Life’s a bitch..and then you die!

Coot Kiss (Photo credit: stewartmorris)

Heaven knows that the lifestyle of a Cantankerous Old Coot isn’t easy. It might seem glamorous and all but fame and fortune aren’t easy. And then there is actually living up to the title. You have to be on your toes every minute, With all those messages urging you to take the well-worn path of ordinary, charting your own course through life takes determined and dogged commitment. You have to fight the urges to just settle for what everybody else does and do something special. Travel is no exception.

Travel these days means cruises. You can’t avoid the commercials showing happy people eating or playing on cruise ships. It’s like water torture except with pretty pictures. It is so hard to resist. What’s not to like? Lots of food in exotic locals while you are safely isolated from any of the harsh realities of actually visiting a foreign country, trying to understand a foreign language and deal with a foreign culture. You are quarantined in luxurious digs surrounded by shlubs just like you. And you have a crew whose job is to make sure you are happy while you float through alien cultures without ever having to engage. And did I mention the food?

Disclaimer. 

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

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Ralph

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

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Originally posted 2011-04-15 11:21:08. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Image via Wikipedia

This post today represents the 199th post on Cantankerous Old Coots.  I thought we could take a peek back at the year that was and explore a bit about this site, and the snarky comment that started it all.

It is only appropriate that Ralph will have the 200th post on the Coots.  Not only has he posted the most on this site, it was his comment over on my blog Catharsis of the Bogue that started all of this madness.  It was March 22nd of last year that I started this site.  On the 23rd I wrote the following post:

Well folks I did something very impulsive last night. I was sitting here trying to come up with some topic to write on. I am tired and only partially fueled by caffeine. My wife said I had that “look” and tonight’s post would be a doozy. She has seen the writing frenzy that exhaustion and caffeine has wrought.
The problem was this. Carlos sucked all of the ideas out of me during the PreWriting Challenge! Ok not really but it has been a day of writers block for post titles. I have a couple of story ideas though. I had a thought this morning after taking the kids to school that I hope I was not running dry of ideas. I am almost at my 3 month mark and ready to push past it.
I know there are more ideas, I just either need more sleep or more caffeine to make them flow. Or some good inspiration. I went and read some blogs, left some comments and tweeted a bit. After that I went back to look at my comments just hoping there was something there.
And there was! My internet buddy and purveyor of many life experiences Ralph(http://ralphcarlsonblog.com/) had left a comment. The discussion was about niches, and fitting in, when Ralph says,
“I am not sure that there is any market for cantankerous old coots but if there were, I’d claim it.”
I laughed and replied that I would sign up for the RSS feed of that. I didn’t think much more about it until Dave Doolin pipes up with his sage advice to go claim it. So I did. Coming in the next week or so, I will have a bunch of work with another blog at www.cantankerousoldcoots.com.
I think I am going to fill the blog with the wisdom and rants of those older than me, even though I am getting up there myself. I hope to get Ralph to fill the first guest post with something profound, and later Dave with something that would be totally inappropriate on his site.
I need to create a badge….crossed Preparation H and Ben Gay over a grouchy old guy’s face…. Our motto could be “Whatever” and our niche is “Advice for life from old coots.” We of course would have to adopt a Red Green type lodge… Hmmmm there are many possibilities. I would love to hear suggestions. We would have bylaws too…if you are under 40 you need to have an old coot persona or you can’t be published. Only rants on things that were better in the past could be posted. Any bowel problems are better off on your own site unless they have a really funny punchline and a cute nurse involved.
Wow I must be tired. This is going to be huge amounts of fun. Let me know what you think in the comments and sign up for my newsletter, I will keep updates in that as well!
Thanks for reading!
-Justin

And now here we are 200 posts, 6 authors and 134,000 words published.  It has been a good year.  If you are new to this blog, thanks for coming!  Sign up for our newsletter and get the first Coots e-book from Cantankerous Old Coots University.  If you are one of our long time readers, thanks for sticking around and boosting our numbers!  If you have never commented, now is a good time to do so!  If you feel feverish, head on over to one of the Coots other blogs: Ralph’s, Bob’s or mine.

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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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We are Cantankerous, that is established.  For some reason, when we start talking about Coots, Zemanta (a groovy little plugin that helps you add pictures to your posts) brings up this:

Image via Wikipedia

These are Coots.  Worse they are common coots.  At this site, we strive to be way beyond common.  Typing “Coots” into Google gives you 10 different sites with definitions of the birds.  Finally at number 11 is our site, the Cantankerous Old Coots.com.  Not too bad, but we are ever striving to get that higher.  As our Alexa rank rises alongside the readership of this site, Google can’t help but put us above some mangy waterfowl.

I would like to start typing Coots in this blog and wait for Zemanta to bring up these pictures:

 or even  or heaven forbid

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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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Originally posted 2010-08-04 09:55:52. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

*** since this post was first published there have been 233270 visitors to it.  There have been a total of ZERO submissions.  c’mon people get on the ball…send us your face!***

Now hear this Current and aspiring Coots!  Very shortly we are going to be putting out our first product.  I know that is exciting enough to make you all pee yourselves with excitement.  You may want to get a doctor to look at that though.  Don’t worry in any case because that’s why they make Depends.

So far we haven’t got a lot of participation  here at COC.  So since you refuse to respond to the sticks we throw, we are going to break out the carrots just this once.  We want your face!  And we are offering a prize for the best face.  There!  That is as nice as we get.

What does your best Cantankerous Coot face look like?

By now you should have mastered the basics for Cantankerosity or maybe you were a natural and had what it takes all along.  It doesn’t matter because we want to see the results.  Show us your best Coot face.  Take a picture and if it doesn’t break the camera send it to us.  We want to see the Cantankerosity that we have inspired.  We want to use your faces in out upcoming E-Book and at the blog. You could be famous.

So scrunch up your face and practice your cantankerousness.  Little children should either laugh or weep at the face you finish with.  Preferably both.  Then take the best picture you can and send it to us.  This contest will end at midnight on July 10th MDT when we get enough submissions to actually have a contest.  Right now, there is all the time in the world You have until next Saturday night to get us a picture.

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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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Originally posted 2010-08-06 07:26:27. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

This lesson could be the penultimate Coot lesson.  It isn’t, but it could be.  Throughout all of these lessons so far we have been working to promote Cantankerosity.  If you have been following closely you have learned to say what you think and not dither.  You have learned to use sarcasm and the difference between being an angry old fart and a Cantankerous Old Coot.

If you have taken to heart and studied diligently then you are most definitely on you way to Cantankerousness Grasshopper.   This lesson is one way of gauging your final test of Cantankerosity.

Picture if you will the elderly gentleman in a rest home.  He is not wearing pants.  He is railing against Politicians (see this post, and this one).  He is yelling at nurses and doing his best to avoid the orderlies who are trying to cover him.  Does he care?  No!  He continues to run around and yell.

Now you may be saying this man is demented, sick in the head, a victim of Alzheimers disease.  I say No!  He is a Cantankerous Old Coot.  His Cantankerosity has been finely crafted and honed over the course of several years and now, he hides his devilish ways behind insane medical diagnosis’s.

This is our mission, to create a fine figure of Cantankerousness who is not afraid to do exactly what it is they want to.  Pants are optional.  A test of your cantankerous training will not be to parade around without pants (at least for now) but it will be to cultivate the attitude to be able to do so.

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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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