Tag Archives: thoughts

Disambiguating Gratitude

Posted on November 24, 2014 by | 7 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

I’m sure all of you are preoccupied, sneaking around every waking moment putting together all the things you’re thankful for in your lives so’s to not forget anything come Thursday.  I don’t want to interrupt that, but I’d just like to throw in a suggestion:

Try to keep it simple.  Try retain your sense of taste and perspective while you’re acknowledging all the things you’re grateful for.  Sure, you’re grateful for not being downrange of any presidential war of the moment, naturally you’re glad you’re not a Palestinian and the neighbors aren’t likely to bomb your home, set fire to the nearest hospital, nor come kick you out of the house so’s good Baptists can move in.  Of course you are.

But you don’t have to say all that.

Truth is you’re almost certainly dwelling on how damned lucky you are to have legitimate citizenship in this country because it took in the destitute downtrodden souls including your ancestors without asking a lot of questions instead of patting them on the back and sending them off to starve in the place they escaped from.

And naturally you’re thanking your lucky stars the multi-national corporations haven’t sent your particular job to some third-world cesspool where people work for a nickle a week.  Probably because you’re a cop or other government worker and they haven’t figured out how to outsource the scowling clerks doing their fingernails and talking on phones down at Department of Motor Vehicles to Chinamen.

All I’m trying to say is keep it simple this Thanksgiving.  Be glad nobody at the table is being held in a US penal institution at the moment getting anally raped by other Thanksgivers.  Be glad you’ve got a motor vehicle in the driveway you’ve never produced enough of anything during any decade of your life worth the sticker price of it.  Be thankful you’ve got at least another year of life ahead before all that Japanese radiation forces you to wonder whether all those nuclear power plants  were all that great an idea.

Maybe it’s a good time to really bundle up on Thanksgiving:  “I’m grateful for everything that’s ever happened to me in this lifetime.  I’m grateful for everything happening right this moment.  And I’m grateful for everything that is going to happen to me from now until I croak.”

That way you’ll have plenty of time to sort out the specifics without boring yourselves to tears.

Old Jules

7 Comments

Posted in America

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Prioritizing insignificance

Posted on January 21, 2014 by | 27 comments

clownpic

Hi readers:

Those of you who’ve read through this long series of anecdotes will recognize that my life’s been spent in a forest of insignificance incapable of being recognized as such except by hindsight.   To qualify for the insignificance merit badge each item running for office had to be at least a week in the past.

Lately that’s changed.  I’ve got a 1950s Africa movie scene dust cloud of stampeding herds, pods, prides, coveys, flocks, and occasional individual insignificances coming at me out of the future, stirring up all manner of noise and dirt right here in my normally significant present.  Even when they drift downstream into the past they keep zigzagging around trying to fight their way back uphill to make nuisances of themselves in my today mode.

Fact is I’ve got another reincarnation coming into the picture, as well, and though it’s probably insignificant, I need to tip my hat to it various ways.  Just so it doesn’t get pissed off and decide I need to pick up on past themes earlier reincarnations.  If I’ve got to bow and scrape a bit it’s worth it.

So I’m going to take some time away from this blog.  Spend my time sorting through whatever I can convince myself is more significant than something else over the next period of time.

Those of you who’ve been frequent visitors, I appreciate you.  Those who haven’t, I appreciate you, also.

I’ll send you no more omphaloskepsis unless something different happens.

Old Jules

27 Comments

Posted in Human Behavior

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Bummer if that thing went off (from the drafts)

Posted on January 9, 2014 by | 4 comments
Enjoying a day out after the hospital stay last week.

Enjoying a day out after the hospital stay last week.

Ever noticed how many people hang around discussion boards of every description watching for things they can tell other people NEVER to do?

NEVER play with matches! NEVER ride a bicycle with no brakes! NEVER point an acetylene torch at your face when you light it! NEVER try to get inside a tree shredder while it’s running!

I think there must be something about typing a command about never that feels validating, self-affirming. Telling people what they’ll either have better sense than to do anyway, or who will pay no attention and will do it anyway.

And the fact is, it could as easily be said in ways people might listen to because it wasn’t so offensive and presumptuously downtalking. How about, “Sure would be a big bummer for a person to get his hair caught in that fanbelt.” Something along those lines.

About the only response I can think of appropriate to the NEVER command is “NEVER say NEVER!”

Old Jules
====================================================
Hi folks, Jeanne here.  That was from the unpublished drafts files…although it’s still possible that it was published and I just didn’t find it. So if it sounds familiar, let me know and I’ll be more careful pulling things out this way. There are 945 published posts on this blog, so I suppose you could just hit “random” and find something entertaining.

Fact is, Old Jules has an unstable phone line right now and can’t keep a connection long enough for the internet. It’s difficult to talk to him for more than a few minutes, although the breaks in the connection get fairly predictable. There’s a lot of repeating and frustration involved with a five minute conversation. But he did approve my putting up this old draft and an update.

Yes, but how is he, you ask.  Well…he’s not in the hospital. He sounds real good.  He’s got almost zero energy.  Drinking Caisse’s tea. Blood oxygen level normal. Blood pressure fluctuating. Reading a lot, generally staying warm and fed. Trying not to get dehydrated or winded. Although he’s isolated, Gale and his neighbor check on him from time to time and some others of us call him frequently and freak out (me)  if for some reason he doesn’t answer the phone (usually it’s on the charger).
I suspect it was pneumonia that caused things to deteriorate to the point where he went to the hospital. While treating him for that, they found other stuff to alert him about, and he’s tackling those in order of importance as he sees it.
A couple of us are standing by to take care of the cats if he decides to, or needs to, go back in for the rest of the recommended testing. Gale is out of town on a fairly frequent basis, so we are trying to make sure some satisfactory solution is found for them. I would just drive down there and get them, but 800 miles doesn’t allow for him to get them back easily when things settle down, so that’s not the first choice.
So basically, he’s resting a lot and trying to get his energy back, and I’m preoccupied with keeping tabs on him and passing on updates as needed.
When I can keep my head on straight, I’ll see if I can’t pull some posts out of the drafts from time to time, but I think my own blog is on hiatus for now.
Thanks, C.P., for sending the photo from last week.
And thanks again, everyone,  for all your kind thoughts.
Jeanne

4 Comments

Posted in Adventure

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Shooting 50,000 unsolicited words at the Universe

Posted on October 30, 2013 by | 16 comments

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

Jeanne tells me November’s going to have several thousand people grinding out first drafts of immortal prose again.  Poor old Universe will be ducking and dodging new characters, events, plots, subplots, trying to keep track of what’s really happening, and what someone dredged up from the imagination and stuffed into 50,000 words packed into the month of November.

I’ve wondered about this phenomenon for a longish time, several years, and honestly can’t quite figure it.  Probably tens of thousands of November novels written in past years nobody but the authors ever laid an eye to all the way through.  Pages, electrons on the screen, characters floating around in the ether wondering what the hell happened, why their pent-up events just ground to a halt.

All I can figure is those people doing that are trying to shoot down the Universe and know it’s going to take a lot of ammunition.

If a person were looking for a worthy project that would be less likely to damage the Universe he might consider taking the JRR Tolkein Lord of Rings trilogy and working it up into a second draft, which wossname, Tolkein failed to do.  At least not the part about say, cutting about 2/3 of the extraneous immortal prose, working it around so it’s tight, a pleasure on the tongue of the Universe, rather than just something out of some fast food joint.

Maybe someone everyone does what he says will think of this sometime and tell them they ought to do that instead of picking out targets of opportunity trying to shoot down the Universe.

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Books, Writing

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

Old Sol: You’ve got’em by the shorthairs

Posted on September 14, 2013 by | 3 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

Old Sol: You Chosen People don’t need any international agreements anymore. All that World Trade and Free Trade crap can go down the tubes. Along with NATO, and all those Asian and Pacific treaties. You won’t need NAFTA anymore because all of North America will be Chosen People.

Me: Isn’t that a bit extreme?

Old Sol: Only because you didn’t know you were ALL Chosen People in the United States. You thought just some people were Chosen People. Once the word gets around everyone’s going to want to be Chosen People. All those Mexicans, Guatemalans, you name it, they’re going to be gnawing at the doorstep. Begging to be let in. Oil. Oil. Oil. $20,000 per head per year for all Chosen People.

