Today is *NOT* Thanksgiving!

 Posted by at 11:59  Down with, principles, rants
Jan 012014
 

You read right folks, today is not Thanksgiving, it is Black Friday Eve.  If you haven’t, read Ralph’s post from yesterday, he explains things well.   So is this the first step to abolishing Turkey Day?  I was driving around the other day trying to get the last of the stuff for Thanksgiving, I mean Black Friday Eve, and all I saw was Christmas stuff and Black Friday sales.

It was Monday of this week and Wal-Mart had already discounted what little Thanksgiving stuff (napkins, plates and the like) they had.  I didn’t see one “Happy Thanksgiving” banner or anything that didn’t have to do with the mighty and all powerful Black Friday.  Commercials on the TV are toting the virtues of black Friday and opening up stores at midnight, if they even are closed for Thanksgivng Black Friday Eve.

I have to say this MUST be the beginning of the end.  Soon the turkey tradition will be gone, replaced with Black Friday specials at Burger King, Chick-Fil-A and Sizzler (just 3 places that I saw who were open on Black Friday Eve.)  We will soon grab a whopper and go home to not watch football games, but whole hour long blocks of commercials sponsored by Toys-R-Us and Wal-Mart.

Amazon.com will probably join in and offer Black Friday Eve promotions that start at 10 AM  on the Thursday that used to be Thanksgiving.  Like Ralph said yesterday, there is no differentiation between holiday’s anymore.  I try very hard to keep Christmas separate from everything else.  I fight tooth and nail in order to keep Christmas from invading until after Thanksgiving.

It still trickles in not long after the Halloween decorations go down.  I am accepting this little by little but I will be damned if that tree is up and decorated before the turkey carcass is cooled.  But there are deals and presents available sometime around election day.  Bah.  Humbug.  Even the bell ringers were out on that Monday BEFORE Thanksgiving, er Black Friday Eve.

POMPANO BEACH, FL - OCTOBER 08: Wal-Mart empl...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

I for one will not be participating in Black Friday festivities this year.  Despite the lack of money to participate, I have lost the desire to brave the cold and crowds for a few good deals that are mostly gone by the time I get there.  On the news last Saturday, there were already people camping out at Best Buy.  What a load of, well, this is still supposed to be a PG-13 blog so I had better save that line.  You get the gist of it.  Plus, if you want a secret, MOST of the deals you can get on Black Friday are also available online.  Many you can get at Amazon for nearly the same price right now.

Speaking of Amazon, if you like this blog and would like to help Ralph, Bob and myself spread some Christmas cheer, please link to Amazon with our affiliate link over there in the right sidebar.  It will take you to Amazon.com where you can shop to your hearts content and not pay anymore than you normally would.  We just get a small portion for sending you there.  Enough commercial.

Are you planning on hitting the sales this Black Friday or even this Black Friday Eve?  Are you giving up?  Are you going to attempt to hang onto tradition and have THANKSGIVING?!?!?  I am.  I would like to hear your plans down in the comments.

for now, I have to check some ads and try to figure out what to get people for Christmas.  I did just get an email about quality fake ids…

Have a good one,

-Justin

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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 college reunions!

 Posted by at 11:58  Down with
Jan 012014
 

I’m not going!

I just decided that I won’t be attending my college reunion this year despite the schedule of scintillating events, the opportunity to see the campus again and the daredevil feeling of walking into a gun fight that a trip to Chicago always provides.  I’m torn because it is the big five oh.  It has been fifty years since I received my diploma in the campus chapel.  My how those years fly by.  T’s a big deal that frankly never crossed my mind in June 1963. No twenty-one year old can comprehend living this long.  After four years I decided that Chicago is a fine enough place if you like cold, wind and humidity but I never considered sticking around and I never thought once about coming back in 50 years.

The University of Chicago

Rockefeller Chapel

College was a great experience that I failed to take proper advantage of but looking back I probably handled it at least passably.   I passed my courses, got the degree and moved on into the real world eventually after detours to graduate school and the army.  Somehow all the clichés about those wonderful college years didn’t find me.  I didn’t make any lifetime friends in college.  I didn’t keep in touch with anybody.  Which simplifies the decision about attending my reunion because there is nobody that has any interest in me and nobody I want to catch up with.

