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.

Reliability??? I should have known

Posted by Justin at 11:48 Plain 'ol Cantankerous, principles, rants

Nov 262014

Bij de vuurkorf in Bodegraven (Parents in law) (Photo credit: Johan Koolwaaij)

There is a universal joke about how bad ones mother in law is. My Mother in law goes on a very stringent set of bipolar behavior, where she is good for some things and a complete pain for others. Isn’t that how it is for everyone? Some slight background, this isn’t new. I have been either dating or married to my wife for 19 years now, so this is not new!

This morning is the focus of this rant however. A main statement, If you commit to something, BE THERE! I don’t care if you didn’t get 53 reminders and my 11 year old didn’t tell you yesterday, you committed to be there so BE THERE. I could only shake my head in, not disappointment but realization that this is normal.

Back from the appointment I was late for now and everything is back to normal. Meaning, it will be hard to rely on her in the future. There was quite a while when we didn’t even ask because she had cancelled at the last minute.

Then there was the time I had half of my kids in the hospital and she bailed on the other two because it was too hard. That was a tense ride home from the hospital. I made record time and it was a good thing she wasn’t there or I may have had to dig a hole in the backyard, if you get my meaning. I am not even kidding about that one.

But we are supposed to forgive and all of that but that can be hard especially when it happens repeatedly. Besides, how does forgiveness allow for cantankerosity? Rants and touchy feely don’t go well together unless you are really doing it right.

Later.

-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 Bugs, namely the Mosquito!

Posted by Justin at 11:48 Down with

Nov 262014

Ochlerotatus notoscriptus, Tasmania, Australia

Image via Wikipedia

It is finally drying out here in Utah. We have had record rain and snow all year, with the wettest May in 150 years. What that has been good for is to keep the bugs down. Except for the time I went fishing under one of the dams here and apparently stood in the middle of a mosquito convention where I got approximately one bite for every 3 mosquitoes I killed. And I had a lot of bites.

Anyway, here in the Salt Lake valley it is warming up. Today, Sunday it was almost 90 degrees, quite a turn around from what it has been. And as such, there have been mosquitos aplenty flying around. This is the first time that I have seenn bugs this year and I am not looking forward to them this year.

Not just the flying bugs either, my main bane is the earwig. Those little stinking buggers get everywhere. They are in the house, in the garden, in the fruit and in the ground. I found the entrance to a nest last year (just a note, while I am sitting here writing, I just killed a mosquito on my monitor. Bah!) anyway, the earwig nest. I found the hole in the ground where they were just pouring out.

I proceeded to fill the hole with the mixed gas I use for my boat motor, that way the oil keeps it burning longer. It didn’t seem to help, many died and the fire burned underground, but too many of those buggers still were **everywhere**.

So, this year I am taking action against many of the bugs that I don’t want around. Mosquito traps are baited and placed around. Yellow Jacket Traps….I didn’t tell you about the yellow jackets. Call them hornets or wasps or yellow jackets, those are everywhere as well. Last year I wrote about the ones that came out of my mailbox every time I opened it. Read that post HERE. This year I killed two or three inside and didn’t think much about it until my 9 month old son started screaming in pain.

I was sitting next to him on the floor, my 7 year old was standing on his other side and here is the baby screaming for nothing that I could discern. I picked him up and saw something in his mouth. After the swipe to rid him of said debris, it was a freaking yellow jacket that had stung him in his mouth! It couldn’t fly too well, being wet and all and took a while to die after I cut it in half. But the Baby got stung in the back of his mouth by a yellow jacket. Luckily we found out he is not allergic to the venom and had no problems.

But there are Yellow Jacket Traps up now. Earwig traps are littering my backyard as well. I have declared War on many of the insects in my world. Don’t get me started on the mice in the shed. They are next.

Do you have bug problems? Let us know in the comments below….

-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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Hey! It’s April Fools Day! What a Load of Crap.

Posted by Justin at 11:48 Plain 'ol Cantankerous, rants

Nov 262014

Hey Folks, Justin here. I am coming to you live on what is one of the stupidest holidays in the entire world. April Fools Day. Informal though it may be, why do we still bother to “celebrate” something that most of the world doesn’t even truly know the origins of? It seems there was a reference to it in Canterbury Tales back in 1392 that was badly translated and people were made to endure a full day of pranks and foolishness.