Me: What about the Four Civilized Nations on Earth you mentioned earlier? Australia, New Zealand and Canada?

Old Sol: No problemo. Canada’s already as good as in. That border’s just a damned nuisance to them. And Australia and New Zealand won’t have much choice. If they don’t join up to be Chosen People they’re going to be chock-full of Asians. It’s bad enough already.

Me: And Israel gets to be Chosen People again when they move to Nicaragua?

Old Sol: Yeah! Isn’t that exciting?

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in Adventure

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

Trickle-down economics and pornography

Posted on September 11, 2013 by | 1 comment

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

When Ronald Reagan invented trickle-down economics and sold it to US lawmakers it sounded like one-heluva good idea to the people who know most about money by having a lot of it. The idea was that if people who have more than a million dollars didn’t pay as much in taxes the extra money they had would trickle down their legs and end up in the pockets of store clerks, hamburger flippers, ditch diggers, truck drivers, and guys who spend their days in slaughter-houses whacking hogs on the forehead with sledge-hammers to keep hams flowing into the grocery stores.

The problem was that all those rich people spent the extra money they got with tax breaks watching pornography. Vanessa Del Rio, Annette Haven, Lisa Deleeau and Marilyn Chambers did indeed find themselves plenty of work, though. Johnny Wad Holmes and Ron Jeremy got a fine boost from trickle-down economics.

But that was back before the Internet. Once Donald Trump, wossname, the Microsoft guy, and wossname #2, the AOL married to Jane Fonda guy, had worn themselves out watching porn they naturally just went back to trying to figure out how it could make them some more money. Probably a lot of that went into recruiting new porn stars and putting their work up where it could make them some more tax breaks.

Today there are a million porn sites on the Internet, I read somewhere. Which must mean there are what? 50? 60 million? people out there working to keep the porn industry going, moaning, grunting and sweating all day long taking advantage of trickle down economics.

In fact, I’m betting old Bill Clinton’s probably spending his idle days when Hillary’s busy checking out the economics of it. He was too young when the Kennedy’s were passing Marilyn Monroe around between them, but Vanessa Del Rio might still be alive.

Old Jules

1 Comment

Posted in Adventure

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

Happy days are here again

Posted on September 10, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by.

The Inkspots are singing, “I don’t want to set the world on fire” on the player this morning. Those high old times when the US and the Rooskies were staunch allies in the worldwide struggle against the forces of darkness appear to be seeping into world events.

This guy, Arnold Swartzneigger Putin has pulled Br’er Rabbit out of the Briar Patch. “A small step for a man, a giant step for mankind,” someone observed. Taking a page from a presidential debate during the 1990s, the US President complimented Putin. “You are not Joseph Stalin. I knew Joseph Stalin. You are not Joseph Stalin.”

Putin preened and flexed his biceps in response and provided the escape route out of the briar patch. Henceforth, Russia will take care of the problems on its doorstep, or ignore them. This will allow the US to withdraw from Iraq, Afghanistan and the various other pest holes in the area and tend its own affairs. Move into the 21st Century, or at least into the last decade of the 20th Century, where the Middle East ain’t our problem.

“You have more oil now than any place on the planet,” Putin quipped to the President. “You don’t have to be stuck back here in the middle ages anymore. These people are all just semites. Let them destroy themselves. They’re better at it than we ever were.”

Well, whatever comes of all that, he isn’t Joseph Stalin and this guy in the White House doesn’t have to be John Kennedy.

Old Jules

Leave a comment

Posted in Adventure

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

Moving the White House and Congress to Disneyland – A serious proposal

Posted on August 31, 2013 by | 8 comments

Hi readers.

Representative democracy isn’t working and pretty well everyone knows it.  Potential voters aren’t interestedand most don’t even recognize the costumes candidates wear to disguise themselves.  Citizens have learned from hard experience that they can vote for Snuffy Smith, L’il Abner or Joe Palooka and they still end up with Daddy Warbucks.

Moving the seat of the US government to Disneylandwould go a long way toward correcting that.  Everyone would know the candidates, known them all their lives.   A vote for Mickey Mouse or Goofy wouldn’t get you Scrooge McDuck in the White House.  Everyone is honest in Disneyland, and you get what you pay for.  Drucilla doesn’t get any glass slippers, Chittychittybangbang doesn’t have an atomic warhead and the Lady and the Tramp are all right there where everyone can see the fire hydrants.

