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

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Down With banks!

 Posted by at 11:03  Down with, principles, rants
Feb 232015
 
An example of street markets accepting credit ...

Image via Wikipedia

I have had some issues with my bank lately.  I don’t really want to hash out details but Holy Crap can they be problems to work with.  I know everyone has a story where the bank made them bend over right there in the lobby to receive their *(insert your own term here, this is a PG (mostly) rated blog so…)*.

I was thinking today about the past, back when computers didn’t rule the world and people had to carry their little bank books with them to prove how much money they had.  Back when a handshake was good enough to secure a loan and people tried to do the right thing by each other.

I suppose that is an idealistic “It’s a Wonderful Life” scenario that can never again be realized.  Computers and micro details about your life and money history are very important today.  My wife and I recently bought a car and of course our credit is not very good with a kidney transplant’s medical bills.  We knew that however, so it wasn’t a surprise.

The dealership sends the credit application to several lenders and then we get rejection letters for two weeks.  My favorite rejection letter said they could not give us the loan because of “insufficient debt experience”.  I’ll tell you, that was actually a very proud moment for me because it says that we have been living without credit cards and financing for long enough that it is adversely affecting our credit.

Credit is so important now that employers are checking it to give people jobs.  I think it is a bunch of crap that how you pay your bills is involved in so many decisions about you.  If it wasn’t for direct deposit I would probably have a shoebox under my bed with all of my savings in it.

I am tired of banks and creditors, unfortunately, there is no way to get rid of them until the world really goes to hell and then people are screwed who don’t have some cash in a shoebox.  FDIC can’t guarantee anything if there is no government left.  I say let chaos ensue and go back to the barter system.

Have a great weekend

-Justin

Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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Down with Majorities!

 Posted by at 11:03  Down with
Feb 232015
 

“Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.”      Mark Twain

There is much left unsaid in that quote but somehow it captures my feelings as we approach the election. It may be our common Missouri birth and small town beginnings. It may be reflected in our escape from Missouri early in life to more cultured society but the basic similarity as I see it is in our mutual distrust of collective decisions in this country although it took me a while to get there.

By themselves, my fellow Americans seemed quite capable of making good decisions for themselves, their families and to a more limited degree, their neighborhood. But today, more and more of those decisions are made far away by people I don’t know, don’t much respect and who don’t seem to care about what I think. I’m talking about politicians.

 

Yeoman farmer

Rugged individuals don’t get respect

It seems like the questions are always about ‘those people over there’. “Those people over there’ are not like you and me. They have problems because they don’t make good decisions. They eat too much and what they eat too much of makes them fat and unhealthy. They smoke and as we all learn from watching too much TV, smoking is unhealthy. They drink- not the normal Martini before dinner and a beer watching the game. Those ‘people over there’ drink bourbon straight, 7 and 7 and tequila shooters to excess causing them to behave badly and drive drunk.

It’s always easy to demonize ‘people over there’ because they aren’t you; they aren’t your neighbor or your boss and by their very existence they threaten all you hold dear. I remember when I was young and offensively self-righteous, being quite upset over the sad state of affairs in our country. It was all because the ‘people over there’ weren’t living up to my expectations. (Back then, the nanny state was a wet dream of college professors and pinkos.) We were all dragged down because some people- meaning the ‘people over there’ just weren’t capable of making good decisions and so, for the good of the country we needed laws to make sure that they behaved. Of course I wanted to help.

 I was an easy sell.

It was he right thing for all us responsible people to create laws so that the ‘people over there’ would be forced to do the right thing. Then we would have the perfect country because all the ‘people over there’ would become just like me. It needed be said that of course they would be happy once set on the right path and all those problems caused by those ‘people over there’ would stop.

It didn’t go so well. Converting the ‘people over there’ to being ‘just like me’ is problematic and actually contrary to our founding principles. It actually created new problem. Oppressing ‘the people over there’ just created dependency and massive social programs paid for by me and run by those far away politicians. It turned out that managing those unintended consequences required more programs, more taxes and an undeserved level of respect for the politicians. It was so bad that now we actually needed them- or at least that’s what they told us.

Gradually this dogooder philosophy gained traction as more and more people became convinced that we could force those ‘people over there’ to behave just like us. Slowly the momentum built up until it became the American way to make sure that ‘people over there’ behaved right. Finally, the majority had caught up with me. But something still wasn’t right because somebody back there in government discovered that I was one of those ‘people over there’ too.

This was troubling.

How could that be? I hadn’t changed. But the country had.

What used to be responsible behavior is now reckless and irresponsible. Slowly the rugged individualism of my childhood became redefined as endangering society. How could I send my kids out on a bicycle without a helmet when at any moment a meteor might fall from the sky and brain them? How could I practice Christianity when it was clearly an oppressive cult: remember the crusades and the Spanish Inquisition? How could I insist that marriage is intended to nurture children and protect women not a tax dodge to get medical benefits? Who needs a Daddy anyway: the feminists have already established that men are redundant.

It seems that ‘the people over there’ have taken control and instead of listening to me, those politicians get stronger by enlarging their scope. They want me and the people like me to become manageable just like ‘the people over there’. They tried social pressure. Now it’s on to making laws.

It’s just like when I was young although when I was young and foolish, I believed that right was on my side. I was helping everyone by getting ‘the people over there’ whipped into shape. Now, I see things as more desperate. Unless something happens to rein in the politicians who now answer to no one, What freedom remaining to me will go. People like me will be forever lost in the great mass of ‘people over there’ working without free will or self-determination to support the will of the politicians subjugating us all. I guess it’s time for me to take Mark’s advice and reform.

