Ralph

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

Up with SciFi Masters

 Posted by at 04:23  Up With
Oct 082012
 

People who think they know everything

are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

– Isaac Asimov

 

Dr. Isaac Asimov, head-and-shoulders portrait,...

Dr. Isaac Asimov, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing slightly right, 1965 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Looking for inspiration this morning, I stumbled upon this quote form one of my favorite authors when I was young. I loved Science Fiction in high school in spite, or maybe because ,of it’s reputation as low-brow and trivial. I was unimpressed with the criticism. I read everything I could find by Heinlein, Bradbury and of course, Isaac Asimov. They created a future brighter and more interesting than the boring present I faced back in those days. I loved the twists, the unimaginable possibilities and fell in love with the future. Back before the dumbed down special effects burdened future of Starwars, those early SciFi masters created a future that excited and engaged my mind. Long before the force engaged the universe, learning about psycho-history could change the world- or at least help you deal with it.

 

College put the damper on my SciFi passion. Scientific reality blinded me to the truths contained in Bradbury’s Martian stories and even the clever Asimov was no Jane Austin when it came to developing character. I began to accept the conventional wisdom that SciFi was a second rate branch of literature. The cocksure heroes of SciFi were not blessed with wisdom, fortitude and plucky determination, they were pigheaded, dumb and lucky.

 

The death of Ray Bradbury made me remember how important these writers were in my young life and how much I may have lost by leaving them behind. And the quote above from Isaac Asimov helped me see why my life got derailed. In high school I was open to ideas with no real authority figures to steer me. I had some great teachers in high school but outside of their classroom expertise, I didn’t give them any more credence than I did my parents. The were by and large nice people but they didn’t have what I wanted and so their advice and approval was not a requirement.

 

A photograph of science fiction author Ray Bra...

A photograph of science fiction author Ray Bradbury that I took in August, 1975 and which he later autographed to me. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Asimov would have ignored them, Bradbury would have seen through them and Heinlein would have kicked their asses. I let them control my thinking and limit my life. Looking back, it is clear to me that I had a pretty good handle on life when I first arrived at college and that without the college experience I might have gotten control of my life far earlier. I didn’t know everything then and I don’t know everything now but what I do know is that people who thought they knew it all certainly did me no favors back then. I now understand that they didn’t know it all. I wasn’t smart enough to be annoyed at the time. I didn’t know enough but I should have.

 

Bottom line, people who think they know everything are not just annoying to those who do know everything. They can do great damage even to those who don’t. This poses a great difficulty when you are trying to decide whether to follow advice from others. My advice based upon years of experience is this. The only people in my life who have been willing and eager to tell me what to do are the people who think they know everything. The ones who actually do know everything will let you figure it out for yourself.

 

Midshipman Heinlein, from the 1929 U.S. Naval ...

Midshipman Heinlein, from the 1929 U.S. Naval Academy yearbook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Ralph

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

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Coots have the computer blues!

 Posted by at 04:23  rants
Oct 082012
 
Error (EP)

Image via Wikipedia

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” — Albert Einstein

Computers: You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them

Cantankerous Old Coots are dealing with the scourge of modern existence today- computer problems. This week Bob’s computer just won’t connect to the internet. And you know what that means – we finally found a way to shut Bob up. It’s not a complete solution because Bob still can Skype. He can still write too ( if that is what you call his rambling rants) but without the internet he can’t share his wisdom.  And that pisses Bob off!

Bob is no computer whiz but what he lacks in knowledge, he more than makes up in brute force. Any moment now, I expect to feel the blast of hot air from the Georgia backwoods when he finally wills his computer into submission and gets connected with civilization again. Meanwhile, it’s just another rainy day in California while I fill the vacuum here at Coots.

Computers have changed our lives

Bob’s misadventures with computers, just remind me how dramatically computers have changed our lives. We haven’t reached the deadly evil genius computers like HAL in 2001, a Space Odyssey. What we have today is actually much worse. Computers have become something far more destructive and insidious than HAL ever dreamed of being. We used to joke about government bureaucracy and senseless rules and red tape that stopped us from living our lives. That was then. This is now. That government stuff hasn’t gone away but today we are far more constrained by computers constantly telling us no than we ever were by bureaucrats. And when you are fighting you computer, there is no recourse.

We understand humans

Bob is a good example. When Bob gets messed up by a bureaucrat, he knows what to do. He knows who to talk to and what buttons to push. Not everybody has Bob’s connections, outweighs the police department and knows how to start a strategic lawsuit, but most of us know how to talk to people and bug them until they have to respond. None of that stuff works with computers. You can sit on them, threaten a law suit and talk at them until you are blue in the face. It won’t make a difference. No wonder Bob is flummoxed.

Who are you going to call?

But Bob is not alone. Sure you can call the Geek Squad or whatever the marginally computer literate computer service guys call themselves in your neck of the woods but once you do that, it is all over because first they will babble some nonsense at you. Then they will fuss around for a while and sigh. And finally they will happily sell you a new computer because something got corrupted in your old one. If you try to debug on your own, the computer pretends to be helpful and gives you cryptic messages but it is all a sham to make you feel guilty. Soon you become frustrated and buy the idea that it is not the computers fault that it won’t work. It is all your fault. So when you finally give up in desperation, you are no longer mad at your computer, you are mad at yourself. Buying a new computer is your penance for being so stupid and ruining you old one. They have us cowed!

Here’s hoping that Bob prevails and gets his computer back in line. If anybody can do it, it will be Bob. Me, I no longer fuss at my computer. I don’t pretend any knowledge or mastery at fixing problems. I give up and buy a new one immediately.

Ralph

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

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Need some help with Cantankerousity? Don’t forget the Coot’s Lessons

 Posted by at 04:53  Coots Lessons
Sep 202012
 

Back in the Day…

Step away from the pack.

When we started Cantankerous Old Coots, there were just two of us- Justin, the wild-eyed dreamer and stay at home Dad and Ralph- the over the hill dreamer and frustrated retiree. As we stumbled through the launch and developed our plans for the blog, our first thought was that Cantankerous Old Coots would be a beacon in a dull, conformist world. We wanted to create a landmark of contrarian thinking and inspiration for sheep everywhere who were lost on the road of life.

We had both suffered from following the crowd and trying to please everybody and were now attempting to recover our Independence and joie de vivre by letting it all hang out. We were repelled by the conformist, non-conformism of today’s youth where letting it all hang out seemed to mean letting your boxers show by wearing your jeans under your crotch. We were bored by the look alike cars and mindless music, the inanity of modern humor and the insecurity causing modern man to seek status by wearing clothes with designer names written on them like a billboard.

We didn’t believe we were alone… 

We believed that we weren’t the only people bugged by these developments. So we began Cantankerous Old Coots to tell it like we saw it. We hoped that this would be the start of a community. Next we decided to help people who might feel some anxiety about the direction the world was heading but not yet ready to tell their friends about their feelings. We wanted to find intelligent, insightful people who were beginning to push out of the kool-aid stupor of modern life but still uncomfortable about speaking out. For these folks we established Cantankerous Old Coots University (COCU) which consisted of lessons devoted to encouraging one aspect of Cantankerousity. To date, 21 of these lessons are available for readers of Cantankerous Old Coots. A few of these lessons have been quite popular. Others languish in relative obscurity in the archives of Cantankerous Old Coots.

It is time for that to change.

Today I would like to review three of those Coot’s Lessons as a service to newer readers who may have missed their initial publication. Today’s lessons might be categorized as emphasizing urgency as an important quality of cantankerousity. Taking action with immediacy and vigor is basic to the cantankerous mind and lifestyle. So here are the three review lessons for today.

 Take Coot’s Lesson 1 – Let it 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.. “

Then review Coot’s Lesson 4 – Say it when you feel it.

“Are you one of those people who worry about being “politically correct”?  Do you always think out what ‘you want to say before you say it?  Do you get home later and say to yourself ‘I should have said….’ “

Finally follow Coot’s Lesson 7 -Coot’s Don’t Dither

“..decisiveness is more important than being right. Others may worry about making the right decision. Cantankerous Old Coots know that getting all the facts and weighing the pros and cons is less important than action. “

So take a moment today and review these three Coot’s Lessons and use them in your life. Don’t get hung up on doing the ‘right’ thing. You know the right thing already. You just aren’t willing to take the heat for acting on it. Maybe you need more inspiration. If so Ginger Baker may be your man.

