Rip Snorter's Blog

 

Anonymous

Twenty miles from nowhere
On a desert autumn road
It caught my eye
Drove another mile
And turned around
To look again
And wonder

 

Mile Marker 20

Vieja rattles truck
Worn loose and wrinkled
Pickup and woman
Two alike
Too alike.

Youngest son of 20
Sullen, pockmarked
Central Avenue of Duke
Comes around to steal her change
And vanish.

Middle daughter
Just 20 miles away
Her man hates
No calls, no visits
No joy smile of grandson
Nothing

Man dead
These 20 years
Whiskey mind rocketed
Car rocketed
Life rocketed
Into concrete
Just over there.

Oldest son locked away
Seven years of twenty
In Las Lunas
Today she visits
Carton of smokes
And twenty bucks
Saved hard
To ease his gone.

Flash inside her head
Inside the years
Inside the cab
Brakes
Wheel wrenched right
Fingers locked white
Stalks circles
Three times around the truck
Eyes down
Sees nothing

Tin, tape, a marking pen
A steel post cry
To everything that wasn't.

MISSED

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright 2002, Jack Purcell

Tonight was a first.  The 53/50 high number combination has never hit before on MM, nor on PB. 

A problem?  Is there a way, using this method, to draw any assumptions about what numbers will hit on PB tomorrow night?  On MM next draw?

Here are the last few draws on MM and PB.  PB date in yellow, MM date in blue:

 

 

8/5/2005	3	5	48	50	53	4
8/3/2005	5	19	24	28	39	24
8/2/2005	17	22	39	50	52	46
7/30/2005	8	14	35	38	46	34
7/29/2005	4	16	23	25	40	22
7/27/2005	1	4	10	13	29	3

 

However, even though this high number combination has never hit before on MM or PB, a search of the histories using the handy-dandy Premium Membership tools reveals the combination isn't an entirely new one, though it's a distressingly unimaginative refrain:

 

FL

 May 11, 2005  04 05 09 17 19 30
 May 7, 2005  03 25 29 47 50 53
 May 4, 2005  10 19 22 33 34 44

 May 1, 2004  11 13 18 29 41 51
 Apr 28, 2004  09 21 22 25 50 53
 Apr 24, 2004  12 15 25 30 33 47

 Mar 15, 2003  01 11 22 30 47 53
 Mar 12, 2003  22 23 35 45 50 53
 Mar 8, 2003  05 06 08 22 51 53

 Mar 15, 2003  01 11 22 30 47 53
 Mar 12, 2003  22 23 35 45 50 53
 Mar 8, 2003  05 06 08 22 51 53

 Oct 3, 2001  14 20 27 37 45 50
 Sep 29, 2001  04 29 31 32 49 53
 Sep 26, 2001  06 18 31 38 50 53
 Sep 22, 2001  01 17 23 39 44 53
 Sep 19, 2001  09 25 27 38 43 52

 Nov 1, 2000  11 21 32 38 39 48
 Oct 28, 2000  08 24 47 48 50 53
 Oct 25, 2000  13 27 28 34 48 50

 Apr 15, 2000  10 17 20 29 42 47
 Apr 12, 2000  07 13 21 36 50 53
 Apr 8, 2000  01 07 15 22 32 43

NY Lotto

 Dec 17, 2003  06 18 30 34 35 56  39
 Dec 13, 2003  03 19 27 43 50 53  29
 Dec 10, 2003  01 02 26 33 40 41  16

 Dec 11, 2002  01 12 14 22 23 28  18
 Dec 7, 2002  01 09 11 48 50 53  24
 Dec 4, 2002  06 14 24 29 35 54  36

Illinois Lotto

 Feb 26, 1997  08 19 22 26 31 37
 Feb 22, 1997  19 28 30 50 51 53
 Feb 19, 1997  02 04 14 19 24 25

 Nov 18, 1995  02 29 31 32 34 39
 Nov 15, 1995  11 23 34 50 52 53
 Nov 11, 1995  01 05 24 25 35 49

 Sep 2, 1995  09 28 40 41 43 46
 Aug 30, 1995  03 31 34 35 50 53
 Aug 26, 1995  06 15 20 21 34 45

 May 10, 1995  12 22 24 27 32 53
 May 6, 1995  02 05 38 40 50 53
 May 3, 1995  16 28 42 43 44 46

Now, if you can't look at those past draw numbers from diverse lotteries for a couple of minutes, max, and draw a fine bead on several numbers that are almost certainly going to hit on the next PB draw, or on the MM draw following it,

YOU AREN'T HALF THE MAN (OR WOMAN) I BELIEVE YOU ARE.

Jack

I got a PM from a young man who'd been reading my blog and was astute enough to notice I've made a lot of mistakes in my life and didn't appear to have a corresponding level of grief and regret.  He asked me a number of personal questions regarding all that.  I answered most of his questions, but the PM reminded me of the following, which I wrote a few years ago.

 

Old Man and Young Man
On a Mountain-top

 

Old man and young man
Sit, gaze at far reaches
Of valley and desert
Spanning to horizon
 
“How’d I get to be this old?” 
Old man smiles, serene
“I wonder sometimes myself”
 
Young man: “I’m serious”
Old man sighs and leans
Against a rock.

“You’ve already 
Heard the parts about
Cheating, lying, and
Stealing all your life.
Those can shorten things
Considerable.
Could have mine.
 
Those are things you need to
Keep in moderation.”
 
Young man frowns.
“You’re joking.”
 
“No. Just being
Completely honest
For once.
But those are more
Likely just to ruin
Your life than
To end it.”

Tosses a flat rock
Into the void
Eyes follow
The long descent
“I never killed myself
When I wanted to.
Never threw myself
On my sword over
Defeats I can’t recall now.
Never flang myself
Off a cliff over scores of women
I no longer remember.”
 
Old man digs his pocket
Pats his other pockets
Looking for his pipe.
“I never gloated sufficiently
On my amazing successes
Over the efforts of others
(Those escape my mind
These days)
To make anyone want
To kill me enough to
Actually do it.”

Tamps the pipe
Frets with a match
 
“I was astute enough
To recognize early
When you bed
Another mans woman
She’ll eventually tell him.
She mightn’t say who,
But she’ll always say what
And if he’s smart
He’ll puzzle out who.
That’s a worthy thing
To keep in mind”
 
Pipe bowl sparked
Glowed, smoke
Curled around him

“I’ve always lived hard
Pushed the envelope
Hung it out over the edge.
I’d rather have died early
Than not done that

“But I always kept good tires
On whatever mechanical
Critter I was depending on
To get me back
Always kept the brakes
In good shape.  And
I was damned lucky.”

They sit silent
Watch the shadows
Crawl into arroyos
Far below

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright 2002, Jack Purcell

 

For some while I've been zipping around in the results histories trying to find a way around the high numbers frustrations that have resulted from the MM matrix change, and will soon be followed by PB.

I mentioned on earlier posts that I was also exploring the strange correspondence between the two highest numbers each draw and the historical mirrors whenever those high numbers happened previously.  Naturally, the MM matrix change created some difficulties on that score.

However, it can be overcome.

I probably wouldn't be posting this if I believed anyone but me in this universe is willing to believe these lotteries all behave similarly.  I feel completely safe that no one will go and look to see whether what I'm saying is actually fact.

Anyway, two ways of getting a bead on numbers sets that are in a process of historical repeats are, 1)  the high numbers, and 2)  numbers that repeat on either MM, or PB, or between the two.  (There are several others, as well)

For instance, here are the last three-each (six draws total) for MM and PB.  Yellow = PB, Blue = MM

8/3/2005	5	19	24	28	39	24
8/2/2005	17	22	39	50	52	46
7/30/2005	8	14	35	38	46	34
7/29/2005	4	16	23	25	40	22
7/27/2005	1	4	10	13	29	3
7/26/2005	1	10	18	29	55	8

 

Here are the most recent NY Lotto draws with 39-28 as the high numbers.  The numbers within the NY draws that are in color are the ones also found in the MMPB draws above:

NY 39-28 as highest numbers (last PB draw)
Jan 8, 2005	10	37	38	43	49	50	17
Jan 5, 2005	21	27	28	52	56	57	39
Jan 1, 2005	8	18	37	46	49	57	56
May 19, 2004	3	4	29	34	43	53	15
May 15, 2004	7	15	28	32	39	56	29
May 12, 2004	5	7	11	20	26	38	44

Here are the most recent NY Lotto draws with 39 repeated between MMPB as happened on the most recent MMPB draws:

NY 39 repeats
Apr 6, 2005	22	26	29	31	35	49	50
Apr 2, 2005	4	36	39	52	53	54	15
Mar 30, 2005	1	16	17	20	40	43	39
Mar 26, 2005	3	9	31	44	47	57	52
Apr 17, 2004	38	45	47	49	51	56	42
Apr 14, 2004	18	39	43	47	48	55	9
Apr 10, 2004	4	7	23	39	56	59	42
Apr 7, 2004	5	8	16	25	31	46	10
Feb 28, 2004	1	4	6	25	30	54	14
Feb 25, 2004	14	16	27	39	47	48	35
Feb 21, 2004	4	14	21	23	30	39	2
Feb 18, 2004	17	19	29	37	40	50	23

As you can see, every number within those three-each MM and PB draws is also found on the NY Lotto draws for those high numbers and 39 repeats.  Every number in those six draws except 13 and 24 is found within those NY Lotto draws with similar characteristics.

Conclusion:

You figure it out.

Jack

 

 

 

 

 

Orion's Phallusy

Orion yearned those Pleiades
Dragged 
In endless stellar chaste pursuit
Loved them as no mortal man
Ever loved a woman
Who ever caught one

Orion never had to gnaw off that starry arm
That held the club
To let her sleep
While he got out
The morning after

Orion never had to say,
"I'm going out for smokes
I'll be right back," at 3 am
When she said,
"I think I love you."

 

From Poems of the New Old West
Copyright 2002, Jack Purcell

 

Jack

 

 

 

It's happened to most of us, one time or another.  Losing our head over a little piece of tail.

Or just discovering we've lost our tail and it's a long way to the EXIT sign.

Uncertain, here, which feline pulled this off.

Jack

 

 

 

 

The man in the picture is Charlie Nelson.  My step-father, biological father to writer Bobby Jack Nelson. 

Charlie harbored a notion for a while that he might make me into a rodeo circuit bull rider, because, he said without a smile, it was a profession a man such as I was likely to become, could ‘fall back on’.

Charlie was a somber, taciturn, unimaginative man who’d left his two pre-school sons, Bobby Jack and Billy, with his aging parents to run around unsupervised all over that small town during the war years while Charlie was off doing the North African Campaign.  When he got back those boys didn’t quite understand who he was, and he didn’t show any signs of wanting them to know, so they continued to run loose.

By the time he married my mom, herself a divorced mother of three kids of her own, Bob was 11, or 12, and I was a toddler of 4 who thought Bob hung the moon.  A couple of years later, Bob ran away to California and was gone for six months.  When the cops brought him back and dropped him off at our house, Charlie was sitting in the front room trying to repair a space heater.  He looked up at Bob and said, “Hi,” and Bob said, “Hi Pop..If it’s okay I’d like to come back and live here and try to finish school.”

“Sure.  Probably a good idea.  I hope you do it.”  Charlie went back to working on the space heater.

Bob did, but he never forgave Charlie Nelson, and Charlie was a man who took a lot of forgiving.  Bob spent enough pages maligning the character of Charlie in Keepers, A Memoir, a book that made a middling smash during the late ‘90s, so that it doesn’t need a lot more from me, even though Bob did a lot of it with lies, which also weren’t needed.  The truth would have been enough, and it would have been a lot more intriguing.

When Charlie died in 1972, nobody knew how to find Bob to tell him about it. 

I’d spent a good many years trying to find ways and reasons to forgive Charlie for his shortcomings.  He took an impoverished mother of three kids, kept a roof over our heads, food on the table.

I forgave him all the beatings he used to give me because I had to admit, I earned most of them fair and square.  I had it all thought out that he was an unenlightened man, that beatings were just how things were done in those days.  I’d never thought about whether he was beating the other kids, just assumed he was, that it was part of the operating procedures.

I went a quarter-century without any contact from Bob, but during the mid-80s I saw him on television being interviewed about one of his books.  I chased him down and we began having lunch in Austin, occasionally.  One day over lunch at a restaurant Bob and I were discussing Charlie, him griping about the complete indifference, and I mentioned the beatings.

