being.  Which is another way of saying they lied, made meaningless gestures to an actual threat to national security and well-being, while devoting their attention to waging bloody wars on top of soil where the old-fashioned energy sources lay hidden.

Whatever common sense is, you and I certainly have a lot of it.

If we could ever discover how to inject it into the gray matter of the men we elect to office, we’d have to change the definition to something less common.  Which is the reason I stay the hell away from knowing the current news events and don’t pay any mind to politics.

Common sense tells me history testifies to the futility of common sense and the futility of worrying about political matters.   Common sense tells me life’s too short to fire up my ammunition at targets I can’t hit.

Old Jules

John Prine– Illegal Smile
http://youtu.be/Li-HVSdjQFg

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

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Helicopters and Orange Jump Suits

Posted on September 5, 2011 by | 99 comments

A couple of years ago I came across a profoundly orange jumpsuit in a thrift-store clearance sale, which I picked off at a righteous price.  It’s the sort worn by students of jailhouse academies in a lot of places, so the potential was great, both as work clothing and other possibilities that came to mind and brought a smile to my face as I paid for it.

Some times of the year I get considerable low-flying air traffic over the cabin, frequently helicopters.  Scares the chickens and often has me out there craning my neck wondering what they’re up to.  Sometimes they zigzag over the area, circle, generally just burn up fuel without it being obvious whether they’re taking pictures of my workings, satisfying curiosity, or something more sinister.

But that orange jump suit’s added a whole new side to things.  Nowadays when the helicopters start flying over I stay inside until they go out of sight, slipping on the jump suit.  Then, when I hear them coming back in this direction I head over to the other side of the meadow, staying just out of the trees until they’ve had a glimpse of me.

I fake panic, run into the trees and hide, peeking out at them, pretending to try to conceal myself better while they waste more fuel trying to see what I’m doing.

It’s quite a hoot, all in all, but I count myself lucky they don’t fly around doing that much mid-summer.  I appreciate the exercise it gives me, 68 year old guy running around hiding from a helicopter, but I’m not sure my ticker would stand up to the wear and tear when it’s 100 degrees F outside.

I’ve always wondered whether the local law enforcement have gotten any calls asking whether there’s an escaped convict running around loose in the area.

Anyway, I figure it gives them a thrill, puts some adventure in their otherwise uneventful lives.  Something to talk about over the radio besides all that ‘Roger that!’ stuff.

An elderly man without a lot of means has to do whatever he can to try to help other people along this lifetime, or he’s likely to be thought a waste and freeloader if he’s drawing a SS retirement pension.

Old Jules

The Kingston Trio – Everglades
http://youtu.be/w0TtIRpG-jE

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Tuesday, September 6 edit:

If you need a few more laughs I suggest the enlightened, well-thought-out viewpoint from the helicopter:

It’s All Fun and Games Until Somebody Gets Shot

Ah, the fun to be had with an orange jumpsuit.
 Evidently they aren’t telling pilots nowadays they’re required to maintain an altitude of 500 feet above ground level, that they’re not allowed to shoot anything on private land out of an aircraft on a whim,  suspicion, or gut feel, and that killing people because they’re wearing  a particular color jump suit is homicide even if it’s done from an aircraft.
They used to tell us that kind of stuff.  Must be the education system’s slipped another notch into the shallow end of the gene pool.  Old Jules

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, America, Country Life, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Texas, Thrift Stores

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The Sawmill: Joys and Frustrations

Posted on September 4, 2011 by | 8 comments

One of the ways Gale makes money for himself is saw-milling mesquite.  There’s a guy with heavy equipment bulldozes cedar and mesquite off ranch land, and he pushes big mesquite off to the side instead of burning it.  We go pick it up in a trailer, haul it back here and stockpile it for cleaning up to be saw-milled.

These are mesquite boles waiting to be sold to a woodworker or for Gale to work them down into something tasteful and useful:

Here are a few larger ones stockpiled by the sawmill waiting for sawmilling.

But when Gale bought the sawmill he din’t actually have an enviable shelter to put it in.

