Tag Archives: society

The 21st Century Through Mirror Sunglasses

Posted on May 28, 2012 by | 3 comments

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

For six days this Australorp hen’s been sitting on a golf ball and two chalk eggs.  Every day I go out and rob the real eggs from under her, stroke her, talk to her, listen to her grumbles, whines, complaints, leaving that golf ball and the chalk eggs to give her something to hope for.

Highly-bred hens such as this one are somewhat similar to 21st Century human beings in some ways.  They’ve had almost all the instincts bred out of them in favor of, either producing a lot of chicken-meat in the least possible while, or producing as many eggs as their bodies allow.  Australorps hold the world record for the most eggs produced by a single hen during the span of a year.

The cost, from the perspective of the hen, is they’ve mostly lost the instincts required to cause them to go broody.  The instincts required to survive as a  species.  Same’s true of my Americauna hens.  Great layers, lousy instincts.

So I’m prone to have a warm place in my heart for a hen when she goes broody, even though I don’t need any more chickens, don’t want any chicks.  It’s the mawkish sentimentality in me, I reckons.  I feel a lot of sympathy and tenderness for a hen trying her best to hatch clutch of eggs, even if the eggs are chalk and golf balls.

I try to simulate a pair of mirror sunglasses when I go out to lift her off the latest eggs, hers and those the other hens try to sneak in under her to give the species another microscopic shot at survival.

Those imaginary mirror sunglasses mightn’t be necessary to me to get through these final decades of my life, but they certainly make it easier to watch what’s going on around me.  Human beings sitting on golf balls and chalk eggs, allowing instincts to creep briefly into their behaviors occasionally, probably won’t hatch.  But it appeals to my mawkish sentimentality side and there’s no harm in it.

At least no harm that would be neutralized by me not indulging. 

A creature pays his money and takes his chances this lifetime.  Even if the creature’s a hen and the eggs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. 

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens

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

The Legal Money Raffle Consortia

Posted on May 24, 2012 by | 4 comments

Previously posted in 2005:

I used to know a guy named Mike, down in Socorro.  A man with a lot of ideas.

During the mid-‘90s, about the time the Internet was cranking up big-time, Mike had the idea it would be cool to start an online raffle.

Mike had some money lying around.  Just about enough to buy a full-sized Harley, and a large RV.  But he thought he could increase the amount of money he had by taking a risk.  He’d sell raffle tickets online for a Harley and a large RV without buying them until someone won the raffle.  If he didn’t sell enough tickets, he’d make up the difference with his savings.  But if he did sell enough tickets, he’d give away the Harley and RV, and pocket whatever extra came in.

It turns out raffles are illegal at almost any level, though the cops and prosecutors look the other way if they feel the cause is a good one, or if it’s just small potatoes.  But item one for Mike turned out to be that if he went online he’d be almost certain to be prosecuted.

Item 2, was the fact he was, in effect, proposing to raffle a motorcycle and an RV that didn’t exist.  The fact he didn’t own them yet compounded the felony he would be committing.

Now what Mike was proposing to do was precisely what lotteries do.  Raffling off something that doesn’t exist…. Money that they plan on earning as interest.

But, of course, when a government-sanctioned, or government-owned administrative entity commits an act that rhymes with something that would be a felony if an individual behaved identically, all’s well with the world.

Unless they happen to have a lot of attention focused on their behavior, which sometimes happens.

Similarly, I used to know a guy named Dan, who had a lot of cash lying around doing nothing.  He dreamed up an online something he called a ‘money club’, or ‘money pool’.  Members, Dan dreamed, would pay $5 per month into the pool.  Every month the total proceeds, minus 10 percent (to Dan as operational and administrative fees) would be handed out to some lucky member by a process known as Random Number Generator…. Something nearly identical to what’s being done by lotteries.  Except it would be private enterprise….. private sector.

Dan figured the payout percentages would be so much better, the odds so much better than any lottery that it would cause players to flock to him.  He might have been right.

But there was naturally a catch.  What he was proposing was and is a herd of felonies at almost every level of jurisdiction.  Even though what he proposed was a lot better for the players involved, than the competition (the government and the various legally recognized mob) could (read ‘would’) offer.

So neither of these ideas ever came to fruition, though each represented the cleaned up versions of corrupted first-cousins we all accept as normal in the lottery systems.

It’s surprising sometimes to see people who claim to believe in free enterprise so blindly support any government monopoly.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 1990's, Adventure, America, Current Issues, Gambling, Government, Human Behavior, Internet, Lottery, New Mexico

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

Quid Pro Quo Chainsaw-wise

Posted on May 21, 2012 by | 8 comments

The old Poulan chainsaw’s always done me a good job of work until the priming bubble burst:  For Want of a Nail – Something Worth Knowing Chainsaw-wise.  I eventually found a replacement at a place a few miles out Highway 27, midway to Center Point.  Double M Equipment Service.

I installed the primer bulb, but no joy.  It wasn’t sucking gas.  I pulled things apart enough to see the fuel line had become brittle and a piece of it was broken off inside the gas tank.   The whole thing appeared to be iffy, and I honestly didn’t want to spend any of my frustrations messing with it.  I need those frustrations for other things.

So I decided to put that saw into a place where they did that sort of thing, let them do it.  Never put a chainsaw in a shop before, but it’s the experience I’m after this lifetime.  I ain’t in this for the money.

So I went back to Double M Equipment Service, midway to Center Point on Highway 27, spang walked in and whistled to myself until the lady looked up from something important she was doing.  [Fans, Compromises and Drowning in Over-My-Head Math].

I could tell right away I was imposing on her, but I explained about my saw and she handed me a piece of paper for me to write it down, which I considered prudent.  She handed me a tag with a number on it.  “Be sure you put your phone number on there.  I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

I couldn’t remember my phone number, so I wrote down what might, but probably wasn’t Gale’s number.

“How long you reckon it’s going to be?  I only get into town every couple of weeks.  I’ll just swing by and check.”

“No.  It’s running two-and-a-half weeks, average.  I’ll call you as soon as it’s ready.”

“I’m a hard man to get on the phone.  I’ll just call or stop by next time I’m in town.”

“No.  I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

This friendly lady was Lisa, according to the business card.  Mark and Lisa, it said.  Double M Equipment Service.  Lisa.

Three weeks later I stopped in, asked about it and Lisa advised me it wasn’t ready yet, but she’d call when it was.  “Eh?”  My hand behind my ear.  “I’m sort of hard of hearing.  Can’t hear the phone ring.”

Two weeks later I stopped by again.  This time it wasn’t ready, but it was next on the list, friendly Lisa explained.  Next week it wasn’t ready again, she didn’t know why. 

Heck, maybe I’m getting the time passage mixed up.  It went in around April 17.  At least that’s when I mentioned it on the blog post.

Anyway, after X number of trips by there and X number of weeks without a chainsaw, I stopped in and friendly Lisa said it was ready.  $65 US.  Called Mark from the back and he brought it up.  “I replaced that gas cap for you so you don’t have to take it off with a wrench anymore.”

The cap’s slotted so’s a screwdriver can be fitted in perpendicular for taking it off.  Never had a problem with it.  Guess Mark never noticed that feature.

Anyway, I got the saw home, found it still doesn’t prime, but if a person pulls the recoil starter long enough mostly it will eventually start.  Runs a few minutes, long enough to cut down a cedar as thick as your bicep before it runs dry of gas.  At which time a person does the whole process again.

$65 US.  Double M Equipment Service, Highway 27 E & Laurel Way, Kerrville, Texas.  Mark and Lisa.

Tell ’em I said hello.

But I’ve digressed.

