Old Fools Journal: Do You Long For Some Agent Orange In Your Life?

or What a glorious world it will be when Monsanto owns all the food.
What could go wrong?


The mind is like a parachute, it doesn't work if it isn't open  Anonymous

Monsanto is a corporation and corporations are people. As John Fogerty sang  "I know it's true, oh so true, 'cause I saw it on TV". In this case some no nothing politician said it. The only thing wrong with this is that  if a person did what Monsanto does they would be executed. What I mean by executed is drug out bodily by a mob to their fields of "genetically modified organisms" tied to a stake then the whole thing set on fire. How do you execute or even punish a corporation? The method we use now is to fine them after the bodies are found. They pay hundreds of millions of dollars which does not bring back the dead, heal the sick or protect future generations and it is a fraction of one percent of the profits made under the protection of the government. They are, like the oil industry, intent on making a profit at any cost. The cost is our health and our lives. It has an upside. It turns our millionaire congressman into billionaires.

I would really rather eat food and not "genetically modified organisms". I don't want Genetically Modified Organism on the cob smothered in butter laden with anti-biotics and growth hormones.

If you truly long for agent orange then use a lot of  24D (Round-up) and you may find what you are looking for.  You can have my share.

I have boycotted Dow Chemical for years because of the deadly chemical warfare weapons of mass destruction they manufacture and now I boycott Monsanto for their warfare on the plants that sustain us. I don't know how successful it is but it is something and if I am doing it then so are millions of others.  My tomatoes may not be as big and as pretty as yours. They may be downright unsightly at times but I'm not afraid to put them in my mouth.

In my quest for information I use several hours of my remaining life everyday studying how to grow stuff and I recently ran across this documentary "The World According to Monsanto".  As near as I can tell it has not been shown in the U.S.A.  It is a full length movie, one hour and forty nine minutes (in metric that is one hour and forty nine minutes) and far exceeds the attention span of most Americans.

The photo at the top is of one of our mini-gardens in the big garden. It is 2 feet by about 4 feet and there are five rows.  Sounds crowded doesn't it but it's not. It has three rows of French Breakfast radishes on a staggered planting schedule and two rows of bunching onions. The radishes are coming up and I eat them as fast as they grow usually right from the ground. I do shake the dirt off and rub them on my kilt to clean them up. No one else here much cares for them. By the time these are finished I'll have had my fill until the fall. Really I'd rather have them than candy.
By the time they are finished the onions should be getting to a usable size. I eat them straight from the soil as well. This soil has no petro-chemical fertilizer. We have used it in the past but I think it is all gone now. I hope so.

This is an 18 foot row. The potatoes are in upper left and in the foreground are brussel sprouts and cauliflower. It's supposed to be all brussel sprouts but it was mislabeled and I just read the label and didn't look at the plant. Dumb, however we are eating the cauliflower and it is ever so good. I'm going to plant it again in the fall. There are only four brussel sprouts to get us through until fall and it will just have to do. Eight plants carries us through the summer and fall but we'll be a little short unless I can coax some to flower in the fall.

The soil in these beds is of my own mix some of which is from Texas and some from Arkansas. The potatoes are a mixture of soil from here which came from the "worm bed" where our kitchen scraps go. It has a hundred pounds or so of what I call Bill Clinton soil added recently. I call it that because it came from Hope, Arkansas. Unlike Bill it has no bullshit in it but it is silty and fine and cuts the abundance of clay we have nicely. It will all be buried in hay mulch soon.


A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.  -Doug Larson

Old Fools Journal: Re-purposing An Old Friend

The number one rule of thieves is that nothing is too small to steal.
Jimmy Breslin

No fly was harmed making this photo.

This wine glass fell over in the sink and snapped the base off. It was not dropped just nudged. It is heavy glass made to withstand the free wine rigors of first class travel on Western Airlines.  I have broken many a  glass as a man is likely to do if he drinks wine everyday. I started to put it in the place I have for things I might need someday but held back.  It's been well over thirty years since I stole it and I have not estimated the hundreds of gallons of wine it has forced into my mouth but that's not what makes it valuable to me.

