I can’t rant!

 Posted by at 04:32  rants, Reflections
Jan 292013
 
Al Capps Joe Btfsplk the worlds greates jinx.

I might end up like Joe.

I’ve lost it.  It used to be no trouble at all to erupt in outrage at the drop of a hat even about the most trivial thing.  For example, I can remember going off because I could never find a ripe avocado at the store for guacamole.  I remember the feeling.  I was completely and self-righteously overwhelmed with the absolute certainty that I and every other human being in that store was entitled to find a perfectly ripe avocado right there, right now.  It was impossible for me to accept any thought that the store should be allowed to do business if they were only able to supply un-ripe ones.  I wanted guacamole.  I wanted it now and there was no excuse for any store that expected my business not to know that and have at least one perfectly ripe avocado awaiting my desire. My expectations were perfectly reasonable to me and I let my rant fly without a hesitation or doubt.

But these days my resolution waivers.  “Who am I?” I ask myself “ to believe that I should get what I want.”   What has happened and why have I turned into such a sniveling wimp?  It is troubling.

Maybe guacamole is not a life changing event.  Maybe it isn’t really important to have guacamole when you want it.  It seems trivial looking back- especially today when guacamole is not my prime directive.  There are ways to handle a ripe avocado deficiency and amazingly most people can survive without guacamole.  My point, though, is not about the importance of guacamole.  It is about rants.  Rants have nothing to do with being reasonable or responsible.  Rants are about knowing that you are important and matter and the belief that because you matter, someone will at least notice.

Definition of RANT

1

a: a bombastic extravagant speech

b: bombastic extravagant language

This is what the dictionary tells us about a rant.  I agree but a true rant is so much more.  Not only is it bombastic and extravagant.  It is also cathartic.  It releases a load of frustration building from an inability to accomplish something you want.  It clearly lets people know that you are somebody with standards and expectations.   Finally, it gets you off the hook for any responsibility for that failure.  The highest quality rants unload all of that frustration and pile it squarely and vehemently on the shoulders of someone or something else.  What a relief.

Well, I’m finding that something has happened.  Those rants that just used to flow naturally from normal day to day life have stopped.  It isn’t that I don’t get frustrated.  It isn’t that bad things have stopped happening.  It isn’t that the world around me has stopped being crazy and dysfunctional.  It is something else.  It’s just that somehow, I can’t summon the energy to let those rants fly and I don’t know why.  I have racked my brain for an answer but the ‘aha’ moment escapes me and if I don’t know what is preventing me from venting a good rant.   I can’t fix it.  The pressure and emotion build up and with no way to let it out, who knows what might happen.  I might blow a circuit and turn into a vegetable, or a serial killer or worst of all, an email marketer.  I need help.

The problem is that this pressure has turned my mind to mush and I’m impotent to act.  The minute I try to analyze the situation, I become mired in infinite possibilities and my mind shuts down.  I need help.  Times like these are when you need a coldly detached intellect to look at reality and tell you what to do so today I’m throwing the question to readers.  Help me out.  Tell me what is preventing me from producing a healthy and cathartic rant and how can I restore my psyche to its old uninhibited state?

This is as far as I can take it.  I will give you my best guesses for consideration but feel free to explore the universe to find what makes sense to you.  So far I have only two hypotheses which are:

  1. It is from living in California where nothing functions efficiently, government is against the people rather than for them and the only ‘good’ money is taxes especially if it is from the rich. I fear that because there is so much to rant about and no way that any individual can stop the craziness all around that my rant engine has overheated and shut down.
  2. Senility is setting in and my mind no longer demands logic, reason and responsibility in the world.

I have to add that neither hypothesis is appealing to me which may contribute to my inability to reason this out.  I’m waiting for reason from readers to get me past this.  Help me out so I can get back to normal.  It is more than I can handle on my own.

Down with Self-Respect

 Posted by at 11:39  Down with
Jan 242013
 

Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious. H.L. Mencken

I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them. Susan Sontag

I’ve been seeking self-respect all my life and now I’m beginning to think it was all a fools mission. In my early years I was confident

Self Esteem

Self Esteem (Photo credit: Editor B)

that everybody older than me had life under control while I careened from crisis to disaster. I used to wonder “What did they know?  and Who gave them the secret?” I wondered  when would I reach that enlightened state. I watched others move confidently through life, seeking to learn their secrets and hoping that nobody noticed my confusion.  I was, of course, a fool but not willing to face the music and admit it.

As I moved through life, I kept hoping that this stage would be the one where I finally figured it all out and took control of life. High school, college, graduate school, the army; it was all the same. I was barely managing to cope and, all the while, I was hoping to get the answer.

It seems like I was always posturing; hoping that I looked like I knew what I was doing. I never pulled it off. I may have fooled some people but I always believed that they could ultimately penetrate my facade and see the loser inside. I never managed to earn my self respect.

You can’t fool people who aren’t looking.

The sad part of the story and what I think most people miss is that nobody is really paying any attention to you. You don’t really matter in their world. You are a prop or part of the scenery; not the leading man your ego wants you to be.

So what’s the point here?

Now I’m trying to get this post to a point and it’s falling apart on me. I meant to say that self-respect is a mirage hanging over the horizon of life. We all want it but it really doesn’t exist. Self-respect  depends upon putting up a good facade so that nobody notices there is nothing inside. But what really frosts the cake is when you notice that nobody is even looking. You don’t even register on their radar.

I guess the point is that pursuing self-respect and seeking the approval of others is not only frustrating, it is useless like tilting at windmills, looking for unicorns and hunting the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; meaningless exertion that takes your energy and accomplishes nothing.

