Shared Experiences

        Here on Coffee and Scotch I spend a lot of time writing about the things that make us different, well more like the things that make you different from me, but you get the idea. I’d like to try something else this week, a tribute to the late George Carlin, and spend a little time laughing at some of the things that bring us closer together. I’m talking about the little things that we have in common; the habits, annoyances and nuances of our day to day lives. I hadn’t given these quirks much thought, assuming they were signs of my own unique blend of ADD, OCD and insanity. As it turns out, some of you may have the same special blend of crazy that makes me tick. Here are a few of my personal favorites, let me know if you can relate.

        You know that moment when you’re swimming in the ocean and it gets deep enough where your feet can no longer touch the bottom? Am I the only one who starts to irrationally panic imagining killer sharks, giant man-eating squid, and possibly Cthulu circling around below me? God forbid something touches your foot...full on panic mode!

        When you’re awake in bed starring at the alarm clock, are you calculating the precise amount of sleep you’ll get assuming you can fall asleep that second?

        How about when you realize the blanket is the short way across your body and it won’t cover your toes, so you kick and thrash at it to get it the right way but it just ends up turning 360 degree and is back the short way again? That might go on for hours until I can get it sorted out.

        Ever have someone aim a rubber band at you and your entire life flashes before your eyes, like the shot could be fatal? I had a boss who used to offer days off if you’d put a miniature baseball helmet on your head and let him fire rubber bands at it. If he missed the helmet and hit you, it was good for a day off. Of course, you’d probably spend that day in a psychologist’s office trying to recover from the trauma. Thanks Rob, I’m still emotionally damaged.

        When you go into the bathroom and the shower curtain is closed, do you look behind it to make sure no one is hiding in the bathtub waiting to murder you while you’re on the toilet?

        Or when you’re in the shower with soap on your face and you’re convinced that the girl from The Ring movie is in the bathroom with you and is about to come through the shower curtain, what’s that about? That seems perfectly rational.

        Ever get into the shower at a friends house or a hotel and have absolutely no idea how to turn the water on? Fuck you and your fancy college engineering degree, I’m a shower fixture!

        Have you ever been around two people you don’t know, who are talking about something you absolutely love, like a movie or a book, but you don’t know how to maneuver into the conversation and it feels like a lost opportunity?

        How about when there is a conversation going on and you have something relevant to say but it changes topics before you get a chance to say it and you’re stuck with that thought rattling around in your head with nowhere to go?

        Or how about when you’re driving the car and the sun is blinding you, so you pull down the visor and realize that the sun is exactly positioned so it streams in the half inch gap between the visor and the edge of the window? How the hell does God always manage to pull off that little miracle? He must own stock in Oakley.

        Ever watch a video online and think it’s hysterical, then show it to some friends and suddenly it’s not even remotely funny anymore? “Keep watching guys, it gets funny!”

        How about when someone says hi to you in the hallway but you don’t realize it until they’re gone? Nobody wins in that scenario, especially when it was a hot chick.

        Or when you try to plug a USB device into your computer and it doesn’t fit, so you flip it but it still doesn’t fit, so you flip it back to it’s original position and it goes right in? Time to call the Geek Squad.

        Do you ever get really self-conscious when you’re leaving a store without buying something so you feel like you have to act extra carefree and innocent to prove you aren’t stealing anything? I’ll often fake a cell phone call too so it looks like I’m being polite by stepping outside to talk on the phone...nice cover.

        That’s it for this week, normally I pride myself on original content creation but this was more about gathering some fun things I’ve read here and there and bringing them together. Every one of the above made me laugh and reflect on how bizarre and irrational we are under certain circumstances. I hope you can relate.

Words To Live By

        You hate that guy, you know you do. He can’t make it through one conversation without peppering you with sanctimonious, bullshit, cliched expressions. Inside every office, every circle of friends, every family, every team; there exists at least one. Usually, I’m lucky enough to sit next to that guy at work and if he sees me staring out into space he’ll helpfully chirp, “penny for your thoughts?”. How about I make it an even buck for a falcon punch in the junk you jackass? I’m always interrupted at the least opportune moment too, like when I’m on the verge of a daydream breakthrough about my new cologne idea Sawdust, Motor Oil and Unicorn Sweat. That guy is as bad as my alarm clock, jolting me awake right as the midget hops onto the bed with a peacock feather and a set of jumper cables. A lot of these stupid sayings are commonly taught to us as children, presumably to help tune our morale compasses.Recently, I’ve been thinking about a few of the more commonly used expressions and worrying that they are conveying the wrong messages.