By the way kids, (notice I didn’t use that horrific BTW that has become so friggin’ popular. That is a whole ‘nother rant) back in 527 AD Byzantine Emperor Justinian delcared that on April 2nd all Justin’s in the world should have homage paid and gifts of “gold, silver and precious things in great quantity.” Check it out, that is tomorrow, I will just wait for all of the good things to roll in.

You see, that actually sound legit (almost) even though I made the whole thing up. Much like April Fool’s Day. My wife is currently preparing devious deceptions to taunt the kids with. She loves it. My kids love to play pranks and “get mom and dad”. I don’t get it. I have never really gotten it. I don’t care to play pranks for the most part. If I want to make someone look silly I can use words better than some silly prank.

So if you are into pranks, go for it. Just know that there are some people out there who really don’t give the rear cavity of a rat about it.

On another note, Congrats again to Hansi for earning his degree from the Cantankerous Old Coots University. he is now qualified to teach Cantankerosity and is an adjunct professor. We will be featuring his first lesson next Tuesday, April 5.

And for the theme writing contest. We have a clear winner this month with 4 votes to the 2 everything else got. The topic that we will be writing on for the week of April 4th to April 8th is, (drumroll please) is, (no really, a drumroll here is appropriate) fine, with no drumroll the topic is Haiku. We will just have to see what splendid and fascinating things that we can write about a simple Japanese Poem.

So that will be all today, go out and do something cantankerous. Maybe just scream at someone who tries to pull a prank on you, or really fly off of the handle and make them cry. That will be my goal, make a prankster cry. Unfortunately, the only ones who will be around to pull pranks are the kids, and homework and chores make them cry anyway. Good thing my new sink doesn’t have the separate sprayer anymore.

Thanks for reading, how are you going to get through today?

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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Bob is on the Blacklist! Don’t say what you think!

Posted by Justin at 11:48 Coot Smirk, Plain 'ol Cantankerous, principles, rants

Nov 262014

Image via Wikipedia

Well folks I have a doozy for you today. The main point is about commenting and the things that we are trained to do as bloggers that get ignored by some. One of the first things I learned when I started blogging was to encourage conversation in the comments. And to always respond to comments. And to not argue in the comments which I always took to mean flat out arguing as well as name calling and profanity laden libel.

(Again with the pictures that have no bearing on the post whatsoever. I dunno why it came up but it was a fish so I used it.)

Wednesday the 20th, here on the Coots site we had a great bump in traffic. There seemed to be a couple of reasons for this that I could pinpoint right away. First there were incoming links from some search engine stuff about classic cars and repair.

If you go back to Ralph’s post, Bob and I both commented about car repair in response to Ralph’s handyman service and amateur plumbing. I thought that this must be a decent spike and began to craft a post about cars and repair and how they want you to go to the dealer for the repairs. That post is still coming, I have some things to say about that.

But for today, back to commenting. Bob sent me an email later talking about what he thought was the issue. From Bob’s email:

Stirred some **** at a pioneer woman hater site (did you know there is a whole
damn cottage industry around hating Ree Drummond?) and logged in as
Bob@JuicyMaters. Well, after quite a bit of fun, some of the wimmin
there tracked me back to JM and found the link to COC. When they
went back to the hater site they spread the word that I wrote at COC
too…and today’s stats are the result. My stats yesterday were
double my second best ever day (I did have one post go semi-viral last
year…I don’t count it).

It’s probably over. A new post is up over there this afternoon and
all of yesterday’s **** is off the landing page and won’t get as much
attention…LOL. (the edits are mine)

I went back and read all of the comments from this site that I am not going to give a link to. I was surprised to see the backlash against Bob and the only male perspective on this whole post. Screw it here is the link: http://www.thepioneerwomansux.com/2011/04/monetizing-the-hate/. They really attacked him and anything that they could find out from Google about him.

