NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: Ellis the Oracle

I have decided that this movie is a Greek morality play...maybe.
I'm working on the interpretation so indulge me for a while.
Let's start near the end.
After the Sheriff discovers that the Ghost like assassin (a shade perhaps) has gotten the money and bested him and got away, the movie cuts to his truck driving up a long road in empty country to a house setting off by itself in the absolute middle of nowhere. It turns out that the Sheriff is on a pilgrimage to his oracle to "confer" with him as to what he should do. The oracle lives alone out in this isolated place. He is The Sheriff's Uncle Ellis, who is a wheel chair bound old man. Now how do I know Ellis is an oracle. Well the name Ellis is the Anglicized version of Elijah who of course was a prophet. Then there are all those cats. The Cat Goddess of Egypt, Basset, was know as the mistress to the oracle. The Sheriff tells Uncle Ellis that he is going to retire. When the Sheriff says that he always thought that when he got older he would get closer to God. But I didn't, he says. God doesn't want me. Ellis the oracle says now you don't know what God is thinking. but that is not the oracle bit. The oracle bit comes when when Ellis is telling the Sheriff about his lawman great grandfather , I think it was, who was shot down on his own porch by five Indian outlaw types.
People like that have always been around, Ellis says, they ain't nothin new. You think they are going to wait until you catch up with them? They are not going to wait on you.

So we have the classic going to see the oracle scene. Not as interesting as say the writhing young woman oracle in the movie 300 but of the same genre.

Next time, the Fates.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: a rumination

As an actual activity, I don't do many movies unless they are free on basic cable. That puts me a decade or so behind the culture in some ways. On the other hand, I occasionally pick up on a exceptional buzz about something, like 'Serenity' or '300'.

So I'm in a discount electronics type place yesterday with my youngest adult son obtaining printing papers for two of my printers and he comes up with the new made for DVD, an SG-1 movie. That reminded me that there was a movie that had just been put out that I wanted to see. It had Tommy Lee Jones in it. So I find an on sale copy of 'No Country for Old Men' by the Coen brothers. I have been a fan of the Coens ever since I first saw 'Blood Simple'.

So last night I slipped it into my computer and watched it.

Dang! Did that hurt. I don't have my mind stretched that far often.
Now it will be a few years before this film is wrung dry of its meaning.
But at first try, my review goes like this:

1. No Good Deed Will Go Unpunished.
If he hadn't taken the agua back to the suffering survivor, the hunter would have been home clean and clear.
2. We Owe God a Death.
Chance might save you once but in the end, death will be there like a ghost.
3. There Is Nothing New under The Sun.
Just because you haven't encountered it doesn't mean it hasn't been here.
4. The True Killers Among Us Are Seldom Who You Think They Are.
The sniper from Nam was more dangerous than those you thought were.
5." You Don't Have To Do This.":
Yes he does, or he won't be.

So for those of you who have seen this movie, What say you about it?
For those who have not seen it. Do so.

Close Enough

Sunday was a nice day. Kind of windy but it got up to 76 degrees. We were well into Sunday dinner (supper to some of y'all). Wife had made her special spaghetti for us and and we were chowing down pretty well when the tornado siren went off. Being hungry I kept eating. Being sane my wife grabbed her cat, and our son who was eating with us turn on the TV. Seems there was a large circulation forming over western Oklahoma City. In fact is it was forming about four miles west of my house. As I proceeded to gulp down my meal they showed the hook and intensity on dopler radar and the location. The sucker was now less than three miles from my house. My wife was already in the basement and my son then grabbed his cat and joined her. So with my wife and son in the basement with two of the cats, I of course grabbed my camera and went out the front door. I could see the lowering and that it was moving fast. The city lights and the lightning gave a fair view of it. Then there was so much scud, that I lost it for a while. Then it cleared off again and it was straight down the street and about a mile south of the house. So I of course started taking pictures with my super duper new camera that I just barely know how to use yet. It was set on "dark of night" and 1600ASA. So I thought I 'might' get lucky. The picture above is the best of the lot.



The top picture shows what was happening, but of course you could see it much better than the camera can. The bottom picture is a print of the top one marked up to show where stuff was. The interested parties and storm freaks of my acquaintence will be able to pick out the particulars on the top photo.
Now lest you think I be totally stupid, stupid maybe, but not totally, there is something missing from the photo and from the event. The cyclone has not dropped a tornado to the ground, because there were no power line or transformer flashes. Inside a city a tornado on the ground would be producing those constantly. So I knew I was safe, and besides I could see the animal itself.

