Down with Supercilious Brits

 Posted by at 11:02  Down with
Feb 232015
 

 

Bob’s a Bad Influence 

OK, if Bob’s going to slack off and then 24 hours late whine about how Yankees are destroying the South, there is no reason why I can’t do a little whining as well- even if it is out of character for me. I already gave a shout out because, at long last, we are experiencing the last of the silly Harry Potter movies. I suppose it is a relief to see anything positive about the UK these days so maybe I shouldn’t be so negative but I can only take so much. We are long past Britain as the ruler of the waves and the sun never setting on the Empire. They have come down quite a bit in the respect area over the past century. The best they can do these days is sending the Royals in funny hats out to titillate the peasants in Los Angeles or Ottawa or push Amy Winehouse on us. Pretty pathetic, if you ask me.  Harry Potter was a vehicle to present a positive image for Britain with attractive, un-pierced, un-tattooed and un-sexed young people who speak intelligible -if pommy- English.

I’m not planning to see this last gasp of British civilization but I still like to know enough about the dumb movie to have a few good comebacks when the topic comes up, I found this Cliff Notes version of the plot. It works for me and you might enjoy it as well.

Harry Potter- the laugh riot

Funny as the Harry Potter movies might be, I doubt if the Brits can even guess the depths of potential humor. I can’t wait until Mystery Science Theater 3000 gets hold of the series. It will be a hoot. Meanwhile, not only to we have to put up with the Royals and their damned hats, we get silly British college twits who think that life in America is funny. I’m going on the record here to say that I shop at Walmart and there is nothing funny about it.

Walmart, the movie

It’s bad enough that America has to police the world and defend countries that don’t have enough pride to defend themselves but when they put out movies touting their cultural superiority and then make fun of Walmart, it’s too much for me.

 

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook

Black Friday

 Posted by at 18:17  Plain 'ol Cantankerous, rants
Jul 072014
 
black friday
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

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.

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook

When did Wal-Mart become Civilization?

 Posted by at 17:02  Plain 'ol Cantankerous, rants
Jun 022014
 
Street sign for Wal*Mart Drive, south of Gordo...

Image via Wikipedia

This past weekend I took the family camping and fishing for my daughters birthday.  It was her idea by the way.  We drove down to the middle of Utah to a great lake and caught a ton of fish.

What I noticed is that on the way back there was lots of empty space…in the dark at least.  Plenty of stuff in the day.  What I really noticed is, even on the freeway, it was dark.  Cars passing on both sides of us because a minivan with a tent trailer has to be slow right?  70 mph not quite enough for you jackasses is it? Anyway, there were islands of light along side of the freeway that rose out of the darkness like the moon coming over the mountain.  Which was happening at the same time but irrelevant to the story.

The island of light was, you guessed it, a Wal-Mart surrounded by several smaller stores all seeming to be sycophants to the great and powerful Oz, er Wal-Mart.  My wife said, “We are OK now, there is a Wal-Mart.”  I chuckled and we drove on.  Another 10 minutes or so (again still at 70 mph and getting passed) another Wal-Mart rose out of the stygian night.  I said, “We must be back close to civilization, there is another Wal-Mart.”

That was the joke now as we passed two more before hitting Provo, the first big city on our way back to Salt Lake.  After that there were more Wal-Marts and we already knew where they all are in the valley.  We finally made it home and speculated that we may have to hit a couple of those Wal-Marts in the future.  (Not a joke, when we didn’t have kids (and a couple times with the kids) we drove the two hours up to Evanston, Wyoming just for fun.  We would have pizza at the Shakey’s and then go to Wal-Mart because there wasn’t much else to do.  Now it is a joke to stop at a new Wal-Mart.  And no, they are not all the same.  Why just last year we stopped at the one in Price, Ut………)

I think the “old” part of Cantankerous Old Coots is coming out, I am rambling.  I just want to know exactly when Wal-Mart became synonymous with civilization….Any thoughts as we go into the weekend?

(I just realized that Wal-Mart should be kicking back some advertising every time I mentioned Wal-Mart in this post.  If I got a nickel for every one, I would have .65 cents…enough for a candy bar at Walmart.  Oh, that makes .70 cents.)

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.

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook

Today is *NOT* Thanksgiving!

 Posted by at 11:59  Down with, principles, rants
Jan 012014
 

You read right folks, today is not Thanksgiving, it is Black Friday Eve.  If you haven’t, read Ralph’s post from yesterday, he explains things well.   So is this the first step to abolishing Turkey Day?  I was driving around the other day trying to get the last of the stuff for Thanksgiving, I mean Black Friday Eve, and all I saw was Christmas stuff and Black Friday sales.

It was Monday of this week and Wal-Mart had already discounted what little Thanksgiving stuff (napkins, plates and the like) they had.  I didn’t see one “Happy Thanksgiving” banner or anything that didn’t have to do with the mighty and all powerful Black Friday.  Commercials on the TV are toting the virtues of black Friday and opening up stores at midnight, if they even are closed for Thanksgivng Black Friday Eve.

I have to say this MUST be the beginning of the end.  Soon the turkey tradition will be gone, replaced with Black Friday specials at Burger King, Chick-Fil-A and Sizzler (just 3 places that I saw who were open on Black Friday Eve.)  We will soon grab a whopper and go home to not watch football games, but whole hour long blocks of commercials sponsored by Toys-R-Us and Wal-Mart.

Amazon.com will probably join in and offer Black Friday Eve promotions that start at 10 AM  on the Thursday that used to be Thanksgiving.  Like Ralph said yesterday, there is no differentiation between holiday’s anymore.  I try very hard to keep Christmas separate from everything else.  I fight tooth and nail in order to keep Christmas from invading until after Thanksgiving.

It still trickles in not long after the Halloween decorations go down.  I am accepting this little by little but I will be damned if that tree is up and decorated before the turkey carcass is cooled.  But there are deals and presents available sometime around election day.  Bah.  Humbug.  Even the bell ringers were out on that Monday BEFORE Thanksgiving, er Black Friday Eve.

POMPANO BEACH, FL - OCTOBER 08: Wal-Mart empl...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

I for one will not be participating in Black Friday festivities this year.  Despite the lack of money to participate, I have lost the desire to brave the cold and crowds for a few good deals that are mostly gone by the time I get there.  On the news last Saturday, there were already people camping out at Best Buy.  What a load of, well, this is still supposed to be a PG-13 blog so I had better save that line.  You get the gist of it.  Plus, if you want a secret, MOST of the deals you can get on Black Friday are also available online.  Many you can get at Amazon for nearly the same price right now.

Speaking of Amazon, if you like this blog and would like to help Ralph, Bob and myself spread some Christmas cheer, please link to Amazon with our affiliate link over there in the right sidebar.  It will take you to Amazon.com where you can shop to your hearts content and not pay anymore than you normally would.  We just get a small portion for sending you there.  Enough commercial.

Are you planning on hitting the sales this Black Friday or even this Black Friday Eve?  Are you giving up?  Are you going to attempt to hang onto tradition and have THANKSGIVING?!?!?  I am.  I would like to hear your plans down in the comments.

for now, I have to check some ads and try to figure out what to get people for Christmas.  I did just get an email about quality fake ids…

Have a good one,

-Justin

Related articles

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.

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook