This here rant describes exactly what I don’t care about. I think the writers of Scrubs looked into my brain and came up with this. Go ahead and try to disagree with most of it.
This is short and cantankerous. Dr. Cox, take it away!
I am going to celebrate my daughter’s 1 year kidney transplant today. Leave a comment below and I will return it later.
Have a good Wednesday, Ralph has a doozy on Friday.
-Justin
Folks who know me know that I am a very retro type guy. My tastes run retro in music, in politics, in lifestyle…in almost every aspect of my life.
I love to cook…and don’t own…or want…a microwave oven, even to boil water or melt butter for a recipe or to reheat leftovers.
I love to fish, but I’d rather do it with a cane pole or cheap spinning rod/reel combo from a creekbank or the banks of a farm pond than with a lot of high tech fishing equipment from a 60 MPH bass boat. Folks sometimes think I’m so retro that the term “luddite” is a fitting description for me, but I’d like to dispel that notion and tell y’all that I’m retro because I’m so dumb.
Yep…I’m dumb, and my retroness comes from that.
My overall retroness is an outward display of a desire for “the way things were” socially and an acknowledgement that I’m not smart enough to re-invent the wheel, instead looking to the past to find what has worked before and a desire to “fix things” by a return to those times.
A few examples would be:
When I was a kid if I screwed up 2 blocks down the street from my house while out playing, the neighbor (stay at home) mom gave me a swat on the ass and sent me home, where my mom’s reaction was to send me to my room until my father got home when my butt got rally blistered. Now, the neighbor mom isn’t home, and if she were and even looked crosseyed at Little Johnny his parents lawyer up.
The other side…authority…has done it’s share to cause it’s own downfall too. When I was a kid my parents taught me to “look for the cop on the corner when you have a problem. He is your friend.”
No more. Law enforcement has become, in large part, jackbooted Gestapo-like thugs. If two kids hav a schoolyard fight, rather than being sent home with a note for the parents the kids leave school handcuffd in the back of a police car. Hey…authorities…listen up! Every rule infraction doesn’t require criminal charges!
Single family households were rare. Also in the 50’s and 60’s dropout rates were much lower, drug useage was not as bad, teen pregnancy was an anomaly rather than something normal…
…can you imagine an out-of-wedlock birth in the 50’s being cause for celebration, complete with baby shower and proud grandparents?
So…I’m retro…because I’m too dumb to come up with new ideas to fix societies ills…but I see solutions in the past. I’m a big believer in “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. I’d kinda like to return to societal mores that weren’t broke.
You know what really kills me? It is all these no-fat, lo-fat foods. Not that you can’t still find the good tasting stuff with all the goodness of real high quality fat around. Ben and Jerry’s is still going strong but our whole society is just over loaded with message against fat. You would think that fat was a plague from the devil just like that insidious apple in the garden instead of God’s gift to good tasting food and healthy living. You heard me. I said healthy and fat in the same sentence.
The body needs fat to be healthy and eating fat has very little to do with getting fat. Blame that on the carbs. Carbs are the evil dudes, especially the simple carbs like sugar and pasta. You know that fat has got to be OK because the government is against it. If you have been around even a little while you realize that the government strenuously avoids accepting anything as healthy- just try to get anything approved by the FDA. When they do accept something, however, it becomes chiseled in stone, like the ten commandments. And when they discover the ‘truth’, they spare no expense with your money to harangue you with it.
By now, everybody believes that their health depends upon eliminating all fat from their diet because the government says so. And what do we find to help us? The helpful food companies oblige us with lo-fat and no-fat alternatives that either taste awful or are loaded with more carbs to make them somewhat palatable. Simple sheep that we are these days, we buy the stuff thinking we are being healthy by eating things we would never eat if taste were the criterion. These lo-fat and no-fat treats don’t spare us any calories. They just replace the fat with carbs which quickly settle on our ever expanding bellies. They aren’t so filling as the versions with fat and so we can eat more of the lo and no fat items. And we do.
Stop the foolishness and enjoy life. Eat food that is tasty, healthy and full fat. You will eat less. Enjoy it more and stay healthy. If you want to cut something in your life – start with the government propaganda and then cut out the carbs.
Coots on a tire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It seems that all I do on here anymore is bitch. And it is sounding like a broken freaking record. But it is something posted at least. Here is the deal. Cantakerous Old Coots is darn near a one person operation from Ralph. I put some stuff in once in a while. Bob has been MIA while working through his various programs and computer problems.
