Rip Snorter's Blog

Evening blogsters:

Some of you are too young to remember why microwave ovens and electricity were invented.  It's a fact worth knowing.

The pioneers, when they invented this country, lived mostly in dugouts.  Dugout canoes in the summer, dugout houses in the winter.  Those winters tended to get them cold on their backsides and necks.  So they started growing wheat, milo maize, rice, to try heating up and putting in some warm container to throw around their necks to try to keep warm.

They tried all manner of containers, those cold natured ancestors of ours.  Tried skinning rabbits and sewing up grain inside the hides, but it didn't take any time at all before the only benefit they were getting from it was the smell of burning hair.  So they invented sweat socks to put it in.

But they needed a way to heat it up without burning it, so they invented microwave ovens.  Trouble was, the microwaves sat there for generations full of sweatsox waiting for electricity to be invented.

Then along came Nicoli Tesla Edison with the solution.

So nowadays all you have to do is plug that mama in, that microwave, shove in a sweat sock full of grain, run it about five minutes, and you have a thingamabob you can drape around your neck when it's cold, or stiff, or for when the old shoulder's reminding you of a motorcycle that wrapped itself around a tree 40 years ago, and you can toss in another one for putting at the foot of your blankets to give the cats a place to get hacked off when you throw them off it and go to bed.

Got two of them in that microwave right this very moment.

Thankee universe for nicola tesla edison and joseph h. microwave and their yankee ingenuity inventions.  And thankee universe for joseph cotton's development of sweatsocks.  Also Horatio Milo, the developer of Milo Maize.

We lucky to have this universe to provide such blessings.

Jack

Who'd 'a thunk it, innocent blogsters:

I just read a thread saying those were the most searched for words on AOL.  Plus it provided other words also heavy into the search engine league.

So let's get some action here.

I don't know what Sudoku is, but it sounds vaguely Nipponese.  Might well be something good to eat, raw fish with spikes all over it and poisonous unless carefully prepared, but delicious.

Noticed how RINGTONES have changed over the years?  Used to be they were mostly gold, silver, platinum, brass, copper, iron, usual stuff.  Now they're all manner of other colors and shades.  Plus they have a different sound.  People are searching for rings with different sounds.  Colors.  Make sense?  No. 

IRS and jokes are up there high, neighbors in the search game living next door to one another, which seems appropriate.  Those AOL searchers first go to the IRS site and provide themselves with a downer and a shot of Jack Daniels Black.  Then they ponder whether to shoot themselves and decide what they need is a good joke, instead, for an upper.

American Idol, hairstyles and NASCAR.

Whew.  Nice combo.  I'm trying to visualize the hairstyle a person would put on an American Idol.... coming up with something between an Elvis ducktail and a Jimi Hendrix Afro... but neither of those is likely to blow in the wind the way it should speeding around a track hitting stuff wheels flying balls of fire and explosions of gasoline cheering crowds.  I'm not sure how all that fits together.

I'm running out of steam running out trotlines for AOL searchers, but I'm safe.  Fact is, Lottery.... yeah, lottery is right up there among the most searched for words.  And Lottery Post is the most searched for combination of words those smart AOL types are after.  That and gas prices.

Lotteries, hairstyles and tattoos.

Boggles the mind, knowing what Americans are looking for on the internet. 

And this blog's what they're gonna find instead.

Better.  Far better.

Jack

Morning blogsters:

Been out in the pre-dawn clear chill peering at M264, or M239, whatever.  The middle body of Orion's belt.  Trying to bring forth a recollection of what that thing looked like through an 8 inch telescope on hot summer nights in Texas with mosquitoes chewing wherever bare skin showed.

The mosquitoes and the hot are easier to bring into focus than the look of that heavenly body under high magnification.

But what the heck.  The light I was seeing a quarter century ago through that telescope probably was already a million or so years old before it shattered itself against the backside of my eyeballs.  Maybe older.  This morning the light from that body I've been looking at is almost exactly the same age, just got a later start out of the chute by 30 years or so.

