Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

Up with Cantankerous Old Coots Lessons

 Posted by at 11:03  Coots Lessons, rants, Up With
Feb 232015
 

Newer readers may not have noticed that there is an instructive dimension to Cantankerous Old Coots. Early on Justin and I created a series of Cantankerous Old Coots Lessons designed to help fledgling Coots perfect their cantankerosity. Starting with Lesson 1 “Let it out” up to Lesson 21 “Cantankerosity lasts” we provided direction to COC wannabees. We even established Cantankerous Old Coots University with an ebook containing augmented versions of lessons 1 through 5. It was a glorious vision. We would help create a more perfect world by communicating the COC vision as stated in our manifesto and help spread the COC message to the initiated..

Coots in action

We imagined that COC would wake up hundreds of sleepwalkers from the boring tedium that is 21st century life. We were certain that slowly- over time- our readership would grow and more Coots would join with us to spread the spirit of cantankerosity. We were wrong.

COC gets read but as far as we can tell, no one wants to join the ranks, take the lessons seriously and move into serious cantankerosity. Our most popular post continues to be Coots Lesson 13 “Same to you.” a thoughtful and timeless lesson from Justin about standing up for yourself. It isn’t clear to us why this lesson resonates so well with our readers but as we struggle to understand our reader’s thinking we wonder why their pleasure with Lesson 13 doesn’t cause them to check out Lesson 12 or even Lesson 14.

Then I get it. Our readers are indeed Cantankerous Old Coots. They can’t be bothered with the effort required to locate those other lessons just like Justin and I can’t be bothered with creating a web page with links to all the lessons. This is the most encouraging news we’ve had in months because it means that we are finding Coots and Coot wannabees out in the blogosphere. They have found COC and appreciate the message and like good Coots, they are not willing to waste any time or effort to make us feel better. They have a mission to improve their quality of their lives. Improving the quality of our lives here at COC, not so much.

We clearly didn’t connect all the dots when we developed our business model here at COC. We talked a cantankerous game but measured our results using ordinary standards. What this suggests is that more people might enjoy the COC Lessons if we got off our double-wide asses and created an index of those lessons with convenient links. Being user friendly and customer service focused is not generally the prime directive here at COC This is going to take some time to sort out. Stay tuned.

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook

Up with Columbus Day!

 Posted by at 11:03  Up With
Feb 232015
 
First landing of Columbus on the shores of the...
Image via Wikipedia

Did you celebrate Columbus Day this year?  Columbus Day along with the country that thought up the idea has been demonized so harshley that hardly anyone celebrates the holiday anymore. Sure New York City still holds a Columbus Day Parade but more often you get rags like the Huffington Post telling us that Columbus is not worth our respect:

Called everything from a “rapist” to an “idiot,” Columbus Day now occupies the position of a bona fide controversy in the annals of America.

Amazingly no one ever seems to notice that when they tear down the giants from the past, there is no one left to look up to. I’m sick of all this negativity. They say that our founding fathers were nothing more than miscegenating slaveholders who created our deeply flawed country in their own self interest, ignoring it’s greatness through the centuries. There is too much here to get into. I am going to stick with Columbus today. It is very simple. I don’t know much about his ethics or morals. I don’t actually care because IT DOESN’T MATTER. Christopher Columbus discovered America and made our country possible and without America, I’d probably be a worthless Swedish welfare suckup today. The man did good by me.

The Huffington Posters and the other hate America folks like to point out that discovering America wasn’t so good for the Indians. I don’t know about that. Those hypothetical s always bother me. Who knows what might have happened if the Aztecs decided to develop an empire. Who’s to know how well that would work out for the Indians. What if the Vikings came back? You just never know.   This just might be the best of all possible worlds. They never like to credit America for fighting to end slavery, saving the world twice from the Germans who seem to have an unstoppable stream of bad ideas to foist on the world or taking in immigrants from every country in the world and making American’s out of them. America has been good for Americans, the world and it has made a place where Huffingrton Posters can safely snivel about some better world. If things are so bad. why are they still here?

So I say Up with Columbus Day and let’s celebrate the bravery and hutzpa of our man Chris. He may not have been the perfect human being. He might have had a flaw or two but he had the balls to talk the Spanish into fronting his expedition to reach India and sail to the edge of the earth. Along the way he discovered a new world. Whatever the cost, the result, as they say in the credit card ads, is priceless. Give the man his due. He is the kind of man we need more of today instead of the self-serving timid and pansified leaders we seem unable to kick out these days and rags like the Huffington Post seem to find flawless. Let’s hear it for flawed people like Chris who took a chance, risked everything and made the world a different and better place. Then lets kick some pansified ass next month.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook

Down with Filing.

 Posted by at 11:03  Down with, Uncategorized
Feb 232015
 

Coping in the age of information is a challenge. Every day some incredible amount of new information is added to our store. There is much to know and explore and too much to retain. The trick is to organize that information and have a system to pull that information for review when you need it. In my youth there were dictionaries, encyclopediae and my favorite place, the public library where knowledge was available to anyone mastering the Dewey Decimal System and the card catalog. Back in those days we were dependent on physical documents: books, magazines, newspapers and the like. I used and appreciated the systems that made the information accessible. I highly valued the secretaries, librarians and researchers who developed filing systems and then used them to make the information accessible. But things change.

My filing system.

My filing system.

Today we still have those archaic systems to organize physical documents although they are dwarfed by the amount of cloud based information flooding the universe and made accessible through search engines driven by principles only understood by Google. I am awed by the Internet and the search engines that somehow allow me to find the information I need with a few keystrokes. I can use my computer to find information anywhere in the world. I can print it out, review and edit. I can create documents, spreadsheets and files. I can assemble information from many sources at my desk. It is efficient and convenient. It is what happens next that is my problem. I have never mastered filing. Continue reading »

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook

Down with vegetarianism!

 Posted by at 11:03  Down with
Feb 232015
 
Image via Wikipedia

“Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.”

Fran Lebowitz

There are many reasons why vegetarianism is wrong including the proven fact that it is impossible to get everything your body needs for health from vegetables alone.  Still, the most important reason of all as Ms. Lebowitz says is that without meat, it is impossible to have a satisfying meal.

Humans are omnivores.

Let’s face it, human beings are omnivores. It is one of the big reasons that we dominate the animal kingdom. We would and could eat anything that we could find. It is why you find humans all over the world in every climate and habitat. Our ancestors ate anything they could get; a little meat here, a little fruit there and vegetables to fill in the holes. Pre-civilization, men were hunters and we have the cave paintings to prove it. As civilization progressed, men became farmers, keeping herds of animals for meat and milk while they grew crops both to feed their animals and to bolster their diets.

What are vegetarians afraid of?

So why is it that today we have so many people who insist on avoiding meat? What are they thinking to put thousands of years of history and success with meat eating on hold and to cause them to risk their health with such foolishness? You have to give a pass to folks who for religious reasons won’t eat meat because they fear they might eat their reincarnated Aunt Josephine. Coots are not going to criticize serious religion here (although we might be caught smirking from time to time). What can possibly cause normal people to shun meat? I am no shrink but my opinion is that these folks have got themselves totally detached from reality.

Nobody farms anymore.

Almost nobody today grows up in a rural, agricultural environment unlike the golden days of my youth. The only animals people know today are their dogs and cats. They would certainly never think of eating their pets and companions and therefore make an unrealistic comparison between farm animals and pets.  This is very different from the more realistic view of animals back when we were an agrarian society. Even forty years ago, people were closer to farming. If you didn’t grow up on a farm, you knew somebody who did or you had grandparents who farmed. Farmers have a more healthy understanding about animals and what they are for – food! This was how the world worked. It was the pattern of life. Men raise animals and then eat them. Period, end of story.

All they know is cute little animals.

Today because nobody ever sees a farm animal or experiences the process of making food, they get neurotic about cute little creatures. I remember raising chickens as a kid, first in our suburban house and then on our farm. One of my earliest memories is watching my father kill a chicken for dinner by chopping off its head. My brothers and I enjoyed watching the headless chicken flop all around the yard. We knew first hand the reality of a chicken with its head cut off. We knew that the chicken was not tortured. Its demise was quick and merciful. And we knew that this is what chickens are for – eating.

People today live in a fantasy where nothing is messy.

People today know nothing about the realities of feeding yourself from your own labors and they have access to anything that takes their fancy just by visiting the local supermarket without any pain or effort. Because they love their pets, they confuse pets with animals whose only reason for existing is to feed humans. This makes them suckers for organizations like PETA with its confused morality that equates farm animals to humans. If you do anything to a farm animal that you wouldn’t do to a human then you are bad. Sloppy logic leads to wrong conclusions and unhealthy eating driven by confused morality. The emotional pablum that eating animals is cruel drives them to become vegetarians to sooth their confused consciences.

Survival of the fittest – as always.

In the end, I suspect that Darwin will have the last laugh. In the long run, those foolish individuals that damage their health with deluded morality and the pablum of vegetarianism will fail to procreate and raise healthy offspring leaving the world to meat eaters.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook

Thought about turkey carving on Thanksgiving.

 Posted by at 11:03  principles, Reflections
Feb 232015
 

A lot of Thanksgiving days have been ruined by not carving the turkey in the kitchen. 
Kin Hubbard 

Carving your first turkey is a rite of passage. 

Real men know how to carve a turkey

You grow up watching your father carve the turkey on Thanksgiving.  It doesn’t seem like a big deal because you’re a kid.  It’s just a grownup thing and you don’t pay any attention.  Your main priority is stuffing yourself silly and staying under the radar. It isn’t important to observe how that turkey meat gets sliced off the carcass.  That’s just a detail.  You don’t notice or appreciate the finer points of carving.  You don’t keep score about how even the slices are, how many times the knife slips or how artfully arranged the final serving platter might be because you are a spectator with no skin in the game.

This goes on for years. 

You move from grade school to high school and then on to college always staying on the sidelines and never considering the possibility that your turn is coming.  Then suddenly and with no warning the world shifts.

You get married. 

When Thanksgiving comes around again, your bride presents you with her first roasted turkey. She stands proudly at the table beaming expectantly at you- the man of the house.  She is obviously expecting you to carve it.  Not only that, she has invited her folks so you have an audience.  There is that beautiful golden bird, steaming and fragrant sitting on the dining room table.  There are your in-laws watching intently.  There is your lovely bride proud at pulling off her first Thanksgiving feast and gazing at you trustingly.  It’s your turn.  You pick up the carving knife and realize that you don’t know what to do.

Panicking, you realize that your father let you down. He never took the time to take you aside and explain the facts of life.  He failed to guide you through the mysteries of manhood by sharing the secrets of carving a turkey and you begin to sense a pattern.   You remember your wedding night and realize that it’s not the first time he left you unprepared and this time you have an audience.

Well with all the eyes watching, you forge ahead and it isn’t a pretty sight.  By the time you finish, the turkey might as well have been attacked by rabid wolves and the serving platter is a mess.  Instead of tidy slices of meat, it looks like pulled pork.  Meat clings in tatters to the carcass. Skin and drippings ornament the tablecloth.  Drumsticks hang precariously off the serving platter. It’s bad but there is nothing to do except plow on.

After an eternity it’s over.

Relieved, you pass the platter around and sit down.  You have avoided catastrophe.  Sighs of relief break out around the table and your mother in law tells your wife that her turkey is perfect.  Life goes on. You can’t look at your father in law.  He thought you were stupid before today. You don’t want to know what he’s thinking now.

Since my first turkey carving trauma, I have been an avid student of turkey carving.  I experimented with various techniques hoping to develop mastery.  I relived that day over and over in my mind trying to correct my errors.

In the end, however, turkey carving mastery eludes me.  My carving skills haven’t improved much since that first turkey.  Much as I might envy and emulate those master carvers at fine restaurants, my techniques remain flawed and my execution is messy.   I tell myself that if I carved two or three turkeys a day, I’d be good at it too but down deep I am convinced that it is just a reflection of my inadequacies.  Real men instinctively know how to carve a turkey.  I got dealt a bad hand.

Now I change the play.

They tell you when life gives your lemons, make lemonade. They say if you don’t have what it takes to play the game, then change the rules.  Who says that carving the turkey is part of the Thanksgiving dinner program?  Who decided that exposing the man of the house to ridicule and embarrassment contributes to the event?  No one!

So I’m playing by a new rulebook these days.  If the old rules make me look bad, it’s time to make up my own.  These days I carve the turkey in the kitchen.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook

 Older Entries  Newer Entries