Feelings! Whose Feelings?

 Posted by at 11:02  principles
Feb 232015
 
A teddy bear named Tommy.

Image via Wikipedia

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.

Oscar Wilde

Bob is inspirational.

I’ve been inspired today with our task of exploring the sensitive topic of feelings. Bob was very eloquent in stating that there are some areas of life where feelings just can’t be considered. Life is no cakewalk. Eggs have to be broken and some things are more important than feelings. I wouldn’t attempt of challenge Bob because first of all he outweighs me by 75 pounds and second he is friends with all the judges and elected officials in his community.

Well said Bob!

Still, sometimes, you need  finesse.

But  I like to think that I can add a little finesse and sophistication to the conversation. And I would like to counter the negative slant of Bob’s argument with a positive one. My suggestion for today is that somebody’s feelings are the perfect lever to mess with their mind and leave them slack jawed, dazed and confused.  And to enhance your own feelings.

Feelings are irrational

Nobody can explain why we love kittens and hate snakes or why we happily squash cockroaches but swerve to avoid hitting a bunny. It is easier to understand that we love the sound of our own name and are suckers for flattery. Some of the strongest feelings we have are those of self-love, deluded though they might be.

Which reminds me about the Coots Lessons

I can’t help but be reminded of the series of Coots Lessons here at Cantankerous Old Coots. Some of you may have forgotten those lessons -or worse never learned them. At the core of those lessons is one over riding concept: don’t let the feelings you imagine for anyone else cause you to deviate from your own  principles. First of all, who are you to read their minds and know their thoughts and second, why in heaven’s name would you care?

Coots see the world clearly

Being a Coot means that you have a clear vision of the world you live in and your purpose in it and in case you are confused this means that you are not concerned about what anybody else thinks. You have enough problems of your own. Let them handle theirs!

Let’s review those first five lessons

In case you need a refresher, here is a brief summary of the first five Coots’ Lessons (incidentally available for your own e-library is our beautifully designed E-Book which you can have free of charge when you join our mailing list with all the other cool guys). Coots in training should review these lessons periodically anyway.

Coot Lesson #1 – Let it out!

“Here at Cantankerous Old Coots we believe in letting your feelings out. Maybe your mother taught you to be nice. She may have told you “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Well, we say forget what your mother said. How far has your mother’s advice got you anyway. We say, if you feel it, then let it out.”

Coot Lesson #2 – We Don’t Care What You Think

“Here at Coots, your opinion is worthless. If we wanted it, we would ask but we don’t have time to waste arguing about it. It’s a free country for now but every second we get pushed further and further into a world where we can’t say something because somebody else thinks different and we might offend them.”

Coot Lesson #3 – Polite is over rated!

“Polite is a synonym for lie. If you don’t set these people straight, they will continue to inflict their shoddy goods on other unsuspecting victims. If they believe you they will have your encouragement to do it. If they don’t believe you, they brand you either as a fool or liar.”

Coot Lesson 4- Say It When You Feel It!

“Lose that internal filter that clogs up with what you “should” say, and just say what you mean.  It may anger people but shooting straight is the best way to deal with society as a whole.  Keep your lies and your equivocations; quit pandering to people who don’t really mean anything to you.”

Coot Lesson 5- Let your face show what you think.

“Your expression must support and reinforce everything you have learned so far. It must be stern and serious. It can run the gamut of emotions from scowl to downright contempt. It must take no prisoners, leave no stone unturned and be so controlled that no one can have any doubt that you mean exactly what you are saying.”

Stand up for your own feelings!

So forget about other people’s feelings and stand up for your own. That is the position of Cantankerous Old Coots and we think that the world would be a better place if everybody lived by that stand. Review the Coots Lessons and make the world a better place. Whose feelings are more important anyway?

Ralph

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

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Coot Lesson #1 – Let it out!

 Posted by at 18:09  Coot Law, Coots Lessons, principles
Jul 292014
 

Forget what your mother told you.

Here at Cantankerous Old Coots we believe in letting your feelings out. Maybe your mother taught you to be nice. She may have told you “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Well, we say forget what your mother said. How far has your mother’s advice got you anyway. We say, if you feel it, then let it out.

Permit No Time Bombs

The way we see it, those bottled-up emotions are time bombs, wreaking havoc on your health and well-being. Keeping quiet just lets that pressure build up and, even worse, encourages those fools causing all the upset to keep doing what they are doing. Keeping quiet not only makes it bad for you now; it makes it worse in the future.

Niceness is Phoney

All this niceness is phony anyway. You know what people are really thinking. It’s what you are thinking but just not willing to say. They may tell you that you are looking good and that your new grandchild is so cute but you know the truth. Old age never improved anybody’s looks and that grandchild is a wrinkled mess, even if they do say he resembles you. Wouldn’t it be a relief not to have to pretend that you believe them? Don’t you think they deserve the same honesty from you? Of course they do. Do yourself and them a favor and just let it out, tell them the truth.