Wonder how things are over there now, this morning, in that cluster or nebula.  A lot of stuff can happen in a million or three years.  Lightbulbs burn out.  Spark plugs need changing.  All manner of stuff to upset the apple cart and keep some cluster of stars from providing amusement and conversational material to our progeny a million or so years from now.

Ah well.  It ain't my problem.

Best to you,

Jack

This is getting hilarious.

Got some member of Congress wearing his Bronze Star, some ex-sargeant from NY with a DSC and nominated for some higher decorations saying, "I got more medals than you, so I know more.  I ain't been elected to anything, but I been nominated for a Medal of Honor.  You don't know jack.  I know lotsa stuff."

Sheeze.

Where's my Good Conduck Medal?  Ahhh.  I remember now.  I didn't get one because of that incident down in the village. 

Here's a war on a slippery slope, folks.  Public opinion polls show support for the prez and the war are declining steadily.  Those opportunists in both parties are going to listen to those polls.  They're both wanting to have some seats in Congress and maybe a prez elected next time around.

Ain't going to help to hook a microphone into the grave of Audie Murphy to ask what he thinks, despite all his decorations.  Ain't going to help to trot out your Hectors and Ajaxes to spout your line and parrot the opinions you fed him.  All his Charlie McCarthying ain't going to win no votes.

Those polls are speaking and the smart money's on the politicians who are listening.

J

 

Morning blogsters:

I just read Tiger Angel's blog about the battle with the molar.  Whew.  Makes me feel lucky to be me this morning.  It ought to make you lucky to be you if you don't happen to be Tiger Angel and can't be me.

TA didn't get that tooth out last night so far as I could tell by the time the Ibuprophen kicked in and souped up with the wine.  So it sounds as though there'll be another session with the needle nosed pliars before this full moon goes down.

Speaking of which, that old moon's looking good.  Pause and take a look at it as you go off where ever you're going.

The full moon's precisely the time when you're supposed to pull teeth and cut hair, if I remember my Farmer's Almanac admonishments correctly.  Hmmmmm.  On the other hand, maybe it's the other way around.  Maybe the full moon is absolooooooootle the time you're not supposed to take out a tooth or cut hair.  Too early in the morning to try to sort it out.

Anyway, you blogsters who aren't Tiger Angel, you pause a moment to look at that full moon.  Think about Tiger Angel and be grateful it ain't you trying to take out a pesky molar.  And think some good thoughts for TA, thoughts of that molar popping right out easy and painless this morning, leaving whatever's the antithesis of a dry socket.

Have a great one,

Jack

Evening blogsters:

That thing was hanging from the ceiling in a Mexican restaurant where I was having breakfast in the desert town of Deming.  I made sure it wasn't an example of something I was going to have wrapped in a tortilla.  It was roughly the size of a basketball.  Just a thing hanging there above my table to contemplate when I wasn't watching the droves of US Border Patrol guys drift in for their mid-morning breakfasts.

Stopped into Socorro on the way down on Monday.  Looked up a guy I haven't seen since before Y2K.  Mike.  We used to try to dowse the lottery numbers together, or in tandem.  Never had a lot of success at  it, though each of us could pretty well be assured of getting one number.  Mike made a few of the mountain climb/unclimb trips with me  during the Adams searching.

Anyway, I extolled the virtues of Lottery Post to Mike.  Might be he'll register and decide it's a worthwhile expenditure of his time, reading some of the threads.

Not much going on here except cold air and a hunter's moon.

Night to all of you. 

Jack

 

Morning blogsters:

Last night's entry told about an encounter I had yesterday at the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Truth or Consequences, NM.  This is a continuation of that anecdote.  If you're just tuning in you might enjoy the story more if you go back and read the previous two entries (and the comment I left on the first of the two) before you read this one.

