Tag Archives: senior citizens

Sure I’m poor, but I came by it honest.

Posted on June 13, 2014 by | 6 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

The 20-30 people down at my physical therapy are surprisingly homogenous and I’m not saying anything about sexual preferences.  We’re all white, all but three are men, and all but two are above the age of 60.  The nurses, also are all white, but their ages cover a spread from around 30 to a cautious guess of 60.

So when I asked one of the nurses, “Where do you keep all your ethnics?” while she was taking g my blood pressure it seemed an obvious question.  An expression of surprise crossed her face and she flinched, or sort of jumped, then her eyes scanned the room and the people on all the machines. 

“What do you mean?”   Seemed more of an accusation than question.

“Hey, we all look alike in here.  Everyone here seems to be old, male, white and other than me, well-to-do.  All except me are fairly unpleasing to the eye.  Don’t people with skin pigment get cardiac problems?”  I was just wising off.  I already knew Olathe’s an affluent community and area.   But watching her facial reactions kept me at it.

 Anyway, the old guy at the NUSTEP machine next to me felt the need to set me straight when she went on to other matters.  “We’re not all well to do!”  He ground his teeth a bit.  “I used to be but I lost it all in 401Ks.”  His face was reddening and the blood vessels on his bald scalp were becoming visible.

“Sure I’m poor.  But I got that way through honest hard work, good credit, bad marriages, and trusting the 401K people.  Not like these people who got born into it and didn’t get out because of shiftless laziness and rotten attitude.”  I finished my time about then and just grinned.  Couldn’t think of anything to say.

Damn I love that Physical Therapy at Olathe Hospital.  I’m going to be sorry when it runs out.

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 2014, America

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Something’s happening here but don’t let it fool you.

Posted on June 11, 2014 by | 8 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University is pissed. He was part of the International Entrepreneurial Academians for Climate Change report in 2007 that stuck all the participants up on pederastals by being awarded a Nobel.

Then, damned the climate did change  but differently than they all said it would. Newspapers calling it a “Global Warming pause“, and similarly dangerous misinterpretations of Mann’s and his brothers in academic reputation-sharers predictions.  And Mann doesn’t want anyone thinking he and his buds who have high stakes in selling man-made climate change are off the mark, just because they were somewhat wrong.

Scientific American, April 2014, Mann penned an article, “False Hope” trying to explain why the fact the debatable temperatures didn’t rise as much as expected doesn’t mean “Ohhhh shit the sky is NOT falling.”

Mann says it’s still falling, but falling in slower motion so’s a person standing underneath it is liable to think it’s surprisingly cool this spring, amazingly cold this past winter.   And has actually been something of a Communist for the past 10 years for reasons Mann can’t explain scientifically.  Or, I should say, support with scientific observation and evidence.

Which doesn’t stand in the way of his filling his Scientific American piece with conjectures, speculations and possible excuses the planet might have for failing to dance to the tango Mann and the Nobel Club hummed in 2007.

 Not to suggest Mann and the other partisans for sky is fallingism are wrong.  They might be right.  They surely might be right.  Even though their reasons for being right might be based on all manner of false premises.

Fact is, they bet on a horse and even though it ain’t running ahead of the others at the moment, it still might win, place or show.  Because it doesn’t have a damned thing to do with what Mann thinks, or his academic entrepreneurial associates think.  Or you think, or I think.

That planet and the weather is run by bigger minds than mine, yours, or Distinguished Professor Mann’s.  It’s run by the Coincidence Coordinators.  They love it when people are awarded Nobel Peace Prizes for shit that if it goes differently than they conjectured will have their reputations destroyed.

Same as they love putting aces-high full houses across the table from one-in-a-lifetime straight flushes. 

People believe in God on a lot less evidence than the Coincidence Coordinators provide them through direct evidence everyday of their lives to encourage believing in them.  But God is more of an abstraction, whereas the Coincidence Coordinators are the real item, a part of our everyday lives.

Here’s hoping for the sake of Distinguished Professor Mann and his fellow non-believers in God and the Coincidence Coordinators, both equally, that the sky goes ahead and falls in time to save their reputations.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2014, Adventure, America, Science

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City of Adventure

Posted on June 10, 2014 by | 4 comments

hydrox june 2014

He’s too old to cut the mustard anymore.

Hi readers.  Thanks for the visit.

