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Rants February 24, 2008

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1. From watching me on television, you might get the impression that I’m quite a natty dresser. I spare no expense to look good for you. But my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, is from Connecticut, where they have a different standard. And one day last week she asked me why I always wore such ratty clothes. I said, “Clothes don’t amount to nothing. It’s the body underneath that counts.” And she said, “Don’t make it any worse than it already is.”

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2. Local law enforcement officers are glad that Maine criminals are technologically behind mainstream America --- often by five or ten thousand years. While New York police might have to dodge a hail of bullets from automatic weapons, Maine police are frequently bitten on the hand.

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3. You might suspect that laws are like social customs: they don’t really have to make sense. Think about this: if a man murders his mother, the first thing the lawyers want to know is, was this man sane or was he crazy when he did it? You see, for this type of crime, your state of mind makes a difference. If you can prove that you were crazy when you killed someone, you can’t be held accountable. But, on the other hand, every year hundreds of Maine people are fined in court for not having license plates or inspection stickers on their cars. Most of these people are horrified and embarrassed when brought to justice. Wouldn’t you think that the law would make some allowance for their absentmindedness?

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4. There are all kinds of lifestyle gurus out there. They will tell you how to look better, how to feel better, how to make more money, how to get more done. I just saw one article listed on line that you can download. It is an article that will teach you how to get up early. You don’t need to bother to download it because I’m going to tell you how to get up early. Get some cows. 060324

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5. Crime seems to be moving in on all sides of us and it might be because nobody worries about being found guilty anymore. There is the my-father abused me, my mother abused me excuse. The -- a horse stepped on my foot when I was 10 excuse. There is the --- we-were-poor excuse. There is the --- we-were-rich excuse. How can you be guilty of a crime if you were crazy at the time you so very carefully planned it? We can expect to see the drunken excuse very soon --- he’s a really nice guy. He wouldn’t have done it if he’d been sober. And then there will be the hunger excuse --- she’s a regular witch when she hasn’t eaten -- a handful of crackers would have saved his life. Which brings up the --- I-ran-out-of Prozac excuse. Or even --- his wife did it because he refused to let her go on line. Where will it end?

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6. Have you seen this new combat thing on TV? I think they call it absolute fighting. It can get pretty messy because you can do whatever it takes to completely destroy your opponent. No holds are barred. You know, my friend Lawyer Crandall could be a world champion --- he’s been handling divorce cases for years.

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7. The other morning when I woke up, I realized that there are two kinds of people in the world. When one type gets up in the morning, a large area in the bed where they have spent the night is toasty and warm. The other type of person quickly moves into this warm spot. 071125

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8. My wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman personifies the Type A individual. She is a pessimist and she tells it like she sees it. The other day I strutted up to her, stuck out my chest and said, “I have big plans.” She said, “You’re going to take a nap?” 071202

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9. I have watched the Jerry Springer show with academic interest. A scholar would hesitate to dismiss the Jerry Springer show out of hand. If I were a professor of Elizabethan literature, the Jerry Springer show would be required watching for my students, and a source for papers in which the student would be required to “compare and contrast.” Although the Jerry Springer show has admittedly gone downhill since I last saw it last year, there was a time when the guests on the shows were exact parallels to characters in Shakespeare’s plays. 071202

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10. The three years I spent at exercise class in front of a TV screen with the other retirees here at the rec hall has paid off. Today I noticed that my arms and legs look exactly like those of the woman on the screen.

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11. Is it true that Medicare might soon be spending 2 billion to buy Viagra for seniors? Because smokers are over twice as likely to become impotent as non-smokers, should non-smokers be taxed for shortcomings that smokers have chosen to inflict upon themselves? If you are an older non-smoking man, you might want join me in a letter writing campaign opposing this expensive legislation. Shouldn’t we let our legislators know where we stand? 050527

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12. I read that handguns predominate in firearms crime. More than three-quarters of the 83,000 guns used in crime that were traced for law enforcement agencies in one year were handguns. Of course crooks commit crimes with handguns. Have you ever tried to walk into a bank with a shotgun in your pants?

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13. Sara in Waldoboro writes: “Did you write the letter appearing in yesterday's Courier Gazette and signed by "James Skoglund"? Its' style was similar to yours but not as good as usual and I wonder if the paper edited it badly and signed the wrong name? If so, I hope they will let you correct it. In my haste to warm up the kitchen this morning I burned the paper, otherwise I would quote it here.” Well Sara, I think you did well to burn that newspaper. I can’t remember now what the letter was about but as far as I did know I did write it and I heard from one of my cousins in Thomaston that the paper put my brother’s name under it. Which I think was a good thing to do if it wasn’t as good as my usual letters. Years ago I used to write a weekly column for over 50 newspapers, and I can tell you that it is hard to write something excellent every week. If all I had to do all week was write one newspaper column or the rants for one radio or television program, I might be able to do it. But I have a wife who --- I’ll be right back. I’ll go see what she wants….

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14. Here’s an email letter from a friend who says, “I used to work as a DJ at a big dance club in Portland. One night somebody climbed the ladder to the DJ booth and told me to shut off the strobe because it was bringing on an epileptic fit. You know just as well as I do that that must have been a long, long time ago, because the way kids dance now nobody would have noticed. 010209

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15. A woman who does a lot of public speaking wrote me a letter last week asking for advice. She said she gives the people in her audiences an evaluation sheet. But no matter how wonderful they said she was in the written part of the evaluation, most of them never give here more than a seven on a scale from one to 10. I told her that if I were having that kind of trouble, I’d ask them to evaluate me on a scale from one to seven. She didn’t write back. 010209

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