Ralph

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

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CNS Followup- Are you a winner?

 Posted by at 12:48  Plain 'ol Cantankerous
Sep 122012
 

It’s the moment of reckoning.

An April fool in Denmark, regarding Copenhagen...

An April fool in Denmark, regarding Copenhagen's new subway.

So now to find out which story is fake, Iv’e linked the stories to the headlines from yesterday.  Click your pick and see if you are a winner.

Man claims attack by lion, saved by a bear

Predator Shocks Jogger

$5 FOOTLONGS CUT SHORT IN SAN FRANCISCO

432 Park Avenue Will Reach 1,397 Feet, Taller Even Than the World Trade Center 

Happy April Fools day from all the Coots.

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Ralph

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

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook

Up with Choices

 Posted by at 09:14  Up With
Aug 272012
 

One of the delights of not having a job anymore is that I spend more time with my wife. To be honest, much of this time is spent in strange ways that I would never choose for myself but, these days, we do spend more time together than we used to. And one of those ways is grocery shopping. It’s given me a new perspective on life and made me wonder who buys all that stuff on the supermarket shelves. It certainly isn’t me.

The Modern Supermarket

I’ve done my share of grocery shopping in the past but when I go shopping by myself, it is different from shopping with my wife. While I shop with purpose and efficiency, my wife bips and bops all over the store and spends too much time waiting for service, like at the deli counter. These days,shopping with my wife, my mind drifts as I wander the supermarket aisles following her whims. I seldom have an agenda which leaves me free to ponder the wonders of all the products on the shelves. Who, I ask myself, buys this stuff?

 I’m a simple guy!

My wife and I have simple wants and needs, at least that’s how I see it. As we traverse the store to select our purchases we pass thousands of products that we never consider buying. There are at least ten laundry detergents not including the one we buy and who really believes that there is any difference? Some are brand names that you see advertised on TV. Others are generic. We don’t even buy detergent at the supermarket- saving that purchase for our once a month trip to Sam’s Club but somebody does and for some reason, the store’s customers want all those choices.

No real choice- just variety

Milk is another example. No commodity is more regulated than milk today. You can’t really have choice in milk because the government has set all the rules. You can’t have fresh, unpasteurized milk whatever you are willing to pay and the price is controlled. Still there are four or five brands of milk with slightly different prices. Somebody clearly cares about those brands or the store wouldn’t carry them yet I can’t believe that there is any difference. We pick the cheapest one and wonder why people buy the expensive. Once it is in the glass, who can tell?

 Do you really need canned peas?

There are aisles full of canned good. These days, we hardly ever buy anything in cans. The exceptions are soups and beans. Vegetables for emergencies will be frozen, not canned and we don’t buy many of those. We do buy canned tomatoes for the winter, I remember. Maybe there was some purpose to canned goods years ago but today, who needs them?

The produce section is a wonder but with all those choices, what we actually buy is limited. We usually buy zucchini, asparagus, broccoli and green beans. I’s nice to have the chilies, tomatillos, eggplant and so on but most of the time we leave them on the shelf. The organic section we ignore completely. Who needs that overpriced, feel good stuff. Strangely, we never see anybody actually buying it.

In the meat section, there are specialty products already breaded and stuffed for immediate preparation. While appealing, they actually taste stale when you get them home and fix them and the actual time it would take to stuff or bread something is marginal so we stay simple. We stick with the basics.

The list goes on

That is only a small inspection of the incredible range of products in our neighborhood supermarket. There are sauces and condiments that couldn’t have been imagined in an American grocery store fifty years ago. I peruse those shelves with wonder these days. Once in a great while, I’ll see a recipe that calls for fish sauce or coconut cream and it is nice to know that if I really want it, I can get it but I can’t help wondering who actually buys that stuff.

This is the modern, multicultural America with sushi shops almost as frequent as Starbucks and I’m not complaining. I love the variety and vitality of new ideas. I don’t really want to go back to the kinds of choices I saw on the supermarket shelves when I was a kid back in the 50’s. It is just when I see all those choices and the amount of expensive real estate devoted to displaying this vast array of products, I can’t help asking.

Who buys this stuff?

Ralph

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

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