Mar 092014
 

**Editors Note: Today is actually a happy day here at Cantankerous Old Coots!  My friend Bob has here, written below, what is the 100th post published on this site!  That is a great milestone and one we are most definitely not going to stop at   Not bad for a blog that started on a whim with a sarcastic comment.  Thanks for coming and reading our stuff and you can look forward to more, number 200 is coming!  Now onto Bob’s post! -Justin**

Sometimes I just think the know-it-all kids might be able to run things better than us old farts (and fartettes).  Maybe we just ought to turn all the country’s problems over to them to solve.  They’ll probably do it in about a week and a half.

Just ask them…they’ll be glad to tell you.  Apparently, from about age 18 to age 25 is when a human is the smartest and can do the best analytical thinking, and after that it’s all downhill.  So…if they are so damn smart, let them figger things out for us.

This was brought home YET AGAIN this past week when Megan McCain, the dumb blonde bimbo highly intelligent and discerning daughter of Sen. John McCain opened her mouth…again.

Does anyone besides me wish she would just shut…the…hell…up?  If she weren’t Sen McCain’s daughter she’d be just another dumb blonde…like, awesome…Valley Girl wannabe.  Instead, the media treats her like the second coming of Socrates, spreading her insight far and wide.

How does a 26 year old who hasn’t yet learned to wipe her rear without a diagram and written instructions get so smart so young…and she must be smart…

Last week she shared with us…and with the breathlessly listening main stream media…that  Christine O’Donnell, the senate candidate from Delaware, shouldn’t be elected because she is not qualified.  Well, just what makes one “qualified”, Megan?

(“Megan” because you are a know-it-all snot-nosed brat.  Gain some age…and wisdom…and you might earn a Ms. McCain.)

Megan, just what kind of qualifications do you feel someone needs to have in order to hold elected office?  Let’s look at a couple of elected officials for guidance, OK?

There once was a small town country lawyer from Illinois.  He was mostly self-educated, and was not a lawyer with a polished resume.  His political career consisted of several failed attempts to get elected to local and state office before his single win.  He was not a polished speaker and was not notably educated on national and foreign policy of the day.  He was much like Christine O’Donnell in that he was simply a good man of average intellect who wanted to just do the right thing.

The second politician was also of average intellect, but had a far more extensive unofficial political education having been raised in the politics of a navy admiral’s household and absorbing the politics of national defense.  He attended the US Naval Academy and served as a Navy carrier pilot where his only notable act was to be shot down over North Vietnam.  As a POW he showed himself to be an American patriot.  So far, so good…but after being released from captivity and leaving the navy he was bitten by the political bug and was elected by his wife’s money and his war hero status to the United States senate, where he changes his position on issues as often as I change my underwear, always sticking his finger in the air to test the currents before deciding what he thinks.

I like inexperienced and unqualified better.

Meghan, the first inexperienced, unqualified (by your standards, anyway) politician was Abraham Lincoln.  The second is your father.

I think it’s best you, like, you know, just shut up.

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.

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Mar 042014
 

…and my new hero is an 18 year old high school dropout.

His name is Jhaqueil Reagan and he lives close to Indianapolis, Indiana.  He may be a dropout, but we need more kids like him…LOTS more.

Jhaqueil is a dropout because he quit school a couple of years ago so he could take care of his brothers and sisters after his mom’s death.  Right there I got past the fact that he dropped out.  As far as I can see, that wasn’t dropping out, it was prioritizing and making the right decision.

From what I read, his leaving school didn’t mean leaving his education behind as he finished his secondary education before he would have graduated in the first place, getting his GED.  Second prioritization choice, second good decision.

Ya know, though…a dropout with a GED who has younger siblings to care for also has their stomaches to feed…and that takes money, which means getting a job.  Now, I may be wrong, but a dropout teenager might just find it hard to find work.  He might decide to take advantage of our wonderful nanny – state giveaways and suck off the state, the taxpayer’s money tit.  After all, everyone knows when the job market is tough the thing to do is suck off of someone else…you know, like the 20 – somethings, perpetual students that move back into their parent’s basements and go play in the streets at Occupy Wall Street style protests, all planned out on the iPads their mommy’s

English: Photos of Occupy Wall Street on Day 2...

and daddy’s bought them.

So this kid Jhaqueil can go suck the government’s welfare tit, right?

Um…no.

Jhaqueil heard about a job opening at a Dairy Queen across town.  10 miles across town.  And it was snowing and icy and windy and CLOD…but what the hell…Indianapolis has municipal bus service, right?

Not for Jhaqueil, at least not until he gets a job.  He cannot afford bus fare, so do you know what he does?

He walks.  He needed a job, he heard about a job, so he went to try to get the job.  Its simple, really.

The freezing weather didn’t matter,  Nor did the ice and snow or the wind.  Jhaqueil had good, simple, linear thinking:

Need a job>>hear about a job>>go apply for the job = Get the job.  That simple, and anything between the first and last of that  equation is simply an obstacle to be overcome.

But he did not get the job, demonstrating an obvious lack of management’s good judgement at the Dairy Queen.

That’s OK though…Jhaqueil got a job.  He had stopped at another restaurant along the way to ask directions, and the owner had asked why he was out in the bitter weather, walking.  Jhaqueil explained about the job and his lack of bus fare…then kept walking.  Art Bouvier, the owner of Papa Roux Cajun Cooking, the place he stopped for directions, saw him later when he went out on an errand, still walking.  He picked him up to take him the last mile, and got his name and phone number before the kid got out of the car.

Art Bouvier’s judgement is better thanthat of the Dairy Queen’s management.  He recognizes character when he sees it.  He can see beyond the school dropout, beyond a poor kid who doesn’t have bus fare instead of walking 10 miles in a blizzard, who simply sees something that needs doing and does it and apparently doesn’t have “I can’t” in his vocabulary.

Art Bouvier knows a good employee when he sees one, even one who hasn’t asked him for a job.  He called the kid that night and asked him how the job search went.  When he found out the Dairy Queen hadn’t hired him, hadn’t hired a kid willing to walk 10 miles through a blizzard to apply, he hired him right then.

Good catch, Art.

Now I have a new hero…two9, actually.  A kid who just does what has to be done, and Art bouvier, one Coon Ass I’d like to meet.  Indianapolis ain’t that far…I just may eat some Cajun food soon…surely they serve red beans and rice with a couple of links of boudin.

PS:  I don’t normally do this, but this is an exception.  After finishing the article I called Papa Roux’s.  Great folks and, I’d bet my last nickle, great Coon Ass (Cajun to you uneducated folks…LOL) food, too.  If you are ever in or around the east side of AIndianapolis, grab a bite to eat there.  Call ’em for exact directions at 317.603.9861.  Tell ’em Bob sent ya.

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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.

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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.

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Down with Routine

 Posted by 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

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.

 

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Ralph

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

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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

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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