Gripes, grumps and Gramps

I stopped adding to my blog for quite while because I felt contented and happy about the results of the election, the growth of my grandsons and the well being of my family. It's not that anything has changed with either of those three, it's just that I have some gripes and perhaps that's why I keep getting called grumpy. Be patient with me while I air a few pet peeves.

Oil prices and gas prices - How much repeated bullshit do we have listen to from the oil industry as they try to justify their outright greed. Reading some comments on this topic from viewers of CNN one person accused us that are getting grumpy (I am beyond that, I am outraged) of being Socialists and that this was how Capitalism works. NOT! It works within reason with the ebb and flow of supply and demand. However the oil industry are not true capitalists, they are "greed whores" who take us for all we are worth without even kissing us first or saying thank you for your bottomless pockets.

Okay, that's one gripe off my chest.

Maxi-dresses, bell bottoms etc. - Why is it that when the creative powers in the fashion industry are either sleeping off the hangover from their drunken debauchery with our dollars or they feel omnipotent and lazy, that they then choose to regurgitate old styles that many of us in the "boomer" generation were only to glad to see vanish from the store shelves and racks?

Hip hugger jeans and bell bottoms have re-entered the scene a few years ago and now I see the result. A new vocabulary has evolved. I see a generation of "muffin tops" prancing around baring their overflowing mid-riffs for all the world to see and wonder what is becoming of America's dietary sense and they even wonder if all those tree huggers who would ban every food from the shelf unless it still has fresh dirt clinging to its organic exterior might be correct. Why just the other day I heard a young boy singing, "there I was on good old muffin top, muffin top is my girl..." Change is good but really...!

Maxi-dresses are the latest piece of regurgitated fashion to reappear. Maxi-dresses became famous, or shall we say infamous, back in the 60's. Mama Cass of the Mamas and the Papas made them her staple for fashionable dress. However if you remember Mama Cass (and that might be the problem because all of you are too young to remember) she was beyond a "muffin top". She was a virtual mountain whose figure was subject to mudslides rather than curves. Her adoption of the maxi-dress was a progression from the late 50's and early 60's horrible Mu Mu. Now that had to have been the product of fashion terrorists. Any way girls it isn't called a "maxi" for nothing. It is a "maximum" coverage of everyone's flaws designed originally for those girls who just didn't look so good in a "Mini". What with bountiful bottoms and knocking knees you can't blame them for grabbing the "Maxi" from the shelves but please, let's not kid ourselves and call it fashion. It's like pleated pants. I don't wear them because they are "so-o-o fashionable. I wear them because I am over weight and as a friend of mine called them when I was younger and skinnier, they are fat boy pants. Enough said.

Organic foods and prices - Trying to be an open minded old fart, I have made the trip to the Mecca of "yuppie" wannabes, Mount Pleasant, and visited Whole Foods, the Mecca of those who espouse the dietary theory of "don't eat that, it is filled with poison and don't you know that corporate food companies are killing us". Well I am sure that there is some truth to that BUT! When I totalled up the bill from each time I visited Whole Foods, I was aghast. That used to be the amount a young family man would put down on a new car!! Also, how did my grandparents back in Ireland live to ripe old ages (late 70's and 80's) when they disobeyed the current mandates of the dietary gestapo and had a diet filled with fried foods and used beef lard to fry and bake with? I have come to the conclusion that when "Organic" food followers develope some corporate Organic farms large enough to compete with the present corporate farmers then we will have decent prices so that I can afford to eat a little healthier than I do. In the meantime I will continue to spread margarine on my English Muffin (baked by 50,000 factory bound "muffintops") and put refined sugar in my non-organically grown coffee.

Finally - Now that I have aired all my gripes, I understand why I have been called Grumps. However life is still beautiful. Why just the other day I heard my grandson sing Louis Armstrong's famous song, "It's a Wonderful World". There are 43 days left until the family goes to the beach and I know that when we get there I can just be "Gramps".

See you later and enjoy your English Muffins, organic or otherwise!