        Let’s start with the Golden Rule, as I’m sure it’s the one people think of first and seem to preach about the most. Heck, it’s got to be important because it’s been labeled with the gold standard, and at a whopping sixteen hundred dollars an ounce, this hefty rule must be worth it’s weight in gold. Punny, right? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s an elegant, simple, religiously grounded maxim about treating people well. Unfortunately, it’s not particularly good advice. Hey, I’d like everyone I meet to hand me twenty dollars, should I walk around with my wallet open and start handing out money? I realize that’s a bit of an extreme example, but assuming people are inherently good and treating them in kind,is a surefire way to get stepped on and abused. I suggest we adopt a new rule, the Silver Rule; “do nothing unto others and in turn expect that they do nothing unto you”. You may not make any new friends today, but you’re less likely to get Ponzi schemed out of your life savings either.

        Another saying I’ve been thinking about lately is, “one in the hand is better than two in the bush”. Now, there are times when I think the concept behind this is justified and it’s downright good advice. However, people seem to treat the kernel of wisdom as a hard and fast rule to live by. Success is often a direct result of risk taking. I look at the “one in hand” as a euphemism for mediocrity, an excuse to take the easy path. I think many of our great leaders, soldiers, thinkers, teachers and inventors have often opted to let go of the “one in hand” and go after the “two in the bush”. I think “nothing ventured, nothing gained” is better advice, if you insist on being that guy. Let’s teach our children to be smart risk takers, so that our next generation is full of winners, not simply participators.

        Finally, I give you the absolute worst axiom to live by, “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”. Whoever thought this was good advice and passed it into our collective vocabulary was an idiot and obviously didn’t know anything about books. Walk into a book store, if you can still find one, with no preconceived idea of what you want to buy. You will undoubtedly walk around looking at the covers of books and making judgments about whether they might be worth your time to read or not. It is of vital importance to our safety that we size people up as we meet them as well. If you see a guy in line at the bank with “Fuck You” tattooed on his forehead, I think you have a pretty good reason to consider leaving and coming back after the robbery....err later in the day. If you see a guy in line at the convenience store at three o’clock in the morning with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream, a bag of Funions, and blood shot eyes, chances are he’s stoned. The bottom line is, it’s perfectly normal to judge books and people, by their covers. Nature has given us that tool to aid us in our survival, don’t be an idiot and not use it. Teaching our kids not to judge people based on their appearance is dangerous, politically correct bullshit. We don’t have to create a generation of racist bigots, but we do have to acknowledge that when red touches yellow, you're a dead fellow; but if red touches black, you're all right Jack.

Baseball, Sex, and Jelly Donuts

        I’m writing this blog on the heels of one of the slowest sports weeks of the year. Major League Baseball has been mostly dormant, with the exception of the mid-summer classic, and the rest of the professional sports leagues are slumbering or locked in contract negotiations.The FIFA Women’s World Cup is going on supposedly, but I’ve become desensitized to watching women on TV or the Internet engaging in anything other than pornography, so that’s out. The New World Order has successfully removed the top black athlete from the PGA, so golf has lost it’s scant appeal. It’s back to the usual, “which boring rich white guy in bright green plaid pants will win this week” routine. When is the world of golf going to realize that it needs a little more Happy Gilmore and a little less Shooter McGavin? This athletic dry-spell creates a good opportunity for listening to some very entertaining sports talk radio at least. What better way to ease the misery of my commute home than hearing baseball trade proposals from Sal on Staten Island or fantasy football draft planning from Rocco in New Rochelle. Keeping with the theme, I’m going to focus this weeks Coffee and Scotch rant on three aspects of baseball that need an overhaul and which have been getting a lot of airtime on the AM band this week. For the sake of perspective, I’m a perennially disgruntled Mets fan, so take it all with a grain of salt.