We plotted, planned, watched and horse-traded when they were putting in new power poles to acquire enough for a new sawmill barn:

Even laid out the footprint for the new pole barn and got the holes drilled:

We’ve got the design put together by us two geniuses.  Those poles need to be measured and cut to length, then dragged over to be slid into the holes, set vertical, tamped into place, first off.  Then everything that doesn’t look like a pole barn needs to be removed from that airspace sitting there empty.

But the fact is, Gale’s an old guy.  Claims to be older than me even, by an imaginary year.  He’s got a bad hip and too many other things troubling him to have any business out there trying to do work ought to be reserved for a younger guy, namely me.  I can’t afford to be losing an old friend and the man who owns this place because of some silly notion he might have about getting out there doing any heavy lifting and sweating.

So that barn of the future’s been sitting there waiting to happen for a year now.

If I had my new truck running I’d be up there now, while they’re gone and can’t do anything about it, measuring and cutting those poles, dragging them somewhere they can become something better than what they are now.  I’d be getting those poles up pointing at the sky the way the Coincidence Coordinators intended when they delivered them.

All while they’re off in New Mexico at the Hatch Chili Festival doing what’s best they do and they do best.

It ain’t going to happen this time, because I don’t have anything to pull them with.  But that new truck’s going to be running next time they leave.

On the other hand, I think he might be edgy about me doing it.  They’ve both seen the things I’ve built, or am building down here:

White Trash Repairs: Throwing Down the Gauntlet

Thumbing Rides on Throwaways

News from the Middle of Nowhere

Disclaimer and apologies – I posted this accidentally when I went to save the draft.    But there’s been too much deleting of accidental posts here lately, so I’m leaving it up.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Texas, Trucks, White Trash Repairs

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Something Rhyming with Joy in the Pre-dawn

Posted on September 4, 2011 by | 6 comments

The temperature dropped enough last night so’s I turned off  the fans.  When I walked outdoors the cats were doing those little rear-on-hindlegs-pivot happiness acts they’ve taught one another, all gathered for a some grub, a refill on the water bowl,  having their tails tugged and a few words of greeting.

They all explained they’re grateful to me for turning down the heat, and I didn’t tell them any different.  Anytime a person can get a cat feeling beholden he’d best take advantage of it.  I took my coffee out to the porch swing hangs under the oak and let them take turns snagging a few scratches behind the ears, held Tabby upside down and explained how she was one of the best cats around here and just listened to the night trailing away.

I stay fairly joyful around here always, but somehow it managed to get itself trumped this morning.

If I was shorter and had me a mirror and a sink to stand on I’d do what Jessica’s doing in the video below.

Jessica’s “Daily Affirmation”

http://youtu.be/qR3rK0kZFkg

Instead, I reckons I’ll have another cup of java and wait for the roosters to begin their concert.

——————–

8:00 AM

Without taking anything away from Jessica, here are a few of my own gratitude affirmations this morning:

I’m grateful Gale’s got water up there I can haul, grateful for all these jugs to haul it in, and grateful he’ll loan me Little Red for packing it down here.

I’m grateful Gale gave me this new truck:

“GOT ME A NEW TRUCK” https://sofarfromheaven.com/category/trucks/

The wiring's too Communist and beyond my ken to fix myself, turns out. I'm grateful there's a real mechanic in town and we can tow it in when he gets back.

Won’t be long now before I have transportation again and whoooeee will I ever be grateful.

I'm grateful we don't have to depend entirely on rain.

If I had a sink I’d dance on it, same as Jessica.
Old Jules

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, America, Country Life, Free, Homesteading, Redneck Repairs, Trucks

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Déjà Vu All Over Again – Ways to Be a Good American Without Waving a Chinese-made Flag

Posted on August 29, 2011 by | 18 comments

Lose the God-Damned Bigotry or Quit Calling Yourself an American -You’re Walkin’ on the Fightin’ Side of Me

on

Paid for by Americans to Restore Freedom, Austin, TX 1970

A word in advance:  About the time Merle Haggard was reaching the top of the charts with “The Fighting Side of Me”, and “Okie From Muskogee” a war over forced busing was being fought in cities all across the country by good Americans.  The poster you see appeared on telephone posts, taped to the outside of doors, windows of public places, scattered on the streets. 

