Spring Funnies

If you didn't laugh at 90% of them (click the arrow, 'old coots')....then you, sir/madam, are a banana-head!

But The Helmet Still Makes Him A Sissy!

I've posted a couple *bike videos* over the years....but this one I think takes the cake:

Doctors Are A$$holes...

You can read the story here.

While some might be inclined to blame the social workers or lawyers and insurance companies....I blame the doctor who must have called it in - whatever *it* was.

Why? Because he knew darn well what chain of events it would set off.

An isolated case/jerk?

Hardly. In fact a doctor I know pretty well just posted the exact same ignorant anti-midwife comment on FaceBook - maybe only 2 months ago!

I've said it before - *doctors are almost indistinguishable from the worst priests....all salvation/health must go through them*.

And if you resist....they call in the ruffians.

A Soda App?

Have y'all seen these new *touch-screen* soda dispensers?

Pretty cool, right?

Well, not if you are waiting for an 'old coot' in front of you to figure it out!

I sure wish I had my camera rolling on my father the other day at Five Guys....was classic especially at the end(!) when he couldn't figure out how to get *ice*.

The Neo-Barter Society

While there have been fits and starts over the past 2 years....unfortunately we really haven't been able to *do piano* with the kids like we have wanted.

BUT NOW, I've struck up a deal with a local teacher.

He will teach my kids piano....and I'm going to help his daughters with math!

The guy can play too - check him out. He's a former concert pianist.

USA - Run By 'Old Coots' With Childish Intellects

So I point out to my son that the local *comic book store* just closed shop:

CaptiousDad - Look John, the comic book store is out of business now....It's a bad economy right now, do you know what that means?

Son - Nah.

CaptiousDad - It means that a lot of people don't have jobs....that a lot of people don't have any money these days.

Son - Well....then they should just print more money!

HAH!!!

There you have it - the current national economic policy can be intuited by a 7.32 year old!

While my son is certainly very precocious....he hasn't read a lick of economics and so doesn't understand it a little bit - a la Bernanke, Obama, Bush, et al.

Half-A$$ed Kindergarten

Some residents of our town - which already spends 26k per pupil! - are petitioning for *full day kindergarten*.

Okay. Whatever.

But check out this dimwitted petition/plea that was just forwarded to my wife:

Hi Ladies,


This came into my inbox this morning and I was so happy to see someone doing something about our outdated Kindergarten program! I would love to see a change happen, if not to directly benefit my family, then to benefit the students and families following (her daughter)'s Kindergarten year.


We all love to spend that extra time with our kids when they are growing up so quickly, but as I already have a child in elementary school, I know that Kindergarten is not what it used to be. Gone are the days of play, singing, painting and nap time on the rug. In my opinion, the skills that our 5 year olds are expected to leave with REQUIRE 5 full days at school.


Please take a look at what is below and take a moment to click and sign if you agree!


Thanks!

Say what???

Did she just say that kindergarten SUCKS now and that the kids need 5 FULL DAYS of it, now???

My wife asserted that she herself is *against the full-day*.

But my opinion is, "...that there should be either 'no kindergarten' or a 'full day'..." because a half-day (2.5 hours!) is nothing more than a logistical nightmare for parents.

After all, a lot of these kids have been day-cared for 7-9 hours per day since almost birth, so there's no transition at all for them to adapt to being raised by new strangers for a *full day* when they are 5+.

REMINDER - Kindergarten isn't even mandated by law.

In other words, you don't even have to send your child - which I, by the way, highly recommend!

Must Be Messing Up Our Kids!

Just this week...

Someone, a repeat (childless!) offender, insinuated that my wife and I weren't emphasizing *multilingualism* in our homeschooling.

Then, a couple days later, another in-chimer told me I should bring my kids to his neighborhood in Harlem so my kids could *experience diversity*.

AND just yesterday my father calls up, asks what we were doing on that *nice, warm day* and interjected before I could even answer, "I HOPE YOU ARE TAKING IT EASY ON THOSE KIDS....AND LETTING THEM GO OUTSIDE."

Of course my father specializes in *taking it easy* so he was simply projecting his priorities - as the others were.

And, not for anything, but there's hardly any *intellectual diversity* in Harlem or anywhere else in NYC.

E.g:

I am indeed always looking for new educational ideas and perspectives....but this week I couldn't help but be reminded of Will Durant's zinger:

"Wherever men do things, other men will arise who will explain to them how things should be done."

As always, y'all can see how *messed up* our kids are at their blogs (see the right-hand margin) and at HomeschoolDad.com.

Evangelical Pagans!

Hah!

It is somewhat interesting that they are targeting Orthodox Jews over Christians.

Hmmmm....

The College Life Of Dissipation

There's language, and not exactly my choice style of background music....but I must admit this looks like a pretty good time:

We had surprisingly good parties at UPenn, but nothing like that!

Sitting Is Death!

Look, I've been saying that - *sitting is death* - for a while now....but since nobody listens to me, perhaps they'll listen to Tim Ferriss?

He's got a blog post up (laced with very high-priced affiliate links!) that pretty much corroborates my own independent assertion.

The opening line is a haymaker:

If you’re a white-collar worker, hacking your body isn’t limited to the gym. In fact, what you do outside of the gym might be more important that what you do inside the gym.

Recent research suggests that those who sit from 9-5 (more than 6 hours daily) and exercise regularly are more likely to have heart disease than those who sit less than 3 hours per day and don’t "exercise" at all.

Did you catch that???

Sitting all day MORE THAN OFFSETS exercise. Yeah, it's that bad.

And it explains why those European women can eat so much food and still stay thin...

THEY DON'T WORK - at least not at desks all day.

It's just too easy to sit, to drive, or ride the subway/train. None of our daily needs demand any exercise to be fulfilled.

You sort of have to manufacture situations of physical hardship. For example, nowadays I always walk and carry my own bag when golfing - as intentional exercise.

And yesterday when we got off the train at Penn Station I made my kids walk 2.9 miles through Manhattan to get to their art fair - not to save a subway/cab fare, but rather because they don't get near enough exercise naturally in my estimation.

Blind Surfer?

Cool.

But I still think *blind golfers* who have 4-handicaps are more impressive!

Education Pictorial

Created by: College At Home

First of all....I believe there are 3 million kids homeschooled in America today. The media/government has been insisting on the *2 million* number for a while now.

The one thing that stands out to me on this info-graphic, and I've seen it before, is that educational performance remains the same no matter how much money is earned or spent by the parents.

There's also been research showing that the *education level* of homeschooling parents has nothing to do with outcomes either.

Les Christie Is A Moron

On CNN.com they just ran some reality-inverting article that asserts buying a home today is cheaper than renting.

There were several INSANE assertions in the article (who wants to live in Detroit's cheap crack-houses?) but my favorite was:

Kolko pointed out that places like Honolulu, San Francisco and Boston have strong long-term growth prospects.

Hah! Strong long-term growth prospects in Boston?

And they say *blogs* don't produce quality content!

Funny GIFs - 1

I don't know what it is with these *funny GIFs*....but my son's blog gets a ton of traffic for one little post on them he did.

Is this what people do? Spend all day looking for funny GIFs?

Marrying For Her MIND

Trust me, watch this one. You'll love it:

You can tell....this guy really loves his wife!

I Can't Pound One, Period!

Start at the 1:20 minute mark:

Pump Pain

Hah! I've been telling y'all this was coming, for years.

Recall 16 months ago we bought a little car (32 mpg) expressly because of this prediction of mine.

Obama's people are printing money to monetize the stock and bond markets (so they can get re-elected and so they can bailout the 'old people' that run this country).

But an irresponsible, rampant policy like this inevitably juices the commodity markets too.

The funny thing is....high gas prices from now to November will be taken out on incumbent politicians. Obama - er, I mean his *handlers* - have to be aware of this.

So I believe at some point soon they will take the air (monetization) out of the stock and bond markets in order to knock down oil a peg before November. Sure they will *release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve* and make a big announcement out of it....but that won't really lower the price of oil that much.

Oh wait, some of you naive folk that the Strategic Reserve was for real emergencies like supply chain disruptions and wars???

Hah! No it's always been for incumbent pols!

The one problem with my little Volvo is that I'm too scared to drive my kids around in it. There are just too many crazy drivers here in NY. I feel like we'd be crushed instantly in the event of an accident (versus my Chevy Tahoe).

While politicians might not survive higher gas prices....the public will figure it out. Soon everyone will be driving less, ordering from Amazon Prime, and driving a moped:

What's that old moped joke?

Something like - They're like fat girls....fun to ride but you don't want your friends catching you riding one.