Jeanne’s next door neighbor saw us on the back porch the other day:  “Hi.  Is that big, fluffy-looking black and white cat yours?”

Me:  “He came with me from Texas.”  No point giving my cat-ownership philosophy dissertation.

Neighbor grinning:  “We watch television late at night with the front door open.  He comes by every night and sticks his head inside, looks at us a moment, then leaves.  It’s eery when he meets your eye.”

Hydrox is evidently as determined to milk as much living out of this life as I am.  Even if it means spying on the neighbors.  They’re older than him, but barely.

Old Jules

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Posted in Adventure, America

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Rally Round the Flag Boys, by Max Shulman

Posted on June 10, 2014 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

1959, 1960, I was reading everything Max Shulman wrote because of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.  In that one he introduced Maynard G. Cribbs of later fame, and gave most people their first look at Beat, Beatniks, and much of the como se llama life outside anything most had considered.  Although Dobie Gillis had a TV series in his name, the Maynard Cribbs character lived longer in another vapid TV series about an Island somewhere.

So when I encountered Rally Round the Flag Boys in a box of books at a garage sale recently I happily paid out a quarter for an unexpected delight far in excess of my memories of the book from 50 years ago.

In a 278 page yarn filled with laughs and poignant human insights Shulman peels away the 21st Century fantasies of how America ‘was’, “Thank you veterans, for your service“, and any lingering thoughts you might have about romance, marriage and the American dream when  the citizenry saw career military men as “too lazy to steal“.

A wonderful, hilarious book before during and after its own time.  Story of a small Yankee town in Connecticut where the US Army needs to place a Nike Missile Site.  A brutally honest story of the wealthy people running the town and why they oppose a sanitary landfill because of the cost, oppose sex education in their public schools because of the danger of KNOWING, oppose anything that stands in the way of development of real estate into more neighborhoods for NYC commuters.  Neighborhoods located in quarries, bogs, swamps, with names like Powderhorn Hill and Patriot Valley.

What a fun book.  I’m finished with it and will happily mail it to you if you’d care to read it.  Contact me by email.

Old Jules

Afterthought note:  This book teeters on the brink of upcoming events, but barely pre-dates them.  No Berlin Wall until 1961, no Cuban Missile Crisis until 19 what?62?, no Vietnam War until 1965, no Kennedys assassinated yet, no Martin Luther King, no Watergate.   No Fidel Castro.   Cuba was still clean sandy beaches for US tourists.  And the book is the “How I view the world” of those US citizens back before things got nasty.  J.

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Posted in 2014, America

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Busted

Posted on June 6, 2014 by | 10 comments

Hi readers.  The cardiac physical therapy nurses gave me a little counselling today after they caught me cheating on their machines.  I haven’t been sticking with the piddling little times and settings they give me on a piece of paper each session.

So I was boosting my walking speeds up as much as I thought I could get by with, staying longer, and when I saw them approaching I’d quickly adjust the settings.  Same with the como se llama arm exercizing machine and the walking while sitting down one.

But today I saw them getting cagey, trying to use their animal cunning to outsmart me.  Spang caught me trying to spend 15 minutes making circular movements with my arms instead of 10, and at heavier loads and higher speeds.

They’ve got that thing attached to me all the time, shows I-don’t-know-what, and sometimes it twigs them to tell me to pause.  If it isn’t ratting me out I figure nobody else has any business being my governor.

Well heck.  Those little bitty pissant things they put on the paper for me to do just ain’t where I want to be.  Seems to me I ought to have some say in it.  But that isn’t going to happen.  “You shouldn’t even be walking around!”  She scowled at me.  Scowled!  “You are amazing with what you were doing before you even started coming to these sessions.  But you’re going to have to go slow or you’re going to be dead.”

Screw them.

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 2014, America

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Real synthetic meat

Posted on June 6, 2014 by | 20 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Sitting around waiting rooms exposes a person to a lot of reading material he’d proabably never encounter otherwise.  Popular Science magazines are a favorite example for me.  They’ve always been great predictors of how our lives will be in the not-too-distant future.  As John Prine observed, “We’re all driving rocket ships and talking with our minds” here in this future we’re living in.

Anyway, the November, 2013 edition of Popular Science had a series of articles I found fascinating about some folks who are in the final phases of development of synthetic meats to replace those that came off living animals and poultry.  Indistinguishable from the real item.  Columbia University’s one of the places it’s happening, not because of better health, but because of the greenhouse gasses resulting from grazing livestock.

