Down with | - Part 13

Let’s define “zero tolerance”

Posted by Bob@HayleStorm Interactive at 10:42 Down with, principles, rants

Feb 152014

The “let the nanny state take care of me” crowd has a tendency to use zero tolerance as a way to protect themselves when they turn their brains off. That would be 99% of the time. Let’s look at just what zero tolerance is.

Back before zero tolerance became the politically correct method for demonstrating your stupidity, it had a very limited use, and was usually enforced only by the local old maid librarian. Most of them had ears like a directional microphone, and were pissed at the world because they had never been kissed, and used that super hearing mostly to punish highly hormonal teenagers.

I’ll swear, the librarian back home could hear you if you picked your nose, and would throw you out. For the library, the upside was it kept boogers off the bottoms of tables and chairs.

Don’t look at me like that! Where else are you gonna put a booger in the library, inside the back cover of a book?

Anyway, these days any little self appointed dictator uses zero tolerance to 1.) Give them an excuse to exercise what little power they have as often as possible, and 2.) Allow them to save energy by not having to think. For some reason, while it seems to be used by everybody with just an itty bitty bit of power, it rears its ugly head most often in our schools.

• A couple of years ago in Cobb County, Georgia (a part of the metropolitan Atlanta area…naturally) a little girl in, I believe, the seventh grade, who was an A + student, was expelled for the balance of the school year for bringing a weapon to school.

The weapon? A plastic 6 inch long Tweety Bird keychain that had the door key to her home on it. Now, if you have at least three active brain cells working at the moment, you have to be asking yourself, “Self, how in the hell can a plastic keychain be a weapon?” Well, a brain dead (and zero tolerance loving) principle, followed Georgia law to the letter and decided that a keychain with a key on the end of it (where else would you keep the key?) fit the legal description of a “flinging weapon”, and kicked the honor roll student out of school.

The principle was thinking along the lines of numbchucks. Personally, I think numbskull is more appropriate.

• Along about the same time in Gwinnett County, Georgia, (yet another suburban Atlanta county)…

Stop right there. I don’t wanna hear any crap about Georgia. Atlanta might be in Georgia, it might even be the capital of Georgia, but it is not Georgia. Atlanta might be 10% Georgians. Everybody else moved in from Yankee land.

Anyway, in Gwinnett County, Georgia another 10 or 11 year old little girl took a very small 1 ounce bottle that had a purple liquid in it to school and told her classmates that it was communion wine. One of her classmates told the teacher, who took the little girl and the bottle of “communion wine” to the principal’s office . The principle opened the bottle (drinking on the job Mr. Principle?), discovered the “communion wine” was actually grape juice…and expelled the little girl for violating the no alcohol policy. He said that even pretending that it was alcohol put the little girl in violation of the policy.

I suppose that means that if two of the boys in school were standing at the water cooler and started joking about getting a drink of beer “on tap” they would be expelled as well.

• Not to be outdone by it’s confederate neighbors to the south, a high school in Spotsylvania, Virginia has expelled another straight “A” student for shooting spitballs in class. Not suspended… expelled.

As a totally irrelevant aside, who the hell would name a town Spotsylvania? Every time I hear that name I get an image in my head of a cross between a spotted Dalmation dog and a vampire, and I don’t even do drugs like our regular reader Hansi.

OK, back on topic. The school has taken a portion of the Federal Gun Free School Act, which mandates that schools expel students who take “…weapons, including hand guns, explosive devices and projectile weapons, to school. “, and has decided that a spitball is a “projectile weapon”.

Based on the three examples above I think my own personal definition of “zero tolerance” is fairly accurate. My definition? I’ll express it in the form of a math problem:

Zero intelligence + zero judgment = zero tolerance.

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.

Down with Evil…

Posted by Ralph at 10:42 Down with

Feb 152014

Where ever you find it.

