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Month: November 2023

Wisdom

I am now 75 years old, and I feel compelled to pass on the vast and varied knowledge that I have learned by quiet contemplation and observation or more likely by making stupid mistakes.  I present these in no particular order as I feel that each has its own situational and intrinsic value. 

 When walking your dog in a campground, always take two poop bags. Campgrounds are crowded and everybody is standing around outside watching you and will give you the skank eye if you don’t pick it up.  Also, it is a good idea to plan the dog walk so that you don’t have to carry the bag(s) for extended lengths of time.  Carrying poop is not my idea of having a good time while camping and if I have to pull up my sweats before they drop and expose my ass crack, what can I do? The sweat pull-up job takes two hands and as I have no ass it is a frequent occurrence.  Judy tells me I should wear suspenders to hold my sweats up. Yep, there goes the last of my dignity.

“Look at that would you. An old fart wearing sweats with suspenders carrying dog shit”

No thank you. I will just spread my legs a little wider in my walk and hope for the best.

Old men should not go commando, we tend to leak. I learned this lesson from my grand daughter who was five a the time.

 “Look Mama! Pappy’s got a little fish in his pants.”

“How do you know it’s a fish?”

“Cause it wiggling around and left a wet spot.”

Don’t cook a hot dog with a blow torch. Went on an overnight canoe trip with my nephew. We were a little short on cooking gear, so Alan tried to cook a hot dog using a blow torch attachment on a green propane bottle. Thought he would save some space in the canoe and not bring one of those single burner things. Or more likely he just forgot to pack it and he was too lazy to scrounge some firewood and start a campfire with the said blow torch.  What he got was burnt on the outside and raw in the middle.  He ate it anyway. Now that is roughing it. 

Don’t drive and eat sugar free chocolates. Rest areas are often not located in emergency locations and gas stations rest rooms often do not have floor drains. I probably have a class action lawsuit as that particular warning statement did not appear on the fake candy package. But who am I kidding, I am a guy so I would not have read it anyway.

When in a canoe, your butt is your friend. The upper part of your body can move like a drunken hula dancer, but the butt needs to be firmly glued and frozen to the seat. And do not stand to pee over the side.  Even though this exploit can be accomplished, not all of the bodily fluid will end up in the water. That day ended quickly and badly for me.

Don’t crowd the mushrooms while saluting. This is not one of mine. Judy had to put in her two cents.

Spam is edible but that is about it. While in grad school we qualified for food commodities. This was before food stamps…yes, I am that old. Our monthly allotment consisted of powdered milk, a brick of cheese, peanut butter, butter, powdered eggs, flour, bulgar (whatever the fuck that is) and for meat…spam or some related and equally disgusting canned meat.   By the time food stamps replaced that program, I was the only one in the family capable of eating it and it had to be thinly sliced and burnt. Even to this day my 52 year old son gets the willies if you show him a can of it in Safeway.

There is no logic in food pairings. For example, beer and popcorn are great together. Popcorn and chocolate are another.  Logically, beer and chocolate should work. That’s a big no.

Italians always brag about their food but its only spaghetti. This is not one of my observations but one of many I learned from Karl Rukavina, who I could write a book about.  He has a point about Italian food though. Did you know that there are 45 kinds of pasta? Ever heard of bucatini, campanelle, cavatappi, casarecce, farfalle, fideo, gemelli, mafaldine, orecchiette, pappardelle, pipette rigate, radiator(WTF), tagliatelle, and 32 others? And guess what, add a bit of tomato and some hamburger and you get spaghetti in different shapes. I make pancakes in different shapes like silver dollars, micky mouse heads, kitty cats, and saguaro cacti. Add a little butter and maple syrup and guess what I end up with….FUCKING PANCAKES. What is the difference between multiple shapes of pancakes and pasta?  Italians?

Voice mail is one of the of the many differences between men and women.

Man: Its dad. Got a question about my pickup. Give me a call back.

Woman: Sorry to bother you a workday son, but I was thinking you may know the answer to a question that came up the other day when I was driving to my hair appointment at Carla’s House of Curls. You know the place next to the old Piggly Wiggly that is now a flea market.  By the way Carla asked about you again. Did you two have something going on in high school? Why am I always the last to know? Oh, and before I forget dad is going to call you about a funny noise that I keep hearing while riding in his pickup. He keeps telling me it is nothing, but his hearing is not what it used to be. But that is not my question…beep..beep..beep.

This difference in the sexes is annoyingly real.  I just need the facts, clear and in as few words as possible. If I wanted audio book, I would have bought one.

In the last few years, I have learned a difficult lesson. As a former scientist I try to use logic and facts in my discussions with those who have opinions that differ from mine. With the ridiculous conspiracy theories associated with the election and pandemic, this approach has failed me.  My assumption was that these people were just ignorant of history, the constitution, or how a vaccine works. In truth, ignorant people when presented with facts learn or at least listen. Stupid people laugh. If you are dealing with the latter, walk away or better yet run.

Being wealthy does not mean you are intelligent. And that fact is not confined to the My Pillow guy. For example, the four ultra rich who paid a quarter million each to take a trip to view the Titanic through a tiny window in a cramped submersible. Personally, I had my fill of the Titanic halfway through that Kate and Leo remake of a remake of a remake. Then there are the hundreds who travel to Nepal to climb Everest. How about that Shatner fellow who paid four times the median yearly income for ten minutes in near space so he could claim to be a real astronaut as opposed to a bad actor playing one on TV.

Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. This is a given. What guns do is make it a whole lot easier to kill and kill more. More guns, more gun deaths. This is also a given. Is it your right to bare arms? Where is my right to attend a concert, go to the grocery store, bowling alley or church without having to check out an escape rout in case a crazy with a gun opens fire. Fuck your second amendment rights!

And finally, much to my shame, I have to admit that Marco Rubio was right. Trump has a little dick.  Trump was found guilty of sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. The jury did not have enough evidence to say that he raped her as Ms. Carroll was not absolutely sure if, when he pulled his finger out of her China, that what he put in her next was his dick as it did not feel much larger. Ergo, Trump has a little dick, that according to Stormy Daniels resembles a mushroom. The burning question in my mind is how did Marco Rubio know?

That’s it. All I got. What did you expect from a Beaver fan? Lost by a safety???

Satire on Facebook

What do these stories have in common?

Denzel Washington Declines Disney’s $50 Million Project, ‘They’re Too Woke’

Mike Tomlin Suspends Two Steelers Players for Anthem Kneeling

Jason Aldean Wins $100 Billion Lawsuit Against CMT

Beyonce Sings ‘Alternative National Anthem’ At The NFL, Gets Booed Off Immediately

Bud Light Suffers Billions in Losses After Appointing Colin Kaepernick as Their New Brand Ambassador

Roseanne’s Debut Morning Show on Fox Shatters Viewership Records, Overtakes ‘The View’

Megan Rapinoe Leaves America, Vows To Never Return

They were all on Facebook and none, zero, nada is true.  These stories are obviously fake.  These stories are as ridiculous as posting that Trump is facing 91 felony charges. Would anybody in their right mind believe that one? An ex-president could never be charged 91 times. Utter nonsense. But just to make sure, I googled each one of the above stories. It took me ten seconds to determine that these were all fake news, yet they all got thousands of likes, positive comments, and shares. These examples are just a small sample from just one of these “satirical” sites and almost all, at least on my Facebook iteration, are aimed to enrage the right wingnuts into responding. The anthem kneeling ones have been repeated using different teams, coaches and even refs suspending players for protesting racial injustice. This brings the feeble minded out of their commas with cries of “it’s about time”,” I love Mike Tomlin”, and the ubiquitous “Amen”.  These people hate Whoopie Goldburg and The View so much that they claim that they are going to keep watching the fantastic Roseanne show no matter what, even though no such show exists!

And if you happen to be the most successful woman athlete of the last 20 years and the one who forced a male dominated sport into paying comparable salaries to a team of women, watch out!  So, what if this team has dominated for years. They even took glee in watching them lose their last game when Rapinoe missed a penalty kick.  What happened to the chants of USA USA?  The only way these butt holes would root for a women’s team would be if they played in bikinis. Even then they would only be looking for wardrobe malfunctions. This is so wrong, even though that is the reason I watch beach volleyball. It’s still wrong. Did you know that the lingerie football league is back? Now that is football.

These wingnuts are the same idiots that gave up their beloved Bud Lights because of a commercial showing a trans person drinking one.

“Budweiser should not have known better than to insult the people who drink their beer. GO WOKE AND GO BROKE”.

I am glad they cleared that up for me as I thought it was a virtue to insult homophobic bigots.

I remember sitting in an Elks Lodge in Arizona about the time Colin Kaepernick took the knee. Many of my fellow Elks were so incensed by the act that they vowed never to watch the NFL again. They gave up football because a second string QB at the literally the end of his career, used the national spotlight to try and make a point about the inequities in the justice system. That was seven years ago, and they still are enraged at the NFL for not immediately fining, firing or butt fucking anyone who does the same.  Do they not notice that most of the players on the teams are blacks? Do they not realize that black mothers and fathers feel that they need to teach their children that when they get pulled over by a cop that they keep their hands on the wheel, stare straight ahead and try to remain calm? That is something I never dreamed of having to tell my three kids in their driving lessons.  Might have been that I was worried about getting home alive, but that is another story.

Having been born, raised and grown old in semi-rural Oregon, I have only known a few blacks who were almost exclusively highly educated.  One of these people was an intern we had for a summer. He was an Oregon State University student with a big smile that forced me to smile back even if I was having one of those days.  After I got to know him a bit, he told me that he had been pulled over 22 times in two years and never given a ticket.  This was one of many stories finally woke my skinny lily-white ass up.  Driving while black is really a thing, even in Corvallis.

Honestly, I am surprised that I don’t see a lot of anti-migrants “satirical “posts about diseased wet backs. Maybe it’s too much for the fake news Facebook crowd to denigrate the brave people who walk for miles only to have to swim across the ice choaked St. Lawrence or Niagara Rivers in order to take our health care from us ‘mericans.  Trump is right we do need a wall.  A really tall one to keep all of that Arctic air out.

But seriously, here is an important piece of advice.  If you are a racist, misogynistic, homophobe, it is best to keep quiet about it. Copying and liking, IN WRITTING, this kind of shit on Facebook only points out who you are in mixed company. Eventually this will kick you in the pie hole, unless of course your last name is Trump.

One other point about people who loudly voice their hate for those who don’t conform to their norms of sexuality. As my dear friend Toni pointed out to me, those that are the loudest are the ones trying to hide who they really are from themselves. Maybe they should wake up before they are outed on Facebook.