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March 15, 2009 Rants

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1. Whenever I'm feeling optimistic about the future of the country, I turn on the TV and watch a show where they have guests. The guests are usually mothers and daughters who come out and shout at each other. Most of their conversations go like this. "You peep, peep, peep." I'm sure you watch them. Sometimes the guests are men with two wives or women with two husbands. At first I figured that they must get paid. Nobody would make a fool of himself in front of the whole world without getting paid. But then I remembered that I was a volunteer on Maine Public Radio for 28 years.

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2. Is there something wrong with me or am I out of touch with present modes of communication? Why can’t I just relax, drool, and go along with this dumbing down of America? You know that people who don’t know how to use email and the telephone are my pet peeves. Tonight when I picked up the phone and said, “Robert Skoglund here --- what can I do for you?” the voice on the other end said, “Hi there --- how are you doing tonight?” How am I doing tonight? I don’t pick up my phone to hear someone ask me how I am doing. I wanted to cry. Nobody cares how I am doing, so why throw that meaningless phrase at me? Why, why, why can’t people simply say who they are and what it is they want? More and more Americans seem to be on a little programmed track, and if you throw them off that track, they have to back to the beginning and start over. You are not allowed to drive a car without first passing a test. Wouldn’t you like to see everyone take a course in talking on the telephone and then having to pass a test before being allowed to have one? This is not done because it would keep half of the people in America from communicating with their neighbors. Well --- we finally determined that this caller wanted to talk with his aunt, who happens to be my gracious hostess --- the person who supports me and Marsha all winter. I told him I’d be glad to have his aunt call him when she came home --- if he’d be kind enough to leave his number. And then, another slap in the face. He said, “Do you have a pencil?” In other words, “You don’t have brains enough to keep a pen and paper on your desk so I’m not going to give you the number until I’m sure you are ready to write it down.” The most annoying thing about this entire incident is that I didn’t need to ask him for his number because my telephone automatically records it.

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3. You’ve heard me say that I’m looking for a little pickup truck with less than 90,000 miles for around $1500. I’m like you in that I naturally want to buy it from the old man who bought it new. I’ve been looking in Craig’s List every day and I’ve pretty well figured out how that works. They update it every day, so the new listings are at the top, and the ones you’ve already looked at are in red. There is a maximum and minimum price so I type in 1100 and 3100 for that. And because I don’t want to buy a truck from a dealer, I google their telephone number in another screen. If they are wheelers and dealers, their number turns up on everything on the page and you can see all the different things they’re selling. Here’s a nice little 1992 White Isuzu Pick-Up Truck 5 Speed for $2000 in Orlando. But --- when I Googled their telephone number, this is what turned up: We buy non-working junk vehicles So give us a call us today at such and such for free removal. What you want to bet that if you held out cash in your hand they’d take less than $2,000 for that White Isuzu?

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4. (PRX 090309) It is the time of year when some parents finally get to see boyfriends who were acquired over the past school year. If your daughter is a serious student, who is also a friendly outgoing type, three or four young men might show up in the course of a month. This is good. It means that your daughter will probably marry a very rich 50 year old man when she's 35. Were you pleased with the most recent ones your daughter brought home? If you're a father, or a stepfather like I am, it's important to have your greeting down pat. Think it up ahead of time. Years ago, when my friend, Lawyer Crandall, heard a young male voice on the phone asking for his daughter, his standard reply was, "She's in a mental institution." Crandall says they simply said, "Oh good. Thank you. I'll call back later." Another father told me he had his greeting down pat. He smiles extends a hand, and says, "So you're the chemist who's been in Africa working with Aids patients.” I can remember that 15 or so years ago I was very impressed with the crop my wife’s daughter brought home. Each one admitted that he was a grad student on full fellowship to this or that university. Grad student on full fellowship has a nice ring to it. Every time one would appear, I'd say to myself, "Here's a smart fellow who's going to go places. He can't fail." But then one day I happened to think that for years I was a grad student on a full fellowship.

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5. Here's an important public service announcement. There's a new captain on one of our Maine ferry boats who takes every state and federal regulation very seriously. When passengers ask, "Oh captain, can we come up on the bridge and see how you run the boat?" he says, "No, no. Federal regulations say that you can't come up here --- unless you're wearing a bikini."

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6. You might have heard that 70 percent of the people in Sweden's jails are from other countries. If you'd like to learn several new languages, that seems like an inexpensive place to do it.

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7. You might have seen the television show that illustrated the fallibility of eye witnesses to a crime. When shown men in a police lineup, many witnesses identified the wrong man. Had this been an actual crime instead of a test, it is possible that faulty testimony could have helped convict an innocent person. Luckily for people who were convicted long ago by faulty evidence, you can be released after new dna evidence has proven in a new trial that you are innocent --- unless you’re in Maine. The problem of incarcerating innocent people is not a new one. Over 200 years ago a very wise man named Samuel Johnson said that he would rather shoot a robber in the act than testify against him. He said, "Six months later in court, I could be mistaken, but if I shot him in the act, I'd be sure I had the right man."

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8. You might know high energy people who get along nicely on next to no sleep. Some of these people walk six or eight miles every day. For weeks a friend of mine walked up in the West Rockport area but now he's walking closer to his home in St. George. This is a great savings in time and effort, because, a dog can bite him just as well in St. George as up in West Rockport.

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9. Captain Freddie was one of my neighbors when I was a kid. They say Captain Freddie didn't get to go to sea until he was well along in years --- almost 20. He wanted to go when he was younger when one of his relatives, Captain Seymore Watts, or someone in the same business, even came by the house one time and asked him to help haul a load of coal to California. But Captain Freddie’s mother had lost two or three family members at sea and she wouldn't let him out of the house. Captain Freddie said, "You know, that ship went down and all hands was lost. I suppose it's just as well I didn't go."

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10. For at least a million years, somewhere on this earth, people have been killing each other. So we are not surprised to discover several groups on the planet that have been at war, off and on, for three or four thousand years. Things might quiet down with them for awhile, but before you know it, one or two nuts will do something stupid that gives the whole tribe an excuse to start fighting again. They simply can't stand each other, and they will continue to fight until one or the other of them is wiped from the face of the earth. One of my friends who is almost 90 years old can't understand why a larger country might want them to stop their eternal bickering. She says, "Why should they be deprived of one of life's little pleasures?"

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11. People from Hartford and Boston would laugh at people who were born and brought up in Spruce Head or Friendship, Maine. But you know, those big city people wouldn't be able to earn a living here in Maine. It's too different from anything they've ever experienced. Think of the difference: here in Maine when you get up in the morning and look in your garage, your car and all your tools are still there.

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12. Several years ago a most unpleasant man moved here from Boston. After putting up with his foolishness for two or three years, one of the local boys thought he'd encourage this guy to move back to Boston. So late one night this kid came up behind the man as he got out of his car, stuck a gun in his ribs, and robbed him of three dollars and fourteen cents. The next day that man moved back to Boston. We were all glad to see him go, but none of us were pleased with the way the kid had gone about it. And the next time I saw him I chewed him out for scaring the man to death. He said, "Scared? Don't you know nothing about city people? They aren't afraid of holdup men. When that Boston man felt my gun in his ribs, he got just plain homesick."

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13. The police in Rockland, Maine now carry guns and a small can of spray stuff called Mace. According to the directions on the back of the can, Mace doesn't work on drunks, druggies or psychotics. Wouldn’t you think that excludes unless you're attacked by the Osmonds?

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14. 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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