Visits to the Vietnam War Memorial Wall are always a moving experience for me, to one degree or another.  Doesn't matter whether it's the one in Washington, D.C., the moving Wall, or the one in the Vietnam War Memorial Park in Truth or Consequences.  The weight of emotion going with the visits appears to depend on how long it's been since the last one.  Not much else.

Yesterday, the man I'm calling Jonas was wandering back along the wall with me.  We were roughly at the middle of the wall, his van about 50 yards in one direction, my truck the same distance in the other.  We were talking about other things, just chatting, while our eyes moseyed over the names on the wall as we talked.

A large, fancy motor home pulling a trailer with a fancy little 4x4 on it pulled into the driveway and parked near my truck.  We both watched as a mid-50s lady with a large dog on a leash got out, yelling over her shoulder to the driver.  She took the dog to the nearest tree, then followed him to a squatting place, still yelling back at the truck.  She was wearing a stylish running suit and hair that looked well-protected by spray epoxy.

The driver emerged from the truck about the time the dog was finishing his business.  Mid-50ish guy, nice enough looking, affluent, subdued, wearing a matching running suit to his wife.  He wasn't paying much attention to his wife and her harangues as he drifted to the sidewalk in front of the Wall looking over the names and Jonas and me.

Meanwhile ms wifey caught up to him, still scowling and pointing, complaining about the park, the wall, the wind, whatever.

"Man.  I'm glad I'm not married to that woman!"  Jonas muttered under his breath as we both studied them sidewise.

The hubby hung back a bit looking at the names on the wall, but wifey walked right up to us.  "Isn't this pitiful?"

Neither of us spoke, wondering where she was going with this.

"This whole thing here remembering Vietnam and not one mention of Iraq!"  She peered into our faces.  "I'll bet you're both vets aren't you?"

We sort of nodded.

"Look at what they're doing now.  Paying no attention to what happened in Vietnam.  Trying to force us to get out of Iraq the same way we left Vietnam!"

Jonas perked up.  "Just a minute, Ma'am.  Do you recall what happened in Vietnam after we left?"

Her voice went shrill.  "They killed half the country.  That Pol Pot thing."

Jonas:  "That was Cambodia.  We weren't in Cambodia except to block the Ho Chi Mihn Trail.  Left after Parrot's Beak.  We were fighting in Vietnam.  What happened there after we left?"

She:  "They went Communist.  North Vietnam took over the whole country."

Jonas:  "Yeah.  But what happened there that was so bad it was worth one more American life to keep it from happening?"

She:  "Stutterstammer."

Jonas:  "Nothing.  Right?"

She, turning her eyes to her hubby for support.  Him studying the wall.

Jonas:  "So if nothing happened in Vietnam after we lost and left that was worth one more American man dying for, what about these?"  He gestured to the Wall with the hundred yards of names of dead men.  "Those men died to keep what happened when we left from happening earlier.  That's all.

"If it wasn't worth one more American life to keep it from happening, and it wasn't, then it wasn't worth all these.  All these men died for something that wasn't worth a single American dying for.  Same with Iraq."

By the time he finished she was ten feet away and rolling.

Yeah.  I wish I'd said it.

Jack

 

 

I'm going to save the "I wish I'd said that" portion of today's Jonas encounter for tomorrow, but I've re-read the anecdote below and I feel I need to broaden the brush stroke on him a bit.

Jonas isn't an easy man to be around.  It's impossible not to have an almost breathless respect for him, but difficult to like him as a personality.  He must be near my age, and the years are telling on him, but he has an almost obnoxious youthful enthusiasm, a robustness and exhuberance that's not easy to take.

As I mentioned, the appendage above his torso is hair in every direction with a grinning set of somewhat snaggled, yellowing teeth and a pair of eyes peering out. 

His clothing, BDU fatigues with cargo pockets, are worn and give the impression of not being clean, though I suspect they actually are.  His appearance causes the viewer to expect him to stink, which he doesn't.