What I wanted to tell you about in this post is that when I was picking up that chainsaw I asked Lisa whether there was a good cafe anywhere nearby.  She told me about a good hamburger joint just beyond the crossroads in Center Point.

Good place, decent price.  Middling better than average hamburger.

I’m obliged knowing about it.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2012, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Relationships, Texas, White Trash Repairs

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

A Matter of Aesthetic Perspectives

Posted on May 19, 2012 by | 5 comments

In town the other day I stopped into the Autozone store for a roll of electrical tape, nosed around a bit and found some titanium drill bits I think might be an improvement over the simulated drill bits I have around here.

Paid my money and went out the front door into the heat.  Sitting beside Little Red was a shiny 20 year old sedan with tinted windows rolled up, engine running, making the damnedest racket I’ve ever heard an automobile make.  The noise could have been heard across the street and the car almost seemed to be shaking with each new sound.  I stared at it a moment trying to figure out what could be wrong with it, what was happening to it.

“That car’s got a MAJOR problem,” thinks I.  “I’ll bet the owner’s going to love coming back out here and finding a pile of auto parts instead of what he rode in on.”

I perused the distance between it and Little Red to consider whether I dared go back inside to warn someone, or needed to get further from it.  Decided to take the chance and stepped back inside.

A line of people were at the cash register waiting to pay and the clerk was ringing someone up.  I interrupted him and he looked up.  “That car out there sounds like it’s about to explode!”  I gestured behind me, still looking at him.

Three people backward in line a guy who looked as though he just got out of prison, muscle shirt with a lot of muscles to go with it scowled at me and took half-a-step out of line.  “No.  That’s my music.”  Questioning, tentative look, brink-of-threatening, deciding, considering.

“Oh.  Okay.”

I did an about face and moved outside sharply.  Stared and listened to the car again, trying to squeeze the concept of music into the equation.  I couldn’t pull it off.  Shook my head and got in Little Red feeling slightly foolish.

It’s what I get for poking my nose into someone else’s business, I reckons.

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 2012, Survival

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

No Limit to Benevolence

Posted on May 16, 2012 by | 11 comments

I’d just settled in for my afternoon nap when the phone rang.  Sheeze!

Radio announcer voice explained he was Dan Somebody-or-Other with the Police Benevolent Association fund raising.

“This number’s on the no-call list.  It’s illegal for you to call here.  Same as if you’re giving me a ticket for five miles over the speed limit.”

“Uh…”

“I paid a $35 fine for a burned-out license-tag bulb last time I had any dealings with your kind.  Think of that as my contribution.”

Spang hung up on me just when I was getting warmed up to ask to see his license and proof of insurance.

Meanwhile, went up atop the hill with my spyglass.  Counted 14 buzzards circling around the ranch house for the 4000-plus acre ranch half-a-mile to the north.  Widow lives there alone, but maybe she had grandkids visiting killed something last night.  The buzzards are swooping but not landing, maybe skittish because it’s so close to the house and barn.

No buzzards circling over toward Gale’s, the new neighbor’s place, or the CopShop Party Hunting Cabin.  Only other buzzards swooping are probably checking out a coon that was on the front porch a couple of nights ago, tore half-an-ear  off the invader cat.  I shot it through the window screen during a pause in the action and it flopped some, dropped a lot of blood on the porch.

But by the time I got my shoes on and went outdoors it was gone.  Looked around all over from hell-to-breakfast for it next day, but couldn’t locate it.

Buzzards think it’s under a clump of dead cedar 100 yards from the cabin.   Glad it didn’t die on the porch and dump all those fleas for the cats.

Built a humongous rock and brush dam I’m hoping will prove to function as though a beaver built it.  I’m a firm believer the only reason a beaver dam holds water is because nobody ever told it science don’t allow beaver dams to hold water.

Old Jules

11 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Country Life, Government, Human Behavior, Outdoors, Police, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas

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

Nocturnal Target Practice? Poachers? Or Just Shooting a Prowler?