Bob stared at me in disbelief.  “Charlie never cared enough about anyone to give them a beating.”  I was shocked.  So shocked, I was, that when I next saw each of my sisters I asked them whether their memories of Charlie included a lot of beatings.  “No.  I don’t think he ever even gave me a spanking,” was the reply.  “I know he was awfully hard on you that way, but I didn’t get into much trouble.”

Suddenly, a decade-and-a-half after his death, all forgiven and forgotten, I found I had a new, burning hatred for Charlie Nelson of the sort that would have had me dancing on his grave if he hadn’t been cremated.  I had to begin all over with the forgiving, and this time it took a lot longer.  But I eventually managed to get it down to a mild, gut grinding indifference.

But, what I find most enigmatic about it all is that Bob never did.  At the age of 62 he was still seething enough to be gazing at his navel, submerged in self-pity for how hard he had it as a kid.  Enough so to write an entire book about it. 

Makes me feel grateful, writing this, that I got some attention, instead of being neglected.

I wrote this with Bob in mind after I read Keepers, A Memoir.  I didn't remember getting to be third to the bath water until Bob reminded me of it with a tone of lingering resentment many decades later.

 

The Price of Wealth

Hated Saturday nights;
Being third to
The bath-water
After Mom and Dad
But before the older kids
Felt poor;
Deprived.
He thought he was.
While down the road
His buddy, Joe Cordova
Didn.t have to feel so poor
Because the family
Didn.t have a tub.
Lucky Joe.

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright 2002, Jack Purcell

Being grateful can be a tough bull to ride.  Forgiveness might be even tougher.  But it beats hell out of the alternatives.  Things could be a lot worse.

Jack

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That little farm you see down there is the place where I spent a good many of my
formative years.  As you can see, we’d had a pretty good year for hay, which dates the
picture to 1949, or 1950, before the big drought hit.

Maybe I’ll write some more entries about that farm and some of the things that happened
there sometime, but today, the reason I’m posting this picture has to do with life and
some of the more unexpected things that come into it.

In the lower right, this side of the railroad, you see a warehouse… what you can’t see is
that there’s a giant farm machinery business there, outside the picture.

That family was probably one of the wealthiest in our relatively poor town.  Good, solid
folks, the father not one to tolerate the kind of snobbery in his offspring that prevailed
among the other financial upper-crust families there, where there were crystallized layers
of social strata it’s difficult to imagine existing anywhere in these times.

The ‘untouchables’ were the Mexicans, mostly farm laborers, who lived on the same side
of the tracks as I did, in a mishmash of adobes that began half a mile to the left of the
picture.  Next up were the farm kids, no matter how successful the farm.  Anglo farm kids
were better than Mexicans, but not nearly so good as any town dweller.

Next up were the poorer town folks, then the physicians, lawyers, business owners and
ENMU profs.  The stratosphere of a 1950s small town society.

But, I’ve digressed.  I wanted to tell you about the sons of the man who owned that
business in the picture.

I went away from that town for a lot of years, then revisited it and became reacquainted
with a lot of old friends and enemies.  As a result of that fairly weird experience, I
learned that one of those sons of the farm machinery tycoon was a banker in the town
where I was then living, which led to me looking him up for a chat.  His older brother,
Stephen, had been a boy I respected a lot and we’d been good friends at a distance,
allowing for the differences in our social strata.  I wanted to know what ever happened to
Stephen.

I’m shaking my head, once again, as I write this.

That fine young man got himself a good education, went into banking, was a rising star
until the mid-1980s.  Then he abandoned it all, vanished for a while from everyone who
cared about him.

A few years later, his brother tells me, they discovered he was living under a bridge,
living on the streets in Seattle.  He wasn’t asking for any help from any of his wealthy
family, wasn’t looking for a way back, wasn’t even willing to talk to anyone from his
previous life.

I’ve pondered Stephen a lot during the years since I learned what he’d done with his life. 
In some ways I think I understand, though I’m not sure.

My own life has been a long series of reversals in direction.  It’s meandered, cutting as
wide a swath of human experience as I was able to pack into it.  So, from that
perspective, I can gnaw at the edges of understanding Stephen’s behavior.

But I was a wild kid and I’ve always pushed the envelope, all my life.  Stephen was
‘tame’.

I’d like to see old Stephen again if he’s alive.  He’d be 63, 64 years old now and maybe
wiser than he was in the 1980s when something told him he’d had enough.  I’d like to sit
on the porch and talk with him a long time to come to know how he came to make his
choice to isolate himself, to impoverish himself.

I do my best not to think I know what other people should do with their lives.  But, in the case of Stephen, I know what I'd like this reality a lot better if he did, and the news got back to me that he'd done it.

Jack

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was the most recent of a long line of exchanges with an online friend, a man who's had some success skrying numbers on pick 3/4s.....  This is the guy I sent 12 numbers to that were all the right ones for that night's MM draw.... he bought one ticket.... been kicking himself every since.  Mostly he believes his life is a living hell out of habit, except when he reminds himself he’s blessed, which is only when I remind him to remind himself, thinks I.

Thought I’d share it with you blog readers.  I don't believe I've ever mentioned my brief life as a hermit on this blog.

Morning Pal:
 
I suppose you're right.  You live a complicated life.  It would be complicated, just with your interpersonal relationships, even if you didn't have a job that would be enough to satisfy most needs for complication.  Even if you didn't have a piece of real estate that's located in and part of a subtle war zone.  It's relatively easy to imagine how you'd have some difficulties focusing, doing the necessary relaxing and tuning out that's required for skrying numbers, or anything else.
 
A long time ago, when I had a complicated life, I used to wonder whether a stay in the sort of place where you work, an asylum, would do the trick as a means of getting me removed from the system of complications I'd built around myself to help make myself unhappy.  I concluded that it wouldn't.

 I also gave some thought to whether prison life would do it, but unless it was one of those kinds of Federal prisons all the Watergate folks went to, I don't think it could.
 
Thought about a Trappist monastary a bit, even.  That might do it.  I don't know, but it seemed so otherwise out of sinc with my nature that I never tried it.
 
But I had the advantage over most people, because I knew what I was missing.  When I got booted out of the Peace Corps in 1964, after a bit of time trying to complicate my life in Honolulu the way a person will, I was contacted by the US Army Reserve telling me they wanted to know where I was in case they wanted to reactivate me for Vietnam if they needed people with my particular MOS.  In those early days of 1965 nobody knew where all that was going and reactivating the reserves was considered a real possibility.
 
My support for US military adventures overseas went away entirely during my tour in the Far East.  I was gonna have nothing to do with Vietnam.  I decided I was going to spend the remainder of my life as a hermit living in the jungle on the big island..... a place called Wiamono Valley on the drainage of the Kohala range.... used to be a village in there but it was wiped out by the tidal wave in 1947 and nobody laid claim on it since.  Nobody in there but a blind mule and me.... for six weeks that mule had company.
 
That six weeks with nobody to talk to but a blind mule changed my whole life.  It was a pivotal moment for me, one of the greatest blessings of my stay in this reality this time around.  In addition to a book full of other benefits, it gave me a realization of what's possible for a human being, mind-wise, if he can succeed in either simplifying his life, or in (I didn't know then) distancing himself from the web of values, properties, interpersonal relationships and other tangle we do our best to mire ourselves in so we can't see or hear what we're trying to keep from seeing and hearing...... the voice of what's beneath.
 
I definitely understand what you're saying, my friend.  Hang in there.
 
Jack
 

 

For those of you who haven't heard, the soul futures market has collapsed because of over-production since my last blog entry.

I'm not doing any buying.

I got caught with a bloated inventory I bought when the prices were high.  So if you are in the market to buy, I can make you a price on any of several good, servicable souls, or make you a bulk deal on the whole kit and kaboodle that you can't afford to pass up.

I'll let you have it all, lock, stock and banana peel for a good fortune cookie number, or a paying scratcher.

I'm in such straits I've even had to swap my nice icons for a little red X inside an empty box.

Things have really gone to hell in a hand-basket.

Back atcha later,

Jack 

 

 

 

 

Rubber Monster Toys and Pork and Beans

You don't remember twisting
On the knobs though you might try
You don't remember turning up
The color and the contrast
So the only thing you see
Is black and shades of gray
But you did and it is

You'd remember
If you just look
In the mirror

The set is all arranged
You've gathered up the props
You've scribbled out a script
Got a force-field to protect you
Like the Starfish Enterprise

From escaping while you sneer
About the suckers and the fools
Who cannot see can't comprehend
The whole mad reality
Is useless and it's slipping
Down the drain
While you curse about the stupid
That surrounds you
As you sink

So you don't have to look
Into the mirror.

Bite the bullet eat the bullet
Live your life or end it
But get off the stinking fence

When your back's against the wall
And your abdomens distended
Filled with rubber monster toys
And pork and beans
If you can't stand the heat
Leave the kitchen

There's nothing in the rule-book 
Says you gotta quit your bitching
But it might help
It might help
When it comes to surviving
It's the little things sometimes
That just might help.

This rabble rousing nonsense is a
snare

Not a way to get away

The problems of those other fools
Aren't yours they aren't your business
 
Utopian dreams
Are a way to break the mirror
When what you need's a mirror
To escape

Turn out the lights
Turn around
Take a long deep breath
And cross the room
Close your eyes
Reach out
Feel the knobs
Turn them back
Half a turn
Have a beer
Take a leak

And while you're there
Take a long look in the mirror

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright 2002, Jack Purcell

 

 

 

The Gastronome

Intelligence and language;
Pathogenic curses
To obscure;
To conceal
What any ant would know;
His kilobyte of brain
Large enough
To discern
Beeswax from earwax.

From Poems of the New Old West
Copyright 2002, Jack Purcell

Ate the evening meal at the Thai place in Rio Rancho when I went down to buy my tickets.  At the end I got a fortune cookie.... had to do a double-take.  The numbers were all, save one, among the fourteen I had on my short list, had debated with myself whether to buy a wheel, or to just scatter them out on a few tickets.... scattered them.... 30 tickets total, plus the post-meal one after I recovered from the experience of seeing my numbers on a fortune cookie.

Jack

 

 

I have a lot of respect for missionaries, for people who burn with a faith that requires
them to attempt to share the joy of faith with others, even when their zeal is for a faith I
don’t subscribe to.  I’m glad whenever I see anyone consumed with recognition that
there’s more to life than the landscape, the sorrows, the trials, the baggage of human daily
pursuits.

I have even more respect for those gutsy Christian missionaries who took their zeal into
remote areas of the earth without regard for their own personal safety, even though that
respect doesn’t extend to ignoring the damage they’ve wrought on local religions and
cultures, the hate they’ve caused to be focused on their own religion, their own countries
of origin. 

We all make mistakes.

A few years ago I saw a motorcycle gang going down the highway, a typical gang in
dingy leathers, could have been any gang of outlaw bikers.  But the legend on their vests
was “BIKERS FOR CHRIST”.  I smiled to myself and saluted them in my mind.

Having said that, I’ll also say that I have a middling respect for the Christian faith, a lot
of respect for the Christian thinkers of history, almost no respect for modern Christian
doctrine, and a profound respect for the destruction brought about by Christian
evangelism throughout the past 2000 years.

I don’t want to learn about Christianity (or any other religion) from mindless parrots
knocking on my front door in an attempt to convert me to their way of thinking.  I don’t
want to be accosted by hare-brained Hari Krisnas and their bastardized On-The-Rebound-
From-Drug-Addiction-New-Faith when I’m trying to get into a public airport.  I don’t
want to be disturbed by the testimonials of some lunatic who claims to have a hot-line to
God when I’m sitting in my vehicle waiting for a red light to change and allow me to
escape.

I’m glad these people have faith.  I share their joy in that regard.  But I don’t want to hear
about it.

And I’d far rather not read about it when I’m browsing Lottery Post.

The (mostly unpaying) users (read, abusers) of this site who attempt to spread their
gospel on the threads by interjecting religious thread-drift strike me as an unnecessary
and unwanted distraction. 

It seems to me there’s a simple solution.  Most DBs include a button to allow any user to
click an ‘Ignore’ button beside a posters name and purge any posts by that person from
all future intrusions into the attention of the person clicking the button.

By that method the Lottery Post users who prefer to be spared from the religious zeal of
any particular poster can do so without having to experience the reduction of joy for the
zealot that results from the rudeness and arrogance of evangelism.

Just a bit of venting, along with a not-so-subtle suggestion.

Jack