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July 13, 2008 Rants

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1. (951108) It's that time of year again. Your favorite humorists on TV have just about given up trying to say something that will make you laugh. The competition is simply too fierce. Nowadays when anyone needs a good laugh, they simply switch to a channel where they can watch candidates making campaign promises.

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2. (951108) Speaking of incompetence and crime, here's a tip on how you can get along good with your neighbors and co-workers, even though you might be distressed or even outraged by some things you see every day. Smile, close your eyes, and whisper to yourself, "God give me strength to last only two more years and 3 months when I'm out of here with my pension." I recently spoke with a pilot who said he retired and got a lump-sum check two weeks before his airline eliminated all the pensions. Suppose you've just come out of a PTA meeting at one in the morning and you see your next door neighbor's kid letting the air out of the tires on the superintendent's car. Would you tell anyone what you saw? Would you complain? Would you be a squealer? Keep it to yourself if you ever want your neighbor --- or the superintendent --- to speak to you again. Because there's nothing on this green earth that people hate more than a squealer --- someone who rocks the boat --- a whistle blower. Did you see the policeman who ratted on his buddies? They called it breaking the blue wall of silence, or something like that. He blabbed around that some of his policeman friends were stealing drugs and then selling them back to the drug dealers. His boss wasn't too happy about what he'd done. There's even talk about putting that one honest cop who squealed in jail. And then we saw two teachers who were attacked and pounded by violent students. The administration begged the teachers to forget about it, but they wouldn't. They were sick and tired of it. One of the kids is still in jail. You can understand why the boss doesn't like whistle blowers. As long as no one complains, John Q. Public thinks that the boss is doing a good job. Suppose you were a teacher who was thinking about writing a letter to the newspaper saying that for three years many kids in your class had headaches and coughed all the time. Doctors thought it could be caused by mold in the carpets. The carpets should be taken out. Don't do it. The superintendent would probably go through the roof. What you are really saying is that he doesn't have a good grip on what's going on in the school. You see, if he can keep the public from knowing about it, the condition doesn't exist. Some day when you have nothing to do, check around and see if the Commissioner of Education’s children or grandchildren go to a public or a private school. Suppose the second hand cigarette smoke in your workplace makes you sick. Your co workers tell you that you're crazy because no one is allowed to smoke in the building. And then one day the smoke is so strong that you walk around this huge building to find out where it is coming from. And way over in a secluded corner you find a room where people smoke. And the ventilation fans circulate it throughout the entire building. For years you've asked the boss to take care of this. Is it now time to write a letter to the newspaper? Not if you want to keep your job. Because here in the land of the free and the brave, pointing out substandard or illegal conditions is saying that the boss doesn't have his hands on the wheel. Oh, he can't fire you for that. But you'd have to be pretty simple not to know that within a year or two he's going to find an excuse to put you out on the street. You might be aware of similar situations every day where you or your friends work. But you want to keep your job. So when you see your neighbor's kid letting the air out of somebody's tires, you might want to remember that ancient statue of the three monkeys. You didn't see it, you haven't heard a thing, and you're not going to say a word. I'm Robert Skoglund, I don't know a thing about it.

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3. (951108) One of my friends says that the automobile seatbelt is the most valuable safety device in the world today. He won't even let his 16 year old son borrow the family car --- unless the kid promises that every minute he and his girlfriend are in it, they wear their seatbelts. I said, "Does he drive much?" and my friend said, "No, they park."

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4. (960228) Four years ago last Valentine's day my cousin Truman Hilt started dating his fiancee. Last Valentine's day Truman gave her a cup with a picture of her dog on it. But, he says, it has been four years now and she's been very good to him, so he figured she deserved much more. So this year he gave her a cup with two dogs on it.

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5. (960228) Have you ever noticed where your TV reporter goes when he wants to show you what poverty looks like? He gets himself invited into a house or trailer where the kitchen counters are piled high with clutter. The children have sad, dirty faces. There is bare dirt instead of grass in the front yard and the house is surrounded by clutter. The next time you see this on TV, ask yourself if you are looking at poverty or a lifestyle. Because you can take those same people out of that cluttered, run down house and put them into a shiny new house. Give them money, if you will, and yet within three to six months, their new place will look just like their old one. Let's look at this from another angle. Think of three of the fussiest old fuddy duddies you know. They take their shoes off before they go into their houses for fear of tracking in dirt. Imagine, if you will, what would happen if you put any one of them, and their families, into that same grubby, cluttered run-down house that we just saw on TV. The place would be neat before they went to bed that night. It would be clean if they had to fetch their water in buckets. The trash in the front yard would be picked up and hauled far, far away. So the next time you see some people who invite the TV cameras in, to make a big show of the mess that they are forced to live in, remember that a bucket of hot soapy water and two trips to the dump would take care of most of it.

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6. (960228) I recently looked at a Good Housekeeping magazine. It might have been the first time I had looked at a Good Housekeeping magazine for 40 or 50 years. Good Housekeeping magazine ain’t what it used to be. Correct me if I’m wrong, but 40 or 50 years ago, Good Housekeeping magazine used to be about Good Housekeeping. Now it is filled with ads and articles encouraging women to be concerned about their waistline, their wrinkles or their “gray problem.” Were you aware that gray hair is a problem? You know, it wouldn’t be a problem if someone with a product that turns hair brown hadn’t told you that gray hair was a problem. Yes, your waistline might be a problem. If you don’t watch what you eat, your expanded waistline can hasten your demise. But you know, if you give up sweets and drink two or three quarts of water every day, you might be surprised how quickly that waistline problem will take care of itself, and you won’t have to buy an exercise machine or a single pill to do it.

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7. I chanced to see a magazine headline that said, "So and So’s Secret Lover Brutally Murdered." Brutally murdered. We often see these two words side by side. And when we do, we always wonder if the word brutally is necessary. After all, is it possible to peacefully murder someone? Given a choice, would you rather be Peacefully Murdered, Brutally Murdered or just plain old ordinary murdered? We hear the same strange language while flying on airplanes. "We will be arriving in a few short moments." Given a choice, would you rather be peacefully murdered in a moment, a few moments or a few short moments?

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8. One day when I was 10 or so years younger than I am today, a young man was eating breakfast at my house as I put on a friendly old red coat --- getting ready to run a cord of fir through my wood splitter. I turned to The Almost Perfect Woman and said, "This won't take long. Eric is going to help me." I was trying to be funny, because if you know anything about the young men who follow your daughters home from college, you know that they are about as useful as snow shoes on a lobster boat. Yes, they might be studying engineering on full fellowships. Yes, next year when they graduate their starting salaries will be more than you've earned since those golden Bill Clinton years. But their idea of being useful is to destroy your home life by buying your daughter a fish, complete with leaking tank --- or a dog. And you know who ends up taking care of that. So I was surprised when this young fellow Eric followed me. I looked at him with disbelief over my woodsplitter and said, "Are you going to help me and thereby destroy the stereotype of the worthless boyfriend?" This was indeed his intent. But he was wearing a brand, spanking new blue jacket with an attached hood that you can draw together with a string, so you can look like a 14th century monk in an Ingemar Bergman movie. If you've got kids you know that they simply don't care what they do to their clothes, and you can imagine what that jacket would look like after handling a cord of fir. So I told him I was glad that he was going to help me, but he was going to have to change --- I couldn't stand to see anyone destroy a brand new jacket. And he said, "Oh, it's not mine --- your wife says she's been trying to get you to wear it for two years."

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9. (090306) When civilization began, city people set the tone for peasants in the surrounding countryside. For centuries cities have been learning centers as well as receptacles of culture for all forms of artistic expression. Unfortunately, when empires crumbled, art treasures were often destroyed or lost. But not to worry. Should St. George ever succeed in its effort to withdraw from the school administration district, Thomaston will be allowed to keep its green plastic high school sign.

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10. (090306) Are you good at remembering names and faces? I'm not, and it's more annoying than embarrassing when someone says, "I can't believe you don't remember me. I've been to your house four times." I'm not alone when it comes to having a bad memory. A while back you might have heard about some Augusta people who forgot to list on their job applications that they had been convicted of theft, assault, manslaughter and even cocaine trafficking. What an exciting life you must have if you can forget that you spent your last birthday in jail.

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11. (090306) Some people claim to be shocked at the large number of dysfunctional families that have crawled out of the woodwork to air their problems on television talk shows. But our society hasn't changed. We're just hearing about it in a different way now. Seventy years ago there was a popular song, "He holds the lantern while his mother chops the wood." And you'd have to be pretty young not to remember when you could turn on the radio and hear, "Slap her down again paw, slap her down again. We can't have the neighbors, talking bout our kin."

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12. (090306) If you are in business, you might have clever little answers for those predictable questions your customers ask four or five times a week. Nobody knows that you've said it a thousand times and it gives people the impression that you can think pretty fast on your feet. Here's an example. When a local antique dealer is asked if he buys antiques, he always says, "Gosh, I've got to. I can't steal enough to keep the place going."

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