I’m not looking for pleasing anybody at this stage of my life. I’m not trying to fool them or pretend that I know what I’m doing. I know I’m lost but at least now I begin to understand that everyone else is lost too. There isn’t a secret except the secret that there is no secret. And if there was a secret, nobody would share it anyway.

Where was this when I needed it?

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Jan 242013
 

Starting this morning, the Coots went live! A new show…The Political Coot…will be streamed live every Monday at 10am eastern time on uStream on the channel The Political Coot.

The show will be recorded and put up as a recorded podcast here on CantankerousOldCoots.com by ABOUT noon, eastern time…and here is today’s show:

Show length: 14:16

[powerpress]

Show notes:

0:35 introducton
0:50 CantankerousOldCoots.com collaboration
1:30 Show focus
2:00 The WWWWHW (Who, What, When, Where, How, Why) of the show
3:00 Explanation of interactivity
3:20 Viewpoint
4:30 Topic focus
8:00 Illegal veggies are a national security risk!
14:15 WDWFY. YWFU. (Watch the show…fid out)

Jan 242013
 

I was in a superb mood.  Really, truly, fantastic.  Evil plans were coming together nicely, I had plans for the weekend, college was going ok and the parts for my computer were on their way.  Unfortunately I was also near the end of a film; ‘When Harry met Sally’ if we’re being specific.

It’s important to note that my choice in this was limited, I had to watch that movie as homework for my college course.  Sure I had a choice of days on which to watch it but I had to before the end of the week.  Not that I mind the movie – in fact, throughout most of it the dialogue was beautifully written and well executed.

Who am I kidding, the dialogue was brilliant until the very end.

However it still suffers from the one flaw in almost every romantic comedy every (almost added for the simple fact that I’ve not seen all of them in existence and therefore cannot say ‘every’).  The happily ever after.

Now I’m female (obviously), I get the whole desire for things to work out nicely at the end with sugar on top.  For years I loved it and wanted nothing more than to see it end well.  When I found my own ‘Prince charming’ (he would laugh at that) I still enjoyed the movies but there was an added smugness about it; almost like you’d joined some secret club.

Fast forward a few years and I can’t stand them any more.  Not because I lost my prince, but because reality decided to smack us around a bit.  There is no ‘happily ever after’ that carries on forever and ever amen, at least, never as its portrayed in films.  Worse, if you’ve ever had it, seeing films where it remains that way can throw up all sorts of negative emotions you neither asked for nor needed.

Maybe I’m just not their target market any more.  Obviously young, female, and realistic don’t gel well with their audience.  Or maybe I’m just being overly sensitive about this whole thing (it’s been known to happen), but you have to wonder what the actual goal of these movies is.

We’re fed them from when we’re really young.  Much of our ideas about life and love come from the traditional model displayed in these films (Disney too now I think about it, but come on, its Disney).  We grow up thinking on some level that we’ll be swept off our feet, lifted out of whatever mess we’re in, and carried off into the sunset where mundane things like paying the bills and living with choices don’t matter.  This is never going to happen however to a certain extent we’re brainwashed!

And then when it doesn’t work out with our male counterparts we either ‘hate’ men for a while (in a very upset and irrational way), decide that the poor guy wasn’t ‘the one’ (really?), or think that we’ve done something wrong and hope, maybe for a long time, that he’ll come back.  How exactly does that help anyone?

I’m all for inspiring hope but surely it should be hope in something that may actually happen.  Causing misery so widespread that ‘chicks cry at romantic movies’ is a social norm shouldn’t be right.  And yes, some girls cry because they’re so happy and in fact there’s a whole host of reasons.  I still don’t think all those years of watching movies like that and wishing did me, or anyone else for that matter, any good.

What I’d like to know is just how badly this affects the male side of the population?  Oh, and for any of the fairer sex out there (yes, I hate that phrase too), am I nuts?

Back to the real world

 Posted by at 13:56  Reflections
Jan 122013
 
Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires (Photo credit: SebKe)

I’m in the middle of our fourth day back from a month in Buenos Aires.  About the trip back, the less said the better.  Travel these days is not a pleasant experience.  I don’t need to say anything about airline food except that these days the only time you get it is on international flights where, I guess they fear riots if they didn’t provide something to eat on a 12 hour flight.  Believe me; nothing has improved since the old days when you used to get a meal on a long flight.  It’s pretty bad. The flight itself is tolerable (at least I find it so).  I can find a place for my feet and with a facemask, neck supporting pillow and a sleeping pill I can get a few hours’ sleep.

 

The killer is all the lines getting on the flight- and getting off.  The anticipation of the trip causes me to forget the ordeal on the trip out.  It’s the trip back that’s the killer.  You wait in line to check in.  Then you wait in line for security.  Finish that and you wait for immigration.  Your mind goes numb and by the time you get on the plane, you are bad tempered and ready to pick a fight about anything.  We barely made it to the flight after all that.  It’s not fun at all and when you are coming home you don’t have much to look forward to.

 

After about 26 hours in transit we finally got home.  It felt good for about 30 minutes and then my wife started cleaning.  I went to bed.  It is the only safe place.

 

By now, I’ve

 

taken care of the important stuff.  Sorted the mail; paid the bills; put away the stuff in our suitcases; stocked the pantry; called roadside assistance to start our cars.  Now it is just making the final adjustments to being back home and settling back into the old routine.  It was a great trip and I have a lot to share about but right now the big task is mental.  I still can’t believe that the vacation is over and it is time to get back to work.  It is hard to focus.  I’ll just close this post down and hope that my mind will start getting focused tomorrow.  Maybe it’s like getting the first olive out of the jar and it will be easier next time.

 

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