 

 

Ralph

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

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Damn those Astrologists

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

Who can you trust?

The world as I know it is crumbling. All around me the bedrock foundations upon which I have built my existence low these many years is under attack. You would think that at my advanced age, I’d have learned to roll with the punches but Newton’s laws seem to have a hold on personal development just as tenacious as on physical bodies. Seventy years of inertia is hard to buck.

First I lost Pluto

First, I have to confess that I am still reeling at the revelation that Pluto is not a planet. I grew up with the comforting knowledge that our sun has nine planets. The revisionist notion that Pluto is too insignificant to belong to the club shook me to the core.I it is just like the school bullies when I was a kid, who mocked and threatened the class runt and made him cower near the teacher during recess. What happened to equal opportunity? Is size the only thing that matters? Maybe I should respond to that email.

And then there is Ophiuchus

But back to the Zodiac. Now the same anal retentive pedants who demoted Pluto have attacked Astrology. They tell us to make room for another constellation- Ophiuchus.  This hits harder and deeper at the core of my being because it undermines my very identity. I reached my adult life in the 60’s and learned that my life was a reflection of my Astrological sign. A big part of the dating game (or rutting dance, if you prefer) was to exchange Astrological signs. Instantly you knew if tonight was the night or to continue cruising. Fortunately for me those days are past.

Because of Astrology, I knew who I was; what I was capable of; and what not to try. I was a Virgo. I was a good manager of life (mostly other peoples lives), not emotive but very caring. I was the quiet sensitive guy taking it all in. Life was simple. Just read the label and Ralph was easy. Now, I learn that it was all a mistake. The stars have shifted possibly during the 60’s when we celebrated the Age of Aquarius. It seems the sneaky Babylonians demoted an important constellation arbitrarily because they disliked the number 13. The result of this revisionism is that today I learn that I am really a Leo. And I don’t have a clue who I am anymore.

I have been living a lie.

Trying to play catchup, I read that Leo’s are the center of attention, charming all with their wit and wisdom. Leo’s are suckers for flattery. They will do anything for attention and get quite angry when they don’t get it. Leo’s are the people I always hated for their shallow intellects and needy natures. How could I have gotten myself so wrong? And now what do I do about it?

So now what?

After being duped and mislead by incompetent Astrologists for all these years, it is hard to face the reality that I have been living a lie, stomping down my outgoing Leo nature to fit an introspective Virgo image. Who can tell how that handicapped my life or what I might have achieved had I know my true sign. But it’s all too late now. Too late to run for President or conquer cable TV. And it is all the fault of incompetent Astrologists and my naive belief and trust in authority figures. Let that be a lesson for you young whippersnappers out there. Don’t get suckered into thinking you are are a Virgo when, in fact, you are a Leo. Don’t screw up your entire life living the wrong astrological sign. Don’t let yourself in for a wasted life as a left foot in a right shoe like I have. Find out who you really are and go with the flow. And now that I know who I am, want to party?

Ralph

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

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Down with – Conservation

 Posted by at 11:03  Down with
Feb 232015
 

It started with Carter

It all started with that old anal retentive bastard Jimmy Carter. If you don’t remember the smug old know-it-all in his Mr. Rogers sweater scolding us all about waste and irresponsibility, then you are younger than 50 and have probably been brainwashed from birth to believe that we live in a limited world and that conservation is our only hope. We sent the old nag packing in 1981 freeing him up to build houses for losers but the cancer he started has metastasized into every aspect of today’s society.

It is all your fault.

Brush your teeth with the water running and you are an inconsiderate sob. Want to drive a car that is actually fun to drive? If you do then you are a gas hog. Would you like to be comfortably warm in the winter and cool in the summer? If you do then you are killing the planet. Like your green lawn? You are the cause of the salmon shortage and the imminent extinction of the Delta smelt, you selfish dolt.

I’m fed up

At every turn we are scolded about our waste and selfishness. Well, I’m fed up with conservation and like Howard Beal, I’m not going to take it any more. It is un-American. It is antithetical to our country’s history and destiny. The US was founded on unbridled optimism. The sky is the limit. Nothing is impossible. Today that is all changed. We are afraid of our shadows. We believe that the world is limited. There is not enough of everything we need whether it is energy, water, oil, air or food. It is so bad that unless we all channel Mother Teresa’s selflessness our world is doomed. Well I’m not buying it. I am channeling Howard Beal. I am fed up with lectures from self-righteous scolds who never created anything in their lives. There are no limits except the ones we set on ourselves. We can do and have what we want just like we always have. Unbridled American ingenuity will save the day just like it has in the past.

The sky is the only limit

Don’t buy the ‘sky is falling’ whining. Think there is a shortage of water? Bull crap! Two thirds of the earth is covered with the stuff and it’s miles deep. Think we are running out of oil? Bull crap again! We haven’t come close to exhausting the known reserves which continue to grow. We just won’t drill for it. Are we running out of electricity? Build some more power plants. The only limited resources that challenge us are the stunted brains of our worthless politicians. That is what we have elections for.

Go for it.  We’ll make more.

Want a fast car? A thirsty lawn? A cool house? Some more Doritos? Go for it. This is America and just like Jay says. “We can make more.”

Ralph

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

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