Today I’m getting personal

The good news this week is personal. It is my anniversay.  There ought to be a song somewhere that is worthy but if there is, I don’t know it. You could call it ’40 years with the right woman’ and peg it but even if somebody would write it and then find just the right crooner to sing it, who would listen. Let’s face it , marriage is old news and boring these days. So boring and old that everywhere you go, people are pushing for changes- man marrying man, woman marrying woman, men marrying pets. It is a new world.  The old fashioned notion of a man and woman paring up long term to make a life and raise a family is so lame these days.  Just like me.

Back in 1972 when I was still trying to be cool and hip, it finally occurred to me that my best shot in life was the woman who had followed me to California and that if I didn’t grab her before she found out what a poser I really was, I might never find another. We got married 40 years ago. No big wedding. Just us, two friends and a minister followed by a small reception at our penthouse apartment in West LA. We honeymooned on Catalina Island. We were real jet setter alright.

The day of the wedding I remember driving to the ceremony listening to Ricky Nelson, complaining about being a has been.

Anyway, forty years with the right woman isn’t all roses and lollipops because the right woman makes you stand up when you want to hide and do what you have to do whether you like it or not.

Nobody ever tells you that the good things in life are the ones you fight for; the ones that don’t just happen. Those good things are what make you forget what you went though to reach the goal. So while I sit here today feeling proud of my marriage, I can’t forget that there were many times I wanted to bail and do something easy. So if there is any good news today, it is to tell you that whatever there is that is keeping you from making the woman who committed to you happy, throw it out. It won’t matter to you in the future but your marriage will.

Ralph

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

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook

Where is the Summer Going? 

Welcome to the August 5 edition of the Coot’s News Service where we tell you the news that won’t make you want to hide in the closet. Where to start?  What say we take a bite out of crime.?

View of Downtown focused around the Goldman Sachs Tower (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It seems that Mayor Bloomberg, not satisfied with telling New Yorkers what they can eat wants to leave another legacy when he moves on to better things. He has teamed up with Goldman Sachs to fight crime and if they succeed everybody wins. Imagine that!  Juvenile offenders stay out of jail and reform their ways, Goldman Sachs makes money and so do the taxpayers. It is just too good to be true.

Billionaires See Profit in Prisons, But It’s a Good Thing This Time

There is good news in robotics as well. It may not do anything to make your life better today but a new robotic hand may make life better for all of us in the future.

Dextrous robotic hand gets thumbs up

This last story isn’t exactly good news, just interesting. It seems that the Germans have a new invasion from North America. It’s not the barbaric, tasteless Americans either. It is cute, four-legged creatures with masks and the Germans have only themselves to blame.

Germany Overrun by Hordes of Masked Omnivores

The Masked Invaders

Happy August from the Coots. Bob promised to get back in the saddle (Yeah, I know we have heard that one before.) Justin, the harried stay at home Dad is too busy getting ready for school right now although I expect that the experience will provide many cantankerous moments to share. I can’t believe that kids go back to school in August these days. I don’t know how they have the nerve to call it Summer vacation when it has shrunk to the month of July. Kids should go on strike. And this all makes me wonder how the schools can complain about not having enough money and threatening to shorten the school year continue to make it longer and longer. Something doesn’t compute. I couldn’t be happier that my kids are all through with school.

Ralph

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

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook

Down with Conventional Wisdom 

EXPERT (Photo credit: Pete Prodoehl)

One thing that starts to bug you as you get along in years is conventional wisdom- those things that everybody knows to be true but are actually wrong. What makes you suspicious is that over time the story changes. Those ‘experts’ who somehow make a living pretending they know what is best just suddenly tell a different story and pretend that it is the same one.  Not that ‘experts’ ever admit the switch. They just do it. And then, what is even more amazing, it seems that nobody ever notices. We just bounce right on over to the new story without skipping a beat.

Sooner or later you’ve had enough.  After you have this pulled on you a few times, you start to rebel. You wonder who made those ‘experts’ experts. You begin to think that maybe they don’t know as much as they think they do. Woody Allen noticed this years ago.  I’m not a great fan of Woody but as you probably know, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Today, health experts are certain that they know what you should eat, how you should cook it and we don’t question.  These days the buzz is about raw- food, not WWF.  We’ve all been conditioned to the idea that the best vegetables are raw or cooked as little as

English: Cut Green Beans Español: Habichuelas o ejotes, preparados y listos para servir (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

possible. We are told that they are better for us, better tasting and beautiful. Like the sheep that we are trained to be, we buy it. Nowadays everyone makes fun of the overcooked vegetables favored traditionally by the British as gray, tasteless and mushy. Few remember the Southern tradition of cooking vegetables for hours with ham fat. We shudder at the mention because we have been brainwashed to think that eating animal fat is unhealthy. Those beans may taste good but beware the heart attack that will surely follow. Maybe so but I remain suspicious of studies that confuse correlation with causation.  There is another way to cook green beans.

You’re Doing It Wrong: Green Beans

And while we are talking about health myths, aren’t you tired of people telling you how unhealthy modern life is? Aren’t you sick of people telling you to run around and shoot your food instead of going to the supermarket – or even calling in for delivery. Those flipping ‘experts’ would have you believe that you are killing yourself because you have an office job when you ought to be out running down a rabbit. Well the next time you hear that,

hunter gatherers are hot

give them a healthy one finger salute and get on with your life. They’ve got it all wrong.  Couch potatoes are just fine, thank you very much.

Are couch potatoes as fit as ‘hunter-gatherers’?

And finally, are you sick of people telling you that you need to create meaningless and cryptic passwords? Have you given up because you can’t possibly remember arbitrary strings of letters? Well relax because it’s actually much simpler than the experts tell you.

Make strong passwords the easy way

So start the week with a healthy skepticism about anything the ‘experts’ tell you. Chances are you’ve got a better handle on the right thing to do than any of those self-righteous know-it-all’s. Forget about them and their advice. Do it your own way.

Ralph

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

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook