Time Flies

Thanks to PrivateCaller for this one.

If this doesn't make you feel old....then wake up from your nap, wipe the drool off your face, and think about it for a second.  Do the math...

Alternatively, you can go look for your glasses.

Supporting Nappers!

Why didn't YOU think of this zillion dollar idea, Moron???!!!

What's a Napper?

It's what I used to call 'old coots' some years ago. The Forbes guys will reckon...

Nappers and Droolers!

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*.

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.

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.

Classical Funny

Tony Soprano's Mother!

So I'm looking up common and important Latin expressions for the flashcards I'm creating for my son et al...

And I come across this hilarious one:

Obit anus, abit onus

It means - The old woman dies, the burden is lifted.

I thought better of including it on the flashcards, for now anyway.

'Old Coot' Files - "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff

I don't know why I was so shocked at that circa 2009 pic of him. I mean it's not like I HAVEN'T aged since I used to sneak watching him on a low-def Zenith color TV some 28 years ago or so. (My mother banned me from watching wrestling!)

For those of you who remember....check out his hilarious and unscholarly entry on Wikipedia. They use the word *feud* in all seriousness, an astounding 33 times on the webpage!

Another Techno-Relic

The condo we are renting here in Naples, despite only having 7 channels of basic cable color TV, has a set of *TV trays* in the middle of the open living room.

I remember as a child in the early 1980s (AD) it was a big deal to have a *TV dinner night*. That would be the food (frozen sectioned meal with brownie that always burned) AND the privilege of eating dinner on the couch in front of the Zenith with one of those wobbly TV trays. (We had this big sheet that had to be put on the couch in all eating situations.)

But in 2012 a TV tray couldn't be more OUT.

Why would anyone want to watch TV and eat simultaneously? It would ruin the enjoyment of both. Get a DVR already or better yet stop watching the tube altogether!

'Old coots' are funny with their TV trays, masking tape, phone books, piles of newspapers, warehouses of cancelled checks and utility bills from decades ago, VCRs that have been flashing "12:00" since day 1, AOL email accounts, old coffee cans filled with rusty nails,...

Ads For 'Old Coots'

At my aunt's house the other day down here in sunny Florida(!), I noticed her Kindle on the coffee table.

The ads were running on the screen so, having just arrived, I figured that we interrupted her reading.

But many hours later I saw the ads still flashing on the Kindle, in the same spot,...

CaptiousNephew - You know, you can turn that thing off...

Aunt - It IS off.

CaptiousNephew - No it's not.

Aunt - Yes it is.

So I picked it up, slid the power switch to the right and counted out loud slowly, "one two three....six seven" and the Kindle did a miraculous thing - IT TURNED OFF. You should have seen the look of amazement on her face!

CaptiousNephew - Don't you have the directions?

Aunt - Of course. I filed them too.

CaptiousNephew - Well, you should have READ them first!

Later on that night I was talking to my mother - my aunt's sister - via a cordless cellphone...

With my aunt next to me I started to relay this humorous episode to my mother - much to the chagrin of auntie.

Then I caught myself mid-anecdote:

CaptiousSon - Wait Ma, do you have ads running on your Kindle.

Mother - Yes. I can't stand them.

CaptiousSon - Do you know how to turn them off?

Mother - Nope.

And then I walked her through the complicated 7-second-button-hold process.

It turns out she also prudently filed her directions.

Me? I took one quick look and tossed them!

I do wonder how many 'old coots' are out there staring at ads on their Kindles unnecessarily.

And I do wonder if Amazon's engineers did this intentionally!!!

Someone also has to tell these fossils that they can HIT THE MUTE BUTTON when the color TV commercials start blaring too! I mean it's bad enough that they don't have/use DVR technology...

See also - The Jurassic Butterfly Effect.

Unsecured Morons

Our rental unit here in Naples won't have its own internet connection until *sometime between 3pm and 5pm tonight*.

Meanwhile I've been squatting on a neighbor's WiFi.

The problem is that they keep turning it off!

Who does that? Who turns off their router to *secure* it? I mean why not just PUT A PASSWORD ON IT. They could even use *password* like the rest of the 'old coots'!

This reminded of me of one of my college jabronis in Philly. Though he was very intelligent in many matters he was a complete Moron with some other stuff.