We all know it’s an evil world. All you have to do is open the newpaper or turn on the TV. This Coot tries to avoid the bad news but each day it gets harder and harder. Some days it seems like the only way to protect yourself from the proliferating evil in the world is to retreat back in the woods, away from people. My partner here at Coots, Bob, prides himself on being ahead of the curve. He moved back in the woods years ago, taking the road less traveled and not coming back. He’s been pretty smug about the joys of living away from people in the idyllic Georgia backwoods but lately the woods haven’t been so idyllic. There is something evil happening there.

Scientists have long suspected that trees are not so benign and positive as the folklore suggests and lately they confirmed the truth. Trees are evil.

Instead of finding safety in the woods, Bob now finds that he is on the front line of attack from evil trees which attacked his Yurt last night. Communications have been difficult as Bob tries to save his homestead and ward off the attack. He has requested backup but so far is on his own and outnumbered againt the foe. And Bob’s backyard is not the only place where trees are attacking. This story tells how African villagers are terrorized by trees.

Elsewhere Coot’s News Service correspondants have provided news footage showing other places where trees have attacked. This attack happened in the Smoky Mountains, not that far from Bob’s outpost.

And finally, Coots has obtained news footage from Bob’s local sherif. It is a full scale war. Let’s just hpe and pray that Bab can hold his own and beat those evil trees back.

There are even attacks indoors. It is looking very ominous now.

Attack of the Trees – Watch more Funny Videos

Keep Bob in your prayers. How are the trees behaving in your neck of the woods?

Ralph

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

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Down with Routine

Posted by Ralph at 10:42 Down with, principles

Feb 152014

rou·tine

noun rü-ˈtēn

: a regular way of doing things in a particular order

: a boring state or situation in which things are always done the same way

: a series of things (such as movements or jokes) that are repeated as part of a performance

I’m just a ordinary guy

but I find that it’s not easy being ordinary. I like my life to be predictable, manageable and, well, routine. It’s the bane of my existence that life doesn’t work that way. Much as I try to keep my ducks in a row or flying in a tight v formation, they scatter and raise a ruckus. I spend too much time chasing down errant strays and calming the fuss and not enough savoring the pleasures of the moment when I have the time to notice them. I start the day anticipating smooth sailing and fall asleep at night tying to figure how to right my capsized ship. It’s frustrating.

Hamlet with Yorick’s skull (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So it’s no wonder that I go back and forth about routines. Early in life I decided that by establishing a ‘good’ routine for my life I would find success. I looked around for role models and tried my best to emulate them. Then I went to college and learned that everything I had adopted was banal and old-fashioned and that I should challenge the system and rebel. I embraced the new as best I could and imagined that I had become a superior human being when all I really did was to blindly follow a different lifestyle model. I was still following the crowd. All I can say is that it felt good at the time.

It was many years later

that I actually pondered the meaning of life and began examining my own accomplishments. I started thinking about what was really important to me; stopped imitating and pondered who I really was- and even more troubling who I wanted to be. It wasn’t pretty. I asked myself why I had neglected to form a life philosophy and persona of my own instead of aping the philosophy of people that I thought were ‘cool’. I’d been drifting along in the cultural currents making no attempt to steer my boat or select a destination. Not only wasn’t I very principled in my lifestyle patterns and behaviors, I discovered that I wasn’t someone whom I could respect. I was superficial and shallow.

Trying to grow up as a mature man with career and a family was a struggle. You don’t break old patterns easily. Inertia is a powerful force but fortunately inertia can work as a positive as well as a negative. It is very difficult to fight old habits and create new ones but when you do create the new ones they serve you by helping to keep you on track. As you build the new habits it forms a structure for your life that can help you stay on track.

Along the way

I discovered that what I learned as a child worked better as a routine than what I learned in college. I found that responsibility and hard work was more satisfying and productive than saying the ‘right’ thing. I found that listening to people made life easier than telling them what to do. I abandoned the conviction that I knew the answer to most questions and asked for advice and support. I stopped bullshitting and fence sitting and started trying to do what was right and began taking chances, being responsible and living with my mistakes. At first, none of this was routine but over time it got easier. It became routine.

So these days, I’m boring and predictable. After many years roaming the reservation and aping the ‘cool’ guys, I’m going back to the basics and the lessons I learned as a child.

Tying to put together the pieces of my life and fix my mistakes isn’t easy but time is wasting.