After a bit, I went in checked the TV radar and map and could see it was clear of us. So I hollared down into the basement to my people that they could come up now. So Wife took her cat out of the clothes dryer where he had been put for safety's sake (and because he wanted to come outside with me) and came up. We went back to the cold meal, but kept the TV on just in case.

Now you see this near miss of the whole downtown Oklahoma City by a cyclone full of funnels is not a story because (1) It didn't actually get low enough and no funnels came down, thus no destruction. (2) Nobody could get any real good pictures of it because it was too dark and it was covered in scud. (3) And anyway they already had some footage of some minor tornados from an hour of two before west of OKC that were better visuals. So the dragon flys over the town but does not breath fire and it means nothing.

Trips From Hell, and Other Lower Places

It is 1993, Summer, July, these are three teenagers who have driven from Oklahoma to Washington with extreme togetherness in the back seat of a Ford Taurus. Now we can't park, the metro is crowed, the food places are crammed, it is hot, and people are EVERYWHERE! One of the most interesting places in the world and, "it sucks daddy"! How much art can one person appreciate anyway? You mean we have to walk that far? How much longer do we have to stay here? Wright brothers, So? Can we go now? Do we have to go to that museum? But I wanted to go up to the top of the Washington Monument. Why can''t I take a tour of the White House today? Surely you are not going to make us go by Tennessee and see YOUR relatives on the way home are you? They were 13-16-19, what was I thinking?

So what trip from hell do you have to share?

Dear God, What Do We Do Now?

It is the end of Febuary and it has been cold and dreary. Today the temperature is in the 70's and the wind is 35mph out of the SW. It feels like storm weather. In Oklahoma we learn to walk outside close our eyes and feel the weather. The smell, the touch of the wind, the feeling of the moisture. Then you look. After you decide what's happening, then you go in and check the weather on TV for validation.



Today began to feel like Spring Storms.




It's a little early, but heck we had thunder ice a few weeks ago, so anything is game.
Look above, the cold air is on the left and the hot air is on the right. In a few minutes after this picture was taken the lower cloud would have looked like a steam roller.



Someone who knew I was a geographer sent me these photographs.
I've tried to find them on the web, to attribute them to the original photographer.
No luck.



The are all wall clouds /meso cyclones. This one has a funnel on the ground that is about a quater of a mile wide.



These were taken, if I remember correctly, in Oklahoma and Texas during the May 1999 outbreaks.



One thing for sure when you see these outside your home, you better have a hole, the deeper the better, to crawl into.




If you see something like this you better be taking the picture from the door of you storm celler.



Just looking at the photographs make my gonads tingle.
If this one landed on you, you best not be there.



Thanks to whom ever sent these to me and especially to those that took them.
This is real theology.

Why We Fought! Cause and Comrades

My good friend ER, trying to show that even though he is of Southern Blood he supports Obama for President, went and opened those old saws about the brave and true southern soldiers and why we should honor their shibboleths and respect their sacrifice.

Well he got miffed and went and closed up his thread before I could put my 2 cent in on this continues canard.

You know ER, if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, but only weighs half as much as a duck, it is a canard.

So here it will be expounded upon just for the record.

First let me make clear I have ancestors and ancestral cousins and uncles and etc. Who fought and died and killed for both sides in the civil war. Family carrying my name had Farms burned north of Gettysburg and in the Shenandoah Valley. Family carrying my name are buried south of the R.R. tracks in the confederate section of the cemetery in Atlanta. Family carrying my name are listed on monuments on battlefields in Pennsylvania and Virginia. Our Family name was emblazoned on the sides of wagons pulled by Confederate horses full of Confederate supplies from farms run by my direct ancestors.

Secondly let me make clear. I am a combat veteran of the Vietnam War. I know what it feels like to have your service to you country degraded, ignored, and belittled. So I would never do that intentionally to any other soldier neither enemy nor ally.

That said, here is my point.
Both sides in the Civil War fought for their cause. Clear and simple. As always, soldiers on both side also fought for their buddies, and to stay alive.

To say that the Southern soldier fought for something other than the continuation of their way of life which demanded the enslavement of others is mystical bullshit.

Here is my source and here is its data:

JAMES M. MCPHERSON. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997. 237 pages. $25.00

"Recent popular scholarship serves as a testimony to the vast variety of interpretations of the causes and purpose of the war, the motives that encouraged soldiers to fight, and the value of accomplishment in relation to the bloody cost. Many arguments remain based on traditional interpretations of events, while others are clearly subject to a political agenda. For many students of the Civil War, resisting the temptation to succumb to regional and/or cultural sensibilities, often separate and distinct from historical accuracy, remains a challenge. A consistent emphasis on the quality of evidence supporting any interpretation, however, continues as the historian's greatest mechanism for maintaining accuracy. Indisputably, the most reliable evidence for answering questions involving motives, perceptions, and the goals of Civil War soldiers are found in the various writings of the participants."

"With his new book, For Cause and Comrades, James McPherson both highlights the significance of the soldier's view and furthers his standing as one of our nation's foremost Civil War scholars. Employing more than 25,000 letters and nearly 250 diaries, 60 percent Union and 40 percent Confederate, McPherson offers an impressive array of evidence certain to enhance our understanding of why soldiers fought in the Civil War. "
........

"His analysis of Civil War soldiers has led him to conclude that they remained unique among modern fighting men. In McPherson's view, the ultimate motivating force that sustained the ordinary soldier through suffering and combat was a commitment to the cause. And, echoing a theme evident in much of his earlier work, McPherson finds that cause to be either the maintenance or the destruction of slavery. "
.....
"The preeminence of slavery as a motivating issue for the average Yankee may come as a surprise to many students of the Civil War who acknowledge that attitudes of white racial superiority remained ubiquitous in all regions of nineteenth-century America. A desire to preserve the Union and camaraderie have long been regarded as issues at least as important as slavery among Federal soldiers. McPherson acknowledges the importance of other issues, but argues that "larger ideals remained the glue that held the armies together" .
Some Southerners, especially those familiar with letters written by Confederate soldiers, may be inclined to question McPherson's conclusions about the motives of those who wore the gray. A belief that the South would thrive as an independent nation, as well as defense of home and honor, have long served as the primary ideals that motivated Confederate soldiers in the minds of many. McPherson admits that only 20 percent of the 429 Southern soldiers he examined voiced proslavery convictions, yet he defends his position by noting that "none at all dissented from that view"

"Most significantly, this book reminds us that most often the truth of a matter remains in the accounts of the eyewitnesses. Those interested in understanding the horror and sense of purpose that accompanied men in battle during the Civil War will find McPherson's study an essential addition to their libraries. "

These words are from a review by:
Samuel C. Hyde, Jr. is an associate professor of history at Southeastern Louisiana University.
The full review may be found at:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3651/is_199707/ai_n8761527
And of course other reviews may be found on Amazon.

It is time to put away these shibboleths of the South and move on into the 21st Century.
Yes they can be studied as history. But please not by those with an agenda.

Do we want change?
Well then this is one of those things that will have to change.

Perspective, Reality, and Shadows Talking to the Brain

Once upon a time, long, long ago and far, far away and in universe not unlike this one, I learned to read upside down and backwards. It was a skill I had to master to read the newspaper, that is the newspaper I was creating inside the chase on the stone where I was making-up the pages. All hot or cold type printers could do that then. It is a lost skill because there is now no need for it.
But it is a skill that has had strange benefits over the years. Doing that night after night after night burned pathways into my brain that most people haven't got and probably no-one needs.


PICTURE "A"

PICTURE "B"

What we have here is a matter of perspective, and altered reality, and the quirk of shadows playing with your brain. This is the kind of thing I pick out of a series of photos knowing from past experience if I twist things just a bit, they change completely, even thought they haven't changed at all.

Now if you have binocular vision, some people don't, picture "A" appears as a hole in a boulder.
This by the way is a picture I took going down the Grand Canyon in the previous blog. Picture "B" however will look like a raised surface. If you can't see that, don't bother any further with this blog.

In fact, that is in reality, they are the exact same picture. Picture "B" is picture "A" rotated 180 degrees. There are no tricks involved except those your mind is playing with you. The shadows are lying to you. well not really lying, shadows can't lie. You are misreading the environmental clues. Thus a hole becomes a mound, and a mound becomes a hole. (Don't believe me? Copy one of them onto your computure and rotate it your own self) A good artist can use this phenomena to create some really interesting effects in their paintings. Next time you are in an art gallery try standing on your head and see what you can learn.

Which picture is "correct" you ask. That's my little secrete.