Cantankerous Old Coots

Cocktails in Venice

Posted by Ralph at 03:53 Reflections

Feb 062013

Feeling Mellow.

Nothing too cantankerous for today. I’m still remembering how pleasant it can be sipping a refreshing libation in a sidewalk cafe in Venice. Bella!

Typical Venetian coctail Spritz, as it is prepared in Bistrot de Venice, calle dei Fabbri (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Drinking wine in Italy just seems natural. Hard liquor just isn’t right. Sometimes back home, I need a solid libation like a Martini at the end of a day. Not in Venice. A glass of wine at lunch. Maybe an ombra mid afternoon and then some wine and chicceti to hold you over until the ridiculously late Italian dinner hour. Wine can be white or red like at home. But there is also the Italian sparkling wine called prosecco. Without the pretension (and the price of French champagne) it is a refreshing pick me up anytime. In Venice you can find it everywhere. The message is simple and clear. You can and should enjoy prosecco often, by the glass, by the bottle or in a mixed drink, an Italian cocktail.

I was already sold on prosecco. What surprised me was the ways Venetians used it. They don’t just stop at drinking it straight. They mix it in a cocktail. I discovered that there are two signature cocktails in Venice- both using prosecco- the Bellini and the Spritz. Nothing provides a deeper insight into the Venetian mind than a comparison of those two drinks. They are as different as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Nothing in my life had prepared me for either drink but we intended the Venice trip as full exposure to the Venetian lifestyle and we had to try them both. We already liked prosecco (the common ingredient for both drinks) so why would we not like the cocktails. Billa, the neighborhood supermarket in our Venice neighborhood stocked bottles of pre-made Belinins and we bought some on our first visit. They were pleasant enough but not anything to write home about. It wasn’t until we stopped into a bar near Rialto later in our visit that we had a chance to experience a real Bellini and watch a master craftsman carefully preparing the beautiful elixirs. We found the Bellinni’s delicious. They were fresh, fruity and sparkling. Bellini’s are indeed sublime.

Start with the prosecco

Then carefully add the peach nectar

Glass by glass

by glass

Then another afternoon we tried a spritz. We stopped in at a small bar in our local square after an afternoon exploring. I ordered spritz’s for us and the waitress asked if we wanted Campari or Aperol. I didn’t have a clue which to choose- and there was no point in trying to ask so I said Campari. I had at least heard of Campari even though I had no idea what it tasted like. I was soon to find out that Campari has quite a medicinal overlay. I expected a light, refreshing drink and found myself sipping bitter herbs. The drink was garnished with an orange slice and an olive leaving me to wonder why anyone would waste good prosecco in such a concoction. It is nearly undrinkable.

Later on I realized that the spritz is the perfect drink for the restaurant/bars you find all over Venice. You have to buy something to be allowed to sit but once you buy something, you can sit there as long as you want. With most drinks, I sip away and before long I’m calling the waiter over for a refill. Those view tables in the squares can be pretty pricy and before you know it the travel budget it seriously strained. Not when you are drinking a Spritz. One spritz can last me forever. My wife didn’t even finish hers and we enjoyed a pleasant afternoon sitting in the square for cheap, one drink was plenty.

I hear that Aperol is less medicinal but for me the bloom is off the spritz. I’ll just stick to an ombra of prosecco or a Bellini from now on.

The Zen of Ashton Kutcher

Posted by Ralph at 12:17 rants

Feb 012013

No, I haven’t gone senile on you. No, the Coots do not embrace Ashton or his ilk. I don’t even know what silly show he may be staring in these days. So what, you ask, is boy toy Ashton Kutcher doing on Cantankerous Old Coots? Don’t we have any standards?

Makes me think of Ashton

Well the simple answer is that, of course, we don’t have any standards here at the Cantankerous Old Coots. Standards are for bland, boring people and we have higher aspirations. Still that isn’t an explanation. Lets be blunt. Ashton just isn’t a Cantankerous Old Coot although give him fifty years and he might grow up enough to qualify. None the less, thanks to the miracle of Google, people looking for Ashton Kutcher end up at Cantankerous Old Coots. How’s that for poetic justice? Last week the most people coming to COC were looking for Ashton.

Blame it on Google!

If you don’t understand Google, you might be surprised at this information but then I don’t think that anybody actually understands Google. Just the mention of Google makes my blood pressure rise. I can feel a rant coming on but I’m going to fight it off and get back to Ashton. Whatever the craziness of Google, I have to admit responsibility here. I happened to mention him in a post recently.

It’s not that I’m a fan of Ashton. In fact I don’t know a single celebrity today who turns me off more than Ashton Kutcher, the former boy-toy on That 70’s Show, better half of Demi Moore and Nikon huckster. He must be currently doing something but if he is, it’s a mystery to me. I really didn’t give much thought to mentioning him in a post a few weeks back. It was merely an aside, nothing of substance. But I guess nothing on the web gets past Google.

What happened to real men?

I know virtually nothing about Ashton but even that small amount is way more that I’d like to know. He is just a strange, androgynous face on the TV screen. I guess he is supposed to be considered good looking but I don’t see it. But then I don’t get any of the new male stars. They look like girls to me even when they skip shaving. Brad Pitt, Leo de Caprio, I just don’t get it. Whatever happened to real men? And what happened to real women these days. What causes them to choose boy toys over real men. Must be something in the water- fluoride, perhaps.

I have no animus for Kutcher. Maybe he will grow up someday and settle into a comfortable role as a character actor. I wish him well. But in the meantime I sure don’t want him in my face. I’d like to be able to turn on the TV without seeing him. He is totally responsible for my decision to never buy a Nikon camera, whatever their technical merits. I can’t even hear the word Nikon without cringing. It brings to mind Ashton’s stick figure build (much like Jack from the Night Before Christmas) and creepy smile. My stomach is turning.

Over to you.

Thanks to Google, we will probably keep on getting visitors looking for Ashton but I figure they have to me more bewildered than me about that. If I was a smart web programmer, I’d love to set up a welcoming page with a big picture of Bruce Willis. Since that is beyond my abilities, it will just have to stay like it is. Anybody want to stand up for Ashton? The floor is all yours.

I finally see the truth…

Posted by Justin at 12:17 Coot Smirk, rants

Feb 012013

I was just looking at some numbers here on the ol’ Coots blog and I found something interesting. It seems our tweet out when posted plugin is not working. At all. Looking further, there are no updates, the plugin blog post on the developer site is from 2008. Finally, I have switched plugins.

twitterverse (Photo credit: birgerking)

That in itself is not big news, what is surprising is this, the past 2 posts that have gone out this week have had 11 and 17 views. The two before that have had 42 and 37 views. That tells me there are not many people actually reading these posts on their own and Twitter is a huge tool in the promotion of this blog. This particular post should go out into the Twitterverse and lets see just how many hits it generates.

Now, I have read volumes of stuff about how to make blogs happen and get bigger. Twitter is good but sharing, out there with people, gets more people here to read our stuff. If this is your first time here, good deal. Share with your friends using those nifty buttons at the bottom.

If this blog is your guilty pleasure and you don’t want people to know you read it, sneak some links out and about for us. We won’t tell.

If you are so inclined, add something to the comments! We love to hear ~~inane babble~~ er, constructive comments from our readers. Ralph has been the main writer here for far too long and maybe you are just getting tired of him and his rants about traveling the world and all of the hardships associated with living in California. Apparently, he is losing his ranting mojo as evidenced by this post earlier in the week.

Or maybe you are just excited to get some Bob back into the cantankerousness with his last two posts, part 1 and part 2. Maybe you just don’t care. But, with 2013 fast dwindling we need to raise our alexa score so that we can get some advertising to help pay for this adventure.

Please, share, comment, blast us with incredulity, or find your own cantankerousness and write a guest post. You will not be sorry.

-Justin

Up with Old Age

Posted by Ralph at 11:30 Up With

Jan 312013

You just can’t avoid it.

One of our principles here at Cantankerous Old Coots is not to hold back. We believe in straight talk, calling a spade a spade and

The Old Coot (Photo credit: goingslo)

facing the music. We understand that those are the behaviors of a man of integrity and we firmly support the notion that in the English language, at least, a man of integrity is generic, encompassing both major sexes and even a few of the minor ones. Cantankerous Old Coots aspire to be men of integrity but we also modestly confess that telling it like it is is also a direct product of the aging process.

What else can you do when all those bodily functions and physical abilities desert you? You rant. And when ranting just doesn’t satisfy you start picking the world around you to pieces. You notice it’s failures and you tell is like it is. You can’t change reality or bring back your youthful energy, physical prowess and libido but it serves notice that you have had it up to here with old age and you aren’t going to take it any more. You channel Howard Beal. Of course, it doesn’t fix anything but, at least, it distracts you for the moment.

Which came first? The cantankerous or the coot.