Jonas is definitely a gentle soul, maybe a wise one, but his demeanor speaks of a puppy foolishness.

However, having said all that, I'll say again, you can't know him, or know of him, without feeling a humility and respect entirely out of proportion to the human being in front of you.

I'd say the non-Christian religions are lucky there aren't more Christians of the Jonas variety.  He's one of the handfull of Christians I've met in my entire lifetime who behaves as though he actually believes in Jesus Christ.

Jack.

 

 

 

Hi blogsters:

The town of Truth or Consequences installed a Vietnam Memorial Wall in 1982.  A replica of the Wall in Washington, D.C., in a city part a mile off IH25.  It's a good stopping place for stretching your legs, munching a sandwich and pondering as a break on the long drive between El Paso and Albuquerque.

Today I pulled in there figuring to do a hamburger and the stretch routine.  Down at the other end was a beat up brown Econoline van with POW MIA stickers on it and a painted sign along the top:  RAINBOW CHRISTIAN MINISTRIES.

Beside the van cooking something on a Coleman stove on legs was a guy I haven't seen in a long while.  Doctor Jonas.  He looked up when I got out of the truck and we waved at one another from a hundred yards, then he went on cooking while I strolled leisurely along the wall, as I'm prone to do.

"Life good, brother Jack?"  As I neared him, from about 30 yards.  Jonas, I observed, was still wearing old BDUs and more hair than any man needs.  He had the look of a man with an odor, though I can't say I noticed one about him.

"Still good, Jonas."  He turned down the stove and took a few steps in my direction, arms extended.  "We don't hug, Jonas."  I held out a hand for shaking, instead (in lieu of the hug).  "How's the preaching business?"

"Get's tougher all the time." 

We wandered back toward the van and he turned the stove back up.

Jonas is usually known as Doctor Jonas.  He carries the Christian gospel to the street people, speed freaks, street prostitutes in Albuquerque.  His foot in the door with them is that he uses skills acquired during two tours as a combat medic in Vietnam to provide them with unofficial medical care.

Jonas is something of an institution.  He funds his ministry by bringing prescription anti-biotics, anti-inflamatories and whatnot up from Mexico and selling them to illegal aliens in Albuquerque.  That, and selling a bit of jade on the side keeps him preaching and ministering to people who need it as badly as anyone in the US can need it.

As we talked I heard a moan from inside the van.  I shot a questioning glance at Jonas and he just shrugged.  "Junkie having a try at withdrawal.  I brought him down to Caballo where I thought I could keep a better eye on him, but the Park Pigs were getting too nosy."

Another of Jonas's services.  He serves as a nursemaid and guardian angel for people going through withdrawal from hard drugs.  I never saw the guy in the truck, but he moaned on and off all the time we were near enough to the van to hear him.

We talked a bit longer and I had an, "I wish I'd said that" experience before I left, which I'll relate to you maybe in the next entry.

Jack

 

 

Light snow this morning for a while.  Not as much as we ought to have if the drought's broken, but still some moisture.  Down in the Rio Grande valley it looks as though they might be getting more, though it would be unusual for them to be so blessed while we up here in the village look down with a certain amount of suppressed envy.

LP seems to me to be improving, gradually.  Maybe it's just getting used to things, but it seems to me a lot of the rancor I used to see has receded.  People appear to be loosening up in their fixed attitudes and maybe are treating the numbers in more imaginative ways, allowing themselves to believe how the numbers work doesn't have to be a religious doctrine.

I think part of it might be a positive spin-off of some of the changes Todd's made on the site.... restricting a lot of types of posts, introducing the ability for BLOCKing negative inclined posts, which (maybe) causes some people to mitigate the flavor of their posts because (maybe) they care whether they are blocked.  I don't pretend to understand why that would be a concern, but I think it might be.