        The major topic of the week has been the MLB All Star Game. The slow decline of the event, from it’s glory days of pride and competition to it’s current state of meaningless irrelevancy, has been well discussed. In recent years, the MLB has tried to inject purpose by having the outcome determine which league gains home field advantage in the World Series. I imagine the same thought process occurred when some unfortunate confectioner decided that powdered donuts weren’t good enough and they needed jelly injected into them. Classic fuck-up. Unfortunately, this tactic has simply not worked and we’re stuck trying to figure out how to scoop the damn jelly out so we can enjoy the purity of the donut again, which is always a shitty mess. Most of today's baseball stars are so delusionally self-absorbed that they can’t be bothered showing up, let alone playing in an “extra” game. The players who do show seem to play the game with no level of passion or real desire to win. It’s like going to work on Friday, sure you go but are you really giving it your all? Don’t get me started about how ridiculous the Home Run Derby is either. The Chris Berman, “back, back, back” home run call makes me want to throw my TV out the window. They ought to nominate an all-star announcer every year and allow them to call the home run derby and the game. Back on point, my proposed solution for the All Star Game is not to add or modify the rewards for the winning team, frankly I’d prefer if they removed any type of artificial incentive altogether. It’s the one time that Major League Baseball allows the fans to control who plays and who doesn’t. Sure, the managers get a few picks as well, but we have the opportunity to tell the prima donna players that we’re sick of their bullshit. I propose that we band together and throw the vote. Let’s send the leagues worst players out there and send baseball a clear message. And what better time to do it than with Citifield as the proposed site of the 2013 game? Hey, at least the worst players in the game won’t have to travel very far to get there.

        My biggest complaint with Major League baseball is the difference in the rules between the two leagues. This topic has been beaten like a dead horse but I want to get my two cents in. Being a National League fan, I’m generally inclined to believe that having pitchers hit is better for the game of baseball in terms of strategy and complexity. However, the designated hitter (DH) allows the sport to more effectively showcase its most popular aspect, the home run. If baseball is like sex, National League baseball is missionary, lights out, don’t make too much noise and wake up the kids sex; while American League baseball is hot, sweaty, spontaneous vacation sex. Home runs are the money shot and the designated hitter is like baseball Viagra. Whichever rule set you prefer is fine by me, my angst is with the simple illogical fact that the two leagues play a different game. The problem is further compounded every year with another baseball anomaly, inter-league play. National League baseball teams cannot compete on a level playing field with American League teams because they're not built around the DH. There is simply no consideration given to a National League team’s roster to carry a player solely for his offensive output. In the NL, bench spots need to be allocated for flexible players who can be used situationally for double switches, pinch hitting and injury replacement. For the sake of brevity I won’t get into the minutea of bunting, the wheel play, the butcher boy, pinch running, pinch hitting, double switching, or the value in clearing the pitchers spot at the bottom of the batting order, but in the interest of fair play can we level the playing field and decide on a unified set of rules?

        My final thought on baseball ties back into the players lackluster feelings about the All Star Game and their level of non-participation in it. Presumably, these guys have gotten to big for their stir-ups, with their bloated contracts and superstar statuses. Obviously, with the players union as strong as it is, major contract and salary changes are not likely to ever happen, but what if? What if baseball adopted a single contract that all players worked under? Every player is allowed to negotiate their base pay and the length of their individual terms of employment with a specific team. The base pay has a league minimum, as it does now, and a maximum “cap” set to something reasonable like five million dollars. Every dollar a player earns beyond their contractual base pay is incentivized, so performance is heavily rewarded. Every game played, base hit, home run, RBI, stolen base, strike out, and saved game are monetarily rewarded. Every aspect of the game is incentivized and built into every players contract. The players have nearly unlimited earning potential, assuming they stay healthy and perform well. The owners only pay for the kind of results that sell tickets and create successful franchises. The fans stop getting screwed by superstars who don’t seem to give a shit anymore. In my opinion, and obviously that’s the only one that matters here in my world, the system would work and would help baseball bring sexy back.

