When you’re the oldest guy in the room – cranky or not – people want to ask you questions. We sat down with the angry old fucker recently to get some answers.

Question Asker: Should I buy one of those new electric toothbrushes with a built-in timer and replaceable bristles?
Cranky Old Guy: Brushing your teeth is one of those things that modern society is trying to brainwash you about. They want to convince you that you’re doing it wrong, that you’re suddenly incapable of doing something you’ve been doing your whole life. They say you’ll have better teeth if you buy a computerized toothbrush and let them charge your credit card every month.

Don’t be a moron. Your teeth are gonna get jacked up whether you brush them or not. Brushing is an exercise in hygiene … that’s it. You could brush with a laser-guided titanium force field and by the time you reach my age your teeth would still be falling out of your face.

Most people should be able to use the same toothbrush their entire life, I use the same one I was issued by Navy back in ’42. Just brush until you get tired, over the course of a week you’re almost guaranteed to hit every tooth … no one needs no fuckin’ timer.

QA: Why do people own pugs?
COG: It’s a funny thing, lots of stuff in life happens because of misunderstandings and typographical inaccuracies. When an ad runs in a newspaper saying “Pugs for sale” most people really think it means “PIGS for sale.” So they drive out to the farm and, son of a gun, the only thing for sale there is a bunch of ugly little dogs. The average person feels sorry for them and reluctantly takes one home.

Pugs aren’t cute. If a person had their characteristics you would avert your eyes. They have squished faces, tails that won’t straighten and since their bodies are folded on top of themselves like an accordion, their breathing is labored and noisy. The little pig-dogs have to slumber with one of those sleep masks on so they don’t expire during the night.

Anyway, most of the people really wanted a pig and what they end up doing is feeding the dog as much pork as possible so that when they finally need to slaughter it, hopefully, it will taste like bacon.

QA: Do humans really drink Bud Light?
COG: Bud Light is always on sale so, yes, I have heard stories of human consumption. Bud Light will give you a headache just by opening one and if you sit next to a guy in a bar who’s drinking Bud Light that will give you a headache too.

Many people believe that in order to say Dilly-Dilly you have to drink the beer. It’s a common misconception, but it’s not true. You can Dilly-Dilly your ass off and never have to face the public humiliation or physical discomfort of ever having to drink Bud Light.

On Fall Saturdays across the nation, college campuses offer advanced courses in getting liquored-up. Students participate, their parents participate and the community at large and riff-raff from the neighborhood join in because college football is a literal drinking game. There’s no harm in it, in fact, it’s the beer buzz that made this country great.

I was on-campus on a recent Saturday and I observed the young drunk in his natural habitat. I expected to see tipsy coeds, but what I was not expecting to see was our “enlightened” youth, our best & brightest, gulping down large amounts of the pond water known as Bud Light. I thought the college crowd would be smarter than that, that they would be a more shrewd investor of the drinking budget entrusted to them by their parents.

Our Nation’s colleges and universities are failing us in ways I never imagined … and now … with Bud Light as the ultimate proof, college kids are flunking the beer test. People who drink Bud Light on anything other than a dare are from a different planet. They were born with faulty calibration

It’s one thing to be forced into a Bud Light because all the other beer is gone but to voluntarily purchase it in quantity – to have a can in one hand and, in the other, a cardboard container with seventeen more – is inexplicable and so sad.

What do you say to a kid who is so confused, so misguided, so lacking in judgment and instinct, that they would carry and drink Bud Light right out in the open? Dilly-Fuckin’-Dilly.

QA: What’s wrong with USC football?
COG: USC gave the keys to a priceless sports car to the equivalent of a teenager with only a driver’s permit. For a quarter of a century, they have hired figureheads to be their athletic director and aside from the miracle of Pete Carroll, these novice SC alumni have made awful decisions.

The job of USC football coach should be the most coveted position in collegiate sports, but if the people who run the athletic department don’t treat it as such you can’t expect college coaches to view it with the respect it deserves. USC has long confused the job of Athletic Director with a job that would be more accurately titled Director of Football Public Relations & Social Events. They hire former football players that we all used to like, put a coat & tie on them and send them out to raise money.

These money raisers aren’t qualified to hire big-time football coaches. And when they are forced to do so they take the coward’s way out, the easy way out and hire whatever current assistant will take the job. Sometimes those assistants are really nice people – but, as is the case now – they are almost always in over their heads … amateurs trying to run a Fortune 500 company.

So there’s good news and bad news: the bad news is that the current deplorable situation will go on indefinitely; recruiting will tank, your team will be outcoached and a source of public embarrassment. The good news is that allowing the current athletic director to hire a new coach would have been even worse and would have only further delayed what is now a complete tear-down and rebuild.

If and when USC hires a new university president, job one needs to be finding a new AD and a new head coach – and then perhaps the healing can begin.

Photo credit: Neil. Moralee on Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-ND