The reason for my holding on to it and wanting to keep it in sight is that it was in my hand during an afternoon in the sun of smoking and wine drinking aboard the good ship "Serenity". Both were being done for effect and not for taste. I picked up that glass looked at it and in a flash of blinding white light it came to me that I was a thief. I tried to justify it by thinking that I was just augmenting my pay but since I was payed an exorbitant amount that was far more than I was worth that justification piddled out after awhile. A really short while. In fact, even though I had not taken it from a person but from a corporation which everyone (well almost everyone) knows is not a person it still was taken without asking. I was no better than a common thief. I thought then of a few other piddly ass things I had taken in my life and came to the conclusion that I was a repeat offender. Thereafter that glass remind me everyday that I was not the hotshot I thought I was.  I was disappointed in me.

Having that in my head doesn't pay back but it does make me reluctant to take things that are not mine. I said reluctant because I ain't dead yet but I have not taken anything since the "The Great Wine Glass Revelation".

So it is still within my sight everyday reminding me to be good.

What did learn? I learned that one should not think when using mind altering drugs.



Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

Old Fools Journal: Why is this so difficult.

You must be the change you want to see in the world.
~Mahatma GandhiI don't know where we the human species get off thinking that life is anything other than Sex and Death. Everything else is trimming. It's the good trimming that we live for but it is not what we are here for.  We are here to reproduce primarily. We are probably the only species on this planet that would even think of that (I'm guessing here) and then we die.  Other life forms know that, or not, but humans mostly deny it and make up other glorious reasons for having life.  I call that bullshit.

We know we will die and no other animals does I call bullshit as well. In general humans seen to elevate themselves above others in the animal world and I suppose there is some gain in this but I can't see it. I personally have known several animals that went off to their dying place well in advance of their death and I'm told that there are wild animals (elephants for instance) that have special places to go to die.

I don't find elevating myself above other living things gratifying or satisfying. I try to live my life following the Gandhi quotation at the beginning of this post with limited success.  If people in high holy places are doing the same then I must lower my expectations because I see many examples everyday of some not so lofty goals for change.  I see humans lasting until the next earth wiping catastrophe and maybe even beyond but I don't see them being much more than they have been and that's sad.

This looks like a sidewalk but it is touted here as a bike path.  You can see that a manly man has parked his manly pickup truck (pickup with a big bank note is a sign of adulthood)  on it which is wrong no matter what it is. Since no one walks and no one bikes here it does not matter.

It appears to be about a kilometer long and connects two more or less north and south streets then dumps you into traffic. It is a nine mile ride for me to get to it. It is the only bike path I know of around here.

2010 Cayenne

In my hovel, which doubles as a potting and starting shed, I have been collecting and starting plants for the spring. I have learned here that the plant have to be in the ground early or the summer sun gets them. I have had really good luck with saving seeds but lately no so much luck at germinating them. The seed you see above appears perfect but I have yet to get any to germinate. However, if you touch you eyes after handling them you are going to know you are alive and feeling some exquisite pain.

This is one in ten thousand I'm told. I read that one in ten thousand acorns germinate and this is the one.  First time I've ever been in on the start of a live oak tree. This one is coming along just fine.  We must have at least twenty thousand acorns as SWMBO has just found another. I think she makes it happen because she has the touch.  Dragonfly's, butterflies and honey bees land on her. Sometimes she looks like a regular Mother nature.  If you want to find her in the yard, first look for the cats. They will be all around her.


The antibiotics I'm taking upset my stomach and generally just screw up my bowels but I have to take them.  The arm (see post of Feb 10) is weird but better and it doesn't hurt now.  It does give me some strange twinges I can't really describe. I find it distracting but the worst thing is I only have a brain for writing in the mornings and these mornings I seem to have morning sickness. I am absolutely certain I am not pregnant.

There is a big storm happening here at this moment so I think I'll shut down and take a nap to dream of my plants being watered by the sky.



"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."
-The Dalai Lama

I believe he has it right but I don't see any examples of our overlords heeding these words.

Old Fools Journal: 28 Years

...or Nothing to See Here, Move Along.