Time Is Money Friend

        I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I consider my time to be an extremely valuable thing and I don’t like other people wasting it. I piss away enough already, as evidenced by my weekly ramblings here on Coffee and Scotch, so I find it particularly annoying when inconsiderate jackasses employ copious amounts of stupidity and self-importance to waste precious minutes of my life. Now, people waste our time everywhere we go; hell I could write for days about how people at work waste our time and how the government wastes our time. The government has a monopoly on wastefulness in general. What has been grinding my gears lately though is the imbeciles who have no idea how to pay for things and manage their finances at the checkout counter. If I didn’t know better I’d think I was stuck behind a bunch of career felons who just got released from prison and were buying bags of topsoil at Home Depot for the first time in their lives.

        The absolute most heinous offense you can commit when you’re checking out is a lack of preparedness. Are people just clueless about the process or do they have a complete lack of regard for everyone else? How many times have you been in line behind some ditsy woman reading Parade magazine while her groceries are being scanned?
Lady, for the love of God, at least start the 20 minute archaeological excavation of your purse in search of your wallet. It’s not like the cash register is some kind of mysterious place where the procedural outcome is clouded in a veil of secrecy. Here’s a news flash for you sweetheart, you need to fucking pay for all that crap and that hitherto unheard of event occurs shortly after the last item is scanned by the cashier. Can everyone agree to get on the fucking ball and pay a little attention? Incidentally, when did we start working for the stores we shop at? What kind of scam is self checkout? How brilliant are the executives who made the decision to have us simultaneously spending money at their stores and also working for them for free? Sure, I’ll ring up my purchases, pay for them and bag them myself. Fuck we’re gullible.

        Figuring out which checkout line to get in has become a complicated science as well. On the surface, sizing up a line based on how many people are in it and how many items they have would seem to be enough to go by. Unfortunately, you need to stereotype people in order to save yourself a headache. Personally, I never roll the dice on old people, especially old ladies. Grandma is the number one perpetrator of the social crime, paying by check in the first degree. Check payers always seem to be pocketbook archaeologists as well, waiting for the last second to start the check book dig. After they find the ancient relic, they need to wait for the GPS satellite to get into synchronous orbit so they can trans-locate the pen in their cavernous purse.
Naturally, the pen won’t work because it was designed for form over function. Who wants a pen that reliably writes when you can have a twelve dollar, craft fair, decorative pen that some art school dropout hot glued plastic crystals onto? If you’re sharp-eyed and lucky enough to avoid the pay-by-checker, beware the stay at home soccer mom with time to kill. Chances are she’s going to pay with cash, which is fine, but she’s gonna screw you at the last second in a move I call “exact change diving”. One sure way to spot a change diver is by looking for signs of early onset scoliosis. Every time soccer mom buys a venti, extra hot, soy, no whip, caramel macchiato, she tosses the change down into the depths of her bag until it’s so heavy it hurts her back to carry it. Later, in the express line at Shop Rite when her box of Tampax costs $6.37, it’s time to plunge headfirst into the bowels of her behemoth pocketbook in search of the elusive exact change. What should have taken 10 seconds turns into minutes as she surfaces for air in order to dive again for the last two pennies.

        So you’ve avoided the grannies and the hunchbacks and you’ve slid in line with your debit card out, ready to rock and roll. There’s still a few pitfalls to look out for, the problem is they are hard to spot. The first problem is tricky but avoidable with a little awareness. Make sure you’re not the guy at the register with an item that doesn’t have a price or a bar code on it. Nothing brings the checkout carousel to a grinding halt like seeing the cashier reach for the intercom and broadcast a price check on your box of Trojans.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of embarrassment, trust me. Next come the dreaded, “Why yes I’d love to fill out the application for your store credit card so I can save 10% on my purchase today” people. This always seems to happen to me when I’m past the point of no return in a line. Once you’ve made it into the cash register on deck circle and you’ve already waited for five minutes or more in the same line, you can’t abandon it. It’s one of the unwritten rules of the universe, like starring at nice breasts and absentmindedly bouncing any tennis ball that finds its way into your hand. Lastly, you need to try and dodge the dreaded key ring rolodex of disorganized store rewards card scanners. Buying a sixty-five cent pack of gum at Walgreens, better scan my card and get the bonus points. Two minutes later they’ve managed to extricate the rewards card mobile from their pocket and they’re hunting for the right scrap of plastic like the school janitor looking for the key to utility closet number nine. Your knew you were in Walgreens, you couldn’t have started that process while you were waiting in line checking Facebook on your iPhone dipshit? The theme of the day here is preparedness. If everybody could take an extra second or two to get organized at the checkout line, we all might be able to get a day or two of our miserable lives back.

