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Down With Mother Nature!

Posted by Justin at 11:03 Down with, rants

Feb 232015

: Image via Wikipedia

Ahhh Ralph has been eloquent the past few days with tales of airline travel and LA. While I believe there is a place for such things, Sometimes there need to be comment on things that we can do nothing about.

I am talking about how &*^%ing hot it has been the last few days here in Utah. Check your local listings, but it seems like September is not being the crisp fall month that I remember from my youth. Days where you actually needed a jacket in the morning and may be able to do without it by the afternoon.

This past week it has seemed like late summer here. All temps in the mid 90’s. This week is scheduled for more of the same. The air conditioner is still running and the kids are still wearing shorts. So today, I saying Down with Mother Nature and Down with the Heat!

Now there are going to be those people who say “What’s the big f’ing deal? It’s hot here too.” Same statement applies. I am not sure of Ralph’s climate but whenever I think of California it is nothing but sun and heat.

There may also be those who will give me the business about living in a basic desert state. It gets hot in the desert. My Grandpa used to live in the extreme southern Utah town of St George where the summer temps routinely hit over 110 and cool off to the low 90’s at midnight. That climate sucks.

Up here in Northern Utah we have seasons. Or we used to. Now it seems like it is just warm all of the time. Last December a flannel shirt and a Levi jacket were warm enough. “So Move.” Some of you will say. That is not an option. I would rather just bitch and hone some more cantankerousness. There is nothing to be done about Mother Nature and whatever PMS is causing this heat wave.

Is it global warming? I hope not, it will last too damn long for me. I can only hope that the thermometer bottoms out and we end up having to leave a faucet on at night so the pipes don’t freeze this winter.

All in all there is a climate for every one and you just have to deal with where you are. If you don’t like it, move. If you don’t want to move, bitch about it, no one will really care.

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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Railing at Mother Nature…What a Bitch.

Posted by Justin at 11:02 Coot Law, Down with, rants

Feb 232015

You can't miss Utah

The weather in Utah is legendary for changing at a moments notice. Ok maybe not legendary, but at least known to the public here. Give it a minute the weather will change is a mantra we live by in the spring.

So When this post was written we had just finished a day of heavy rains. The weather forecast said it was going to be partly cloudy and warmer. I washed a load of towels to hang outside on the line. Just getting ready to hang them out, and it starts raining. I am sure mother nature was just thwarting me.

I had a few choice things to say to Nature at that point. I kind of wanted to be Captain Dan in Forrest Gump screaming at the storm. But, I had kids at home.

There will be another snowstorm, that is almost guaranteed. Except it will be 80 this weekend and I have to get the lawn mower out before the jungle sets in. My Great Grandpa, who had a garden that should have been on a magazine, always said, “Don’t plant anything until after Mother’s Day.” That is sage advice here, because you will just get your tomatoes growing and it will freeze. It just does here.

I have never been disappointed with that advice, even with pressure from my wife a few times becasue the weather was nice. Didn’t plant, didn’t get frozen. So, do you all have some interesting weather thwarting stories to share with us? I would really like to hear them. You can’t beat Mother Nature completely but you may be able to slap some sense into her once in a while. Well, probably not.

Have a great Weekend.

-Justin

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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Down with lazy, no good, non-writing buggers.

Posted by Justin at 11:02 Coot Smirk, Down with, Plain 'ol Cantankerous, principles

Feb 232015

This post is about me. It is about ineptitude, insolence and laziness. I couldn’t think of another “i” word that meant laziness. I could have looked it up but that would defeat the purpose of laziness.

There’s A Fine Line between Rest and Laziness (Photo credit: SaraiRachel)

For a long time, Ralph has been at the head of this site. For reasons known to the Universe and the laws of B.S., Bob and I have been largely absent. Bob has an excuse, he is Bob. I could come up with excuses too, but they all boil down to laziness. You know the old saying, “Excuses are like assholes, everybody has one.”

I am not going to sit here and write yet another post saying how I should post more, I am going to try and figure out just what should be done to the lazy good for nothings who go and start a site and then don’t do anything with it.

Drawing and quartering seems a bit harsh. flogging? Maybe. Turn the whole damn thing over to Ralph? Nah, that is the sure way to lose all control. So, I will write a Down with post. It is now April and the showers are starting here in Utah.

What does that have to do with writing? Nothing. Just a random thought. What do I need to do about posting? That is the question. The Coots has existed to try and bring a modicum of reality to the web. We seek to enlighten this generation about being yourself, and just letting things go. We even have tried to get you all to join us for Cantankerous Lessons. None of that has worked. I do hope Bob is getting some traction on his podcasts, they are actually quite good, and guaranteed to make you feel at least something.