He thought that the *pitcher* in invert s*x was most vulnerable to HIV; he thought that drinking alcohol before inseminating his wife could give him a retarded baby; AND he also made sure to physically unplug his cable modem each night, you know, so that hackers wouldn't be able to *steal his information*.

Young Guys Sticking Together

I'm dropping my 7.12 year old son off at CCD (Church school) yesterday...

And the 'old coot' parking lot attendant (yes, traffic is INSANE - they need one/two) asked me,

"Hey, wait a minute....you're not his father are you?"

CaptiousNut - No. He's my little brother.

Of course then my son ruined it.

On my way out the guy accosted me again because he just couldn't believe that someone who looked like me was a father to a 7 year old.

Was he blind, dumb, and old? Perhaps.

Anyways this morning I had to have a talk with my son.

I told him that from now on....actually I ORDERED him, from now on to say that I was indeed his brother should that situation arise again.

And I told him that if the person asking is a female and he plays his part well....that I would take him out for an ice cream sundae.

When his sister got up this morning he ran over and eagerly announced, "Dad is now my brother!"

Mulit-Generation Parenting Failure?

I guess this is all the rage now - to put 'old coots' on YouTube dancing - to that lovely rap crap.

500,000 hits in 3 days?

'Old Coot' PDA

From Geezer Planet!

Awesome Fossil!

Watch the whole thing:

Money - Can't Take It With You

My grandmother just became a complete ward of the State of Massachusetts.

Grandpa died 20 years ago. She lived on her own; then at a subsidized home; then at an assisted-living facility until recently when her money ran out.

She had - I believe - 300k after selling her house not long ago. But the monthlies on her care ultimately devoured all that cash.

So now taxpayers are footing the bill, er bills, but at a lesser place than she had been at.

When my father told me how this all worked (you have whittle your accounts down to zero to gain eligibility) I was a little surprised - but only because I was completely ignorant about typical end-of-life living.

It's all really sad. My grandmother doesn't recognize anyone and has all the usual maladies of a nonagenarian. She's not just dying alone, she'll have been living alone for many, many years before leaving this world.

I mean, is this what we all have to look forward too?

She is/was a very difficult woman and there was *no chance* that she was going to live with my father or his brother. Old folk, even if moderately healthy, do need around-the-clock care - even just for incontinence and whatnot. My father said he could have conceivably taken care of (butt wipe) his father but not his mother.

But still, theoretically my grandmother could have moved-in with my parents (or uncle)....they could have hired nurses to stop by here and there....much of that money would not have gone to waste....AND taxpayers could have been spared.

Obviously if they didn't have this *welfare* state those people that can afford their own end-of-life care would pay for it themselves - and the money would be spent a whole lot more efficiently. People would simply figure it out, as they did for thousands of years before the tyranny of Big Government entitlements.

And dotage might not be so lonely...

'Old Coots' + PC + Webcam

2.6 million hits on YouTube in less than a month?

I like how the fossil started yawning and almost dozed off!

Aging 'Old Coot' Rock Star?

Шикарное соло

Life Is Brief(s)

The other day I bought briefs (bikini!) at TJ Max.

Now I haven't worn them in over 20 years - having switched to boxers when I was 16 or so.

Why the switch? Why not, I guess?

I'm deliberately trying to mix things up with every aspect of my life. Just to give another example every time I go to the supermarket I try to buy something, anything, that I've never tried before. Plus the boxers were starting to feel like a cumbersome diaper or something.

It's all part of the age-fighting process. Without conscious effort one can easily devolve/ossify into a monstrous creature of habit - what I euphemistically refer to as an 'old coot'. These fossils, with their 5 meal rotation, ritualistic newspaper habits, hourly naps, perennial vacation schedules, and conversation-less spousal dinner dates are really just half-dead in my mind. They are merely sleepwalking nap-walking through their golden years.

So far I like the way they hug my rump....but of course the boys up front are suffocating having been *free range* for so long. And it's nice to no longer have to experience residual drops running down my leg.

And whatever did happen to that stud Lorenzo Lamas???

Oh boy! From Wikipedia:

Lamas began appearing in the Zaxby's restaurant chain television advertisements in May 2008.

In 2008, Lamas appeared in season 2 of CMT's Gone Country.