Yesterday marked 28 years since Her Royal Pain in the Ass Highness SWMBO (she who must be obeyed) and I flew off or eloped in my oily old 1954 Cessna 180 from the wilds of Arizona.  Eloped is a stretch as we had no intentions of marriage at the time. We were more involved in being naked, having a few and doing full body massages. I think we gave the full body massage it's full meaning. We didn't do bad on the "having a few" either.

We flew out of Quartzsite, Arizona which is the enema entry point of Arizona. We (we is She, her puppy that bit me the same day and me)  took off on the same street in a new development that I had landed on with 5 gallons of gas (count'em five gallons of gasoline in the tank which is about twenty minutes).    It's not my favorite place and, in fact, I hope I never see it again.

I think I told the story of  "Ms Donna and that Pilot Guy" in an earlier post and when I am next not so fuzzy brained I may check.

So today I went to the Doc to have a look at this arm that was getting better but now has developments I have questions about. This was severely suggested by her, ahem, highness in the statement "get your dumb ass to the doctor before it gets really bad".  It had a serious 'or else' quality to it. That was followed by " if you have MRSA don't come near the house".

All I had was a wreck with the wheelbarrow. It wasn't even a wreck it was more in the vein of "let a sleeping dog lie". Well that applies to wheelbarrows as well.

So now I have less money but instead I have some heavy duty antibiotics that would get me arrested if I could not prove they were prescribed by a bonafide Doc. If they don't give me an upset stomach I'll be happy.

Good night all.

Old Fools Journal: Furniture Repair or Expert Wood Butcher

    Edged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt.  -Agnes Repplier I found this table without a top at the thrift store and I liked it so I managed to anti-up the seventy five cents it cost and brought it home thinking I would have a glass top cut to fit it.  It turns out that glass top tables just "ain't my thang"

nicks and scratches
This is nothing you should
have seen it the first week after
the terrible Wheelbarrow
wreck of 2012.

It has a few nicks and scratches but then so do I (see photo at left) so I think we'll do well together. It's nicks and scratches just give it character. My nicks and scratches have become infected and are giving me way more character than I want. That and way more whining than anyone wants to hear. I have done a great deal of swearing over it as well which I have found works as well as praying.

So I started to look for a piece of cardboard to make a pattern when I noticed in the wood pile some partial sheets of veneer that had only been rained on a little. Since it did not delaminate I assumed it was of good quality.



Taking my trusty razor knife (classed as a deadly weapon by homeland security not to be trusted in the hands of an ordinary person lest they go mad and kill thousands) I commenced to cut. We don' need no stinkin' pattern.

Since this stuff is only 1/8 inch thick it is kind of flimsy. I needed two to glue together. This stuff is too flimsy to use a saw on so I sat in the shop and slowly cut away happy as a clam and probably with about the same amount of  brain activity.   I managed to make two of approximately the same size and I didn't cut myself once. That is some kind of new record. The gods of woodshop must have taken pity of me because of my current wounds. I didn't show the one on my shin I receive when I crashed through the wood pile but the gods see all. I wish the one that takes care of fools would drop by.

You can see the scrap to left of the table.

This is the high tech gluing and clamping station in the Oldfool Bicycle Shop. Boxes of  large lag bolts, nails, screws, a can of wheel weights, fire extinguisher and cat litter I keep on hand because it is nearly pure dry clay. Cats reconstitute it with pee.

I know at least one professional furniture maker reads this blog and I hope he doesn't put out a contract on me for my shoddy work. I get a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction handling wood of all kinds so I must be some sort of pervert. No matter what the outcome, I enjoy handling the wood for my less than professional creations.

Now I need to trim it with the dreaded box cutter then sand it.  I'm not big on finish work (80 grit sandpaper is finish work for me now but that is an improvement over the 16 grit it use to be) so as soon as I get rid of the splinters it's done. It will be sealed with whatever I can find. I may just oil it. I have some old motor oil around here somewhere.

The finish will not matter because a day after it is in use you will not be able to see it anyway. The most powerful gravitational force in the universe is an empty table.  It is said that "nature abhors a vacuum" and I believe that "nature abhors an empty table as well.



Anybody can become a woodworker, but only a Craftsmen can hide his mistakes. 
-Walter Blodget

 It is raining steady here in SE Louisiana which is good for the plants and I would not go out in it unless the house is on fire. Make that "I would not go out in it unless the house is on fire or SWMBO needs beer". I just got back. 