I am working on yet another iteration of the old Cantankerous Old Coots podcast myself. But, I don’t know that people would be interested in hearing me bitch and moan about the world, even though it works for Bob. What I would like to do is have guests. People who would be interested in joining myself and maybe even Ralph and Bob, to talk about the world and this pussy footing, politically correct, sissified country that we are now inhabiting.

I would really like to hear from the hundreds of people that visit this blog each day hoping that Ralph will pull another nugget of cantankerous wisdom out of his ass and make you all smile. I hope is is not a disappointment when it is Bob or I that graces this page. If you are interested in joining me for an episode of “The Cantankerosity Sessions”, send me an email or comment below.

I plan on recording the episodes over Skype, unless you happen to live in the Greater Salt Lake area, and then we will still do it over Skype. You can be a part of history, or at least lost in the endless sea of podcasts that inhabit iTunes.

Imagine now that I am doing the Jedi wave and saying, “You will come and be part of the podcast. The Coots are your friends, and friends talk about what bugs them.” Bugs them like lazy, no good, non writing buggers. Join me. Be Cantankerous. The first Cantankerosity Session will hit you next week, with or without you.

-Justin

Jeremiah Brandreth (1790 – 7 November 1817) was an out-of-work stocking maker who lived in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire who was hanged for treason. He was known as “The Nottingham Captain”. He and two of his conspirators were the last people to be beheaded with an axe in Britain (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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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The Heat is HERE! Or is it?

Posted by Justin at 11:02 rants

Feb 232015

This summer thing keeps coming up, year in and year out. I guess it can’t be avoided in climes this far above the equator, so I either have to move to Alaska, or deal with summer. Here in Utah, we live in a desert. Sure it has been irrigated and settled to have trees and reduce the appearance of a desert, it is still technically a desert. That means in the summer, temperatures are routinely in the upper 90’s or low 100’s.

Kolob Finger Canyons, Zion National Park. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Usually that is not bad, it is as they say a dry heat. Humidity is usually around 20%. This late spring, early summer the temperatures have been all over the place. One day it hit 95, the next barely made 74. It was upper 80’s for 6 days and today as I write this at noon, it is just over 70.

I am confused really. Usually it gets hot here and stays that way instead of jumping all over the thermometer. I don’t know what to make of this. Maybe it is global warming….well probably not. What do you guys think about summer. is it a good thing or a bad thing? Hot or not? What is your choice? Personally I like it cooler. And I am not going back to Florida anytime soon.

Comments are open below.

-Justin

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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Down with Bugs, namely the Mosquito!

Posted by Justin at 11:48 Down with

Nov 262014

Ochlerotatus notoscriptus, Tasmania, Australia

Image via Wikipedia

It is finally drying out here in Utah. We have had record rain and snow all year, with the wettest May in 150 years. What that has been good for is to keep the bugs down. Except for the time I went fishing under one of the dams here and apparently stood in the middle of a mosquito convention where I got approximately one bite for every 3 mosquitoes I killed. And I had a lot of bites.

Anyway, here in the Salt Lake valley it is warming up. Today, Sunday it was almost 90 degrees, quite a turn around from what it has been. And as such, there have been mosquitos aplenty flying around. This is the first time that I have seenn bugs this year and I am not looking forward to them this year.

Not just the flying bugs either, my main bane is the earwig. Those little stinking buggers get everywhere. They are in the house, in the garden, in the fruit and in the ground. I found the entrance to a nest last year (just a note, while I am sitting here writing, I just killed a mosquito on my monitor. Bah!) anyway, the earwig nest. I found the hole in the ground where they were just pouring out.

I proceeded to fill the hole with the mixed gas I use for my boat motor, that way the oil keeps it burning longer. It didn’t seem to help, many died and the fire burned underground, but too many of those buggers still were **everywhere**.

So, this year I am taking action against many of the bugs that I don’t want around. Mosquito traps are baited and placed around. Yellow Jacket Traps….I didn’t tell you about the yellow jackets. Call them hornets or wasps or yellow jackets, those are everywhere as well. Last year I wrote about the ones that came out of my mailbox every time I opened it. Read that post HERE. This year I killed two or three inside and didn’t think much about it until my 9 month old son started screaming in pain.

I was sitting next to him on the floor, my 7 year old was standing on his other side and here is the baby screaming for nothing that I could discern. I picked him up and saw something in his mouth. After the swipe to rid him of said debris, it was a freaking yellow jacket that had stung him in his mouth! It couldn’t fly too well, being wet and all and took a while to die after I cut it in half. But the Baby got stung in the back of his mouth by a yellow jacket. Luckily we found out he is not allergic to the venom and had no problems.

But there are Yellow Jacket Traps up now. Earwig traps are littering my backyard as well. I have declared War on many of the insects in my world. Don’t get me started on the mice in the shed. They are next.

Do you have bug problems? Let us know in the comments below….

-Justin

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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