Now, I am standing up for my friend Bob and his place on this site. That said, I will argue with Bob any day of the week of I don’t think he is right. He will do the same. But he will at least entertain your argument (read it, take it out for drinks and try to make it his) and then agree or stick with his point. Therein lies the problem. Bob has opinions. Bob is knowledgeable. Bob knows what he wants and more or less how to get there. He has the detail map to Hell in his back pocket. and he will share that opinion. Argue if you must, but be prepared to be at least intelligent about it.

When the owner of the blog comes back with a profanity laden tirade against Bob and his opinions, and then blocks him from her site! So many things that are just not “right” in the bloggers code. And her cronies start in on little nit picking crap that doesn’t make a difference, but makes them feel like they got the upper hand. Good for them, all of the “Yes Men and Women” are in line and ready to kiss the ass of the moderator, and the lone dissenter is exiled to the blogosphere…..

I probably would have let all of this go but then they started in on Cantankerous Old Coots. Through the magic of Google, the following stream ensued:

Mary Beth says:

April 20, 2011 at 2:16 pm

I just wanted to share one more thing about Boob, sorry Bob. I went over to his site and found a link to a site called Cantankerous Old Coots. I found the following:
http://cantankerousoldcoots.com/2011/04/18/report-from-the-obgyn-department/#more-4614

I can understand why he didn’t include his contribution to this site in his web site resume. But I do love a good case of irony. Wonder if he was on or off meds while he was typing all his crap.

poppy says:

April 20, 2011 at 2:50 pm

Hi, Mary Beth! Would you please give me a run down? I don’t want to click on anything of his. Thank you!

Reply
- Just Another says:
  
  April 20, 2011 at 3:18 pm
  
  Hi Poppy!
  
  Oh yes I went there. That one isn’t his site, it looks like a collection of different contributers who write essays about being old coots and where they vent about how the world is on its way to hell in a Longaberger basket and anything else they don’t like.
  
  I know! Something like this has never been attempted before in the history of the entire internet. Please contain your shock!
  
  Bob’s essay was about how he had to go to the hospital for something something (not life threatening, sounds like he’s a regular there) and the first room available to him was in the ob/gyn wing in a bed with stirrups. He was having a crazy day I tell you! And get this — all this happened while he maintianed saintly endurance of ER shenanigans! and tornado warnings!
  
  And that’s as far in as I could stand to go.
  
  Reply

What is this? Attacking my blog just for 1 lousy article that Bob wrote while all drugged up on meds in the hospital? (the post is not lousy Bob, I got a kick out of it.) They read one article and scanned a sidebar it seems and now are experts on this site. And they have the nerve to complain that this site is not a new concept when the site they came from is nothing but a rip on site of something more popular?

At least we got a link to our site, which will probably be removed when this post hits.

Well I will tell you one thing, There will never be any argument like that on any of my sites. I will debate people until I am blue in the face, but I am not going to start slandering them in my responses. I am not going to block them unless they become a spam problem. We are all in this blog community together right?? Maybe we should figure out how to act like we are.

Responses are open below, what do you think about all of this?

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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Where the #^@& is that fairy now?

Posted by Justin at 11:48 rants, Reflections

Nov 262014

Frances and the Leaping Fairy, the third of the five Cottingley Fairy photographs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Profanity. That is not what this post is about. What I am really wanting is one of those little fairies that flies through my daughters cartoons and grants wishes to any bastard lucky enough to ask. Where the hell is she? I need stuff, I need my house cleaned, I need posts written and a big fat book contract. I need to have all of my stuff magically moved to a new house. But do you think I am going to get any of that? HA!

Alas, there is no such thing. Unless you have a slave and I believe that is still illegal in the US. Don’t give me that crap about having kids and they will be helping, the help they give is minimal at best and, Holy Crap, I have more to clean up with them helping. My wife is ready to throw all of the toys in the trash and start over.

These are the days that I look forward to being an empty nester. That is going to be another 16+ years but still, it would be nice.

Bah. Anyone want to come and be a fairy, cleaning my house and freeing me up to do nothing but write? Huh? Anyone? Damn. I guess I will just have to go get some laundry done then. Gotta go.

-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.

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook

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