Posted on May 16, 2012 by | 3 comments

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

1:55 am I must have been on the verge of awakening anyway.  Someone fired off six rounds from what might have been a .22 magnum rimfire pistol, rapid, but somewhat spaced.  Then a pause, maybe to reload, then a single shot.  Close enough and loud enough to get one of the roosters crowing and me considering the matter.

Then, 2:15 am, ten, maybe 13 rapid fire shots from a large-bore autoloading pistol.  Afterward, silence.

It’s none of my affair, but I’ll confess to lying there awake pondering it all.  Doesn’t make any sense at all.  That first six shots sounded aimed, maybe someone shooting a coon, hitting, but not getting a killing shot.  Reloading, issuing a coup d’grace. 

Okay.  But what about the second set of shots, thinks I.  Something didn’t die, or run away?  Someone crawling around amongst the ticks and rattlers looking for a target to shoot back at?

What the hell?

I don’t mean to be nit-picky and overly critical, but I’m thinking it might have been poachers who didn’t have a clue. 

Dammit, that isn’t the way you road-hunt deer.  You use a .22, spot it between the fences, drop it with one shot, get it into the trunk or back of the truck and get out of Dodge.  And you don’t road-hunt on a road where there’s only one way out [back the way you came], such as this one.

That’s all assuming it’s outsiders.  Anyone living around here hungry for deer meat would just knock one on the head with a hammer daytimes when they’re trying to run them out of the front yard.

Okay, poachers road-hunting seem unlikely.

On the other hand, those cops from Beaumont who rent the lease half-mile southeast of here were up there a few days ago.  Maybe they just got noisy-drunk again and had a firefight over one of their lady friends who sometimes squeal and go shrill after midnight.  That might make sense.

Or maybe the new neighbor was just trying out his night-vision on something moved in the bushes and the dog barked.

Hell, I don’t know.  Ain’t my affair.  I’ll keep an eye open for the vultures circling, anyway.

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in Adventure, America, Country Life, Human Behavior, Police, Texas

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

About Trust and Knowing Other Humans

Posted on May 15, 2012 by | 5 comments

Originally posted on another blog Tuesday, October 24, 2006 

Maybe this is all bull, but it’s the most painless way I’ve ever found to view reality and my human co-conspirators here in this lifetime.  Riding the mudball around the star and watching the two-legged critters wade around the muck beside me hasn’t caused me to admire us as a species.

As for knowing other humans, we mostly don’t allow ourselves to ‘know’ anyone. Instead, we construct them as we wish them to be, assign a set of behaviors required of them.  Often the people we’re trying to hammer into our mold haven’t  agreed to try to satisfy these requirements.  Still, we count it a violation of ‘trust’ if they don’t perform according to the rules we created.

But, even if they told us they agreed to be what we wished them to be, (and they might have meant it when they did it) obeying contracts of that sort just aren’t part of the usual human machinery. The flesh is weak and time and circumstance erode the best of intentions.

Trusting human beings based on unrealistic contracts probably leads to more heartache than simply abandoning the concept of ‘trust’ and the demands that go with it, and adopting a consistent readiness to forgive and continue loving them. (With no joint checking accounts or shared credit cards).

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 2000's, Adventure, Communication, Human Behavior

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

Dumping Representative Democracy

Posted on May 13, 2012 by | 7 comments

The cascading failure of representative democracy in the US has a lot of causes.  Those involve all manner of shell games played by professional politicians, political parties, incumbents, payoffs, power blocks, extortions, bribes, and bird-nests on the ground.  Doesn’t matter whether it’s local, state government, national government or some district or other.  It’s always the same names, the same non-working solutions, the same broken promises, the same background names everyone recognizes buying them off.

So how’s a country going to break itself free of all the ne’er-do-wells hanging around over Power Lunches, back rooms, limousines, and board rooms thinking up new ways to get rich?