???

Networking?

I hate the word, *networking*, but that's essentially a big and growing part of what I'm doing these days.

For one thing, it's not easy to homeschool kids in New York in the sense that there really aren't that many kids whose parents are educated enough(!) to pull them out of school.

So I'm always driving all over the place, introducing myself to everyone, responding to online forum questions, picking brains, and striking up *education* conversations with just about everyone I meet....all in an effort to find other homeschoolers, convince people to *opt out* of institutionalized AND to promote myself as an educational resource.

I mean today I drove 25 minutes Northeast to a little art/math co-op; then I drove out to middle island for my kids' American History Club (watch John here). Tomorrow we are taking the 40 minute train ride into NYC (plus a subway downtown) for an *Art and Design* fair with the NYC homeschoolers. THEN on Wednesday, we are trekking 90 miles east to an observatory at night!

So that's just a clue as to why my blogging has been so tragically light these days. Florida was easier. Less commitments!

Math Haters

While dyslexia is a fairly well-known and oft-discussed affliction these days...

There does exist an analogue in the math world - Dyscalculia.

Apparently its sufferers (*math haters!*) have trouble recognizing and counting dots quickly. Or at least this is one of the diagnostic tests they fail.

They say that 3-6% of people suffer from it - and that's across the entire IQ range.

I do believe this actually exists although my inclination is to always take the *under* of the percentages posited by financially-interested researchers. So say it's more like 1-2% of Earthlings.

There are free dyscalculia tests online, just have to Google.

Also, there is a nice, seldom-used word for people who can't compute....it's innumerate.

A Little Different Than Cafeteria Swapping

Yeah, she is indeed homeschooled! Article here.

Thanks to Heather for this one.

'For The Children' Morons

I bumped into some guy from town the other night at a local restaurant's bar.

He said he was on his way to some benefit at the country club.

CaptiousNut - What for?

Dude - It's a fundraiser for the schools...

Hah!

They already spend a mind-blowing $26,000 per pupil, and they need more?

AND these Morons will voluntarily contribute???!!!

CaptiousNut - How much does it cost to go?

Dude - Well as a family we gave five thousand...

Wowsers! (Tickets started at $300 per couple.)

Dude - It's a way around the state cap....if the town spends any more money the state will reduce its aid. All the wealthy towns do this...

Another attendee, the next day explained further:

OtherDude - Last year it was to install WiFi everywhere. This year it's for smartboards...

Apparently the foundation simply picks a sleek new *cause* each year, preying on the misguided fears of these wealthy parents. Yeah, without smartboards....their kids will *fall behind* everyone else. Right.

As I said, they already have PLENTY OF MONEY in town. The superintendent makes $270,000 per year to achieve the worst academic results of all six towns that abut our district!

OtherDude - But how much of that $26,000 per pupil goes to pensions?

CaptiousNut - Not that much, now anyway.

You see, he has an answer on the tip of his tongue, no doubt echoed by the *foundation* and other naive folk that continue to ignore the school district's criminal fiscal irresponsibility, runaway pensions, and ridiculous salaries; naive (guilt-ridden?) folk that just bend over and take the inexorably escalating property taxes.

The most Moronic assumption of all, however, is that they all just equate money spent with educational outcomes.

There's a verse in the Bible - Proverbs 29:12:

If a ruler listens to lies, all his officials become wicked.

While that may be very true right now in Washington....a proverbial spin on it might well read:

He that hath fatal Moronic assumptions, is ripe for rampant exploitation.

It's just too bad they are dragging the rest of us, the remnant who understands what's really going on, down with them.

They think they are subsidizing smartboards....but all they are doing is subsidizing pensions and incompetence.

Chess - A Way Out And Up!

There's a documentary coming out on an amazing NYC government school. Here's a clip:

I'm telling y'all....this is a powerful game.

Overnight Camp?

My wife emailed me today:

Do you think kids are too young? It is 5 nights only. I think they would LOVE it.

http://www.campsfatimabernadette.org/specialprograms.php see starter week

So I googled Camp Fatima to see where it was.

First of all, New Hampshire is too far for me.

Second of all I noticed the tag *sexual abuse* on the Google Map page.

What the heck is that?

Well, another google revealed that Camp Fatima was the scene of some alleged(?) sexual abuse not too long ago (2002?).

I sent my wife the link to that info and the terse response to her suggestion "Good one!"

