Coots are into video now. This is the first but just wait until we get our second wind. The very best to all our readers. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Feb 232015
Feb 232015
Thursday is the day Thanksgiving. The day where we give thanks. We give thanks to each other and the country and generally blow smoke up each others asses.
This post is no different. Today the Coots would like to thank everyone who comes here and reads this silly blog, or as it should be called, Ralph Carlson’s second blog.
Personally, I would like to thank Ralph for keeping this thing afloat and running. I would like to thank Bob for pretending to care about this site. Continue reading »
Feb 232015
Image via Wikipedia
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.
Image via Wikipedia
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
Jul 072014
- Image by thinbegin via Flickr
Do you get caught up in the business of what has become common in these here United States and gone forth into the great unknown that is Black Friday? You know you get a newspaper chocked full of advertisements to make your kids drool and then you head out into the cold early in the morning (or late at night) to get a “deal” on these things?
Well as I type this it is almost 7am. decent people should be asleep or just waking up if you are one of those “morning” type people. I am not one of those. Still, Toys R Us opened on Thanksgiving night at 2200, sorry, 10 pm to let the sales start. Walmart started selling stuff at 1201 am. Sometimes I am still amazed at the lengths that parents go to to make Christmas special for their kids. (*note, this is a stock picture and not of the toys r us I was at. if it were, I would have started about beyond the picture at least double if not triple the people that are shown here*)
Tonight I saw some very interesting points of Humanity. I saw grumblers and malcontents waiting in line with the placid and the comical, all hoping to get inside the store before the 12 degrees afforded to us by a doozy cold front froze parts that we would rather have not frozen. I saw people just grabbing things, for the sole purpose that they were on sale and then proceeding to misread the 20 items or less sign and seem to see an extra zero on it. I could blame fatigue, but it was on 0230 at that point.
One thing I didn’t see was people fighting over things. I have always heard stories of things coming to blows over a toy or a movie, but I didn’t see any of that. I guess the earlier times opening helped out with that. I also saw people in relatively good spirits. People who were forced to be together by the commercialness that Christmas has become. But most people were nice to each other, or ignored most everyone else (like I did) while plugged into my MP3 player. I thought at one point that there was some hope, albeit small and shrunken like the raisin you find under the stove next spring, that humanity can endure.
So yes I fell, no jumped, into the quagmire that is Black Friday and came out tired but unscathed on the other side. It made me all the more happy that we decided to have our kids make gifts for each other and for the Grandparents. It beats waiting in the cold. And then I got a call from my wife that you could get darn near everything online for the same price. What a load of crap.
I would so love it if anyone reading this would regale us with tales of Black Friday present or Black Friday past. The comment section is lonely and wants to hear from you. Yes you, guy in the red shirt, leave a comment! And then please share via one of the many exciting social networking sites listed below.
Thanks for reading, I can’t wait to hear your stories.
-Justin