Could be I'm just not seeing some of it, too, because I'm free and easy in my use of the BLOCK feature.

But there's something more, thinks I.  I've been watching hypersonic's experimentation with a lot of interest, noting the fact he isn't being laughed off the board as he once would have been.  JAP69's also doing a lot of innovative stuff, and aye's pronouncement about psi influence seems to me to have been an act of courage that fit into an open-minded way of examining things (even though some folks felt the need to pronounce his pronouncement as untrue on the face of it). 

People appear to be sticking their toes into the water of the unknown more than they did once, not just making bald statements and pronouncements that it's all luck or statistics.  And the folks who see themselves as obligated to stomp on anything new or outside their tiny mental boundaries appear to be conducting themselves with more restraint than they once did.

One possibility is that there aren't so many computer jocks trying to come up with ways of selling software for the lotteries, all replays of other software for the lotteries, all just assuming it's a matter of shuffling statistics.

Maybe part of it was the fact that a guy who called himself BIG LOOSER shot out a piece of hefty evidence that a means to whip this whole thing is possible.

In any case, I think it's a healthy change, maybe an evolutionary one.  I think it certainly stands a better shot at putting some folks into a winner mode than the attitudes that existed a year ago.

Needless to say, I'm glad to see it.  Helps to offset the diatribes of the Charlie McCarthy political faction.

Best to all of you,

Jack

 

 

Old Eugene's passed over to the other side.  Could have put a stop to the Vietnam War back in '68 if the country'd had the ability to see into a few years of future.  He was the reason Johnson resigned from the '68 presidential campaign.

Nope, we ain't talking Charlie McCarthy, the guy modern politicans and most politically sophisticated and involved Americans do their best to imitate.  The prototype for radio talk show hosts.  He died some while back when his buddy Edgar Bergan died.

Nope, we ain't talking Joseph "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy, who headed the House UnAmerican activities committee and started the Commie Behind Every Tree fad that led us into Vietnam, Bay of Pigs, you name it.  Not him.

No, we ain't talking Douglas MacArthur here.  He's been out of the biz for a while.  Never was heard much of after Harry Truman fired him over his determination to lay a radioactive cobalt belt a thousand miles wide across Manchuria to keep invaders from getting into North Korea unless they came from the south, as Japan did in the past.

Just old Eugene McCarthy.  A politico who never got to be a hero prez.  Wrong attitude.  He didn't want to get us into any wars, or keep us in them.  He wanted to get us out of one before we lost a lot more men.

RIP

Jack

Evening blogsters:

Cold evening tuning up here.  Sort of snowy looking clouds off to the west and north.

I've been reading through the thread LottoMike created about member popularity, occasionally having to stop and readjust my knobs and dials, as I discover what people think about themselves, about other people on LP, and about the entire issue of whether well-liked is one of the ways someone might be described.

A person tends to assume the world looks at the world the same way he does.  Which certainly isn't true for any of us, but we assume it in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I can't honestly say I know anyone on LP, though I've been here a year.  I've had some somewhat personal communications with Todd, whom I consider likeable, but I don't know much about him, nothing at all outside his input and function on this site.  I admire him in that context because I like the site and appreciate what a job of work it must have been to create and maintain it.

But do I 'like' Todd?  Heck, I don't know.  I don't dislike him, but there's a dividing line between 'like' and the absense of dislike.  I assume he is a nice person who is liked by the people who know him.  Worthy of being liked, provided a person knows him.  Which I don't.

In fact, I only know a few people on LP well enough to 'like' them.  That 'knowing' generally hasn't come from personal exchanges, but rather from reading their posts when they've revealed information about themselves that I find worthy of my respect, admiration, whatnot. 

It's a good deal easier to know which LP members I don't want to know well enough to dislike.  Those tend to show themselves in ways that come across strongly.  And I use the BLOCK feature Todd's provided so I don't have to know them well enough to dislike them.  I have a philosophical objection to exposing myself to negativity when I can manage to avoid it, and I see the BLOCK feature as one of those features on this site that I count as a blessing.