The answer is actually fairly obvious and simple.  Opening the system up, letting it air out.  Castrating the tradition of pork barrelling over the falls of disaster by a transfusion of new, uncorrupted [yet] blood and single-term tenure in office.

You want to be king?  Buy a ticket and take your chances.  Want to be a senator or congressman and get rich fast?  Buy as many tickets as you want.  Sheriff?  Mayor?  State Governor?  Same deal.

Think how refreshing it would be to have some waitress with things sticking out of her lips, nostrils, belly button for your president instead of some sleezeball never did anything in his life except improve his lying skills.  A US Senator who only last week lived down in a trailer park trying to figure out how to keep his truck from being repossessed.  A governor who just last week was a librarian, clerk in a toy store, selling lawn mowers, renting out excavating equipment, building houses, working some-way-or-other.  Scrambling, trying to get by.

There’s a long tradition of picking juries by lottery.  And jury-duty’s one hell of a lot more important than hanging around Washington D.C. lying, stealing, and thinking up new strait-jackets for the citizenry to wear.

It ain’t going to happen, of course.  If it did I’d personally be careful not to buy a ticket.  But I’d be tickled pea-green to see the snake shed its skin and grow a new one.  Might actually buy a ticket and give it to some guy hanging out in the parking lot down at the convenience store.

The office holders mightn’t be better than the ones up there now, but they’d be fresh and it would spread the wealth around.

Old Jules

7 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Government, Politics

Tagged , , , , ,

900 Pound Gorillas, Kidney Stones and Dying Texas Towns

Posted on May 9, 2012 by | 4 comments

I talked to Kay on the phone last night.  Gale’s doing a lot better.  His marble-sized kidney-stone is still in there, but they installed some kind of bypass tube until they can identify what it’s made of, then break it up or do something else with it.  His fever’s down and though he’s still in ICU, looks as though this won’t be his excuse for exiting the vehicle.

Marble-sized kidney stones ought to be worth something, considering the trouble a person goes to in the growing of them.  The only one I ever had was only the size of a grassburr, but it was worth every cent I paid for it, plus some boot.  In Peace Corps training I’d passed some blood and the medico told me it was probably a kidney stone, so I thought I knew about them, but I didn’t.  If that Hawaii thing was a kidney stone I must have been living right.

This one came on suddenly, sometime in the mid-1970s, and for a few hours it got so the nearest thing to a painless position was upside down against the wall, bent at the neck, torso, feet and legs held up by the wall.

I decided I was dying fast and agreed to allow my ex-wife to haul me to Scott and White Hospital, 30 minutes away, to die there.  Someone in the emergency room suggested it might be a kidney stone and I emphatically declared it wasn’t.  “I’ve had a kidney stone.  This isn’t a kidney stone.   This is a grapefruit-sized tumor!”

They took me at my word and pursued other avenues for several hours while I demanded they check me in and begin cutting out that tumor.  Around midnight I began telling my wife I’d be dead in just a little while, “You’ve been a blessing in my life, Babe.  I’m sorry to leave you like this.”

But they finally dyed my bloodstream and proved to me it was a kidney stone.  Gave me a shot of morphine and I went around the ER shaking hands, thanking everyone, congratulating them on being genius-quality practicioners of medicine.  They assured me the morphine would wear off and offered the hope I’d pass the stone before it did.

But I’ve digressed.  Get a person telling about a kidney stone and he’ll tell it as long as you’ll listen.  Giardia and kidney stones have that in common, though giardia might be worse in the long haul.  Getting the Egyptian Ducksquirts and abdominal cramping for six months is probably memorable.  Then there’s shingles, which I could tell you about, but won’t.  But all those qualify as 900 pound gorillas, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.  Mostly people survive them.

Yeah, I digressed again.  I began this post to tell you about Junction, Texas.  The County Seat.  Gale and I went over there the day his world took the plunge into the planet-kidney-stone, so’s he could submit his application for the Agricultural Tax Whatchallit.

I was going to tell you how a mile of main street had half a dozen cars parked along it, how a few businesses are still struggling to survive.  How they have a lot of thrift stores, but the prices are too high.  How the town’s got a huge park on the river I’d like to fish in sometime.

But I won’t.  To hell with it.  I’ll tell you some other time.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2012, Senior Citizens, Texas

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

Do We Have a Plethora Yet?

Posted on May 8, 2012 by | 7 comments

A plethora, say, of pinatas?

Jefe: I have put many beautiful pinatas in the storeroom, each of them filled with little suprises.
El Guapo: Many pinatas?
Jefe: Oh yes, many!
El Guapo: Would you say I have a plethora of pinatas?
Jefe: A what?
El Guapo: A “plethora”.
Jefe: Oh yes, you have a plethora.
El Guapo: Jefe, what is a plethora?
Jefe: Why, El Guapo?
El Guapo: Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has no idea* what it means to have a plethora.
Jefe: Forgive me, El Guapo. I know that I, Jefe, do not have your superior intellect and education. But could it be that once again, you are angry at something else, and are looking to take it out on me? 

Three Amigos – circa 1980s

 

Mindless outdoors work gives me a lot of time for my thoughts to ramble into unexpected places.  Theyve been doing that a lot lately. 

I’ve found myself pondering how a governed population can escape resp0nsibility for the activities of the government they put up with.  No matter how oppressive that government might be, no matter how inclined the members of that government are to ignore the wishes of the governed [or responsibility for the consequences of their decisions as fragments of the governing body].

If any of us gave a damn about karma we’d probably be concerned.  Everywhere on this planet human beings are allowing themselves to be governed.  Tacitly approving and being a part of what those governments do.  The bedrock fact is there… those governments couldn’t do what they do without the consent, at one level or another, of the populations giving them support. 

Nanking, say, couldn’t have been raped by Japanese if some substantial piece of the Japanese population hadn’t actively or tacitly participated.  The gulags in the USSR, the NAZI horrors, even the killing fields in Cambodia weren’t just a government job of work.  The insane, lazy, entrepreneural capitulation of US education, industry, economic solvency, labor and energy leading to where we are now didn’t happen because of single piece of government idiocy, corporate greed,  educator incompetence, Chief Executive dynastic aspirations.

Those pinatas hanging in the pic at the top came to be there because the citizenry of the US snort coke and toke marijuana through one breath and pretend they don’t through the next.  And they’re going to remain silent and pay for more penal institutions so long as the folks filling up the prisons for doing it have enough pigment to their skins to keep them out of the equation.

The prohibition against their behavior runs the price of it high enough so’s thousands, millions of people world-wide who are blessed with fewer alternatives find themselves involved in one of the processes.  It offers a legion of lawyers a product cycling through a system of human cages to enrich themselves.  It provides a river of money to fund so many layers of copshops nobody can keep track of them. 

But the bottom line is that it ain’t the government, the copshops, the brotherhood of  judges, lawyers, jailers and private prison corporations doing it.

Fact is, it’s humble us.  The people who sit on juries. 

This entire damned selectively-enriching, otherwise-bankrupting, oligarchy-growing pretended attempt to control the behavior of adults in their private lives, crimes without victims, can’t happen without a dozen citizens on every jury agreeing to help it continue.  Those juries, soberly listening to the somber prosecutors, the judges, are pronouncing death penalties every time they sell their souls to an abstraction.

Those people hanging from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo were convicted and sentenced by US jury members who allowed themselves to believe they were just sending some black guy off to the slammer to get himself raped by his fellow felons for possessing a controlled substance.

Jefe: Forgive me, El Guapo. I know that I, Jefe, do not have your superior intellect and education. But could it be that once again, you are angry at something else, and are looking to take it out on me? 

Maybe Jefe was onto something bigger than the knew.

Old Jules

7 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Government, Police, Surveillance, Survival, War on Drugs

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,