One of the explanations for the existence of cantankerous old coots is the aging process. Getting old makes you just naturally turn cantankerous and, of course, when you turn cantankerous what is more natural than being called a coot. Most people will accept that as a straightforward explanation. Most people are fools. This is a very superficial perspective on aging , the kind that you develop when you are a youngster and don’t know any better. When you are young and everything works like it is supposed to, you just don’t know what you don’t know. Youngsters imagine that they understand life when, in fact, they are clueless.

Aging is one of those facts of life that we learn early on and think we understand. We observe old people but can’t fathom that life will take us all there- if we are lucky. The young mind sees old people and can’t truly believe that they were once young. They also have no way to understand their future; what it is like to be old. They believe it is all cosmetic, wrinkles and gray hair with the body still willing..

The young can’t handle it!

Youngsters can’t get their heads around the physical reality of aging. They don’t believe that it will actually happen to them. The young mind refuses to acknowledge it’s own aging . The young mind denies the physical deterioration of his body but each year that denial becomes harder to justify.

At some point the reality hits. Denial become impossible and the true test of life begins.

You begin to ask the important questions. What good are you? What justification can you find in struggling on? Who really cares? This is a painful and humiliating process: accepting old age after decades of denial. Some deal with it better than others. Many wilt with this acceptance and meekly surrender to decrepitude and dependence. Others just give up and expire. A few refuse to go quietly into the dark night of senility. They get mad. They fight back. They protest and complain. They get noticed. Sometimes they even matter. Those are the Cantankerous Old Coots.

It’s all futile.

Of course in the end, it makes absolutely no difference. Life on earth is finite. At some point the perceived advantages of continuing to exist start to lose out to the difficulties. Cantankerous Old Coots might hold on longer just for the sheer, good-matured fun of messing with Mother Nature but that is an individual decision. Cantankerous Old Coots aren’t in it to win. Nobody wins. For a Cantankerous Old Coot it is the battle. Did you give it all you had? And did anybody notice?

Are you a Cantankerous Old Coot, a foolish youngster or in denial? Going down easy or hard?

Tell us about the 2nd Amendment (part 2, The Players)

Posted by Bob@HayleStorm Interactive at 11:30 Bob's Politics

Jan 312013

This is the second of a three part post, an installment each week for the next two weeks. The first installment can be seen here. The article was originally posted in its entirety at Common Sense Conversation and is reposted here in serial

Cover of Rules for Radicals

form by its author. It is the author’s sincere belief that we citizens of the United States are about to lose this country, at least as far as we (think) we know it as the freest country on the planet…and that once lost, it will be impossible to recover.

To understand the “gun argument, you have to first understand the players in the game:

The pacifists

Like Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister of Great Britain in 1939, just prior to the start of World War II, there are those in the United States that believe in appeasing aggressors, be they tyrannical governments or neighborhood gang thugs, and who believe there is no need for an armed citizenry, who truly believe getting rid of guns will reduce violent crime and slaughter as in what happened at Sandy Hook. These people, who would rather be peaceful, non-violent slaves rather than passionate defenders of the constitution, are fortunately the smallest in numbers, of the three groups involved in the gun debate, and are the least dangerous to the constitution because, as in every fight, they are ultimately pacifists and appeasers and will not fight, even for something they believe in.

These are the people Samuel Adams was speaking of when he said, “If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

The constitutionalists

These are the people in the debate who believe in the rule of law, who believe that we are a nation of laws, not of men, and who would win the gun debate were it to be fought with reason and logic. Oddly, this group of people are also the most moderate for that very reason…they believe in the rule of law and the principles ensconced in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. While this group (the author included) generally believe in the 2nd Amendment, they also acknowledge that there is a process by which the 2nd Amendment and legal gun ownership can be done away with…but that abolishment of gun rights should be done through the process of amending the Constitution, not by simply ignoring one of its precepts, if the right to “keep and bear arms” is to be done away with.

The radical left

This group, AKA “progressives” (though they are anything BUT progressive), should not be confused with Democrats, at least not “core” Democrats. These are the collectivists, the “true believers” in a government that should be all controlling, all knowing, and obeyed without question. These are the people Saul Alinsky was talking to in his book “Rules for Radicals” when he called for change at whatever the cost, when he said the end justifies the means…including if it means blood in the streets.

These are the people George Orwell was talking about in “1984”, the controllers in the 1971 Stanley Kubrick movie “A Clockwork Orange“.

Next week: “Tell us about the 2nd Amendment (part 3, The Answers”.