Ralph

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

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Enough is enough! Down with “Guru’s”

Posted by Justin at 07:36 Down with, rants

Jan 072014

** editors note, I don’t know what is with wordpress sometimes….this post is now 24 hours into trying to be published. I hope it is this time**

When is it time to say enough is just e-freaking-nough?? (Sure the language is not as cantankerous as possible but we have to have some family decorum. Like it or don’t.)

So I am on today about people who push themselves to be “Guru’s” in their field. Now I know that this is the idea behind muchof the business we are in with blogging and product creation. We have to make people respect us and want to pay for our opinions on things. That is fine, go forth and create. Just don’t fill us with bull crap along the way.

Now, this will make my wife mad but here is what has been bugging me. Jillian Freaking Michaels. Now it doesn’tmatter what her real qualifications are, she has set herself up to be the know-all, be-all of fitness and training. Now I am not saying that this necessarily a bad thing. That is what we are trying to do. But there are extremes.

Ms. Michaels is just about EVERYWHERE now. She is on 2 TV shows, has food supplements, a web site, a ton of fitness equipment and video games. All geared toward making you feel bad about yourself. I mean getting a person to lose weight because in her world, if you are not like her, you are a fat pig.

I guess what has really gotten me going about her is the smug, airbrushed, windblown poses that grace every product she puts her grimy name on. I was listening to one of her radio show podcasts at the insistence of my wife and there was a caller who was on saying how she worshipped Jillian Michaels and how she was the best ever and how the sun rose and set in her pants, blah blah blah.

This is the problem I have with “guru’s”. People get so star struck with the “big” names that they forget to be their own person. That is a future Coots lesson by the way.

My biggest issue, just sticking your name on anything associated with your niche is not necessarily a good thing and tends to dilute credibility. True cantankerosity comes when you can say, “Screw it, I am doing what I want and you can take all of this superfluous crap and shove it.”

Take hold of your stuff. Make something great and quit trying to prove how great you are by branding everything you can think of. The first Jillian Michaels jock strap that I see….somebody dies.

Now, go do something useful.

-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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Coots Smirk: How about them Yankees?

Posted by Ralph at 07:36 Coot Smirk, Down with

Jan 072014

: Image via Wikipedia

Down with the Yankees!

Nothing makes this Coot happier than to see the Yankees lose. Let’s give a big cheer for the Rangers who sent then home for the season last week. Gotta love those underdogs from the hinterlands. The Yankees represent everything that is wrong with America today – money, priviledge and arrogance.

I come by my Yankee phobia naturally. I grew up in Kansas City where in ancient times the Kansas City Blues were a Yankee farm team. Every time the Blues had a good season, the Yankees harvested the stars leaving the team flat. When the Philadelphia Athletics moved to KC, nothing changed. The KC A’ s continued to function as a farm team for the Yankees. Roger Maris was a painful example as this quote from Wikipedia notes.

Maris made his major league debut in 1957 with the Cleveland Indians. On April 18, 1957, Maris hit the first home run of his career. It came at Briggs Stadium in Detroit and was a grand slam off Tigers pitcher Jack Crimian.[2] The next year, he was traded to the Kansas City Athletics with Dick Tomanek and Preston Ward for Vic Power and Woodie Held. He represented the A’s in the All-Star Game in 1959 in spite of missing 45 games due to an appendix operation.

Kansas City frequently traded its best players to the New York Yankees – which led them to be referred to as the Yankees’ “major league farm team”[citation needed] – and Maris was no exception, going to the Yankees in a seven-player trade in December 1959, with Kent Hadley and Joe DeMaestri for Marv Throneberry, Norm Siebern, Hank Bauer, and Don Larsen.

Heart, pluck and spirit are not part of the Yankee tradition. It is raw power, bullying and all the entitlement that money can buy. Thankfully this year we are spared the ordeal.

***Edit note from Justin: I found this clip from Doug Stanhope about the Yankees. I feel the same way. Warning for extreme coarse language. Listen at your own risk. You have been warned, don’t come back and complain to us.

Ralph

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

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