Like this

“Joe, you old scoundrel, you are even fatter than the last time I saw you. You get any bigger and I’ll have to get you a wheelbarrow to lug that belly around.”

“Sally, you old fool, whoever told you that pink was a hair color? You look like you got your head caught in a cotton candy machine.”

“Dick, you blithering idiot, what makes you think that combing those two hairs over your bald spot will turn you into Fabio?”

Do everybody a favor

You see the point? Friends do not let friends make fools of themselves. So do yourself and them a favor, let it all out. Trust us. You mother was a fool.

Ralph

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

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I’ve got your feelings right here!

 Posted by at 22:58  Coots Lessons, Plain 'ol Cantankerous, rants
Jul 022013
 

Listen to this!—-> Frampton

If you didn’t bother listening to the audio clip above you missed out on some great Peter Frampton.  Today, I get to bring up the rear on this whole “feelings” theme.

First of all, did you like the themed edition of the Coots?  We are thinking that the first week of every month will be a theme week and you, the loyal readers of the Coots (i.e. Heather, Hansi and Dave) will be responsible for choosing that theme.  Go ahead and cast your vote right over there in the sidebar for March’s theme.  And if you have a suggestion for a theme by all means hit us with it via the contact form or in the comments.

Now onto the Cantankerousness.  We spend a lot of time here at the coots talking about basically feelings.  What feelings to have, what feelings to discard, and whose feelings to stomp into a mudhole when the time is right.  Ralph has reintroduced the Cantankerous Old Coots University to our growing audience and, hopefully, has started more and more people on the path to true Cantankerousness.

In a lot of ways, Cantankerousness equals freedom.  To be truly cantankerous, you will be embracing all of the core values that are wrapped up in the First Amendment.  Coots say what they think.  We say what needs to be said without regard for the sissy feelbads of this generation.

Sometimes, you just need to hear the hard stuff.  Like Denis Leary says, “Life sucks, get a helmet.”  Your feelings shouldn’t get in the way of the truth.  The history of America is filled with insensitivity and lack of regard for feelings.  We are stubborn and, well, cantankerous.  Do you think that the Revolutionary War would have been won or even fought if the colonists worried about the “feelings” of King George?  He sure didn’t care about us and we gave him the collective finger.

Think of the government policies regarding Indians.  (Yes I said Indians.  That is what they always were Native American is a whole other rant.  And my Great Grandmother was full blooded Arapaho so don’t give me any crap about it.)  The Indians that basically ruled what would become the United States were slaughtered and pushed to little tiny plots of undesirable land.  More than once.  And the ones who had the balls to resist (see Geronimo, ass kicker extraordinaire) were eventually snuffed out by the Government.

Cantankerousness is not just bitching about the world.  It is taking a stand and forcing your position down the throats of all the namby pamby do gooders who just don’t get what it means to be assertive.  Feelings are an invention of those who need something to explain their lack of intestinal fortitude.

This is the main mission of the Coots.  To try and jump start that intestinal fortitude that is lying dormant in so many people these days.  To show people that it is ok to put your feelings in a dark place in your heart and let them fester until they just can’t be contained anymore and you make someone cry telling them the truth and not holding back because of their “feelings”.

Now, watch this video, it sums up much of my personal philosophy very nicely.

Now tell me what you think about your feelings, the comments are open and waiting for your cantankerousness to flow.

Don’t forget to vote for next month’s theme.   Semper Fi.

-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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Feelings, huh? Yeah… right…

 Posted by at 04:31  Down with, Plain 'ol Cantankerous, rants
Oct 092011
 
Lingering Feelings
Image by Mubina H via Flickr

The first thing that comes to mind when talking about feelings is, “bah, humbug!”

It’s not that I consider feelings to be a bad thing. In fact, quite often feelings can be really, really good.

Like on a chilly night… In front of a warm fire… With a hot mama… Now those are some good feelings, but that’s for another post.

No, my “bah humbug” attitude about feelings is not about feelings themselves (after all, having feelings as part of what makes us human), but about the way our over attention to feelings has screwed things up.

Let’s look at a few ways that over attention to feelings has caused problems:

• We pay way too much attention to “Little Johnny’s” feelings when he acts out in school. The teacher can’t snatch him up by the scruff of the neck, give him a good shake, ask him just what the hell he thinks he’s doing, and send him along to the principal’s office, where the board of education will be applied to his ass.

Oh my, no. That might hurt his feelings. That might damage poor little Johnny’s self esteem. We must stroke him, and coddle him, and tell him everything is going to be OK, that it was a misunderstanding, and probably all our fault.

He ought to be told what a little jackass he is, have his butt blistered, and be sent home, where daddy will blister his ass again tonight.

Ooopps… I forgot. Baby Daddy’s probably been gone since the kid was a year old.

• We pay way too much attention to Muslim’s feelings. Do you want to include profiling as part of Airport Security? Oh no, ain’t gonna happen. It might offend all the peace loving Muslims in the world… or at least those going through an airport screening. It doesn’t matter that over 3000 people dead on 9/11 were killed by Muslims, and that hurt this country bad… No, we can’t hurt the feelings of those Muslims. After all, we all know that Islam is a peaceful religion, and that the majority of Muslims are peace loving people who abbhor violence, death, and destruction as much as anybody.

