As the pony stumbles…

 Posted by at 11:02  Coot Smirk, principles
Feb 232015
 

Another week of 2012 down the drain, February almost at an end, where is it all going?  Well Bob is off on his quest to be the go to guy for wordpress video blogging, and Ralph is getting ready to be either an Italian, or an American lost in Italy.  So that leaves me, riding a stumbling pony around the Cantankerous Old Coots stable.

So with all of the lack of discipline and lack of posts from me it will either be a ghost town of old promoted posts or I will get back into the good saddle and write like I used to when this whole blogging thing got going.

I am inspecting my girth strap as we speak.  Posts will be new and fresh, hopefully they will be interesting.

Have a great Trip Ralph, make your wife think she is more important than blogging for a while….

Bob, well,  I don’t know.

See you all on Wednesday.

-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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Coot Lesson #2 – We Don’t Care What You Think

 Posted by at 11:02  Coot Law, Coots Lessons, principles
Feb 232015
 

We don’t care what you think.

Your mother may think you are clever and dote on your every word. You may have been brainwashed in our worthless education system to think that you have value just for breathing. You may even be a pillar in your community, a church elder, a school teacher or even a politician. In the end it doesn’t matter. Here at Coots, your opinion is worthless. If we wanted it, we would ask but we don’t have time to waste arguing about it. It’s a free country for now but every second we get pushed further and further into a world where we can’t say something because somebody else thinks different and we might offend them. Someone seems to have invented a civil right that makes is a crime to offend someone. While we still can; while there is still no addendum to the Bill of Rights to say that all us Americans have a God given right not to be offended, Coots is going on record to say that we don’t care what you think. You can think whatever stupid things you want. You can be a damn fool for all we care and we are pretty confident that you have everything it takes to be the best damn fool there is. We just don’t care. And we will tell you what a fool you are- as often as we can.

Its’ not easy telling it like it is

You would think that that would make us good guys in today’s feel-good world. It doesn’t seem to work that way. Unless you are Al Gore or the New York Times, society frowns on telling people what you think. Everybody is supposed to be smart enough to make up their own mind today. It is just that making up your own mind is reduced to parroting Al Gore or the New York Times. Being smart and making up your own mind is now nothing more than saying the right things at the right time. Nobody knows how to think for themselves or even that they aren’t thinking at all.

We know what we think

We don’t claim to be smart here at Coots. We don’t read the New York Times and we stay as far away from Al Gore as possible (when you get older, you just don’t like to be where it is cold). We do like to think, however. We think a lot. And when we think a lot we just can’t help blurting it all out. So we will. Disagree if you must. You can even add a comment to voice your disagreement. You can shout. You can scream. You can throw a tantrum. But in the end, we don’t care. We just don’t care what you think. We don’t care if you are offended. In fact, we hope you are. Somebody needs to straighten you out.

Ralph

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

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Christmas is coming….

 Posted by at 11:02  Coot Smirk, principles
Feb 232015
 
The Examination and Trial of Father Christmas,...

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Unless you are living somewhere under a rock or at the bottom of the ocean, you know now, it is almost Christmas!  Yes Sunday is the big day when a large part of the world celebrates the birth of Jesus and most of us celebrate the wonderfulness of the credit card.

As of mid morning on Sunday, our house will be awash in torn paper and giggles as the kids delight in what Santa will bring them.  I will just be wanting a nap I am sure. We get reminded about what and who we should be remembering during the season all too often, yet there are some people that seem to be forgotten.  If you work at a store that is open on Christmas, you should quit right now.

There are however, those who have to work on Christmas, and those are the Emergency Services people. Police, Fire Departments and hospitals will be open and running over the holiday, they can’t be closed.  If you are lucky or unlucky enough to run into one of these type of people during Christmas, say Thanks to them for working.

It may be that fireman who puts out your house after the tree catches fire, the cop who pulls you over for having too much Christmas cheer, or the Ambulance driver who rushes you to the hospital when Grandmas turkey was just a bit *too* underdone.

Then don’t forget the doctors and nurses who will be there to pump your stomach and give you some groovy feel better meds.  Yes my wife will be working the afternoon of Christmas this year as they all get a turn in the nursing field, but then again, if people were not prone to doing stupid things and getting hurt there would be no need for them.  Unless you count the heart attacks and salmonella poisonings.

From all of us here at Cantankerous Old Coots, we would like to wish you a Merry Christmas, or if you are one of those who doesn’t celebrate Christmas, well, I will stoop and say Happy Holidays.

We are not done for the year, but this weekend is, unless Ralph tears himself away from the family to put up a news service post.  Don’t count on it, he has permission to skip Christmas.  Even I am not that much of a Scrooge.

Merry Christmas everyone.

-Justin and the rest of the Coots, Bob and Ralph.

Merry Christmas to All And to All a Good Fight...