Old Fools Journal: Overweight and Proud of It

or     I am no longer Obese.
 If you want to take five pounds off the weight of your bicycle then lose five pounds  of lard from your ass.  ~t. swaim

Declared February 7, 2012
I have reached that magic Number between obese and overweight. I have been dallying around that number for over a month but now I have stabilized at or below The Magic Number, no matter what time of day, long enough to feel safe in making the claim.

When I started this effort to change my eating habits and to lose weight at the same rate I had gained it I had finally understood that the fuel I put in has to be less than the fuel I burn if I want to lose. I also dropped the fairy tale of "I'll eat this pie now and walk it off later".  That is a fantasy like low-calorie pizza. (I'd rather have one bite of pizza than a whole weight watchers meal)

SWMBO (she who must be obeyed) convinced me that the only way I would succeed is to eat what I like and to write down every morsel that went into my "piehole" and to write it honestly ...and so I did...for four years...and it worked. Now it is habit. It has been a habit for the last two years. The first two years I thought about it a lot but not anymore.

The number that decides whether I am obese or not is based on my BMI  (body mass index) which is a derived* through sorcery and presented to me on the intertubesnetpipes.  I am not convinced that it is relevant but it was something to shoot for.

It started with "if I could just lose 10 pounds" then when I made that "if I could just lose 5 pounds". The total of lost weight in 4 years is between 34 and 39 pounds but my record keeping of it has been dumped a few times so I'm saying about 35 pounds.  Now today I'm back to "if I could just lose 10 pounds". It seems to have cured my chronic back ache and my knees and ankles are loving me these days.

My diet is "everything in small portions" and I mean small. I measure everything so I know the volume, weight and calories.  I don't worry about content because I already eat a diet high in fiber, fruits, fresh vegetables, minimum animal products (except for eggs and butter) and we eat seasonably. If It ain't in season we don't eat it. Mostly.

*derived: being somewhere without actually arriving.

As for the photo at the top of the post we are having big trouble with SWMBO's  pickup truck. That cat does not seem to think much of our pissy little problems.

knock, knock.
Who's there.
Ima.
Ima who?
Ima  'bout to puke a rod.



Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.           -Anton Chekhov -

Old Fools Journal: Roller Skating Naked

or...Using the right tool on a grapefruit. 


  There's a catchy title don't you think but it has nothing to do with this post. Magazines I see at the grocery check out use this technique so I'm told.  My first clue that editors that do newspaper headlines are a lying lot was when I noticed they often said things that even if it was not an outright lie it was a devious misleading statement.

This post is about a knife and I want you to know right up front that I was not naked when I took these photos. The knife was.

I found this knife at my favorite thrift store for fifteen cents. It's stainless steel with a one third tang and a wood handle fastened with brass rivets. I don't believe it has ever been on roller skates but I could be wrong.  It is made in Japan and that means it is an older vintage because even the Japs get there stuff made in China (or any place slave labor is being used) now. It does not have even a spot of corrosion which I believe indicates good quality stainless steel. Stainless does not mean it won't oxidize it just means it will do it less. Stainless means just that, not stainfree.

I had been looking for this knife for a long time.  All my adult life I have looked for a better way to cut grapefruit and have made do with everything from a pointy little paring knife to a pocket knife. I believe in tools that fit the job as I demonstrated to my grandson the other day while rehanging a door by using a screwdriver handle for a hammer. I don't believe he was impressed.

You can see that the tip is not pointy but is rounded instead. What you can't see is that it is a smooth knife edge around the tip and back about 1/2 of an inch or 1 centimeter on the serrated side.

This makes cutting along the membrane of a grapefruit or large orange easy. It doesn't snag and it doesn't poke holes in the peeling of the fruit. You may think that is no big 'ting, as we use to say in Hawaii, but as often as not I use the half grapefruit as a bowl while I eat it and juice running down my arm and dripping off my elbow is distracting.

After the pulp is cut from the membrane then the serrated part of the blade combined with the knife's edge on the pointy end makes slicing the wedge loose from the peel easy. I do this in my begging  bowl as  precaution against removing my thumb.

I can't begin to tell you how good this local fruit is and it is so cheap

A spoon easily removes the wedges of grapefruit. Squeezing the juice from what's left in the peel is all that's left.

Squeezing the peel for juice seems straight forward but it has been my experience with citrus that you must approach it with caution.  All citrus just naturally wants to squirt in your eye. I think it is written into physical law that if you don't follow certain procedures you will be punished.  I see the whole grapefruit as a sentient being tracking my eye glasses as I approach it. It turns out the it is tracking both my eye glasses and my eyes simultaneously. That means it is airline pilot material. I have tried laying my spectacles on the cutting board to lure the citrus squirts but it just squirted on my glasses and in my eye then on anything that I don't want it on.

 Here is how I do it now.
1. Fold the peel flat.
2. Hold over bowl so it is up and down.
3. Starting at the center and proceeding to the bottom squeeze out the juice. If you squeeze toward the top enough juice will squirt onto the counter top and your hand to cover them. All in one squirt.  It's like a baby peeing when their diaper is being changed.
4. Turn over and repeat.
5. Dry hands, arms and face. It is not fool proof.
6. Enjoy the fruit.

I know I said I wasn't naked when I took the photos but that was only  half true.

While on the subject of grapefruit I present to you the pompelmous or pommelo or any of a half dozen names each spelled in numerous ways.  I know it as the pompelmous because I first had one in Tahiti in 1975 and that's what they called it. A pretty young Tahitian lady who was married to an expatriate that we met there took us (my future ex-wife at the time and me) as house guest and this was the first thing served for breakfast. They grew all around there.

 This one has been cut already.  It's about the size of a cantaloupe or half again as big as our local grapefruit. The sticker glued on the peel says a product of USA.

 The extra size is all peel.

The amount of edible is about the same as in our smaller one.
This is the first I've had since then and it is as delicious as I first remember. and worth the slightly extra effort to get the meat out. It is much sweeter than any grapefruit here.

Tahiti was not paradise but this fruit is.
Now I think I'll go have some to go with my banana.



There is a lot more juice in grapefruit than meets the eye. ~Author Unknown

Old Fools Journal: Playing in the Dirt

You Can Bury A Lot Of Troubles Digging In The Dirt. -unknown-

I was out planting potatoes the other day

and I had help.  At least she thought she was helping. She is such a slut.
I don't know anything about planting potatoes but I tried it last year at the wrong time of year. I did that because the potatoes had sprouted and it was plant or compost. Like I said it was the wrong time but I still found enough potatoes for a meal for virtually nothing and I got as much compost as I would have just composting the potatoes.
I was hooked as those potatoes were like candy.

My little galley in the bus is alternately a potting room in the winter. This is the middle of potting tomatoes that I started from seed.
You think this might have something to do with some people not wanting to have lunch with me?  Does this taste like dirt or is it just me? Eeuuuu there's a hair in my dirt.

I started eight seeds thinking to pare down to four but I'll be damned if they all didn't take off and do well. I only  plan to grow four, two cherry and two of what I think of as standard. I don't know what the cherry is but the larger ones are Rutgers.

This is a week later.  I'm not doing anything special other than the light. It's 23 watts and is on all day. I mixed my own potting soil which consist of a very sandy topsoil, cheap potting soil, perlite and fertilizer. They get as much daylight as I do and a little water when dry. Wine is wasted on them. I'll re-pot in 15 gallon tubs after the surprise freeze I'm sure we will have. I prefer 5 gallon buckets for portability but the larger containers keeps the soil temperature more even.
It looks like I'll have four to give away.

The herb and chili garden has Begonias, lettuce, mustard and chickweed in it besides the herb's and chili's now. The chickweed volunteered this year and it is delicious. SWMBO doesn't like it but then she doesn't like spinach either except raw. I think it's because I like it, she's that way you know. This is about the best protected over winter spot on the place but it's not near big enough. The tall green plant on the left is a five foot Jalapeno.

February 1 was a beautiful spring day in the middle of winter and the asparagus is pushing up vigorously.  At least one is. I ate it but not until I took a very bad photo.  Oh well I can't get another because the asparagus has teeth marks and I don't think I want a photo of it when it reappears.


Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.~Orson Scott Card