Jun 022014
 
Street sign for Wal*Mart Drive, south of Gordo...

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This past weekend I took the family camping and fishing for my daughters birthday.  It was her idea by the way.  We drove down to the middle of Utah to a great lake and caught a ton of fish.

What I noticed is that on the way back there was lots of empty space…in the dark at least.  Plenty of stuff in the day.  What I really noticed is, even on the freeway, it was dark.  Cars passing on both sides of us because a minivan with a tent trailer has to be slow right?  70 mph not quite enough for you jackasses is it? Anyway, there were islands of light along side of the freeway that rose out of the darkness like the moon coming over the mountain.  Which was happening at the same time but irrelevant to the story.

The island of light was, you guessed it, a Wal-Mart surrounded by several smaller stores all seeming to be sycophants to the great and powerful Oz, er Wal-Mart.  My wife said, “We are OK now, there is a Wal-Mart.”  I chuckled and we drove on.  Another 10 minutes or so (again still at 70 mph and getting passed) another Wal-Mart rose out of the stygian night.  I said, “We must be back close to civilization, there is another Wal-Mart.”

That was the joke now as we passed two more before hitting Provo, the first big city on our way back to Salt Lake.  After that there were more Wal-Marts and we already knew where they all are in the valley.  We finally made it home and speculated that we may have to hit a couple of those Wal-Marts in the future.  (Not a joke, when we didn’t have kids (and a couple times with the kids) we drove the two hours up to Evanston, Wyoming just for fun.  We would have pizza at the Shakey’s and then go to Wal-Mart because there wasn’t much else to do.  Now it is a joke to stop at a new Wal-Mart.  And no, they are not all the same.  Why just last year we stopped at the one in Price, Ut………)

I think the “old” part of Cantankerous Old Coots is coming out, I am rambling.  I just want to know exactly when Wal-Mart became synonymous with civilization….Any thoughts as we go into the weekend?

(I just realized that Wal-Mart should be kicking back some advertising every time I mentioned Wal-Mart in this post.  If I got a nickel for every one, I would have .65 cents…enough for a candy bar at Walmart.  Oh, that makes .70 cents.)

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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Jun 022014
 

Get it while you can!

You may all envy the Cantankerous Old Coot Lifestyle.  Who doesn’t want it- or at least what they think it is?

American Coot

The end of the American Coot? (Photo credit: ap2il)

It seems ideal, doesn’t it; take no responsibility, complain about anything that you don’t like and then move on without ever having to fix a darn thing.  So different from all the crap your mother mad you do as a kid; more pleasant than attempting to satisfy your sadistic, incompetent boss; safer than  driving in the right lane and way less frustrating than all the  bureaucratic folderol that goes with life these days. Who doesn’t want the Coot Lifestyle?

It seems that every day somebody makes up new rules to follow.  Every time you think you have them mastered you discover that someone slipped in some new ones when you weren’t looking.  Where did freedom go?  Where did the independent, take charge way of life that used to be the American way go?  What happened to the pragmatic, problem solving mentality that made America the world leader?  Why do we suck up to assholes in Washington instead of doing what we were born to do-think?  How did we evolve from lone wolves to Pavlov’s dog?  It would take Einstein to figure it out.

Too erudite for me.

I’ll leave all that intellectual stuff to Bob.  It’s been my experience that thinking doesn’t do much about fixing things.  I’m more the take action kind of guy- do something that feels right and then decide later whether it made any sense or not.  I’ve heard this called ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’.  What’s great about this plan is that you either lead into a great new future or you make a big mess and sometime you can’t tell the difference.

Somehow it seems that I got diverted from my original topic- the Coot Lifestyle- into a rant about the country and how it has gone to the dogs but I suppose it all is related somehow.  All I know is that most people these days are too hung up about what somebody else thinks; how many government programs they can get stuff from and finding a drug to solve their most pressing problems (from my informal survey of TV ads, I conclude that for men it is getting it up and for women it is fear of falling down).

LIFE IN A BUBBLE

Bob’s solution is, no doubt, the Constitution- probably the second amendment- and Justin would write a poem.  I can’t be bothered with all that.  Mine is letting it all hang out and living the Coot Lifestyle- calling things as I see them, ignoring stupid rules and letting life happen instead of controlling it and living in a bubble.

Somehow people today expect a life with no downside.  There should be no disastrous acts of nature.  There should be no unpleasantness.  There should be no risk.  And we are all paying the price in a world of rules that only a fool needs.  This new world is boring with no adventure, no surprises, and no disaster.  But it is also a world with no excitement, no thrills, no imagination and no real fun.  All our fun is the safe, sanitary kind with imagined threats and such careful management of risks that even the fun is imaginary.  We are living in Disneyland.

I’ve gone off on a tear again.  Back to the Coot Lifestyle.  Like I was saying earlier, the Coot Lifestyle is all about doing what feels good, calling a spade a spade and getting yourself in deep shit from time to time. To quote somebody “It’s a wonderful life” but if you want it, you had better grab it fast before the government makes a rule to ban it.

 

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Ralph

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

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May 182014
 

Maybe Obama’s campaign ads are working (you do know all those trips around the country…on your dime…were really campaigning, right?), but I’m beginning to agree with him that there are folks out here who don’t pay their “fair share”, and something needs to be done about it. Dammit, EVERYBODY needs to pay their fair share! Let’s figure out who the slackers are, shall we?


Continue reading »

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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May 042014
 

This is not a rant

at least not yet. I’d describe it as a musing for the moment. It is merely a small itch in my brain that threatens to blow up into something bigger it I don’t scratch it.

Can we all get along?

Can we all get along?

Should I scratch? Or let it go. Life is full of small annoyances that society assures are unimportant. “Move on,” society seems to say. “Nothing important here.” So you do and, dag nab it, here comes another one. What’s bugging me today is the idea that nice is the way to go through life.
I like to think that I’m a good guy- someone who puts others first, goes the extra mile and practices the golden rule. I like to think a lot of things, some of them true, others not. I do know that I try. Maybe I don’t measure up all the time but one thing I know for sure. I’m driven to be nice. And what that means in practical terms is that I’ll say ‘what the heck’ and do it the other guy’s way. If being nice is so ‘nice’ then why is it that I feel so bad. Why does it make me feel like a sucker? Continue reading »

Ralph

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

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Life at the Top!

 Posted by at 10:51  Coot Law, rants
Apr 252014
 
Fans galore!

“Blessed is he who expects nothing for he shall never be disappointed.”

Jonathon Swift

Cantankerous Old Coots has been an engaging journey. It’s been well over a year since Justin started this blog and I jumped into water way over my head trying to save him from his folly. Along the way we’ve tried a few things that we thought might be crowd pleasers. We developed Coot’s lessons to help the cantankerously impaired develop their full potential as coots. We even started Cantankerous Old Coots University (COCU) for serious students of cantankerosity, anticipating a mad rush for enrollment. We thought Coots would serve as a meeting place for square pegs sick of squeezing into round holes, a community of Coots exchanging spirited comments. Continue reading »

Ralph

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

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