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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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Awake from the tryptophan coma

 Posted by at 11:02  Plain 'ol Cantankerous, principles
Feb 232015
 

Well folks it is now Wednesday and most of the turkey should be flushed from your system and allowing you to get back to work.  It has been a weekend.  Now, the fun begins.  Holiday shopping.  Black Friday was last week.  My wife said it was a good day, there were only 2 stabbings during the rush to get the deals.

Let’s look now at what the rest of the season holds.  Twinkly lights, fat guys in red suits, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding as you try to enter every store.  All of this and money.  Your hard earned money draining from your wallet and into other people’s coffers.  And yes, credit cards count in this, unless, you are planning on charging everything and then running off to another part of the country with a new name and letting Visa figure it out.  If that is you, morepow er to you, I hope the electric chair is comfortable.

For the rest of us, it gets trickier.  You see I don’t have any credit cards.  I don’t want them, I don’t need them.  I can’t handle them responsibly in my opinion so I don’t use them.  Which gets sticky at this time of year when almost all of our income is used for things like rent, power, gas (oh yes we are running on fumes close to payday).  How to buy Christmas presents for 4 little kids?  Extra work.

For me, it should be any work at all.  I could make more money tomorrow, if I got a piece of cardboard and a marker and hung out by WalMart.  So please shop at amazon through our affiliate link over there in the sidebar.  It will pay for the hosting to keep this site up and running and give me that much more from my wife’s paycheck to spend for Christmas.  But I digress.

Is it the things we get for Christmas that make us happy?  Sometimes.  Is it truly the thought that counts?  Maybe.  Is there a giant wad of cash that is going to be dropped from my bank account in the next 3 weeks?  Yes.  Should we just give each other cash and forget about it?  Should we just give up the gift thing altogether?  Probably.  A couple of years ago we decided that we were not going to buy presents for the family, at least kid to kid.  They would have to make or otherwise modify something for a gift.  That has been fun to actually make the gifts for each other.

This year we are trying to follow the same formula but it really seem slike most of the good ideas are gone and what is the point anymore?  Icarved some stone charms and made necklaces for the kids last year as good luck charms.  I have all of them in a cup on my desk now, picked up from the floors and various other places in the house.  Nowhere near their necks as good luck charms.  I am thinking that this year I will give them a stick and let them figure out what it is for.  Then, after we get back from getting stitches and a concussion taken care of, I will be smiling on the inside.

So, this Christmas season is fast approaching.  Gifts are expected.  Gifts will be given and received.  What are you planning on doing about all of this nonsense?  Me, I would just like a nap.

talk later.

-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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No News is Good News

 Posted by at 11:02  principles
Feb 232015
 

What do we need to know?

Newspapers, news radio, CNN, NPR. It is all around us. News you need to know. Crisis here. Disaster there. The latest on the Pitt kids, Tiger’s golf game and marriage, Obama’s latest oration. They tell us we need to know what is going on. It is important to be informed. I am not so sure anymore.

I played the game

I have played that game. My first year at graduate school, new to the cultural mecca of the East Coast, I would devour all five pounds of the Sunday New York Times, marveling at its richness and depth and sure that soon I would become as sophisticated and elite as I clearly deserved to be. It didn’t take. You can take the boy out of the Midwest but you can’t take the Midwest out of the boy.

I got hooked

I did pick up the news habit, however. If I was going to be a sophisticate, it was important for me to know what was going on. I have continued to read newspapers throughout my life. From time to time, I have been addicted to NPR and 24 hour news radio stations. An evening was not complete without Huntley and Brinkley telling me what was important. When they retired, others replaced them. I was hooked on my news fix. Somebody had to tell me what I needed to know; what I needed to worry about.

But then I noticed

Well, as I get older, I begin to notice something. Nobody was ever very clear about why I needed to know all this. With all the urgency about keeping me informed, the President never called to ask my advice. After giving me all that information, nobody ever cared what I thought or needed me to step in and do something about it. All that careful preparation to make sure that I would have the appropriate response to any crisis and then I was just left hanging. I was full of information but with no place to use it.

Now I get it.

Well, lately I have started to question some of these basic assumptions about life that I always thought were important – like news. I started to think about what I need to know and why I need to know it. I reached an important conclusion – I don’t don’t need to know anything that is printed in the daily rags, broadcast on the radio or shown on TV. Everything will continue to be just as wonderful or just as fucked up whether I know about it or not. There is nothing that I can do to change or ever affect what is happening and no reason for me to think about it at all. So I stopped.

No More News

No more new radio. The oil spill will do whatever it does whether I worry about it or not. No more CNN. I can’t do anything to find those lost girls so why get involved? No more newspaper. California is going over the cliff. Let it go. There is nothing I can do about it. I quit with the news.

I have better things to do.  How about you?

From now on, I have better things to do than follow the news. I know that if they need my help with anything, they know where to find me. How about you? Are you still craving your daily news fix?

Ralph

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

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