Well, they probably are, and they probably do, but they don’t show it very well. There are a few things they could do that would help convince me though. They can start by condemning the actions of “radical Islamists” in a very public way, rather than keeping their condemnation to themselves. They can also reject organizations like CAIR when they plaster posters all over Islamic communities in the United States, telling residents not to cooperate with the FBI in matters concerning terrorism. If the Council on American Islamic relations is little more than an apologists group for radical Islam, and if American Muslims made it clear that they were aware of that, and rejected the organization, I would have a lot more empathy for their complaints that they are being discriminated against. I wouldn’t agree, but I would have more empathy.

After all, on 9/11 19 people hijacked four airplanes and killed over 3000 people. 19 Muslims. ‘Nuff said. Start the profiling.


• We pay what way too much attention to the feelings of fat people… And short people… And poor people… And, well, you get the idea.

I’m sorry, but if you are fat then that is what you are… Plain… Damn… Fat. You are not overweight, chubby, extra large, or (so we don’t leave out the women) a BBW (Big Beautiful Woman).

You are fat.

We pay way too much attention to the feelings of short people. If you aren’t as tall as the average person, then guess what? You are short. You are not vertically challenged, you are just plain ol’ short. Get over it.

One of my favorite songs is “Short People” by randy Newman, so there… PFFTTTH!

Note to midgets and dwarfs: you are beyond short, and cannot claim the “short people” or “little people”moniker. You are midgets and dwarfs, period.

As for poor people’s feelings, society coddles them way too much as well. If you’re poor, your poor, not socio – economically disadvantaged, not disenfranchised, and not less fortunate. You are poor…and except for in rare instances, it is by your own doing.

I once heard someone say, “rich people are rich because they do what rich people do, and poorpeople are poor because they do what poor people do”. If you are poor and think you are stuck there, that it’s the hand life dealt you and there is nothing you can do about it… bullshit. Go read the story of Colonel Harland Sanders and Kentucky Fried Chicken, then come back and tell me there’s nothing you can do about your situation.

• We pay way too much attention to our own feelings. We let everything in our past affect our future. How many times do we hear, “I would be so and so, if only so and so hadn’t happened.” Will guess what? It’s not the incident itself that holds you back, it’s your feelings about it. You get angry because you lost your job, or sad because you’re divorced, or in a funk because it’s winter and you live way too far north, or your melancholy because your lover decided your stomach was too big, your ass was too skinny, and your hair was too thin, so they found somebody else. Get over it.

The other way feelings let us screw ourselves up is when they make us act a certain way around other folks because we’re concerned about how they will think of us. That’s stinkin’ thinkin’, and and because of it we never act like ourselves, we just act like we think others want us to.

You can do that if you want, but I think I’ll follow an old AA adage:

“It’s none of my business what you think of me.”

Or, put in a slightly more abrasive (or cantankerous) manner:

“I can count on one hand the number of people in this world who I give a rats ass what they think of me. Your name is not on any of my fingers. It’s not on my thumb either.”

So there you have it… Bob’s feelings on feelings. What do y’all think about feelings (or about my opinions)? Leave a comment below…express your feelings on feelings. It would be in your best interest for two reasons:

• Having a chance to express your feelings in an open forum like this, without having to hold back out of fear of offending someone, would be a cathartic moment, and good for you.

• Comments are how you pay Justin, Ralph, and me. This blogging thing doesn’t pay very well, and our “pay ” is the enjoyment and entertainment we get from maintaining the blog, and mostly from reading your comments. No comments equals no pay…and that would be a bad, bad thing.

When thinking about whether you should comment or not, consider that we know who you are. You would not believe what we know about you. Just logging on to Cantankerous Old Coots, without leaving your name, e-mail, or URL when you comment, you have given us your IP address, and that opens a multitude of options for dealing with non-commenters.

Your IP address give us your location as well as any GPS System ever could. Not only do we know where you are, we know what color your house is, how many bedroom you have, and whether your yard needs cutting.

Hell, we even know what color underwear you’re wearing while you are reading this post.

So comment.

Otherwise, Justin, Ralph, and I might have to pay you a visit and use a little coercion intimidation convincing on you to get you to comment next time.

What does our convincing look like? Well, let me just say I live in southern Appalachia, home to hillbillies, rednecks, and moonshine stills. When the revenuers come through blowin’ up stills, they leave a lot of dynamite layin’ around in the woods…jes’ sayin’…

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Bob@HayleStorm Interactive

Bob comes to us with a skeptical attitude and a full cup of Cantankerousness. He also writes about homesteading and yurts over at JuicyMaters.com and rants about politics at Common-Sense-Conversation.com Most of the time, though, you'll find him at HayleStorm.net, cranking out great websites for clients OR writing tutorials teaching them to build their own sites.

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