Evidently it’s so far along in getting it going they’re already producing real leather that never rode a cow for use on automobile upholstery, etc.  And they’re doing well with chicken, since almost everything tastes like chicken.

Naturally, if this doesn’t happen now it well be because the cow industry went in at night and destroyed everything they couldn’t buy up and squash.  It won’t be the fault of the lousy record Popular Science has in predicting the future.

Still, it’s nice to think of future generations being able to walk around in the woods without stepping on cow manure if they ever go outside.  And driving along rural highways in the west not having to see a yellow sign with a cow on it to warn there’s a rancher feeding his black cows on the pavement at dusk for the insurance.

Interesting stuff, and it ought to get more interesting.  Human beings ought to get a lot more violent in a world where there was no real meat that needed killing to take the edge off natural inclinations.  And thus far there’s been no mention of where Kosher fits into it all.  Synthetic pork might come from the factory Kosher and Jews and Muslims could start sitting down together to a nice ham instead of shooting one another.

Old Jules

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Posted in America, Animals

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Koreans fighting alongside Japanese in the first tank battle of WWII era

Posted on June 3, 2014 by | Leave a comment

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=my+way+movie+

Hi readers:  I first saw this film on Netflix and it made a big impression on me.  Unfortunately it’s been a while.  I was in the hospital when I watched it first, so some of the details are vague to me now.  But it’s probably the first movie ever to be filmed about Khalkhin Gol.

Khalkhin-Gol: The forgotten battle that shaped WW2

In August 1939, just weeks before Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland, the Soviet Union and Japan fought a massive tank battle on the Mongolian border – the largest the world had ever seen.

Under the then unknown Georgy Zhukov, the Soviets won a crushing victory at the batte of Khalkhin-Gol (known in Japan as the Nomonhan Incident). Defeat persuaded the Japanese to expand into the Pacific, where they saw the United States as a weaker opponent than the Soviet Union. If the Japanese had not lost at Khalkhin Gol, they may never have attacked Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese decision to expand southwards also meant that the Soviet Eastern flank was secured for the duration of the war. Instead of having to fight on two fronts, the Soviets could mass their troops – under the newly promoted General Zhukov – against the threat of Nazi Germany in the West.

In terms of its strategic impact, the battle of Khalkhin Gol was one of the most decisive battles of the Second World War, but no-one has ever heard of it. Why?

http://historyofrussia.org/khalkhin-gol-battle-nomonhan/

The Korean movie industry scored a big one with My Way.  The theme or setting is two kids, one Japanese, the other Korean competing as runners in pre-WWII Japan.  But when the Japanese Kwantung Army rubs up against the Soviet Army in Manchuria both are sent there in time for the earliest tank battle of WWII era.  [Western thought about when WWII began places the battle pre-WWII]

So when the USSR kicks the ass of Japan in the battle, the two are captured and sent to a Soviet POW camp.  Eventually they’re allowed to volunteer for slave labor on the front where the USSR is fighting German troops.  And they’re captured, allowed to fight for the Germans next, because Japan, of course, was an ally to Germany.

As D Day approaches they find themselves on the beaches of Normandy constructing shore defenses.

One hell of a movie.

I see by the clips on YouTube a lot of people agree with me.  Some even say it’s the best movie they’ve ever seen.  Maybe you’ll find it absorbing.

Thank you for your service, all you young Soviets, Japanese and Koreans.

Old Jules

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in 1940's, 2014, History

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Korean kids are higher quality stupid than US kids

Posted on June 3, 2014 by | 13 comments

Hi readers.  I saw the entire movie, Attack the Gas Station 2, on Netflix and found it fascinating.  It ain’t the same Korea I spent 14 months in back in 1963-’64.  Hell, it ain’t even a 3rd world country anymore.

jackjeepkorea2

When this photo was taken near Camp Howze, Korea [Pong Il Chon], I can say with authority there was a rice paddy somewhere nearby where people toiled from daybreak to dark. Somewhere nearby men were carrying a-frames loaded with firewood several times their own weight. Probably somewhere in Korea there was affluence staying well hidden, but the ‘average’ Korean made a few dollars per month and most would never expect to be able to afford a bicycle anytime during their lives.