No old college friends for me!

The old cliché is that everybody forms lasting bonds in college.  If so, then I am the exception.  Just for kicks I rewatched the Big Chill the other night.  I only vaguely remembered the plot from the 80’s.  What I did remember was the cast of stars, the great old music and the sense that it captured something about college in the 60’s.  If it did, it was a completely different 60’s from the one I lived.  These men and women somehow bonded in college and now fifteen years later those bonds were still strong enough for one woman to offer her husband as a sperm donor.  Despite the hype from Drew Barrymore who is now apparently a host on TCM, it is a ridiculous corny movie fairy tale framed from some nerdy writer’s college fantasy.  I watched in amazement because it was so silly but still I had to watch the whole thing.

My college years formed no strong bonds.  Perhaps I should have ventured further east to Michigan for my college but somehow I don’t think it would have mattered.  I suspect my college reality is more the norm than the one in the Big Chill.  I also suspect that it is more common for college friendships to fall by the wayside.  I know that the college love fest in the Big Chill is a wild exaggeration.  I just don’t know where the truth really lies.  Possibly I am missing some serious bonding ability.  I like people well enough.  People are fun to have around- some of the time.  It is just that after a time, they start getting in the way.  They start expecting things and before you know it you are in the middle of somebody else’s life and you find that they have even more problems than you do.

Maybe it is just me.

Maybe I’ve always been a cantankerous curmudgeon, incapable of friendship.  Maybe I’ve been lying to myself all these years about actually liking people.  Maybe I am actually some kind of alien life form somehow injected into human form.  It’s beyond my ability to know.   I suppose at this point in my life, who cares.  I’m not about to change now, even if I wanted to.

My reunion invitation is in the trashcan.  I am definitely not wasting any more time thinking about attending.  Whatever the impact of my college years on my life, I see no benefit from trying to relive them and no impact from renewing acquaintance with classmates from the past.  They’ve managed for 50 years without me.  A few more won’t hurt.

 

Ralph

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

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Down with Spam!

 Posted by at 15:46  Down with, rants
Nov 232013
 

This is not a new topic.  This is not even fun.  There are probably ten million posts about the evils of spam and here is another one.  Evey morning for the past week or more I have been bombarded with over 400 of the same message, from the same sender.  And they all are about viagra.

I really have tried to unsubscribe from these but I still end up with a ton of email.  It is easy enough to delete but still, it takes so much time sorting through the crap.  I know each and every one of you out there are sick of it too.  Monty python has a slightly different take on spam:

That is still one of the funniest sketches ever.  Now, onto email.  There are those lists you get on that you may even opt on for that send you so much $#!^ every day they might as well be spam.  And these guys are the ones who say how much they hate spam as much as you do.  Maybe that is why our email list here is so anorexic.

These “bombardment marketers” (hey I coined a new phrase let’s get that out there) give everyone a bad name.  We have been trying to grow our list here at the coots and so far, it is pathetically small.  It is populated only by those who write here at the coots, plus a pity subscribe from Dr. Doolin from website in a weekend.  Even Bob was assimilated er invited to join the coots after his joining of the list.

It leads me to theorize.  There are 2 possibilities when it comes to our email list here.  One: people are so afraid of getting bombarded with Cantankerous Spam that they don’t sign up, or, Two: they found out that we make subscribers write for us.  I suspect number one is the culprit.  Here is the skinny on that though, I have been so disappointed with the lack of signups that I have sent out Zero emails to the list.  People on the list probably have forgotten about it.

Even the bait of a free ebook in what promises to be a fantastic course on how to be Cantankerous has not helped.  But I am going to put it out there again, with our fantastic new sign up pop up and the little sign up form right over there———>

Or below.  We will give you the fabulous ebook that includes the first five lessons from the Coots University as well as exclusive Cantankerousness and future discounts to the full course when it comes about.  Sign up below, I swear you will not receive 50 emails from us a day.  You will be lucky to get one a month.  If I feel like it.  It is hard to lose with a deal like that.

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Maybe I will get some hacker buddies together and figure out some code that will destroy the servers of anyone who sends out spam.  That would be worth an email sign up or two I am sure.

Have a Great weekend.  Halloween is Sunday, go dress up as something scary and frighten the children.  Then come back and tell me about it!

-Jusitn

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 Twitter

 Posted by at 15:46  Down with
Nov 232013
 

“For me, the most fascinating interface is Twitter. I have odd cosmic thoughts every day and I realized I could hold them to myself or share them with people who might be interested.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Now I get it. Twitter is not for the hoi polloi. It’s a place where the elites can cast pearls before swine and smirk. No wonder I’m frustrated. I apparently don’t have the intellectual gravitas for Twitter. Cognoscenti use Twitter is for sharing those cosmic thoughts that regularly pop into their brains. Lately those cosmic insights for my brain seem to be in short supply. My impression of Twitter was that it was a place to post snappy one liners. Not that I’ve even been good at those either but, at least, I’ve got a chance.

twitterWhat could be more appealing than an audience panting for your input? Theoretically, the idea of a forum for pithy insights is appealing. Something happens. Your synapses crackle. The brain responds but then there’s a problem. What do you do with your inspiration? Blurt it out like fool with Tourettes? Write a letter to the New York Times? Share it with your brain trust? It’s not easy. If you leave it unsaid, it’s like the tree falling in the forest- nobody will know. You brain will explode. It’s a disaster.

When there is a problem, somebody will provide a solution. In this case, it’s Twitter. Continue reading »

Ralph

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

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Down with Spring Cleaning!

 Posted by at 11:58  Down with
Nov 032013
 

Ihate

I hate Spring!

It promises so much with those April showers and the resulting May flowers.; those buds popping out all over the trees and bushes; the promise of  outdoor barbeques and sunsets on the patio. It is all quite enticing after months of cold blustery weather trapped inside. But that’s not all that Spring brings.

Those first warm days bring other promises as well. The promises my wife extorts from me- at first with gentle suggestions but quickly building to a crescendo of unpleasant nagging. She wants me to do some Spring cleaning. It starts simply enough when I innocently observe how nice it is outside. So she takes a look returning a few minutes later with a scowl on her face.

“You are going to clean up the yard?” she asks.

After the spring Cleaning

Finally ready for sitting

And I suddenly realize that no good deed goes unpunished. The Spring cleaning genie has been released from the bottle and there will be no peace until it is satisfied. You might think that some simple steps would suffice, rearranging the outdoor furniture and removing and storing the covers. You would be wrong because each simple step has a related and more complicated association. You can’t arrange the furniture without washing the patio, which means moving all the pots and pruning the plants in those pots. Some of the pots need replanting so, of course they get moved to the side yard to await a trip to the nursery. Which causes further complications.

“This side yard sure is an eyesore!”

My wife hardly ever visits the side yard which makes it a perfect location for storage and work in transition. I’ve got bags of charcoal, potting soil and amendments. There are empty pots and pots with unsightly contents and even some gardening implements leaning against the wall. It’s a bit untidy, I confess but it saves me from the chore of finding an out of the way place to store them. The task expands.

“You don’t need all these pots? Do you?”

My serene demeanor flees as the tasks escalate. For my wife, this is all a logical process. Life should be tidy and all untidiness must be stamped out immediately. There is no tomorrow. Do it now!   For me , it’s a case of life going rapidly out of control. I accept that Spring cleaning is inevitable but I rebel at the growing snowball of tasks. This simple task could take weeks to finish culminating with a fresh coat of paint.  I need to do something.

“Let’s focus on the back yard.” I insist.

I know that if I don’t object this project will inflate to fill the entire day and that my wife’s solution for anything she considers to be clutter is to throw it away. It is exhausting to protect my turf from her onslaught once it gets going.   I steer her to the back yard, hoping to keep her focused on the task at hand.

Hours later, the patio is clean and the outdoor furniture is arranged in an inviting grouping. Extraneous items have been removed from sight and the yard is now an inviting place for reading or flower watching. I can tell because my wife spent ten minutes out there last weekend. I’m not overconfident that my Spring cleaning problems are over just yet, however. Because I’ve been around this block before. She hasn’t forgotten the side yard. She is just waiting for a strategic advantage and she has claimed her next campaign. Next week we are cleaning the garage.

 

Ralph

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

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