Anyway, I think I could say to you blogsters, if I read your posts I might like you, don't dislike you.  But I don't want to go to bed with you.  So don't ask.

And don't vote for me for prom queen or drag queen.

Jack

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mainly longjohns and sweatsuits.

I did my usual bathtub washing routine on my buildup of clothes that got to clogging my sinuses and causing the cats to turn up their noses at me when I put them on.  I'd been outdoors several times and it honestly didn't feel all that cold.

So I hung everything out on the lines and figured all's gonna be well with the sniffers in a few hours.

A while later I went out to check them and they'd all turned to cardboard on the line.

A couple of hours later I made the uplifting discovery that the cold wind was drying them a bit despite the fact they were frozen stiff as boards.

But now it appears the weather's going sour, so I figured I'd best bring them in and let them dry the rest of the way indoors.

You haven't lived until you pull a pair of longjohns off the clothesline and have them break in half in your hand, except a line of threads holding them together.

Jack

I don't care to argue with konane on her own blog, but I feel compelled to make a few observations about the assertions contained in her entries.

First, any war worth being fought is worth whatever sacrifices Americans have to make to fight it.  Every one of us ought to measure the worth of any war by whether we're willing to die in it.  Willing to lose an arm or a leg in it.  Willing to lose a son or a daughter in it.

The fact we aren't, mostly, being asked to make those sacrifices because they're being made by others doesn't change the basic premise.  If we aren't willing to lose a son over a particular cause or piece of geography, we ought not be asking others to do so.

Konane is fond of calling the other half of the US, the ones she opposes because they don't support this war, cowards.  Democrats.  The loyal opposition.  Cowards.  Traitors.  Because they disagree with her.

I'm not a Democrat, nor a Republican.  Not even a self-proclaimed Libertarian.  But I've served in the forces supposedly defending this country, been downrange from machine-gun and rifle fire directed at me in the cause of defending this country (even though the shots were fired by US troops, whom those around me and I were firing at).  I have a problem with being called a coward or a traitor by people who have never served this country in any armed forces capacity because I oppose this war.  It's not a thing I'd allow any person to do to my face, and I have a profound disrespect for anyone who'd do it behind the safety of distance and anonymity.

Here's a proposal to end this idiot conflict in a way that should satisfy those who support it:

Suppose an American life is worth, say, two of human beings anywhere else.  Okay.

How about when twice as many civilians in non-Christian nations have died under US firepower  as died in 9/11, how about then we call it an even trade and bring the troops home?

Fair?

Then you can bring them home today.

Okay, how about three for one?

You can still bring them home today.

The arrogance of Americans who aren't risking their lives, limbs or offspring calling other Americans traitors and cowards because they oppose a war that has not been declared by the US Congress is absurd.

Human life is sacred.  It's sacred enough to justify civil debate.  Sacred enough to worry about civilians being killed in other geography.  Sacred enough to tolerate opposition to any undeclared war in a supposedly free land of civilized people.

Severed limbs and human carcasses cause grief to those who bear them, to those who are dear to them.  It's not an exclusively American phenomenon.  Neither is a callous willingness to create more of them just because it makes the ones back home feel good.  But the folks who measure the sanctity of human life over politics aren't necessarily traitors and cowards.  They might be something else entirely.

Jack

 

 

Morning blogsters:

It's a clear morning here.  The seven sisters are something of an hour above the western horizion.  Naturally Orion's still behind them, chasing them across the sky.

Those seven sisters are another of those M sets I mentioned yesterday.  Full of globular clusters and maybe a nebula.  They only look like seven individual stars to the naked eye.  But through a lens it's an entirely different experience.  Millions of stars in each cluster.

Telescopes and microscopes have a lot in common in that regard.  Nothing much in the universe is as simple as it appears.

Have a great day.

Jack