But several things impressed me about the Korean film.  First, it’s the best photography I’ve seen in any of the foreign films I’ve watched on Netflix lately.  Secondly, the characters are wealthy in the middle-class way US citizens,  even the poor ones, are wealthy by standards of the 1960s.

Secondly, the kids are easily as stupid as US kids, but it’s a higher quality stupidity.  I suppose it hasn’t had time to mature, to become as decadent as US kids manifest constantly in public.  Stupidity of Korean kids has the quality of an over-ripe apple that hasn’t yet begun to rot.

And thirdly, the amazing wealth.  Look at that gas station, the cars and the people driving them.  The motorcycles those kids are riding and the clothes they’re wearing.  Observe the body-fat.  Those people might well be Americans in  the better neighborhoods.

By comparison, consider another Netflix foreign film, this one from Russia.  The Suit.  Some Russian youngsters fall in love with a Gucci suit in a store window and the adventures they go through to acquire it.  And what happens once they have it in their possession.

The Suit is a damned eye-opening good movie, well done and fun to watch, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Attack the Gas Station 2.  The Russian kids are smarter, incidently, and not so wealthy.

Anyone who tells you different is wrong.

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 2014, Adventure, America, Art

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Five Freedom Fighters for One GI

Posted on June 2, 2014 by | 5 comments

Hi readers.

The old guys down at physical therapy are pissed.  Evidently five of the Arab freedom fighters the US has been holding captive somewhere are going to be released so’s to get back one GI Arabs captured.  Hell of a deal, seems to me, though some might argue a GI is worth ten of anyone else anywhere.

But there are a lot of different ways of looking at the matter.  Elected officials are afraid we didn’t get our moneys worth on the deal.  I’d have to suspect they think after five years captivity that GI isn’t going to be much use to anyone, which might be their rationale.

On the other hand, people get out of prisons all the time after being gang-raped repeatedly the way that GI almost certainly has been in captivity.  And it doesn’t hold them back.  Ex convicts are almost all able to stick up convenience stores, steal cars, sell drugs, do a little rape and mayhem.  Being gang raped in prison hardly slows them down at all.

So my gut feel is this guy’s probably going to be okay and if he plays his cards right maybe he can sit on top of a building with a rifle somewhere and plink off a dozen-or-so anonymous people of one sort or another.  Plenty of ex-GIs are doing that nowadays anyway who haven’t even been gang-raped that we know of.

Anyway, people who are against the trade still ought to feel good knowing an American is worth five Arabs.  I can’t help wishing it was ten, though.  Would have been ten back during WWII when it was Japanese, I’m guessing.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2014, Adventure, America

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Post card art, lousy dreams and cats

Posted on June 2, 2014 by | 15 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by.  Jeanne’s about to zoom away on her morning bicycle ride, trying to find something long sleeved to block something just this side of the morning chill.    She says she had a lousy dream last night, dreamed Leonard Cohen died.  Bummer.

I recall dreaming Al Jolson died sometime a few years ago, but the fact he’d been dead several decades already took the edge off it.  Not a good dream, but better than when he actually did it.  I was in grammar school at the time and it’s the first time someone I really liked died, I think.  He had just come back from a USO tour visiting troops in Korea and went kerplunk.  Lousier than dreaming about it.

Anyway, in spite of myself I’ve been allowing my mind to wander into Jeanne’s Library job postcard art project.  http://librarymailart.wordpress.com/

Trying to think of something that could be forced down the throat of the post office as a post card and sent over there to be forced down their thoats disguised as art.  I’m considering gluing a 78 rpm record to a 33 rpm LP, a 45 rpm single, and a CD and putting address and stamps on the whole shebang.  Might do it yet if I can find the 78 and 33.

But I wanted to sneak around and tell you about cats, mostly.  That cat documentary at the top got me thinking about Hydrox and might have given me a dream about Niaid last night, or maybe she was just saying hi.  A lot better than dreaming about Al Jolson or Leonard Cohen.

Hydrox, by the way, is hanging in there, and I’m including him in my gratitude affirmations numerous times every day.  Been spending portions of almost every night outdoors doing what cats do.

And I’m about to toodle off to physical therapy to do what old human guys do when they’re hanging in there day to day, including themselves in their own gratitude affirmations numerous times every day.

Old Jules

 

 

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Posted in 2014, Adventure, America

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