America, Fuck Yeah!

American hero Russel T. Casse.

        Fourth of July weekend, what a great time to be an American! We’ve got crappy gas station fireworks to buy, gluttonous hot dog eating contests to watch, wiffle balls to throw our aging shoulders out with, and tons of other festive things with which we can celebrate our great nation’s independence. I always take a few minutes on the 4th of July to remember how those aliens would have gotten us if it weren’t for the selfless actions of Russel T. Casse, may he rest in peace. There are, however, a few clouds threatening to storm on our parades this year. By the way, is there a point to parades? Talk about a useless waste of tax money and resources. Anyway, I’m going off on a tangent here. I’d like to touch on three particular things going on in our beloved country which are really bothering me. Unlike the news media outlets that you might be used to, here on Coffee and Scotch I don’t claim to provide any sort of fair or balanced viewpoints. I just give it to you like I see it; ass backwards, politically incorrect, emotionally insensitive, sophomorically juvenile, and crassly vulgar.

Harvard bum.

        Starting with the most severe of the three atrocities happening in this country, I give you Fred Phelps and the shitbags at the Westboro Baptist Church. Fred and his congregation of inbred goat fuckers like to protest at the funerals of soldiers in order to spread their hate filled anti-gay message. How can a religious organization, seemingly devoted to God, be filled with such malice? Before you Constitutional lawyers start sending me mail about the first amendment, I understand the right to free speech. I also understand that the people who sacrifice themselves to protect that right are the people whose funerals are being marred by these bible thumping nut jobs. I’ve seen the movie With Honors, so I understand that the true strength of our Constitution lies within its intrinsic capability to be amended. This country is ready for a government official to stand up and propose an addendum to our beloved first amendment, an alteration which makes it illegal to be a complete asshat and protest at the funeral of a soldier. I’d be happy to volunteer for jury duty on these cases, feel free to give me a call Big Brother...I know you’re watching.

Lining up right behind Freddy the Fanny Fencer come the power hungry, self-important, delusional communists that run the Homeowner’s Associations where all the veterans keep buying condos. Who the fuck do these people think they are, telling military veterans that they can’t fly the American flag in their front yards? We need to start gathering up these HOA jackasses and putting them on a bus to Mexico with the Westoboro lunatics. They can swing down to Tijuana for a few months to get a handle on how lucky they are to live in this great place we call America. Here’s another bunch of people that have no god damn appreciation for the sacrifices that our soldiers have made, and continue to make, on a daily basis. This is another perfect situation for one of our otherwise useless political suits to stand up and propose a law making it illegal to bar someone in this country from respectfully flying Old Glory, especially if that somebody put their life on the line to defend it. Find a veteran and ask them what the Stars and Stripes means to them. You can take your HOA rules and shove them up your collective asses. I wonder if any of those HOA folks happen to be gay, I know just the right person to call to borrow some signs.

Participation trophies for everyone!

        Lastly, and on a markedly lighter note, what happened to the value of competition in this country? Have you recently asked an eight year old coming home from a baseball game if they won? Who the fuck decided it’s not a good idea to keep score? That it’s not a good idea to promote competition in our youth? What are the long term consequences of indifference to winning or losing? Do we really want to raise a generation of Americans who feel no pride in winning and no desire to improve in losing? I’m all for inclusion in youth activities. No child should be turned away because of a perceived lack of skill, but what lesson are we teaching tomorrow’s leaders when we don’t bother keeping score? I think we need that lone wolf congressman (not congressperson than you very much) to stand up and make keeping score at sporting events a law!


Everybody relax, I’m just kidding...or am I?


Happy Independence Day!