Thursday is the day Thanksgiving. The day where we give thanks. We give thanks to each other and the country and generally blow smoke up each others asses.
This post is no different. Today the Coots would like to thank everyone who comes here and reads this silly blog, or as it should be called, Ralph Carlson’s second blog.
Personally, I would like to thank Ralph for keeping this thing afloat and running. I would like to thank Bob for pretending to care about this site. Continue reading »
Last week , when I wrote here about new TSA groping frisking procedures I had no idea the issue would flame up as it has. Now, it seems, the whole country is up in arms (or has their arms up, ready to be felt up frisked) over the TSA’s intrusiveness. “Don’t touch my junk!” has gone viral. Folks, this is just the most recent, most visible, and most outrageous of the government’s ignoring of basic constitutional limits.
Here are a few things you thought you could do…that you should be able to do constitutionally…that you can’t do. Some laws ignore rights at the federal level, some at the state level, and some at the local level. Some are serious rights violations, some are silly, and some are downright stupid…but all are a bit more of a slide down a slippery slope:
1. Grow wheat in your backyard. Really…according to US law, and backed up by a 1932 Supreme Court decision, it is illegal to grow wheat in your yard for your personal consumption. Why? It might destroy the wheat market, thus interfering in interstate commerce. Details? Google it…don’t take my word for it…anything you read here needs Ronald Reagan’s admonition to “trust but verify”.
2. You cannot sell milk from your cow to your neighbor. In most states, the sale of unpasteurized milk for human consumption is illegal, as it the transportation of such milk across state lines. Let’s think about this for a second. A naturally produced product, raw milk, is not safe or legal for human consumption in the form that God made it, but it CAN be sold it once corporate America is allowed to make it an adulterated product through pasteurization. In other words, the USDA, FDA, and CDC, along with various state level agencies, are smarter than and know more than God.
Can you spell arrogance?
3. You and your Boy Scout troop cannot, in a burst of patriotism, spontaneously break out singing the Star Spangled Banner while visiting the Lincoln Memorial (or other Washington monuments). It is considered a demonstration and you must get a permit first.
4. In Roselle Park, New Jersey you cannot sleep in public, so if you are drowsy while waiting at a bus stop for the bus, don’t doze off. You might find yourself as a visitor at the local Graybar Hotel.
5. You know those cakes and pastries you bake that your church sells at church fundraisers? In more and more states you can’t do that anymore. You can’t sell foods that aren’t prepared in state approved and inspected kitchens…and your granny’s kitchen doesn’t count.
6. You can’t dye your white poodle’s paws pink for Halloween, even when you use an animal-safe dye. A Jacksonville, Florida woman was fined $255 for doing so, with the judge calling it animal abuse. There aren’t any murders, rapes, or robberies in Jacksonville for the cops to deal with?
7. In many towns…towns, not subdivisions with Homeowners’ Associations…you can’t groom your yard according to your standards. The local government has passed laws governing how tall your grass can be. Then they hire an Ordinance Enforcement Officer using YOUR tax money, to run around with a badge, a ticket book, and a tape measure looking for yards that aren’t cut to their standards.
Yet you think the constitution assures you of property owner’s rights, right?
8. In Atlanta, Georgia you can’t legally walk down the street on Sundays with an ice cream cone in your back pocket. Really. I swear.
9. In California you can’t build a deck on your house if the shadow of the deck, not the deck itself, falls on a spot in your yard that holds standing water more than 10 days a year. According to California environmental protection rules, upheld by the state court, such a spot, regardless how small, qualifies as a protected wetland, and it cannot be affected in any way by a manmade influence…including the shade of a deck…so call your architect and have your deck plan redesigned, after getting the environmental impact assessment done first. Loving those constitutionally protected property owner’s rights more and more…
10. In Gainesville, Georgia you cannot eat fried chicken with a fork. Silly? Yes. A PR stunt for the country’s chicken capital? Yes again…but also indicative of government’s attitude about them ruling us.
Some of these seem trivial…not eating fried chicken with a fork comes to mind…and some seem serious, like your group not being allowed a spontaneous display of patriotism at a national monument, but all show a creeping trend of the government taking away rights, “…all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…” that they have no legal power to take away.
We have awakened over the last two years, and now we face a choice, a decision.
We can figure that we did our job, that the recent election sent a message our politicians heard and will heed without further action from us. We can fall back asleep on the couch, watching American Idol or Dancing With the Stars and guzzling a beer, or…
We can realize that it is not just our armed forces who must take to heart the saying “Freedom isn’t free”…we must do our part. Write our congressman, write letters to the editor of our local papers, show up at meetings our elected officials…local, state, and federal…will attend. Praise them when they act in a manner that shows they know that they work for us, we don’t work for them, and call them out, loudly, bluntly, and often, when they don’t.
I know my choice…I actually enjoy pulling politicians’ chains…what’s yours? Stay awake, or go back to sleep?
Yesterday on Twitter I sent out an advertisement for this blog. I said, “Cantankerify Yourself.” I am now making up words ala our last president, George W. Bush. But, just because it is not in the dictionary now, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be there.
Definition in the Coots dictionary: Cantakerify: V. 1. The act of becoming Cantankerous. 2. V. To educate yourself on the finer points of becoming Cantankerous. 3. V. To be transformed from mild mannered sheep to a Cantankerous Old Coot. 4. To hell with it it means what it means. If you can’t figure it out Einstein, go somewhere else.
Part of becoming a coot is being able to make stuff up and have the younger generation nod their little sheep heads and agree with your words of wisdom, just because you are older. I am reminded of Jeff Foxworthy and his bit about his dad being older and yelling at the dog to “gitonouttahere”. Sounds like a word. Who is going to argue with the old guy? He may give you the business end of his walker.
So I am making up words that will become part of the Cantankerous Old Coot subculture. Some will call it slang, some will embrace it fully. Some Cantankerous buggers may just ridicule me and beg for the business end of my walker. Or cane. Or Baseball Bat…..
This is the site of the Coots. We exist to rail against the wrongs that society has launched upon us. We will educate. We will entertain. We will Cantankerify.
Are there any words that you feel belong on here? Let us know in the comments. I think I may have a dictionary page. I think I will give a free month subscription to the site to whoever sends in the best word. You can sign up for our mailing list too and keep up with the Coots. We won’t bombard you with crap that you don’t want, that is a rant in itself. The Cantankerous Old Coots are coming and we can’t be stopped!
-Justin
No, I’m not kidin’. Jack Lalane’s death over the weekend has made me think about just how true it is that old things and old ways are far better than our newfangled plastic world.
Now, I’m already pretty much of a throwback, having been variously described as a Neanderthal, a caveman, a Luddite, and, by those who wish to be kind, retro, and I am all of those and probably more.
But I get in a hurry, and I skim, both in my talk and in my actions. It’s not that I don’t believe in what I say or do, I just have a tendency to get in a hurry and hit the high spots.
Jack Lalane didn’t get in a hurry, and he didn’t “hit the high spots”. In short, he didn’t skim.
I remember watching Jack Lalane back when I was little more than knee high. I don’t really know what I liked about him at that point. I was around 10 years old, a bit young to be a fitness buff, but there was something about his show that I actually liked watching. Maybe it was just all the energy, I don’t know, but I was always in front of that black and white console TV watching Lalane show American mothers how to stay fit. Looking back, what was really amazing (though I didn’t realize it at the time) was that Lalane was 50 years old even then.
Now, though, I find that there are two things about Jack Lalane that I find inspirational:
First, he was living proof that it didn’t take every newfangled exercise machine in the world, every exercycle, every treadmill, every stair stepper, every nutritional supplement, every protein rich shake this and nutrient dense bar that…in order to stay in shape.
Jack Lalane showed us that if you want to lose weight you simply burn more calories than you take in, and you could burn those calories with little more than a straight back chair and a 3 foot piece of stretchy cord. He would have been the nightmare of every 3:00 AM infomercial pitch man in the world (including Billy Mays, my hero and a Great American, RIP).
The second thing Jack Lalane taught us was that in our quest for good nutrition there was one cardinal rule:
“if God didn’t make it, you don’t put it in your body.”
Now, Jack Lalane is dead and the country (including me) is fat.
See… I told you Retro Is Right.
So here we are, two weeks with no government. Do you miss it yet? It all reminds me of a song- actually it reminds me of several but I’m struggling to stay focused here. What kind of world is it where stopping government means it is all over. And what makes us think that the people in charge are smart enough to fix it?
Sorry, we’re closed.
I’ve come a long way during my life. When I was a kid, the US was the bomb! Literally, but we were the good guys and WWII was proof. We beat the evil Krauts and the evil Japs, and we did it pretty much single handed because the rest of the world was either brutalized by the bad guys or too spineless to stand up. We were a free people, proud of it and proud of our country. Government was a joke.
Nobody back then expected the government to save us from anything. We could take care of ourselves. We were Americans. We didn’t win the war because of our government. We won the war because of our American spirit. We won in spite of the government. If anyone back then had threatened to shut down the government, we’d have laughed because we knew it didn’t matter. Today, shutting down the government is viewed as a disaster. We are supposed to drag our dependent asses into a corner and weep. There seem to be a few weepers out there but they all live in Washington. Who does the shutdown really hurt anyway? It’s those government workers who work daily to make us miserable.