The other advantage is that the Powerball Lottery HQ is right there in Orlando, close enough to move the IRS in there with them and do something about how the government can raise money on a more even-handed basis.  They could have billion dollar jackpots and just end their foreign wars a day earlier to pay off the winners.  Hell, everyone would be buying tickets.  And they wouldn’t gripe about doing it.

They could have a drawing every day giving away a billion dollars, all the while cutting off one day in the distant future when they’d end the wars overseas, bring the troops home.  It would assure that someday the past would catch up with the future and voila!  No more foreign military adventures!

Mary Poppins would make one hell of a lot better president than any we’ve had since wossname, Washington.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in America, Animals, Gambling, Government, Human Behavior, Lottery

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Saved by the British? Wow!

Posted on August 30, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming by.

My friend Rich explained on the phone last night that this guy in the White House had his heart set on embarking on a new military adventure.  Wants to bomb the bejesus out of Syria, of all places.  Sounds as though he wants to take a page out of the Bush book and use the second-cousin of WMD to justify it.

But at least the Brits have some questions in their minds left over from the last time they believed a lying US president and got themselves into a stewpot.  Plus, no doubt the ‘What’s in if for me?‘ part of the equation didn’t work out.

Evidently Israel, who probably provided the chemical weapons to the party who used them, and the French are just about the only people in the world with any enthusiasm forselective humanitarianism. 

The Chinese say, “Hey, let’s have a closer look at all this crap and find out whether anyone’s telling the truth about any part of it before we jump in chasing imaginary WMDs.”   Likely the Chinese are well aware of the propensity of US presidents for stretching the truth and trotting off into military interventions, false flag terrorism, and just lying for the sake of lying.  And no doubt they’ve got a fair idea who is hiding next door blowing into the coals of “Let’s you and him fight.”  Probably figuring they might be able to come out of it with a few inadvertent more miles of territory belonging to someone else.

Sheeze.  Sounds as though for once a presidential war might be avoided, and that the Brits might be a crucial part of the reason.

Wonders never cease.  Maybe if everyone but the French can keep their testosteronies under control, and if the Israeli  Security people can’t find an Archduke Ferdinand to off,  WWI can be prevented this time around.

Old Jules

Tags:  Syria, Israel, presidential war, US government, britain, france, WMD, Bush, false flag, chemical weapons, humanitarian

Leave a comment

Posted in 2013, America, Government, History, Politics, US Army

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

The redeeming virtues of right wing death squads

Posted on August 29, 2013 by | 9 comments

An open letter to President Wossname, the guy in the White House

Backward South American countries gave right-wing death squads a bad name during the last half of the 20th Century. Naturally nobody wanted to be identified with anything backward Mexicans in Chile or Argentina did, so for a while the United States People In Power tried to find lower profile alternatives to accomplish the same goals.

But the truth is that throwing the baby out with the bathwater just narrows the options more than is required.

Henry Ford, the US mining industry, the US lumber industry, and during the Vietnam War, the US government all used right-wing death squads for the greater good of all. The industries would have had a lot more difficulties busting the unions if it hadn’t been for right-wing death squads. The US government couldn’t have killed off all the Black Panthers without them. The Vietnam War protests would have gone on and on ad infinitum if the Ohio National Guard’s right-wing death squad hadn’t opened up on those students at Ohio State and showed them what-for.

Bill Clinton and Janet Reno ran up a trial balloon at Waco, then again at Ruby Ridge in an attempt to restore the usefulness of right-wing death squads, clean up the image. But for reasons not fully understood, the practice was then dropped.

Hopefully this guy in there now will examine the benefits the US has reaped in the past through the use of right-wing death squads and see it’s time to bring it back for the greater good of all.

Right wing death squads aren’t a solution to every problem, as Bill and Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno demonstrated. But that only means they didn’t use the right tool for the right job.

Right-wing death squads worked admirably for Henry Ford and the mining and lumber industries. They worked great in South America, despite the bad press. And history proves they can work well again in the United States if properly applied.

Yours truly,

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in Adventure

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