You know you might just be getting old when: you see a mother-daughter pic, and you get the hots for the mother.
Category: Old Fartism
Mirror, Mirror On The Wall
Sent to me by Longtime Buddy Mervyn:
AAADD – Age-Activated Attention Deficit Disorder
This is how it manifests . I decide to water my garden. As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide it needs washing. As I start toward the garage, I notice mail on the front verandah table that I brought up from the mail box earlier, just after the mailman had made the delivery.
I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. I put my car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage bin beside the table, and noticed that the bin is full. So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first.
How to replace a jean button – that looks like a jean button. But, then I think, since I’m going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway (and the mailman picks up the mail at noon) I may as well pay the bills first. So, I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only 1 check left. My spare check book is in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of Coke I’d been drinking earlier this morning.
I know I was going to look for my check book, but first I need to push the Coke can aside so that I don’t accidentally knock it over. The Coke is warm, so I decide to put it in the refrigerator to make it cold again. As I head toward the kitchen with the Coke, a vase of flowers on the dining room table catches my eye — they need water.
I put the Coke on the dining room table and discover my reading glasses that I’ve been searching for all morning. I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I’m going to put more water in the flowers. I set the glasses back down on the table, go to the kitchen sink to get a jug and fill it with water and suddenly spot the TV remote on the window sill. Someone left it there.
I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I’ll be looking for the remote, but I won’t remember that it’s on the window sill, so I decide to put it back in the living room where it belongs, but first I’ll water the flowers. I pour some water in the jug, but spill some on the floor. So, I set the remote back on the kitchen bench, get some towels and wipe up the spill. Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.
At the end of the day:
– the car isn’t washed
– the checks aren’t written for the bills to be paid
– there is a warm can of Coke sitting on the dining room table
– the flowers don’t have enough water,
– there is still only 1 check in my check book,
– I can’t find the remote,
– I can’t find my glasses,
– the garbage hasn’t been taken out
– and I don’t remember what I did with the car keys.Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I’m really baffled because I know I was busy all day, and I’m really tired now. I realise this is a serious problem, and I’ll try to get some help for it.
As I replied to Mervyn, that’s actually quite a productive day… for me.
Old-Time
As an Ole Phartte of some renown, imagine my gleeful chuckles when reading about this man’s requirements for employment at his business:
A Welsh dessert shop boss has shared the most brutal job advert you’ve ever seen on Facebook, but has been universally praised for his no-nonsense attitude.
And if you don’t give at least one approving “attaboy” when you read the ad, we can’t be friends.
Here’s a similar no-nonsense attitude, but in precisely the opposite direction.
We run Britain’s strictest pub – no phones or kids are allowed inside and anyone who swears is BANNED
As one would imagine, I would be in real danger here — although I’ve found that the more I drink, paradoxically, the less I swear. (Regular Drinking Buddies Mr. Free Market, The Englishman and Doc Russia might contradict this, though.)
Whatever: I would happily guard my tongue at the Fox & Goose to be free from screaming children and fucking (oops) cell phones. The only thing that might cause me to give the place a miss is that I’m not that fond of Samuel Smith beer — but then again, life is full of compromises. innit?
Then And Now
Found these two pics in a newspaper somewhere:
Dallas, late 19th century:
The same block in Dallas, today:
With all the faults and problems associated with living in the 19th century, I still prefer the look of that time to the soulless concrete ghastliness of today.
But you all knew I would feel that way.
Unwanted Feature
Here’s another thing about this so-called “Modern Lifestyle” that is a stone in my soul’s shoe:
A SUPERYACHT owned by a Russian tycoon boasting an eye-watering £61million price tag is set to be auctioned off after being seized.
The stunning 240ft vessel – named The Axioma – has a catalogue of bougie features including six decks, a pool with a swim-up bar and even a cinema.
What is it with having an in-home movie room these days? You can’t open a real estate listing without seeing a windowless room with a giant screen and a few overstuffed easy chairs in it, and if I ever bought a house with such a “feature”, all that crap would be tossed out and replaced with something of redeeming social value — like a tasteful, fully-stocked bar — before the ink was dry on the closing documents.
Here is where I could hang out with a few friends, enjoy good fellowship, conversation and companionable drunkenness, all in a friendly setting. Maybe a TV screen in the corner so we could catch a decent game or a Grand Prix maybe, but live sporting events are different from movies, as a moment’s thought will prove: they are definitely group entertainment.
Movie houses are, almost by definition, not a place for gathering and social interaction. Oh sure, you enjoy the movie “experience” together (not that too many modern movies actually provide much of an experience, don’t get me started), but that’s it.
“Oh, but Kim,” I hear the cry, “it’s really a place for your teenage kids to hang out with their friends.”
Yeah, I really want my teenage daughter hanging out in a dark room with her testosterone-laden boyfriend, with the sound turned up loud lest parents actually hear what’s really going on in there. Or if there’s a whole group of them, to be greeted by a sea of thrusting pimply adolescent backsides when I walk in the room.
Okay, enough of that. 
Or if not a bar, then a gun room. Yeah, a wall full of cabinets such as below, inside a securely-locked door and suitably-impregnable walls:
Add a decent cleaning station / workbench, and I think you can all see where I’m going with this one.
Of course, someone might say that this would not be a place where I could entertain my friends — but clearly, you don’t know my friends.
Whatever alternative use you can dream up for that room, you can be sure that you’d get more enjoyment out of it than can be had from a screening of Fast & Furious 207 or whatever other childish comic-book action comes out of Hollyweird.
What He Said
What do bad manners have to do with the end of imperialism, you might well ask: in a nutshell, nothing and everything. Moral authority disappeared with the empire, just as its successor, socialism, undermined the authority of the family and the pursuit of excellence. The media suddenly presented itself as a tribune of the people, sympathetic to the sensitivities of the masses, with the rich always ruthless and the poor always perfect, the children always innocent and trusting, unless they were white, then they were crazed and feral.
All good stuff, and more besides.