So some input, what should we do with the Coots? I am sure that Ralph is getting tired of being the only Cantankerous one here, and I am not sure about his commitment to Cantankerosity after that Venice trip. He may need some more time to revive that cantankerous attitude.
As for me, I am trying to get back in the writing saddle all over the board. I ostensibly call myself a writer and creator of web content but I am resting on my laurels from the past. So, if you are reading this, tell me what you would like to see from the Coots. New content daily? A break from Ralph? Podcast revive? Bob’s politics? More News? More Hansi?
That comment section down there has been more active in the past couple of weeks than it has in a while. Keep it up. Let us know what the people want. While this is far from a democracy here, we will listen to your suggestions and implement or reject as needed. You all just have to let us know. We will be anxiously awaiting, well more like just sitting here doing something else waiting for comments to come in and enlighten us.
You all can do it. Just a few words down there. In the comments. you know at the bottom.
More to come…..
-Justin
There is much left unsaid in that quote but somehow it captures my feelings as we approach the election. It may be our common Missouri birth and small town beginnings. It may be reflected in our escape from Missouri early in life to more cultured society but the basic similarity as I see it is in our mutual distrust of collective decisions in this country although it took me a while to get there.
By themselves, my fellow Americans seemed quite capable of making good decisions for themselves, their families and to a more limited degree, their neighborhood. But today, more and more of those decisions are made far away by people I don’t know, don’t much respect and who don’t seem to care about what I think. I’m talking about politicians.
Rugged individuals don’t get respect
It seems like the questions are always about ‘those people over there’. “Those people over there’ are not like you and me. They have problems because they don’t make good decisions. They eat too much and what they eat too much of makes them fat and unhealthy. They smoke and as we all learn from watching too much TV, smoking is unhealthy. They drink- not the normal Martini before dinner and a beer watching the game. Those ‘people over there’ drink bourbon straight, 7 and 7 and tequila shooters to excess causing them to behave badly and drive drunk.
It’s always easy to demonize ‘people over there’ because they aren’t you; they aren’t your neighbor or your boss and by their very existence they threaten all you hold dear. I remember when I was young and offensively self-righteous, being quite upset over the sad state of affairs in our country. It was all because the ‘people over there’ weren’t living up to my expectations. (Back then, the nanny state was a wet dream of college professors and pinkos.) We were all dragged down because some people- meaning the ‘people over there’ just weren’t capable of making good decisions and so, for the good of the country we needed laws to make sure that they behaved. Of course I wanted to help.
It was he right thing for all us responsible people to create laws so that the ‘people over there’ would be forced to do the right thing. Then we would have the perfect country because all the ‘people over there’ would become just like me. It needed be said that of course they would be happy once set on the right path and all those problems caused by those ‘people over there’ would stop.
It didn’t go so well. Converting the ‘people over there’ to being ‘just like me’ is problematic and actually contrary to our founding principles. It actually created new problem. Oppressing ‘the people over there’ just created dependency and massive social programs paid for by me and run by those far away politicians. It turned out that managing those unintended consequences required more programs, more taxes and an undeserved level of respect for the politicians. It was so bad that now we actually needed them- or at least that’s what they told us.
Gradually this dogooder philosophy gained traction as more and more people became convinced that we could force those ‘people over there’ to behave just like us. Slowly the momentum built up until it became the American way to make sure that ‘people over there’ behaved right. Finally, the majority had caught up with me. But something still wasn’t right because somebody back there in government discovered that I was one of those ‘people over there’ too.
How could that be? I hadn’t changed. But the country had.
What used to be responsible behavior is now reckless and irresponsible. Slowly the rugged individualism of my childhood became redefined as endangering society. How could I send my kids out on a bicycle without a helmet when at any moment a meteor might fall from the sky and brain them? How could I practice Christianity when it was clearly an oppressive cult: remember the crusades and the Spanish Inquisition? How could I insist that marriage is intended to nurture children and protect women not a tax dodge to get medical benefits? Who needs a Daddy anyway: the feminists have already established that men are redundant.
It seems that ‘the people over there’ have taken control and instead of listening to me, those politicians get stronger by enlarging their scope. They want me and the people like me to become manageable just like ‘the people over there’. They tried social pressure. Now it’s on to making laws.
It’s just like when I was young although when I was young and foolish, I believed that right was on my side. I was helping everyone by getting ‘the people over there’ whipped into shape. Now, I see things as more desperate. Unless something happens to rein in the politicians who now answer to no one, What freedom remaining to me will go. People like me will be forever lost in the great mass of ‘people over there’ working without free will or self-determination to support the will of the politicians subjugating us all. I guess it’s time for me to take Mark’s advice and reform.