In 2009, he starred in the Asylum's Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus as Alan Baxter, a government agent who wants to destroy both the Mega Shark and the Giant Octopus to protect the world from their destructive fights.

Lamas now stars as himself in Leave it to Lamas, a reality show that focused on his own real-life family on E!

Personal Life

When Lamas moved to New York at 13 years old, he suffered from weight problems. In 1979, he took up taekwondo and karate and started to exercise. He has won countless black belts and showed his skills in the series Renegade.

Lamas has been married five times and is the father of six children by three different women.
His first marriage was to Victoria Hilbert from 1981 to 1982. His second marriage was to Michele Smith in 1983, which produced two children: son "A.J." Alvaro Joshua Lamas (born December 19, 1983) and daughter Shayne Lamas (born November 9, 1985). He and Smith split in 1985.

His third marriage was to Kathleen Kinmont (daughter of his Falcon Crest co-star Abby Dalton) in 1989; they divorced in 1993.

Lamas married his fourth wife, Playmate of the Month Shauna Sand, in 1996. Lamas and Sand have three daughters: Alexandra Lynne Lamas (born November 22, 1997), Victoria Lamas (born April 24, 1999), and Isabella Lorenza Lamas (born February 2, 2001). Lamas and Sand divorced in 2002.
Lamas fathered daughter Paton Lee (born 1988) with actress Daphne Ashbrook. He was engaged to Playmate of the Month Barbara Moore, but the marriage was called off.

Lamas got married for the fifth time with his fiancee of more than a year Shawna Craig, 24, in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico on April 30, 2011. His daughter Shayne Lamas, 25, attended her father's wedding.[2][3] He has told reporters that he will go publicly as Lorenzo Lamas-Craig, his manager, Don Gibble tells E! News, "He's always thinking outside the box so he decided to become the first celebrity to take his wife's last name." The other reason was cause his last wife, former Playboy Playmate Shauna Sands, kept the Lamas name and is legally Shauna Lamas. "His new wife didn't want to be called Shawna Lamas for obvious reasons," explains Gibble.

He took his (5th!) wife's last name???

For the 'old coots' in my readership:

A Comedic Genius Too?

Prince - Dad, what's 40 feet long and smells like pee?

CaptiousDad - I don't know.

Prince - The line dance at the old folks home!

Not bad, eh?

Now I don't allow him to read my blog due to adult content, adult situations, adult language, and occasional SSC.

But one day he will learn the term 'old coot' and start using it in proper context. When that happens I'll probably get into real trouble with the humorless set in my extended family.

Funny 'Old Coot' Malaproprism

So I overhear this 'old coot' at the driving range yesterday talking about 22 year old US Open champion Rory McIlroy:

OldCoot - Tiger who???

Cracking himself up...

OldCoot - He never should have got married!

Pause...

OldCoot - He had all these wild oats he needed to ho(e)?

I think, had he known the correct idiom, he meant to say *oats he needed to SOW*!

Not so much why oats, as why wild oats. The saying is referring to a European grass species with the formal name Avena fatua, which has for centuries in English been called wild oats. Some botanists think it’s the wild original of cultivated oats. Farmers have since ancient times hated it because it’s a weed that’s useless as a cereal crop, but its seeds have always been difficult to separate from those of useful cereals and so tended to survive and multiply from year to year. The only way to remove it was to tramp the fields and hand-weed it. Even today it’s still a problem, despite modern seed cleaning and selective weedkillers.

So sowing wild oats was the archetypal useless occupation, indeed worse than useless. It’s not surprising that the phrase sowing wild oats was applied figuratively to young men who frittered away their time in stupid or idle pastimes. But there’s a strong sexual association here, too, because the phrase was often applied, in a more or less indulgent way, and always to young men, to what was politely referred to as youthful dissipation. The associations between male sexual activity and sowing seed are obvious enough.

The saying is first recorded in English in 1542, in a tract by the Norfolk Protestant clergyman Thomas Becon, though I’m told that a related phrase appears in the works of the Roman author Plautus. It’s common in older English literature, no doubt because the image struck a chord in a society that was still mainly agrarian. Here’s a typical example, from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, of 1869: "Boys will be boys, young men must sow their wild oats, and women must not expect miracles".