In 1970 a friend and I came across a guy taping one of these up near the University of Texas.  He had a ream of them beside him on the concrete.  We discussed it with him and his noggin required surprisingly little thumping to persuade him to give us all the posters and swear he would not do it anymore.   He didn’t have the strength of his convictions.

I suppose I kept a few of them  boxed up with other curiosities from  over the decades.

The administrator for this blog found a few of them among some boxes of scribblings and asked what it was all about.

Merle’s had a change of heart, repudiated a lot of what he said and did during those times, says we all make mistakes and we all eventually grow from having made them.  But interestingly, instead of vanishing from arena of public bias, the past two years has seen a re-emergence of surprisingly similar material intended to assist in denouncing the US president.

Being a good American and a good human being isn’t about waving a flag, hating Democrats or Republicans, Muslims, or people who say ugly words about political leaders.  It isn’t about fear, hysterical dialect, consumerism and waste.

Being a good American and a good human being is about personal responsibility.  About having enough confidence and courage not to feel threatened by every little thing.  About assuming the responsibility of not being part of the problem any more than is absolutely necessary.  About self-reliance.

Sometimes it’s not obvious how a person might accomplish those things.

  • On a personal level your life will find itself a lot better place if you can recognize the fact you are going to die as a means of exiting it.  Maybe disease, a car wreck, any of a thousand common ways that don’t have a damned thing to do with any foreign country, foreign leader, foreign war.  You are going to die.  No point in going into frenzies of terror and hate because the death you get stands a billion-to-one shot at being the act of a terrorist.  Trust me on that.  You are going to die, and I’ll only be the tiniest, most microscopic bit of a liar when I tell you it won’t be from anything any foreigner does  to cause it.
  • On a personal level you’ll find it’s a hell of a lot better place if you can learn what is your own business, and what isn’t.  If you can change it, it’s your business.  If you can’t, it ain’t worth concerning yourself with, getting all worked up about.
  • On a personal level you’ll find your life’s a lot better place if you spend considerable energies looking at it, instead of other places, looking at what you like about it, and what you don’t like about it, and changing what you can.  Looking in a metaphorical mirror at the sort of person you are and asking yourself if that is the sort of person you want to be.  You can’t change the kind of person the prez of bongobongoland is, but you can change the kind of person you are into someone you have more respect for.  No one respects a dishonest, hysterical coward, including you, when you see it in others.

If all of us could pull that off our own lives would be a lot better, and America would be a better place for it.  But insofar as personal responsibility and being a good American, we can expand on that a bit.  Here are a few things a good American might do without having to shout from the rooftops about what an admirable person he/she is:

Dependence on hydrocarbons is the ultimate problem of this nation you say you love.

  • Be conscious of your own energy use.
  • Every plastic grocery or garbage bag, every foam-plastic hamburger box, no matter where it was produced, drives up the price of oil.
  • Every time you fire up that hair-dryer you drive up the world-wide price of hydrocarbons.
  • Every made-in-China yellow ribbon ‘SUPPORT OUR TROOPS’ you buy to stick on your car drives up the price of hydrocarbons world-wide, increases the demand.
  • Every made-in-China flag made of nylon you wave drives up the price of oil and increases worldwide demand.
  • Every new plastic radio, CD player, computer monitor.  Every plastic wrapper from that frozen pizza pie.  Every cellophane cover and foam plastic bottom covering the piece of animal you’re having for supper and sending to the landfill afterward is driving up the world-wide competition for oil.
  • Sure, there are the other obvious things.  The things Jimmy Carter used to beg you to do when he was prez, to help you quit relying on foreign petroleum products.  Turn down the heater.  Turn up the thermostat on the AC.  Don’t drive anymore than you have to.  Which, of course, you didn’t care for then and immediately forgot when he left office (which is part of the reason you’re in the fix you are in now.)

But there’s a lot more to being a good American, as opposed to a good human being.  Here are a few more ways you could try to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem:

Quit buying ANY foreign product if you can avoid it.  Even if it saves you a few cents.  Just say no.  Refuse and make it clear why you’re refusing.  If US workers didn’t manufacture it and you can live without it, don’t buy it.  If your old one’s broken buy a replacement used in a thrift store, garage sale or flea market.  If it can be repaired take it to a local appliance repair shop and let a US worker repair it.  Every dollar you spend on a new foreign-manufactured product reduces the value of the dollar you’ll get next paycheck because of the overwhelming trade deficit.

If this country is going to survive another century the population is going to have to begin manufacturing what it consumes, energy-wise and every other wise.  Building hamburgers to sell back and forth to one another isn’t enough to keep a country sound.

Americans are going to have to produce products, and the other Americans are going to have to buy them.  We can’t continue indefinitely sending our chunks of our trade deficit off to bongo-bongo land for petroleum, to China for plastic bags, television sets, seat covers and rubber monster toys.  We can’t starve out our farmers by buying agricultural products from Mexico and Argentina.

Being a good American involves a hell of a lot more than getting angry when some foreigner says something ugly about it.  Loyalty to America and Americans is about keeping America alive, productive, self-reliant, healthy economically.

If we can do those things we’ll find we’re spending a lot less time hurling empty rhetoric back and forth, hating the owners of bongo-bongo land oil, a lot less time bombing the hell out of foreign lands, a lot less angry and full of fear and hatred.

And we wouldn’t need to wave flags to prove we were good Americans.

Old Jules

http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/187535.html

MERLE HAGGARD – Fightin’ Side Of Me
http://http://youtu.be/QX9X5zJ91Ac

Afterthought:  Tffnguy’s got a rant on similar but not identical subjects you might find worth a read, along with comments by a number of oldsters on my blogroll.  http://terlinguabound.blogspot.com/2011/08/divide-and-conquer.html

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Posted in 1970's, 2011, America, Current Issues, Ethnic Supremacy, History, Human Behavior, Politics, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Survival, Thrift Stores

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Learn a New Language with YouTube

Posted on August 22, 2011 by | 14 comments


Hi blogsters:

I rarely talk to young people, though I’ll confess to craftily observing them when I can, watching their interactions reflected in a plate-glass window, sneakily watching them at another table in a restaurant, trying to hear and understand what they’re saying.

The problem is, mostly I can’t understand what they’re saying.  As the years have progressed I’ve noticed that, even in convenience stores and fast-food joints I often can’t understand the simplest thing that’s being spoken.  I tilt my head, ask them to repeat, explain I’m a bit hard of hearing and ask them to repeat again, and finally usually give up and just smile and nod ‘yes’ if that seems it might be appropriate.

I don’t believe it’s entirely my hearing doing this.  I think there’s something new and different going on with language, but more importantly, inside the heads of people who sound as though words should be spoken through a mouth full of something, and really fast.

Mostly I don’t have a clue.  Frequently my curiosity taunts me.  I don’t know who these people are.  I don’t know what, nor how, they think.  To me it would be easy to merely mutter to myself, these kids are incredibly stupid, illiterate, and so whacked-out on television and public school brainwashing it’s a wonder they can function at all.

But I’m trying to insist to myself that the human race hasn’t truly devolved all that much in only a couple of generations.  These aren’t subhumans, though it would be easy to conclude they are, based on a lot of their mannerisms and behaviors in public.  I think these creatures probably think and feel, but that they don’t express those thoughts and feelings in ways that allow me to fathom them.

Enter, the blessing of YouTube.  When they aren’t too long, it rarely takes more than half-hour download on my dial-up.  But it’s a chance to actually decipher something one of those people thinks, feels and expresses, in a way that bypasses the mouth full of marbles and the speed with which the words come to the fore.  Once it’s downloaded it can be repeated until near-understanding arrives.

Old Jules

Steve Goodman– Talk Backwards [Edit: hope one of these links will work better]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMSMAjg2zCU

http://youtu.be/AMSMAjg2zCU

(Cee Lo Green) “Fuck You” sign language performance
http://youtu.be/sv3tadz5Q3o

Note: Thanks to Monique Maes for her photo.
http://moniquemaes.tumblr.com/
http://www.reverbnation.com/teapartyseance

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Posted in 2011, America, Communication, Education, Human Behavior, Internet, Senior Citizens, Youth, YouTube

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