70 Million Hits In A Week?

I don't have time to watch a minute of it.

Someone said it's a scam.

I only came across it because I was deciphering this:

If it's important one of youse can let me know.  Thanks.

Shocking Violence In Socialist Schools

Okay, the *Shocking* characterization in my title is tongue in cheek.

Look, even if your kid isn't bullied themself....the odds are that they are actually bullying some other kids beneath them in the pecking order - even if on a psychological level.

Lord of the Flies isn't what happens when kids are taken out of school/society...

No, it's what kids do to each other everyday when sentenced to *forced association*.

I watched two older Asian geeks at chess class yesterday tease my sweet-as-pie son. I mean these kids were certainly outcast dorks in their local government school penitentiary; and I don't even think they were mean kids, relatively speaking, by any stretch. But they were 11 and 12 years old - my son is 7.30 - and they probably just don't get many opportunities otherwise to flick another kid away like a fingertip booger.

The older homeschooled kids never, EVER tease my son; I mean almost everyone loves him.

When you do something as profoundly against the grain as keeping your kids out of school...it's nice to be continually, if not constantly reminded - even if by chess dorks - that you made the right decision.

I was no angel in school myself.

I used to bully the football players, the minority gang leaders,...

The idea that making a *cause* out of the *bullying epidemic* is going to do anything, at all, is absolutely ridiculous.

A Tale Of Two Nines...

Wow!

For those of y'all who don't know how to keep score (honestly)....Sergio Garcia, the 'Rory McIlroy' of yesteryear, shot a sizzling 5-under on the front and a disastrous 8-over par on the back nine.

I've certainly done that before, in a manner of speaking. But I usually do it the other way - 10-over on the front, 1-over on the back. I reckon I've done that a bunch of times.

UPDATE - Check out the OCTUPLE BOGEY:

After eagling the first hole too!

Book Rec - The Bluest State

The The Bluest State is a terrific book about the horrible place I grew up in. And I especially recommend it for anyone who's ever *done any time* in the People's Republic of Massachusetts.

The author refers to the bad guys as *Boomer Liberals* even though as far as I'm concerned, and as he admits, he is in fact one himself.

I didn't expect to take any notes on this one so I was without paper and No. 2 pencil when I sat down to read it. Consequently there are no less than about 20 pages dog-eared!

But I'm only going to type up one little excerpt:

Years later, Googling the slogan, I found the consensus meaning of "The personal is political": the "broad texture and character" of our personal lives are not a result of our personalities and life choices, but are "defined by the broader political and social setting." We are what a corrupt political system makes us, and thus we suffer from "a totality of oppressions." It's a wonder, given Hanisch's depressing no-exit spin on this, that we even get out of bed.


But my peers in Cambridge didn't have quite the same gloomy, humbling take on it. "The personal is political" was a slogan from heaven for my generation, endowed with limitless self-esteem by our parents, instinctively understanding that the center of the universe looks back at us from the mirror every morning. We took it as a green light to let our gut feelings and personal biases - often mistaken for moral principles - dictate our civic behavior. We used it to justify a new brand of politics that valued personal identity over communal interests, all the while insisting they were one and the same. Widespread protests in the streets of Cambridge during the spring of 1970 were described as antiwar, but they were really a convention of grievances from feminists to anti-Zionists and everything in between. The uniform of choice that spring was a T-shirt with a red fist on the back, a generic but satisfyingly defiant symbol. Exotic concepts of discrimination with made-up names like "lookism," and "heteronorming" got their start from "The personal is political" and its comforting premise that if you believe strongly enough in your own oppression, just as the children in Peter Pan believed in fairies, it must be real.

That just about describes all of my Mass Boomer uncles and my father to a "T". Every time I see them they are complaining about a *totality of oppressions*!

Never, and I mean never, do they ever convey the outlandish notion that, perhaps(!), they themselves have any responsibility for or any control over whatever the particular grief is.

Precocious Headbangers

I'm not a thinking-about-killing-myself headbanger in the slightest....but I prefer this one:

I wonder if they sing/play "I Used To Love Her"????

It's All Reps!

Check out this 'old coot':

700 push-ups, 10 sets of pull-ups and dips, 5 DAYS A WEEK!

This February, down in Naples, I had access to an artificial putting green. Determined to improve this weakness of mine I committed to putting for 20-30 minutes, twice a day, for the entire month.

What a difference it made!

I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I've never putted that much, in such a short period of time, in my entire 22 year golfing career - not even when I was working at a golf course 5 days per week.

While there's almost always a smarter, more efficient approach to whatever it is someone is endeavoring....it's also always possible to put in a whole lot more *reps*.

And the thing is, as I recently found out on the artificial green, the better techniques will undoubtedly manifest themselves during the added reps.

Wow!

Apparently ABC has a new show debuting this month:



It's based on the book "Good Christian Bitches". And it's produced by the invert who did the whore-romp "Sex And The City".

Wow, again.

I say short this one. Advertisers are going to take a beating. Wal-Mart is already stepping out, even before the show started!

Plus, no one is really going to watch it - neither Christians nor born-again pagans.

Mr. Clutch?

Only 6'1 and 170 lbs, my alma mater UPenn's Zack Rosen may not be NBA-bound....but apparently he's had a pretty impressive season:

As Penn heads to Princeton Tuesday night, trying for a share of an improbable Ivy League title and a playoff date with Harvard, Palestra regulars come up with their own ways of calibrating the sensational play they have seen from Zack Rosen all season.

"People sometimes think coaches have more control than we do. His ability to just make plays sometimes even amazes me," Penn coach Jerome Allen said of his senior point guard. "I can maybe count on both hands how many times this season he's had open looks. Not too often."

Stu Suss has sat by Penn's bench since Chuck Daly was the Quakers coach - during the Nixon administration - always coming up with numbers that don't appear on the stat sheet. Ask Suss if he has any interesting Rosen stats beyond his Ivy-leading 18.5 points per game or his 5.3 assists, and he answers, "As a matter of fact . . . "

In the last five minutes or in overtime of Ivy League games in which the score was within eight points - "in that specific clutch situation," Suss explained - Rosen had played 48 minutes, which happens to be the length of an NBA game.

Rosen's box-score line in those 48 clutch-situation minutes: 53 points, plus 6 assists, 1 rebound, 1 blocked shot, 1 steal, 2 personal fouls and 2 turnovers.

Asked if he can think of a player carrying a team as Rosen has carried the 2011-12 Quakers, Phil Samko, the Quakers' basketball trainer since 1985, goes away from basketball and back to his own youth in Worcester, Mass. "Not since Yaz and the '67 Red Sox," referring to Carl Yastrzemski's Triple Crown season.

I'll pull one more little quote from that article:

"I don't believe in talent," Rosen said.

Hah! That seems to be the theme wherever I look these days...

If You Click On The Arrow...

...you'll be accosted by funny junk:

Stealing The American Dream

Hah!

A buddy/old-neighbor of mine up on Boston's South Shore just sent this to me...

Looking at the picture and the headline I thought for a split-second that it was my old a$$hole landlord!

But then I saw that it was in Maryland; and that it was ONLY $1 million worth of delinquency.

My landlord, as far as I know, still has 3-4 properties that totaled over $4 million in *non-performing* debt.

And he stopped paying everything, 4.5 years ago...

One quick excerpt:

"How is it people can stay in a house for five years without ever making a mortgage payment?” said Thomas A. Lawler, a former senior vice president at Fannie Mae who now runs his own consulting firm in Loudoun County. “That’s a screwed-up process. It’s an example of how the process is broken."

Can you believe this effin' guy quoted in the article???!!!

HE WORKED FOR FANNIE MAE - WHERE IT WAS THEIR POLICY TO NOT EVEN LIST A LOAN AS 'DELINQUENT' UNTIL IT WAS 2 FULL YEARS IN DEFAULT.

Fannie, his company, loses hundreds of billions, he goes out scott-free to run his own *consultancy*....and then waxes outraged at his own former boondoggle!

The *Fake-Analysis* Is The Best

Whenever you need a laugh (or a cry)....just take a gander at the YouTube comments for any highly-viewed, viral type of video. It never fails!

They Will Die!

Movie Rec - Winter's Bone

This one is very well done:

Netflix characterizes Winter's Bone as *dark and gritty*, indeed it is - but my wife and I enjoyed it.

On Balls

Me? I play with whatever balls I find (when searching for my playing partners' errant shots!)...

And if I run out of balls myself, I just reach into someone else's bag. Believe me, they'll never know!

For Real?

Government Education - A Crossfire Of Blame